Today i’m taking a little step back for my substackniversary: i’ve been posting on the platform for a full year – yay me!
It feels a bit strange to write this with the results that i’ve had: most posts in this genre celebrate a great amount of growth, thousands of subscribers, and the likes.
This is not such a post, mainly because i haven’t found the attention i wanted. Now, this isn’t to say i hate you, my dear subscriber! I love every one of you dearly (do i?). I don’t think i know most of your names, but i’m still grateful you decided to press subscribe and stayed on here.
(I wish i could add an unsubscribe button right here, but i haven’t figured out how to, sorry)
Back to the point: not everyone gets lots of anything when they start a substack, and maybe this post can be useful if you want to compare stats. I don’t think i’ve seen stats transparency from any other small accounts – which doesn’t mean anything since they’d also be small and have little reach so i’m unlikely to find them (serpent, circle, you know the taste of the tail as well as i do!).
I’m also going to add some advice and lessons learned at the bottom if you’re interested! Now let’s get into it:
The state of the stats
As of this day, i have 109 subscribers (that’s 1 every 3 days, i count that as a win!) and 5.4K total views over the year, for a total of 19 posts (not including this one).
My 3 best performing posts were:
The review of the writing course was circulated a bit among the students of said course, some of which had the same griefs as me, hence the big amount of comments
The end of year review seems to have been liked! I’ll definitely re-write another one like it this year.
The AI post was timely with the explosion of vibecoding and my credentials as an actual software engineer helped (also i used a clickbaity title). I don’t want to be an AI person though, so it’s not greatly useful to know.
Here are the opening rates and views of my last 3 posts:
This is much more in line with my usual stats: between 100 and 150 views, 1 or 2 comments (it shows up as 2 or 4 because i replied 👀), and a handful of likes.
I haven’t gotten a direct sub from a post for the past 12 posts. This coincides with the end of the writing course, so i guess it’s correlated. Most people found me through the forums there. In total, the dashboard shows me 45 people came directly from posts.
I have been getting some new subs through Notes mostly. I can’t find the exact number in the analytics, but i often see 2 notifications in the row: people like a Notes and then subscribe. I guess my shitposting over there has some benefits?!
How are your stats going if you’re in similar place than me? Let me know in the comments or in DMs (i’ll keep if private).
Last graph for now: traffic sources
As you can see, people mostly come from the substack network (i think that means Notes). There’s quite a few “direct” things, but i think that’s just me typing the URL directly in icognito mode when i’m on my work laptop.
Apparently some people found me through Google (i’m pretty sure all the DuckDuckGo hits are also me on the work laptop lol). I’m not doing any kind of SEO or other optimizations for search engines because that’s the biggest joy-stealer possible and i can’t be bothered.
Where am i going?
Substack and writing are hobbies to me, i don’t do it for money and i have no intention of ever making a living from it. My software engineering job thankfully pays me well while giving me enough free times in the evenings to enjoy myself, so i’ll be keeping it.
Because of that, i find most of the advice on how to grow a substack inappropriate. I don’t have a pain point that i’m solving for people, nor do i want to create a lead magnet or add paywalls anywhere. More importantly, i don’t want to mislead people with marketing tactics or clickbait titles.
I did it once actually, with the vibecoding post, and i think it sums up my feelings well: i only did it because i have little respect for people who use AI to do all their work for them, especially in a specialized job like software engineering which is fraught with dangers. So clickbait seemed fine. But i wanted to write the post because i thought there needed to be more of this type of writing, to warn off young impressionable people from relying on AI for stuff like building payment systems – and again, clickbait helps attract attention to the psa, so i guess it’s morally good.
In general though, i don’t want to be known as an AI person, or as a software engineer, or as a marketing asshole who ragebaits you and tricks you round and round. I want to attract people like me, who click off immediately when the stupid title doesn’t match the inside, who seeks “intellectual enrichment” said a friend, that is to say content around culture that’s entertaining but also has substance.
