New to Substack? Helpful things to know

Introduction to Substack and lessons learnt so far as a beginner ☕️

GIF made in Adobe Express of me (Lucy Werner) writing at my desk

Caveat: I am no expert on Substack, but I’ve been asked a few questions about why I made the move here is what I have learnt so far:

Welcome to Substack, and goodbye to Mailchimp

I’m taking the most extended maternity leave with my third child than I have had previously.

To enable this, I needed to do some severe cost-cutting.

I spend close to $200 a month on Mailchimp.

It felt like a broadband package where you must get sports TV channels and a landline when you only want the internet.

I’m only sending a monthly newsletter, which is doable for free over here.

Do you still have all the tagging functionality?

As far as I know, I don’t have the same tagging. This isn’t a problem for me as I’m not currently using it as a place to sell.

Tagging is needed if you have tiered memberships or complicated sales funnels but I don’t.

I thought you were collecting emails from your free downloads and resources.

I used to advocate strongly for growing your newsletter with a free download.

The problem is that although my newsletter grew from these, the engagement rate decreased, and the unsubscribe rate increased because those people didn’t want to be there.

I’ve now made my downloads a genuine gift. I only want people to join my monthly newsletter if they want it for themselves, not because I twisted their arm into it.

Was it easy to migrate your old subscriber list?

For the export, I used the paid support of Vicky Flicemail to pause my Mailchimp account and export all my data on a spreadsheet with tags.

I didn’t want to make any mistakes by accidentally exporting archived or unsubscribed contacts.

The import was easy but it took longer than expected to get the data import approved.

Have you noticed any changes to engagement from your monthly newsletter?

Substack September newsletter vs. Mailchimp August newsletter.

Interestingly, my open rate so far has been 2.5% less here, but it’s quite soon still after I sent it. I’m confident I would hit last month’s open rate after another week or so.

What is interesting is the sentiment. Mailchimp, I get two abuse complaints (c’mon people, it’s PR & branding chat?) versus Substack, where I secured one pledge for future payments, likes, comments and even new followers from the Substack network!

How easy is it to design on Substack?

I can’t even attempt a newsletter design on Mailchimp, even with the AI design tools, because the formatting is always a bit wonky.

Substack I was able to do all preliminary design myself.

I opted for magazine format as I want to have helpful articles. I was able to use colours from my brand guidelines and input the colour codes.

I would love to be able to change the colour of the font to navy blue. A gal can dream.

I’ve not figured out how to make a divider (example below👇🏻👇🏼👇🏽👇🏾👇🏿) in brand colours yet but I know it is possible.

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Any other learnings?

Here are a few lesson notes from a free workshop with

Farrah Storr

that I thought might be helpful to share:

Think of it less as a newsletter and more like a personal media channel.

(Little girl me, who was a Funday Times subscriber, desperate to win a Press Pack assignment and dreamt about being a journalist, rejoiced at this)

It is a good idea to charge from the beginning rather than migrate later.

The conversion rate for launching can be higher at the start rather than later on as people are excited to start the journey with you.

Whilst this made me immediately turn on paid subscriptions, I just as promptly turned them off again because I don’t have formal childcare, I want to know that I can keep up with regular content and not burn out.

Therefore I will test how long it takes me to create content and get any in the bank before I do this.

Pop an image and subscribe now at the top of any article

Don’t worry about having a professional photograph. Rough and ready imagery does well. You can also choose from stock photography they provide.

Make your best content free.

Substack will immediately pop up your best articles / most read on the home screen. Making your most popular bits free can help you attract a new audience.

Pricing.

Many people price around 5-6$ (forgive me if it’s pounds). A word of caution: whatever you charge to start with is what people will pay for forever.

If you intend to start low and raise it higher later, consider this.

Recommendations

Working with other writers with a similar audience can be a great way to increase your subscribers. Think about how you could collaborate with others to recommend each other.

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Anything you don’t like?

I mentioned that font colour options and easy colour dividers would be great.

I also sometimes found the back end a bit confusing. 🤯 I wanted to have magazine headers for my different content and kept accidentally creating separate newsletters rather than navigation pages.

I am not entirely sure I’ve got myself sorted on that yet, as my ‘Notes From France’ currently seems to be an empty page, and I’ve yet to test if I can upload articles there, but I’ll keep you posted.

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After sending out one monthly newsletter and playing gently on the platform for a few weeks, I’ve had a positive experience.

It was pleasantly surprising how easily I’ve grown subscribers through the Substack network.

I would liken starting here as a feeling of walking into your favourite cafe, feeling a bit overladen with bags and clothes, and all your friends are there to welcome you gently and help you settle into what you need.

Please comment below if you have any other questions (repeated caveat: I am not an expert here!) or have your own Substack.

Last but not least, I hate moving platforms. If you are loyal to old systems and intrigued whilst this is a steep learning curve, I do think it is an easy one to learn. Just time-consuming.