It wasn’t how my freelance career began. Back then, I was desperately seeking journalism commissions. They’d come in, every now and again, but I had to do client work, on a retainer, to earn enough each month to pay the bills.

But when I launched my first online course, I saw what was possible with just a laptop and my brain. As a writer, with experience…

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I’m doing a final edit on the workshop I’m delivering on Wednesday - An introduction to Substack - and writing it has been such a tonic. It has been an opportunity to reflect on all that I love about this platform, where you self-publish (and get paid).

Sign up for the workshop here

And it’s the self-publishing part that I want to write about today, because until not so long ago, sel…

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Three years ago, almost to the day, I’d submitted the final manuscript for my third non-fiction book to the publisher and I felt a bit lost.

I wanted to write. I needed to earn a living. I loved having books (and articles) published but I felt disempowered by the publishing process.

I had no control over timescale; no control over how much I could earn.

A …

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I’ve spent the past 12 years working from home, online, alone. Usually from my kitchen table. Occasionally from a studio in the garden, depending on where I’m living. Sometimes, I’ve co-worked in a coffee shop or at the gym.

(Though, only ever for an hour or two. Then, I need to escape the social interactions and potential interruptions and go home.)

At p…

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After my first baby was born, I was determined to keep my career going and I decided that the best way to do this was to start my own business.

It was a digital magazine, and parts of it were creative but the focus was on the business side. I needed to earn a living from it.

So, I commissioned other people to write the articles, while I focused on marketi…

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I met this guy at a party last night. An artist. And an art teacher.

He told me that although he enjoys the teaching, he wouldn’t do it if he made enough money from his art.

But he does’t want his art (photography/painting) to be about making money.

I’m always interested in the work/life of an artist.

Some artists do it purely for the creative outlet.

Som…

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“The great thing about being a multidisciplinary artist is that it works with my neurodivergence,” wrote Brianna Young in a recent piece for We Hyperfocus Magazine.

“I can allow myself to jump around from music to painting, to directing and costume making, and really anything my imagination brews up.

“This freedom didn’t happen overnight, though,” she s…

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I’m pausing my Substack for one month.

I’ve posted every single week for two years and seven months. There are over 300 essays in the archive. Now, I need a month off to rest and reset, creatively.

What this means for you

• If you are a monthly paid subscriber: I have paused your payments so that you pay nothing for the next month.

• If you pay annually: your …

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Last week, I wrote about adding the paywall into your posts on Substack. There isn’t one way that works for everyone - rather, it’s about thinking about your readers and getting creative.

Does it work to paywall everything, because it’s ‘high value’ content?

Would it be better to ask people to contribute if they can?

Should you go in low? (£3.50/month; just under $5/month) or higher - treat it like an exclusive membership?

One thing we all need to keep in mind is that people are becoming increasingly careful about subscriptions. If it doesn’t add something to their life/career, they will stop paying.

So, how do you get your first paid subscribers, encourage them to stay, and build to 100 paid subscribers (and beyond) so that you become a Substack bestseller?

Getting 100 paid subscribers on Substack

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It happens.

Especially in the transient digital world. You run a business/platform, or freelance for clients, and at first you love it but a few years in, it starts to feel a bit boring.

Perhaps you used to rely on Instagram to spread word about your work but now the algorithm has dropped off and the low likes are feeling deflating.

Maybe AI feels like an…

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Back when I was running online courses as a full-time business, there was a lot of advice around collecting testimonials.

Testimonials, apparently, were crucial.

You don’t have to just believe how good I say my courses are, look at what all these other people say!

And of course, social proof is powerful.

I was lucky that women sent me wonderful emails about what they’d achieved, off the back of my courses, without me having to ask.

They were proud, and I was proud.

But what I didn’t like was the way I was hounded, as a consumer, for feedback.

I remember one person I’d worked with sending a very specific set of questions about their service and giving me a deadline to respond.

Here are two things about me:

1. I have people-pleasing tendencies.

2. I don’t like being told what to do (demand avoidant).

It’s an awkward mix. I want to please people by doing the right thing, but sometimes what they tell me they want me to do makes my body go stiff.

I need it by this time, the person said, because I’m just about to update my website.

Coincidence?

No, a weird kind of trick to make me give feedback.

I desperately didn’t want to do it.

My body was yelling at my head, reminding me I don’t owe anyone a testimonial, I already paid for the service.

But the people-pleaser said: you need to do this, otherwise you are mean and selfish.

So, I forced myself to give the bloody feedback, which meant setting aside precious time that could have been spent on my own work, or with my young children.

After that, I decided that I would give feedback when I chose to. I wouldn’t get myself into a situation again where I was reluctantly praising someone.

It’s not authentic, if it’s forced.

For a spell, I did actually ask a handful of people who’d done several of my courses if they’d mind giving feedback - this was following someone else’s advice - and it felt intuitively off.

They generously did give feedback, they even recorded little videos, but after seeing how annoying I found it being hounded for feedback, I stopped asking.

If people wanted to tell me what they thought of a course, they would.

Negative feedback

But what if someone wants to give negative feedback? What then?

During that same period, I had a course in my shop that was really cheap. A short, simple course. Someone signed up and then emailed saying it was shit.

I looked at the course, decided she was right, took it out of the shop - pleased that only she had paid for it, so far - and refunded her.

I apologised, and thanked her for highlighting this.

You know what she did?

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In case you missed it: an investigative piece published in this weekend’s Observer revealed that large parts of bestselling ‘memoir’ and major film The Salt Path are, in fact, not true at all. Memoirists feel let down; readers, even more so.

Last week, I wrote the piece that you’re about to read with no mention of the above, because although I had just finished reading The Salt Path, I hadn’t yet discovered that it’s partly fiction. Now, the message I wanted to share feels even more important.

This essay is about how we place too much emphasis on traditional publishing and too little emphasis on the practice of writing, the act of creating and sharing our art - and the importance of our readers; our community. These are the people who matter.

And so, as writers, we ought to honour and respect our relationship with our readers above everyone else. To write with integrity so that we can be read with integrity. To put the reader, rather than the publisher, on a pedestal.

Here’s the original piece I wrote…

This matters more than a book deal

It’s no secret that I’d like one of my poetry collections to be traditionally published. I write about it all the time. It nearly happened, with a major publisher, but then it didn’t. It nearly happened with an independent publisher, but I changed my mind.

Right now, I’m in pitching mode. I’m speaking with publishers and agents and although the conversations are open and potentially on-going, I haven’t yet signed on the dotted line (though, I have a very exciting phone call booked in for tomorrow).

Meanwhile, I’m spending every morning sat outside my child’s classroom, because my child who was homeschooled for a year is now slowly returning. It’s going very well and for this, I’m grateful, proud and feel too many emotions to list right now.

But the work required to get to this point has meant seriously slowing down my career. Doing the bare minimum rather than the absolute maximum. Sometimes, I like this slower pace. Sometimes, I feel like I’m disappearing.

I catch myself.

This is temporary. This is necessary. This is the story; this is the chapter. I have slowed down my work before. I have also shifted my focus in different directions. And I’ve always returned with new vigour and determination.

Any break from your career - a holiday, the maternity period (not a break, per se, but usually time away from paid employment) - gives you a new perspective. The career is a machine, and when you step away from it, you can see how those cogs are turning.

However, another thought I’ve had is: If I could just get that poetry book deal secured, I would know that I’m still on track. That I’m still moving forwards with my career. That I’m still allowed to have dreams, while I mother in this deep and intense way.

But then today, while writing a poem, I had this profound realisation about our relentless pursuit for validation and what else we need, too. I cast my mind to other successful writers and I realised: I’ve been getting it wrong about this book deal.

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It’s 2008, I’ve just completed my English degree and I’m living in Hackney, working in a pub. Laid out on the bar is a selection of newspapers, including a local Hackney paper I write for, and the chef is out of the kitchen, sat on a bar stool, reading it.

He looks up at me: you’re not a bad writer, you know.

I know this chef. We share friends. We didn’t …

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When I first joined Substack, someone who had a lot of subscribers already and was earning good money from it told me that if they went a while without posting, they lost less paid subscribers. They were laughing, as they said it.

I felt a bit sad that this had become a strategy: just don’t remind people that you exist and they will forget to stop supporting you. It’s complicated, isn’t it? But on the whole, I think we want our writing to gain us new paid subscribers, rather than make them leave.

In fact, last week I did an experiment to see if posting one Substack essay a day, Monday to Friday, would have an impact on my subscribers - free and paid. I did lose a few free subscribers (maybe they got bored of seeing the paywall) but I gained many more paid.

I decided that I would prefer to be gaining in income than in readers, and so I was pleased with this result. Obviously, I’d love it everyone stayed around and eventually, decided to pay a pretty tiny amount to read my weekday essays. But I’ll take what I get.

