Revisiting My Substack

DUH: I forgot to include a link to my Substack account. There's publicity for ya!

I started my Substack in 2023, and in that time I published 12 posts. Initially, Substack was meant to be my author newsletter host, but I found the site so confusing and glitchy that I abandoned it for Mailerlite. (Then I abandoned newsletters all together.) 

Now, since I have literally nothing going on, I decided to revisit my account. It's unclear what I'm hoping to accomplish---perhaps lure a few readers---but sometimes I'll write something I'm proud of and I need a home for it. No offense to this blog, but no one seems able to find it. After several attempts to convince Google to index it, it still doesn't appear in a search, and I've run out of things to try.

A Substacker I follow who's a book marketer has been posting guides on how to navigate Substack, so I decided to read through them in the hope that a light bulb might flicker on. The site is still very confusing, even with helpful instructions. My quibble with it is that it has too many screens that are ambiguously labeled, and the important ones are completely hidden from sight. With this Substacker's help, I finally found the SEO fields and the tags section, which are rather important if I want anyone to actually find my posts.  

Things still don't work the way I want. I went back into an old post to delete an image, only to find it was an impossible task, so finally I gave up. I can't spend an hour on something that really only matters to me.

Yesterday I created a new post, got everything looking good, added my keywords and SEO description, loaded my categories, and no one has found it. One would think at least one person would stumble across it accidentally.

The common advice is to publish several posts before migrating to a pay model; allow enough time for people to discover me before shilling for paid subscriptions. (I can't even get free subscriptions!) So, whereas I have an interesting true-life story to tell, I'm not willing to just give it away, especially when no one is going to even find it. My impractical idea was to break it into eight or nine episodes; make two or three of them free, then entice readers into subscribing to read the rest of the story. 

Isn't it funny how we come up with these wondrous plans that never pan out? I've seen other Substackers do it---start telling a story, then once readers get hooked, tell them that if they want to find out how it ends, they need to pay. Since I have no discretionary income, I've never been able to read "the rest of the story", but I've heard tales of people who actually have money to burn.  

I know, I know; we're supposed to engage with other Substackers, but doesn't "subscribing" count as engagement? I subscribe to lots of them; too many, in fact. I'm not a big commenter, but I guess I could try. I doubt that would work in steering people over to my account, though. 

Anyway, all bitching aside, I'm going to give it a whirl. But I'm only going to post writings that meet my standards. That makes it difficult to maintain the one or two weekly posts that are recommended for success. So far, in two years, I only published four posts that I deemed worthy. 

If you, too, are considering using Substack, these are the common rules for maximizing readership:

• Publish notes (as opposed to posts) daily
• Establish a posting schedule and stick with it
• Engage, engage, engage with other accounts
• Write something good 😜
• Reply to comments (first, get some comments)
• Publicize your account via social media

I would add:

• Be diligent about using tags and categories

I did add a note to my author website, encouraging people to subscribe, but no one visits my author site, either. Can't hurt, though. I suppose. 

I'll hold onto my true-life tale for now, to gauge whether I obtain any sort of readership. I'm extremely skeptical, but I can always post my story here, where at least one or two people could potentially find it. 

Damn, getting readers is a hard slog.