Why I expect to go from 0 to 10k subscribers in 12 months
(Read time 3.5 min)
Happy first week of 2024 and first edition of this newsletter!
Let’s make 2024 the best year of our lives so far.
I have my sights on 10k subscribers by the end of 2024.
But first:
🟢 Why I value having a following at all
🟢 Why I want to focus on Substack and not typical social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
🟢 Why 10,000 subscribers
🟢 How I’ll deserve them
Why I value having a following at all
🟢 clear writing forces clearer thinking
🟢 I like helping people
🟢 being in touch with more people ➔ more ideas and opportunities
🟢 distribution is everything (i.e. once I have ideas for products or services, I'll sell them more easily)
Why I want to focus on Substack and not typical social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
If you haven’t watched The Social Dilemma documentary yet, I highly recommend it.
Social media isn’t 100% toxic, but it’s toxic enough that I expect I’ll enjoy life most if I consume ~0% social media.
I quit Facebook, Instagram, and others years ago and feel much better.
I’m still on LinkedIn but imagine a day when I’ll quit that too.
Substack so far feels nicer because:
I appreciate the lack of ads
Instead of being mainly a resume-promoting site, it’s a community more focused on ideas (great writing)
Substack gives me direct access to my audience via their email address, which decreases platform risk AND aligns Substack’s incentives with creating the best experience for writers and readers.
Substack is popular enough to have momentum but new enough to present huge opportunity
I’ve only had Substack for a matter of days, and I don’t have an existing audience.
But:
I’ve had some success running online businesses in the past, and
I’m more experienced and wiser now, and
I think 2024 is an inflection point where lots of solopreneurs will scale up quickly (sometimes being in the right field at the right time matters more than one’s individual skill)
Why 10,000 subscribers
When asking myself what would be a goal that is both energizing and also achievable in 1 year, 10,000 comes to mind.
That’s almost the entire crowd of San Diego Sports Arena (a venue I’m familiar with) asking to hear from me each week.
Thrilling!
Yet not too daunting.
10k feels like the sweet spot for Year 1.
And helping 10k people (in a way yet to be determined) will probably earn me a comfortable living.
How I’ll earn (deserve) a large following
Let’s call it VP + VP.
Value & Patience
Vulnerability & Perceptiveness
Value = I plan to GIVE, GIVE, GIVE, GIVE. I just want to be useful to lots of people.
Patience = I’m won’t have “commission breath” like a used car salesperson. I know that I might not be rewarded for a year or 2.
I don’t even have any products to sell yet.
So:
Perceptiveness = I need to LISTEN for how people are suffering. I’ll pivot as necessary so that I can help people most.
However, this responsiveness needs to be balanced with an idea that legendary music producer Rick Rubin has been popularizing recently:
What audiences really want is for each of us to be ourselves.
Raw. Vulnerable.
Exposing our sensitive sides. Doing what we believe in, regardless of whether anyone supports us yet.
Why I expect to go from 0 to 10k subscribers in 12 months
In my first businesses, it took me years to learn the benefits of “investing”.
Investing in expertise and investing in paid ads.
I plan to do both right away this time.
Experts who have done this before will help me.
And I’ll use ads to create an early snowball effect and gain momentum.
It feels quite uncomfortable to think about going into the red without a plan to monetize.
But my life has led me to this exact moment, and I’d regret not trying this path.
What I need to do ASAP
Decide a niche (narrow target audience) that I want to help for at least a year
Make a lot of friends within Substack (or newsletter communities in general) to cross-promote
Find 1 or more coaches
Learn how to advertise my newsletter issues
Decide my schedule for creating and editing (to exceed my publishing schedule, so I have a queue to allow for vacations)
Learn tools like Midjourney to help make my content more visually appealing
Build a community not just of my general readership but also a smaller group of people who are interested in helping provide early feedback on drafts
#1 is so important and so hard.
“Niche until it hurts” is advice I’ll want to keep in mind.
The narrower and clearer the niche, the more attracted the right people will be.
They’ll know that what I’m offering is EXACTLY what they need.
The opposite? A confused reader will scroll on by.
Reply here to let me know which of these topics would help you most?
growing fast on Substack
converting subscribers to “paid”
earning more when selling products or services to your list
working fewer hours as an entrepreneur while sustaining or even increasing profits
something else
THANK YOU so much for reading. It really pumps me up that you’re here.
Looking forward to hearing from you. 🙂
P.S. Whom should I follow on Substack?
"Social media isn’t 100% toxic, but it’s toxic enough that I expect I’ll enjoy life most if I consume ~0% social media."
Love/hate relationship here too.
In an ideal world, I probably wouldn't even be on it.
But it's important to show my thinking, position me correctly, and create brand equity as well as inbound leads.
But Sam Harris nailed it when he said that any amount of social media in some sense is already too much social media.
If you haven't read it, give Prof Haidt's work a read.
Good luck Ryan. I agree that 10K subscribers in 12 months sounds feasible, especially if you're going all-in with your newsletter and are already planning to run ads campaigns. All the best!