I was told to be louder
All in all, the 3 bits of advice i’ve kept have been:
Post more on Notes
Be a good netizen and like/comment on essays you like
Make my homepage nice
I also don’t want to be known as someone who posts dumb useless chatgpt notes, so i don’t (how brave of me! i hope you clapped). I try to either shitpost (which is hopefully funny) or say interesting stuff. That means i do struggle with posting 1 Note a day, but i don’t want to force it. I’ve been filling the gaps with pretty photos of my journals and it’ll have to do.
Being the good netizen is moderately easy. I leave likes wherever i get to the end (since i click off rather quick on shitty essays), but i find it hard to leave a comment. I’ve been forcing myself to find interesting and relevant stuff to say, but sometimes i just end up with a “nice post, i liked it” and i find that mediocre. I’ll focus on improving that in the future!
I made me all pretty
Makes me sad that “pretty homepage” is always at the bottom of the advice lists, but i understand why: nearly no-one visits there, and it’s probably better to focus on having clickbaity featured images. But i don’t wanna, and since none of the other advice applied, i spent the time making pretty stuff.
I’ve decided to add a tiny bit of consistency in terms of background color and to mix analog and digital. I handcut letters from magazines, glued them to printer paper, and scanned them with my printer.
Then i use my ipad and procreate to add pictures onto the pinkish background, paste my scanned letters and stamps, and make it all somewhat visually pleasing.
Also i spent hours detouring the letters i use as dividers – it’s completely useless for most of you who read on the app or in email since the background is white, but if you come on my homepage, it looks pretty in transparency.
What else have I learned?
Would have probably grown faster if i had been focused on writing trendy pieces and put out one per week.
Things would be so much easier if i didn’t have morals and a strong sense of wanting to do things right. It’s not even perfectionism (although i also suffer from that), it’s just that i don’t want to put out half-assed takes on trendy topics that i would personally not want to read
This doesn’t mean you can’t have success – it just means i can’t lol. There are plenty of talented and exigent people on this platform who put out great work every week and succeed from it.
I probably should focus on one topic (books) and mostly stick to that. That’s what i originally wanted to do, but then the writing course was making us write personal essays so i kept doing that.
This makes sense because people (me) want to know what they’re into before giving up their email (i don’t think i’d give myself a subscribe right now).
Also, my best posts are about books and they are the ones people liked the most (except the AI one, but we’ve already covered that this isn’t the direction i’m going to – i want a hobby, not a repeat of my job), so it makes sense!
For all that i complain about not getting much attention, i’m very happy whenever you like or comment (please keep doing that!), and i have a rather decent opening rate (more than 30%, sometimes even 40%), so i must be doing ok.
That’s it, really! I’m not going to waffle on for too much more, when i don’t really have any other lessons to share. I guess the last one is: of course you’re not going to be famous on substack in a year, only a few outliers do, as for all other social media.
I feel a bit meh at having only talked about how people don’t like me enough, sorry, but that’s really the entire reason why i’m posting on substack. I like writing, true, but the writing can stay in the drafts. If i’m putting it out on the internets, it’s because i want to be seen. It feel so immodest and arrogant to say it out loud, but i don’t want to lie or fabricate feelings! This is a stats transparency post, so let’s be real <3
Now, i’ll stop here for today! I hope i didn’t turn you off by begging for attention (please click the little like button right below 😉) and i’ll see you next time!
Love,
PS: looking at my list of ideas, i think the next ones are going to be about pseudonyms, notetaking apps, and what it’s like to write about books on the american internet when you’re not at all american
Give me your email here to get notified :))
Want to read more from me? This is me at my funniest:
I D.A.R.E. you to put your name on the internet
You know that moment when your childhood programming crashes headfirst into modern reality? That's me, every time someone asks for my Instagram handle.
And this is the post i’m most proud of writing (unimportant spoilers of Severance season 2, she’s really a side side character with 5 minutes of screen time):
Or you can read said 2 best performing posts:
