Substack can be cruel but here's why I love it

Musings and stats at 5 weeks and “hundreds” of paid supporters

Hello friends and welcome to part one of this two-part feature about my first month (or so) on Substack, the highs and lows of becoming a “bestseller” and how I did it in five weeks.

It feels a significant moment in the life of A Day Well Spent - which you all, my treasured readers - are an integral part of. And so to say thank you, this week I’m sharing an extra bonus post.

Here are the two parts of this two-parter:

1. Substack can be cruel but here’s why I love it (this post, free to read)

2. How I grew from zero to “bestseller” in 5 weeks - and the blueprint for how I launched this Substack

In part two I’ll be covering the exact approach I took to launching this venture, much of which can be applied to any project you might have on the horizon, whether on Substack or beyond. Or even if you are already some way into one.

There’ll be quite a lot there and it may seem a little daunting, but it’s very doable. If I can do it, anyone can.

I hope you enjoy this post. As always, thank you for being here and see you down in the comments section.

Substack can be a cruel but here's why I love it

I like receiving emails from Substack. I’ve set the notifications as such that I receive them only when the platform has good news to tell me - when someone writes a comment on one of my posts or I get a new paid subscriber. Both lovely things to be alerted of.

Substack also sends me news about my publication. I’ve had ones letting me know A Day Well Spent has been featured on

Substack Reads

(where the platform promotes particular articles they’ve enjoyed - it was for my very first post How to slow down the passing of time) and that I’ve been featured on Discover (what you see when you click on Explore).

But five days ago I received a different kind of email. “You’re a Substack bestseller”, the subject line stated without a hint of animation. A sort of nonchalant congratulations; well done you’re doing great, but don’t get too excited.

Which is a fair message. For you see, a Substack writer becomes a ‘bestseller’ once they’ve reached 100 paid subscribers (which to me is not “hundreds” but if Substack wants to refer to it as that, I’ll take it). When this happens, the white and orange tick magically manifests by your profile name. 

It feels good. You feel legitimized. It’s a badge of honour that cannot be bought, a pretty accessory to sport on your page. It’s the digital version of a new piece of jewellery you insist on wearing everywhere because it’s catching everyone’s eye.

But what Substack doesn’t tell you is that if you then drop below 100 - and you may, growth is rarely linear - the badge disappears. Just like that. There one second, gone the next. Which to my eyes is wanton cruelty and can, understandably, play havoc with your ego. 

Over the past five days I’ve had my badge appear and disappear almost as many times as I’ve had breakfasts.

Where I was before Substack and a certain kind of “success”

Whether the tick is there or not when you, dear reader, consume this post, I’ve flirted with this milestone around week 5 of having launched A Day Well Spent and it’s something I’m really proud of. Taking into account:

1. I started from a mailing list of zero

2. I wasn't coming from an established writing background

3. I was branching into topics completely removed from what I am known for*

* which is food and travel but A Day Well Spent is about purposeful living: self-empowerment, slow and sustainable being, personal fulfilment and growth.

The timing of the badge seemed serendipitous too, considering the topics of my two posts last week which happened to be about "success":

1. The 5 life mantras responsible for my success (1, 2 and 3 have been stuck to my computer for years)

2. Sunday Reflections #6 (where we talk about what "being successful" means, how we perceive "success" in others and what we think about society's interpretation of "success")

It’s also worth noting that prior to launching A Day Well Spent, I was not a user of Substack. To my knowledge, I hadn’t read a single thing on the platform (I’m not a great digital consumer in general, see who are you?). 

So the past five weeks have been a learning curve for both getting to know the platform and writing on it.

Being here is quite scary at first but the freedom is unrivalled

It’s like being on a rollercoaster. The perfect mix of unrestrained and thrilling highs (subs) peppered with the occasional stomach drops (unsubs). But that sense of freedom, of soaring through the air not knowing the exact direction of travel, is what keeps me here.

Branching out as an independent writer is scary. You don’t have the support of a big publication, its network and social accounts, an editor. But writing on Substack has been one of the most fulfilling types of work I’ve done for some time.

