If I can succeed on Substack, so can you

Lessons I've picked up from my 17-year career as a professional writer that extend from journalism to Substack and have helped me to become a 'bestseller'.

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 go to school together, because he went to a private boys’ school and I went to a mixed comprehensive, but we’d all hang out at the weekends and in the school holidays, in Camden.

He seems surprised that I can write. Maybe he’s surprised that I’m writing about graffiti and street art, as he fancies himself as a graffer. Maybe he thinks women can’t write as well as men. Maybe he thinks I’m not well-educated.

The truth is: I’m surprised that I can write a double-page feature that reads quite well. The truth is: when I started writing articles, six months earlier, for that Hackney paper: they were pretty shit. The truth is: the more you write, the better you become.

From that point on, I will write articles every week for that Hackney paper. They won’t pay me - they should - but my writing will improve, as will my interview skills. I’ll interview Rudimental, the artist Kimathi Donkor and filmmaker Cavan Clerkin.

I’ll then decide to go back to university to study for an MA in journalism and while it will be thoroughly enjoyable, I won’t be able to say, for sure, that it was necessary. In fact, I’ll end up never going in-house on a newspaper and instead, stick to freelancing.

So, I could have just continued as I was: writing for local papers, while working in a pub, and then pitching to nationals. Because what makes a good journalist is someone who nails the art of writing and structuring an article, as well as the art of pitching.

(I teach this in my online course How to pitch as a journalist).

It’s about writing regularly. Reading regularly. Pitching regularly. Marching on after being ignored. Brushing yourself off when you’ve been rejected yet again. You have to keep going; keep improving - with both the writing and the pitching.

It’s the same on Substack.

Only, you are ‘pitching’ to your subscribers and followers. This means you can practise your writing every week, rather than waiting for an editor to commission you. There’s an opportunity to really nail your writing style, through experimentation.

Perhaps you’d like to write long, poetic, descriptive essays about this stage of life you’re in, or something you’re going through. Maybe you have a subject that you teach and you’d like to write short essays sharing one learning in each. You get to decide.

The more you write, the more you’ll see what resonates. We might find the algorithms annoying but they are a form of almost-instant feedback: if readers like what you’ve written, on Substack, the algorithm tends to send it onto more readers.

That’s not to say a piece without any likes or engagement isn’t any good. And we mustn’t stop writing, just because of low engagement. But we can keep note of the pieces that do do well, and use them to keep us going when another piece flops.

What separates those who succeed on Substack from those who don’t is perseverance. It might be that a successful Substack writer brought over a big mailing list from another platform but why is that? Because they persevered with growing that list.

Maybe they had a popular podcast. A well-read newsletter. Perhaps they freelanced as a journalist, or worked in-house, and brought a community of fans over with them. Whatever it was: they worked for it. It takes work, to grow a community.

And it takes work to grow a Substack platform.

Growth can be slow. Frustrating. I have periods where I feel really impatient and think about frivolously throwing it all away. It’s not growing fast enough, so I’ll just quit. That’ll show them. [who? It won’t show anyone. Except me. That I’m a total twit.]

So, I stick with it.

Like I’ve been sticking with this whole writing career since 2008. Since writing those articles for that Hackney paper. In these past 17 years, I’ve had many different roles, jobs and commissions. Some good, some bad. But I never quit writing.

To end

No one is born a writer. People become writers because they write. They observe the world, read across genres and then find a way to channel their observations through the written word. The more they write, the better they become.

I can see this, already, with my 11-year-old daughter. I read poetry to her, we listen to music and read novels. And then: she writes her own stories and poems, using ideas about rhythm and structure that she’s picked up. Her writing is always improving.

So, if you want to earn a living, as a writer, on Substack: keep going. Keep writing, keep reading, keep engaging with the world, keep picking yourself up and continuing on even when you want to quit… and there’s every chance you’ll succeed.

Annie x

Ps. If you like this piece, please give it a little ‘like’. That’s the heart button. You know that already. This boosts the algorithm too. And helps these free pieces to travel further.

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Want to go deeper?

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Or, perhaps you’d like to see my other writing, coaching and online business courses. They are all here, in my online shop: annieridout.com/shop.

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