What I saw was that the more I put in to my Substack, the more I gained. And that felt good. Because meanwhile, there have been some strange tips floating around about ways to trick the Substack system. And I don’t think that’s a great longterm strategy.

How people (including me) are tricking the Substack system

I wrote in this piece about how Substack is essentially a social media platform, with an algorithm that sends more traffic your way if you’ve created something that resonates or gets people engaging. And with that, comes visible markers of ‘success’.

So, if you look at an individual author’s Substack profile - here’s mine - you might be able to see how many free subscribers they have and where they are ranking in the bestsellers’ lists. Some people hide these stats, I don’t.

We are like sheep. So, if we see that everyone is following a particular person, buying a particular product, trying a new exercise regime: we want to give it a go, too. See what all the fuss is about. Even if we try to tell ourselves that we don’t care about it.

Therefore, if we see that someone has 500,000 readers on Substack, we’re interested. We assume they have something good to say. We assume they are doing something right. We see a light emanating from their reader stats: a light of dazzling success.

If, however, we see that someone has 25 subscribers, we might be less interested. That’s not to say you should quit now, if you have 25 (or less) subscribers - you definitely shouldn’t, keep going - but it is a truth of human nature that:

We almost always follow the crowd.

So, people want those stats to look good, on their author profile. And when I accidentally made mine look better, I got a taste of how it would feel to shoot right up and become something of a dazzling success myself.

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There is a lot of scaremongering content surrounding the rise of AI. Every few days, I come across articles with disturbing statistics (that I won’t share, because I’m not here to scare you). It really highlights our negativity bias and tendency to let fear layer up.

Sometimes, I get sucked into those articles and find myself panicking. And then, I think…

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Housekeeping: If you’d like less emails in your inbox, and to access these Substack pieces through the website or app, head here: substack.com/settings, scroll down to ‘notifications’ and under ‘newsletter delivery’ select ‘prefer app’.

I told you about the time I lost 31 paid Substack subscribers over a short space of time and how I felt like a proper failure but then, decided to make a change.

It was fun, making the change, but it didn’t work.

Well, maybe it did a bit, as the paid subscribers went up slightly, and then down a bit, and then plateaued (rather than continuously dropping).

But I soon realised that a name-change doesn’t save a Substack.

Something else does.

And I committed to that something else and it started to grow again.

How to navigate plateaus on Substack

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When I was writing The Freelance Mum back in 2018, several prominent Instagrammers said the secret to success was, perhaps frustratingly, just making good content and if people like it, you’re off.

There was no secret sauce; no hashtag to turn a failing Instagram account into a thriving one, no amount of mentions or cross promotion that would guarantee you a fast-growing, high-engagement account.

And then, when I joined Substack two years ago, similar messages abounded.

Just write from the heart.

Just write within a niche.

Just write your deepest darkest secrets.

Just make sure you edit properly.

Just make sure your headline isn’t misleading.

All the emphasis was - and is - placed on the subject and quality of the writing. And if that were the truth of it, that would be wonderful.

The great writers who have honed their craft would succeed; those who weren’t taking their writing seriously would fail.

Only, this isn’t quite how it works.

Yes, the bestselling Substackers can write. If their writing was terrible, people wouldn’t be able to keep reading it.

But there’s something else they are all doing to succeed.

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When my first book - The Freelance Mum - was published, in 2019, I thought I was off. Now, I was an author, that was my job and I would be an author until I died.

I imagined moving into fiction, from non-fiction, and hopefully poetry - but other than that, my career trajectory was clear: authoring books.

Only, publishing doe…

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When I got my first book deal, I was extremely excited. I went up The News Building to the 4th Estate offices to sign my contract with a view over London. It felt swanky and I felt special.

The process of writing the book was quite wonderful, too. I had a three-year-old in nursery and one-year-old at home, so I found a childminder to look after my younge…

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Over the years, I’ve paid for several subscriptions to national newspapers and digital magazines like the i Paper, the Telegraph, the Times and - most recently - the New Yorker. And every single time I’ve subscribed, it’s been for the same reason:

They shared a first-person article in an Instagram ad, I clicked through wanting to read it and found it behind a paywall. The writing, the writer and the subject being written about was so appealing that I ended up subscribing.

But then: I can’t find anything else I want to read. So, I unsubscribe.

Whereas there are a bunch of Substacks that I pay a monthly fee to access - or to support the writer - and as long as the content keeps coming (it doesn’t need to be the same day/time each week but it does need to be regular-ish), I keep paying.

What keeps me there?

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