What I really want you to know

The advice I ignored and surprising things I noticed in my first year on Substack (and what it has to do with doing what you love)

“To persevere is to hold the energy of potential within you – in your body, in your mind and in your heart.” – from the Ocean Dreams Oracle by Danielle Noel

Just over a year ago, a few weeks after handing in the manuscript of a book I had worked on for five years, I was sitting in a café in Exeter, sipping a coffee and catching up with an author Facebook group I belong to, while wondering what to do next. Someone had shared a link to a short story posted on a platform called Substack by a former publishing executive, and everyone was chatting about how it was clearly a loosely-veiled fictional version of the truth. Perhaps even more interesting than the story itself was the fact this woman was now making a living writing on Substack. As I read, something inside me fizzed. This fizz is a feeling I get every now and then, and I have come to read it a signal of hovering possibility.

At the end of the essay there was a button to ‘Subscribe’ to get the writer’s essays in your inbox, and an option to upgrade to a paid subscription if you wanted insider content. Seeing that button switched on a lightbulb in my brain: this would be my next project. Without knowing much about Substack, I knew I wanted to be part of it. Today I’d like to share the story of the past year, since launching my own Substack publication. It is a story of unexpected joy, connection and abundance in the middle of what has been a very challenging year personally, and I am deeply grateful for it. I want to share it with you in case it might spark the same kind of fizz, or reinspire you to give your own art some fresh attention.

As many of you know, I have been running my own business for the past fourteen years, and anytime I have followed the guidance of that fizz of excitement, it has always led somewhere interesting. I have come to see it as one of my surest navigation tools along the path of doing what I love.

I spent a couple of weeks poking around Substack to figure out what I might create, and launched soon after with my first (very short) essay. That was a year ago, and today I am in the same café, in the very same chair, writing this to you, reflecting on the wild ride that has been this first year on Substack. I was hoping that joining would give me some structure for writing beyond the enormous task of writing books, and perhaps, one day, even become a new income stream. What I got was so much more than that – it was been freeing, and joyful, and has wildly exceeded any of the vague expectations I had for it.

November is one of the busiest months of the year in my business. Normally anything non-essential gets pushed aside during this time, but as soon as I joined Substack I became obsessed with writing essays. I worked on them after hours and late into the night, or early in the morning, publishing nine essays in the first month.

I started at zero subscribers like almost everyone else, and instead of importing the mailing list I have spent years building, I chose instead to use it as a chance to experiment while no-one was reading. I wrote what I wanted, in the way that I wanted, gave it all away for free, and was stunned by the results.

By the ten-week mark I had five thousand subscribers, with more arriving every day, and was curious to see that posting less often (after that initial frenzied month!) didn’t seem to slow my rate of growth. I could not get over the built-in generosity of Substack’s sharing tools, which enable readers not only to share things they love, but highlight specific sentences, and share with their own comment, as well as offer direct recommendations from their own publication. At the same time I was discovering old friends and new in the Substack app, figuring out how to share work I loved and cheering on my fellow writers.

“I have no idea if this will work but I know I want to do it. To swim towards the moon. To find the right words to articulate my dream of community while giving me space to write.” – Thoughts about Substack, scribbled in my journal before launching my paid offering, SoulCircle.

When I launched my paid offering in the summer - my private writing community SoulCircle - I did a pre-order offer ahead of opening the doors on July 11 was staggered that it officially became a ‘Substack Bestseller’ (more than 100 paid subscribers) before it had even begun. Just a few weeks later my Substack had become #4 on the whole of Substack globally in the Education category (whaaat?). I discovered this when I was in the Apple store trying out some new devices, looked up substack.com and found my publication on the front page under Education… I may have squealed in public.

This beautiful community has kept on growing mostly by word-of-mouth (thank you!) and the joy has expanded exponentially as our SoulCircle community has bonded around a shared love of writing and words. I just adore this space, and the people who I spend time with here. If you are one of them, thank you. If you not yet one of them we’d love to have you.

Perhaps most significantly it has been a year of incredible creative freedom. I have written about things I have never dared write about online before. I have made beautiful, nourishing connections with gorgeous humans and feel more inspired than I have in a long time. Something about this space - and you lovely readers and other Substack writers - made that feel possible and safe for me, so thank you for that too.

