I got my first paid Substack subscribers
Small wins go a big way
Well it finally happened !
After months grinding away on Substack I finally got my first paid subscribers !!
In case you are new to Substack .. below is the official description
“Substack lets independent writers and podcasters publish directly to their audience and get paid through subscriptions”
Simply put Substack is a newsletter platform that allows you to monetize your posts
There are people with thousands of paid subscribers making a nice little income via this platform
This is my journey towards getting those very first paid subscribers on Substack
It is a thrilling feeling to know that people will actually pay to support your content and get access to more stuff
My Substack currently stands at a measly 252 subscribers and yet 3 of them are now paid as you can see below !
Lets start at the beginning
I will admit I initially bought into the whole “Substack will make me thousands of dollars every month” thing
Looking at the calculator thing had me dreaming of the day I would have 800 subscribers and me earning the below figures
Yeah .. that did not happen
My mistake was being greedy and turning on the paywall right from day 1
Big mistake
People will not pay anything unless they know you can provide value
After a few months of seeing my Substack starve for subscribers, I restarted the whole thing
This time EVERYTHING was free and I promoted my Substack on LinkedIn and Youtube like crazy
Slowly and painfully the list has grown
I turned on paid posts just a few weeks earlier very nervously
My paid subscriber strategy
Below was my simple paid subscriber strategy:
- ONE paid post once a month .. rest of my 4–5 posts will be 100% free
- Paid subscribers would get free access to my Udemy courses, free book chapters and even ( in the future ) 1–1 Zoom consultation calls with me
Thats it .. I have an ok following on Udemy, LinkedIn, Youtube etc. so used that to link back to my Substack
So far 3 people felt that is enough value which is awesome !
My advice
Substack is awesome but you have to be patient
It is definitely the long game
It does not work in isolation and you need to leverage your network to drive traffic towards your Substack ( even though its discoverability has been really improving these last couple of months )
My goal is to hit that 100 subscriber mark this year and make that awesome amount below
Good luck to you on your journey and I cannot let you leave without asking you to subscribe to my Substack :)
Taimur Ijlal is a multi-award-winning, information security leader with over two decades of international experience in cyber-security and IT risk management in the fin-tech industry. Taimur can be connected on LinkedIn or on his YouTube channel “Cloud Security Guy” on which he regularly posts about Cloud Security, Artificial Intelligence, and general cyber-security career advice.
If you are interested in getting Cyber Security career coaching then reach out to him here.
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