My First YEAR Publishing on Substack: Here's What I Learned

Has it been 12 months already??

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Let’s Review the Past Year

Normally, I review the previous month’s performance in this space. But since this officially marks my first full year writing on Substack, I want to zoom out and look at the entire year’s performance.

On May 31st, 2024, I imported a list of 868 subscribers from MailChimp. On June 3rd, I published my first post here.

Currently, I have 1,141 subscribers, for a net gain of 273 subscribers over the last year.

Now, it’s worth noting that I’ve had 149 people from that imported MailChimp list unsubscribe. So if we remove those 719 subscribers, that means I’ve currently gained 422 subscribers from Substack. Over a year, that averages out to about 35 subscribers a month.

Let’s look at Traffic (Views), Subscriber and Follower growth over the last year. First, here’s how Views have gone over the last 12 months:

As you can see, Views have steadily increased over time. This represents weekly totals for Views. My first week where I had at least 1,000 Views came in early August of last year, now almost every week has at least 1,000 Views.

My first four weeks here, I averaged 802 views a week. My last 4 weeks, I averaged 1,194 views. So that’s roughly a 50% increase in views from the first week to last week.

Remember, growth in social media isn’t linear. Often times, you need to zoom out to see the real improvement.

Now let’s look at Subscribers and Followers over the last year. First, here’s Subscribers:

For the first six months, Backstage Pass only gained about 50 subscribers total. In December and January it had a nice surge, and it’s slowed down a bit since. But my point is, it took a solid 6 months to feel like it was getting any traction whatsoever as far as subscriber growth. I am sure many writers here can point to similar results, and that’s why it is vital to stick with your writing. Honestly, the only reason why I stuck with the writing while the subs were going sideways is because everyone said to keep going. So I did, and that were right!

Here’s how Followers have done over the last year:

It’s interesting to compare the trend line for Subscribers vs Followers. Whereas Subscribers had very slow growth for the first 6 months, Followers did noticeably better. And in March and April when there were some dips and sideways movement with Subscribers, that didn’t happen with Followers, they continued increasing at a consistent pace.

I think this really speaks to the duality of Substack. It’s not just a Newsletter platform, and it’s not just a Social Media platform. It’s both, and you need to view it as being both.

What I Will Change In My Second Year on Substack

There’s three main areas I want to focus on in my second 12 months here:

First, I need to develop a dedicated Notes strategy. Up until now, I’ve pretty much written Notes whenever inspiration struck. I need to become more intentional in my usage. I also want to focus on specific audience segments to target with each Note. I do see the value in just writing when inspiration strikes, but I don’t want that to be my entire strategy.

Second, I need to develop an exit strategy from Substack. I had already been thinking about this for a while, but the problems Lucy Werner had when she had to start her publication over gave me a lot of pause. Additionally, I do believe Substack will hit a nice growth spurt sometime in the next 1-2 years. When that happens, I want to be able to best leverage that growth, and perhaps use it as a jumping off point to something else.

Finally, I need to do a better job of converting Followers into Subscribers. I’m very pleased with solid growth I’m seeing from Views and Followers. But the growth in Subscribers has been slower than my other metrics. If I can figure out how to double or triple my sub growth rate, I’ll be a lot happier.

Finally, Thank You For Your Friendship and Support

I first started using social media 20 years ago, in 2005. Since then, every few years, whether it was Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Friendfeed or Plurk or Identi.ca or whatever…a new social media site would pop up and everyone would jump on it. My ‘network’ from one site would just jump to the new one.

Substack was different, because my network wasn’t here.

Paul Chaney

convinced me to join, and when I got here, I quickly noticed that he was the only person in my ‘network’ who was active here.

So I had to start from scratch in building a network and community of friends here. That ended up being a blessing because it forced me to more proactively engage others.

But more than that, it showed me that most of Substack’s users are simply good people. Strangers were willing to go out of their way to help me.

Lucy Werner

and

Neela 🌶️

went out of their way (and still do) to help me when neither of them knew me from Adam’s housecat. You just don’t see that on other social media sites like you do on Substack. People aren’t that generous with their time and attention.

But they are on Substack. And that's why I love it here. To everyone that has read Backstage Pass and who has engaged with me here and via Notes, thank you so much for your time and attention. Substack is where my online family is!

Looking forward to what the next year holds!

Mack

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Backstage Pass teaches you how to better connect with your customers, readers, clients, or donors. The lessons shared here draw on my experience over the last 20 years building customer engagement strategies for companies like Adobe, Dell, Club Med, Ingersoll-Rand, and countless others. I give you real-world research, examples and tactics that show you how to create customer engagement efforts that drive real business growth.