Coming from the world of the public eye (I present on TV and radio) and social media (I have a sizeable Instagram account) - and therefore used to spending much of my time trying to cultivate a sense of community - the community here on Substack feels very different.

Readers are engaged, they read to the end, leave insightful comments and start their own conversations down there. They value the words and insights of others in what feels like an ad-free online publishing utopia.

There is the freedom of writing not for an editor, a client nor a search engine, but for my audience directly and more importantly, for myself.

There is the quiet rapture of writing about what the hell I want. Some ideas I have in the pipeline: my ode to the Sun, the power of lucid dreaming, why sometimes it’s OK to quit and a recipe for chocolate brownies that are actually good for you. 

Where else could I cover such a mash-up of musings?

It’s all so very rewarding but be warned about the dashboard

Probably the most visceral thing for me is the very direct, tangible and immediate financial reward straight from the person reading your words. If they like a post, or want access to a part of it behind a paywall, they may well become a paid subscriber.

And it’s all in real time. You don’t get the money months down the line like royalties from a book. You get the reward there and then. You see it appear in your Stripe account and you can set the frequency at which the money moves from there into your bank account. 

The dopamine hit is real. 

Hold up. Someone read some of my words and within a few minutes decided they were good enough to actually part money with? And I immediately receive that money? Wow! What a pure and unmuddied action of appreciation and value recognition. 

And you can see who these people are at an email level. They are not faceless. So the relationship between Substack writer and supporter is very much two way, at least for me.

However, because of the above, the dashboard is addictive. Holy sh*t, is it addictive. It should come with a health warning. It is so clear, user-friendly and with so much granular, user-level data that you could lose hours investigating all the different analytics and graphs (oh just me? OK).

Substack is a hive of cross-pollination

Writing on Substack means you are not writing alone. You are part of a huge network of people (35 million monthly active subscriptions) with similar dreams and as both a reader and writer, you benefit from the clever functionality spending time here affords.

Some of the best things about it are the numerous ways this platform enables cross-pollination. From rewarding and gamifying reader referrals (my leaderboard) and tagging authors and their publications within your words (for example

Sally Prosser

and her fab new publication

Elbows on the table

). 

To being able to write blurbs for other writers and display them on your welcome page. And cross-posting other people’s work so it also appears on your own publication. 

These are just some of my favourite features. There are so many more, too many to list here.

Do you need an existing social media audience to write here? My stats.

All of this means that whilst it would do no harm, it is not necessary to have an existing large social media audience to start a Substack and for it to be a success (whatever that might look like for you).

Here are the breakdowns of where my subscribers have come from - I’ve hidden the exact numbers because I’m not that radical.

The source breakdown of my total subscribers, free and paid:

The source breakdown of my paid subscribers:

The section to focus on is the light grey ‘New accounts’, those who have come directly to my publication from outside the Substack network. It’s these I attribute to my social media audiences or direct emails I sent to friends and family in my first week pleading them to subscribe so I could get off zero.

Note how small the grey percentages are. All the rest of my subscribers, the varying shades of orange, were already on the network.

These are statistics I certainly wasn’t expecting and which prove the potential of choosing to write here.

Tune into part 2 tomorrow

I hope you’ve enjoyed these thoughts about how the first few weeks of A Day Well Spent have gone. Tomorrow, I will be sharing How I launched and grew this Substack from zero to “bestseller” in 5 weeks, for paid subscribers.

If you’d like access to it and everything else on A Day Well Spent, you can subscribe below - it costs less than £1.20 a week. Thank you.

Don’t forget to like and share this post…

…by hitting the little ❤️ and share icon at the top or bottom.

And don’t forget to leave a comment

• What do you think about this look beneath the Substack bonnet?

• What is your favourite feature / functionality here that others might not know about?

• Are you a writer here and if so, for how long and how are you finding it?

• As a reader, what do you think about the platform?

• What are your thoughts on this kind of publishing as a way for writers to earn an independent living?

As always, I so look forward to your thoughts.