I think it’s important to celebrate our milestones, and share what we are learning along the way, so today I am offering an insight into some surprising things I have noticed since that first (very short) essay one year ago.

I am also including the top three pieces of common Substack advice I have ignored along the way, to remind you that you can do this your way. For a deeper dive (and a peek into the data behind my Substack story including financials and detailed observations of what has worked and what hasn’t), you might be interested in joining my brand new LIVE writing and Substack immersion, Ink + Flame). It will run from February 24, 2025 for seven weeks. Places are strictly limited so be sure to get one soon if you know you want to join, and really commit to your Substack next year.

Things I adore about Substack

I love how it feels, and how it makes me feel about writing, and what it makes me willing to share. That is especially surprising when I remember it is a form of social media.

• For me personally, Substack has been a sanctuary. A place that I have been able to write about things that I had rarely or never before written about on blogs or in my newsletter - the darkness as well as the light including:

Grief (here and here and here) | Disappointment (here) | Physical pain (here) | The challenges of navigating midlife (here and here) | Visibility (here) | Self-doubt (here)

• Rather than me just sending out a newsletter broadcast, Substack has made it a conversation (see point below!)

• It has helped me to do more of what I love - reading, writing, pondering, connecting, supporting others.

The engagement here is off the charts, and the people are just the loveliest. (Thank you!)

• My Confessions of a Self-Help Author series of essays has been read over 100,000 times(!) and my open rates here are consistently in the range of 50-80%. That is wild - it is certainly the best for any newsletter I have ever written.

• In SoulCircle, my paid writing community here on Substack, the weekly Journal Notes I send each Monday are read and revisited, on average, 2.5 times by EACH paid subscriber, with a recent one being read and returned to an average of THREE times by each paid subscriber.

• The Live Writing Circles and Live Q&A in SoulCircle are, on average, rewatched 2.4 times, not including participation by those who joined live.

• The comments section of each essay is a joy all of its own, and our SoulCircle private chat is just the friendliest place for writers.

It works best when I go with what feels right. I love strategy and am a planner at heart (possibly related to my stationery addiction), but with Substack I have erred on the side of going with how I feel in any given moment, above everything else.

• I might have an idea scribbled in my notebook or a draft on my desktop for weeks (or sometimes months) and all of a sudden feel compelled to finish crafting that essay immediately. I always follow that feeling. I don’t have a fixed publishing schedule for my free subscribers. I have a notebook full of ideas, and several essays on the go at any one time. Even those which read as being anchored in a very recent occurrence have often been germinating for a while.

• I only post when I feel like I have something valuable to say, even if that means going several weeks in between essays. (Note: For my paid subscribers I send a Journal Note every Monday without fail – I love that this is a very different approach to my free essays, and the combination of discipline for my paid community and freedom for my free subscribers is a healthy mix for me).

• I always get a nervous flutter before posting the kind of essays that resonate most deeply. This is the same feeling I get when I submitting a book manuscript. It’s a good feeling - an indicator that I am being at least a little bit brave.

I love that it’s a place which encourages and rewards generosity of spirit, instead of the competitive feeling of other channels. It’s a living classroom for writers, with stunning essays at every turn, and a feast for readers with experts on all kinds of things offering their insights and all kinds of fascinating humans sharing their take on life and the world.

• It makes me want to be a better writer, in the same way that amazing books do.

• Rather than complaining that famous people are arriving here with huge mailing lists and getting an unfair advantage, I see it as an incredible opportunity to learn from them. They built that mailing list over many years and must have done something right before they came here. It’s interesting to watch what they do with Substack.

The popular advice I have ignored

In case you’re interested, here’s the oft-toted Substack growth advice that I ignored in my first year. I’m not saying it can’t or hasn’t worked for other people. I’m just saying I didn’t do it, and it has turned out fine. There was a lot more advice which I chose not to follow, but these are the three main pieces (I’ll share the rest in Ink + Flame):

Advice I didn’t follow #1: “You should post often, ideally several times a week, and always to a consistent schedule.”

Aside from that wild first month (when no-one was reading!) I have rarely posted more than one essay a week, and I often go 2-3 weeks or more without publishing an essay. (This is for my free subscribers. I send out a short ‘Journal Note’ with writing inspiration every Monday, but I have only done this since I began SoulCircle in the summer, and these pieces are shorter than my essays). My point is that I only write an essay when I have something to say.

I have had a newsletter for more than a decade. Even now, every time someone hands over their email address to me, it feels like an invitation to pop round to their house for tea. I remember once listening to an interview with a radio presenter saying that radio was the most intimate of all media because often people listened while in bed, or in the bath, and they are welcoming you into the inner sanctum of their home when they do that. I think email is the same.

Every time I publish an essay on Substack, and choose to send it to my subscribers, I take a moment to thank them silently for allowing me to show up in their inbox and share something that matters to me, in the hope that it matters to them too. I thank them for taking precious minutes of their life to read what I have to say. And if they take the time to comment, I try to reply.

Advice I didn’t follow #2: “You should ‘go paid’ from the beginning”

In the beginning I had no idea what I was doing. I did not know what Substack would become for me, I had no sense of how long it took to craft a beautiful essay, what capacity I would have for writing here, and whether a newsletter was even what I wanted to offer to paying subscribers. I loved the freedom of writing what I wanted, when I wanted, and offering a paid option would have constrained that.

Besides, I didn’t want to charge anyone for anything until I had figured out how it all worked, and what I wanted my Substack to be (and crucially, what I didn’t want it to be). Looking back now I can see that going paid early on would have probably locked me into a paid newsletter instead of leaving room for me to create SoulCircle, the private writing community that I ended up launching and loving instead.

Advice I didn’t follow #3: “You should ditch all your other social media accounts and make Substack your everything.”

If you have spent time and effort growing a following anywhere else, it makes no sense to me that you would abandon that when you could use it as a way to signpost people to your Substack, especially when those people are likely to be interested in what you offer here. Substack is currently the channel I love the most, but I don’t not post elsewhere. Where possible I repurpose content, and share about my Substack essays on my other channels to encourage people over this way.

A different kind of advice

What I really want you to know is this: You belong here and so do your words. I know this not because of any kind of validation I have found here (although Substack readers are among the loveliest anywhere), but because of the way it makes me feel to write and share in this space.

Besides telling myself that, here’s the kind of advice I offered myself, which was mostly based on what I have learned in writing books, but also from what I learned along the way this past year on Substack:

• If you don’t yet have a Substack, start one. It might be an unexpected joy! I am offering a FREE mini class on how to get started on Substack, called Write for Love Write for Money. You can register here for free. Do join if you’d like me to walk you through the basics to help you settle in.

• Write about things you love, or are moved or fascinated by, not what you ‘think’ you should write about. Let the writing be enough, and anything else be a bonus, especially in the beginning.

• Wait long enough for your words to marinate before sharing, but not so long that you never share. Pay attention to the quality of your writing, but not so much that it spills into perfectionism and that gets in the way.

• Do your best for the subscribers you do have, instead of getting caught up on those you don’t have.

• Know this: The single best thing you can do for your Substack is to offer the best work you can at this point in time. With every essay you write you will become a better writer.

• Above all, be grateful. We are so lucky to live in a time when we have these kinds of tools and technologies available to us, and Substack is still young, so as a reader and/or a writer, you get to have a role in shaping what it becomes. This is one of the loveliest communities of writers and readers you will find anywhere, so dive right in!

Beth Xx

PS If you want to give your writing more attention in the months ahead, upgrade to paid to join my friendly writing community SoulCircle, for year-round inspiration and support, beautiful Live Writing Circles and more.

PPS My Most Popular Essays List (sharing this in case of interest – I always find these things fascinating!) Stats are correct at November 3, 2024.

My most popular essays have been:

• My Confessions of a Self Help Author series Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four (100k reads)

• Warning! May contain audacious dreams (36.3k reads)

• Joy. Boats. Time. (32.3k reads)

• The Body as a Tool of the Creative Trade (32.3k reads)

• Stardust and Small Happinesses (30.7k reads)

• The Song of the Ancient Moon (30k reads)

Photos by Holly Bobbins.