How To Grow Your Substack

Or at least, as much as The Daily Beagle does

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After expressing despair on negative Substack growth, Substackers with even smaller Substacks expressed their own despair with their lack of growth, wondering why they’re not growing to even The Daily Beagle levels.

I very much believe in the mindset expressed by the YouTuber Markiplier that creator networks — like Substack — are not competitive, but cooperative. One Substacker’s article can be built upon by many others.

Expand the size of the pie, rather than fight over slices. The Daily Beagle is by no means at Edward Slavsquat or Crossroads Report levels of success, and nowhere near uTobian or Steve Kirsch levels, but I share what I know.

Thumbnails And Titles Are 50% Of Your Article

YouTuber MrBeast, one of the largest and most successful creators on YouTube, often tells YouTubers to spend half as much time working on improving their video titles and thumbnails.

Many people mistake neglecting their thumbnails and title because they seem short and basic; title might be proportionately only 1% of the article, but they are the gateway to your article. They incentivise people to click. They represent your article.

Which is 50% of what makes an article successful. If you’ve ever looked at The Daily Beagle thumbnails and think they remind you of video thumbnails - that is intentional.

Images must invite interest. Titles must invite the user to click through, giving just enough information the reader can determine topic of interest, but withholding just enough they have to visit to get more.

Branding Is Extremely Important

TommyInnit, YouTube’s youngest and fastest growing creators, uses thumbnail images of himself and the same shirt for nearly every video. MrBeast ensures his face is inserted in as many video thumbnails as possible.

The Doomberg Substack inserts their green bird into every image depiction. This is ‘branding’. Repeated images are the brand. It creates an image, a reputation. The Daily Beagle does this as well, inserting a dog’s face into every image:

Repetition forms reinforcement, Pavlovian conditioning. As soon as audiences see the face + image, they know who it is from, meaning if you build a good reputation, people associate the brand to reputation, automatically clicking through regardless of title or descriptor.

Vary the brand image, though, or it seems copy-paste. The Beagle Dog image has four main facial expressions (happy, sad, laughing, confused), and there are two other dogs’ faces (one of which is a Jack Russell, not a Beagle).

Put A ‘Looking Face’ On Your Thumbnail

Relates to human psychology, how we feel a connection with someone looking at us. Put a ‘looking face’ on your thumbnail. That is a face that looks directly at the camera.

The most effective faces seem to be ones of shock and surprise (a face some might describe as a ‘soyjak’ face). MrBeast video thumbnails are a good example:

Deliver On Your “Offer” As Soon As Possible

Your title makes an offer. ‘Click on me and I’ll answer the question’. When videos withhold this information and put it at the end of a video (or fail to mention it at all), people get annoyed, call it ‘clickbait’.

In the EMA leak video, the answer is in the first five seconds, inviting the viewer to stay to learn more. Once someone visits, you can deliver, because they’re now ‘in’. They won’t click away if you offer them more of the same if they continue on.

The same applies for articles. MrBeast goes in-depth, saying if you can’t deliver immediately, reassure them in the opening that you will get to it, and keep putting frequent reassurances, so they know. If your article fails to deliver on the offer, the viewer has been ‘burned’ and will not want to return again.

Undersell, Over Deliver

Titles should be humble. Don’t say ‘I did all these amazing things’, but say you did one amazing thing, then add the other amazing things as a bonus in the article itself.

Titles set readers’ expectations. Set the bar too high, you will fail to live up to your own hype, and disappoint, it erodes trust. If you undersell, then over deliver, people will be more impressed because you exceeded the modest expectations, building trust.

Another reason to undersell is once you do one impressive thing, it will be expected of you as standard. Audiences will want more impressive things. Set the bar too high and meet it, people get used to that, want more at the same calibre, which leads to burnout.

Quality Trumps Quantity

Especially true for Substack. People hate receiving unnecessary emails. Many Substacks that gain readers carefully space out articles. Even the most popular YouTubers will only publish one video a day. Many will only publish one every two days.

This does a few things that are beneficial. It avoids creator burnout, sets boundaries with your audience, and they avoid ‘binge consuming’ your content.

Example, ever had a video series you really loved and found there were 10 to 20 videos in a row? You probably watched until 3am, felt tired and the dopamine high burned out. Not pleasant.

Rapidly publishing articles has the same impact. It is why TV studios often slow roll episodes, because viewers will overconsume. So space out articles, work on improving quality. MrBeast will scrap his own million dollar video if they don’t meet a very high standard.

Consistency Is More Important For Growth

Consistency in timing of publication is important for growth. This forms a habit, and sets audience expectations of when content will come out.

If you publish once a week, always publish consistently on the same day. That way, audiences know which day of the week to check for your work. If you publish randomly, audiences won’t know when to check.

They could receive notifications, but they might not check for those notifications - or worse, your notifications get buried by other notifications.

Consistent releases leads to consistent viewership. Many YouTubers earned success by being consistent even when violating the quality rule, by releasing anything consistently every few days. Many Substacks succeed with consistency.

Keep Asking - But Don’t Be Annoying

People hate doing this because it feels like they’re bloating up their own ego, but it is done by many successful creators because it works. Like getting a child to clean their room: You don’t sit in silence expecting them to do it, you ask them to do it. And when they don’t, you keep asking.

You can ask too much. Don’t ‘nag’ your audience. Just polite reminders to subscribe. Asking to subscribe once per article seems to be the sweet spot. Many content creators ask at least once in their videos to ‘like and subscribe’, some several times, and many will weave it into the narrative. Like this:

When Asking For Paying Subscribers, Give A Reason Why

Valid regardless of which industry you look at. The for-profit industry, the reasons why will be the benefits to the audience. For example, Amazon Prime offers people ‘free’ movies, ‘free’ delivery, ‘free’ first dibs for online deals.

Not-for-profit industry, the reasons why will be the benefits the audience creates by giving and what urgent need they’re fulfilling. They might write ‘children are dying without water, your donation allows us to build wells that provide fresh water to these children’. Often they’ll accompany with emotionally manipulative videos or images, unless you’re a charity it isn’t advisible to do this.

Offering Reasons Is Psychologically Successful

A 1970s Harvard study by Ellen Langer found simply using the word “because”, a word signalling you’re providing a reason, when asking to cut in line, greatly increased people’s willingness to let someone cut in line, even when the reason given was circular:

May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?

Essentially saying ‘may I cut in line to use the printer I’m cutting in line for?’. Provide a reason for why people should pay.

Readers should becoming paying subscribers to The Daily Beagle because you get to see awesome insights like this, meta commentary and put some dirt in the Deep State’s eye. Also this is the second interwoven subscription plug.

Appreciate Your Audience’s Time

Major YouTuber Markiplier — 34 million subscribers — commented that he respected his audience’s time. He commented many creators see it as a free resource that is readily expendible because it costs nothing, but the opposite is true.

In an attention oriented industry, time is the most precious thing a person has. Time they waste seeing you ramble, is time they could have spent doing something more productive. If you insult your audience by wasting their time, they will leave. Don’t. Appreciate your audience and their time.

Keep articles informationally dense, short as possible. A minute spent re-writing to save time, net saves an hour (one minute for 60 people - an hour). Don’t be afraid to use ebonics, short-hand, colloquialisms, slang, or blunt English. Once finished, re-read, re-word to shorten again.

A Tip From User Interface Design

Don’t make conflicting pathflows that trip over each other. Example: don’t put the button to leave a comment at the top of your article, because that pathflow means they flow straight to the comments section and away from the main article. It is more annoying for readers to navigate.

A number of Substacks seem to copy The Daily Beagle format of the ‘interaction burger’ at the end of an article: Subscribe, Share, Comment:

This is because the ‘interaction burger’ keeps a consistent pathflow. People who finished the article are the same ones who most likely enjoyed it. Asking them if they want to subscribe after reading an article they most likely liked has a higher chance at a subscriber conversion, and it gives the reader a nice pathflow.

Already subscribed readers will move to the next layer - sharing. This again, gives a natural pathflow. Having read your article, they now know if they want to share it or not.

Leave a comment is last, because in order to comment you have to be subscribed, and once in the comment section you cannot see as easily to share. In newer Daily Beagle articles, the ‘interaction burger’ is simplified to just two buttons:

This is because the comment box is already directly below the article, and thus the ‘leave a comment’ button is redundant.

Give Short Custom Prompts

In earlier articles The Daily Beagle presented the ‘interaction burger’ with no prompts. Whilst this did get interactions, you’re more likely to get more interactions if you write short custom prompts above each button providing a reason.

Emphasis on ‘short’. Shorter statements were more likely it was to prompt an action, as it is time the reader isn’t wasting reading your prompt. Appreciate the audience’s time.

Prompts should be tailored to the article in question where appropriate. Don’t say ‘if you enjoyed this article please share’ if the article was about something horrible or nasty happening. The Daily Beagle often writes ‘Share if you learned something new’ - which should be true in all cases.

Read Article Metadata To Find Out What Readers Hate - Then Stop Doing it

If you go to your dashboard, you can expand your articles to see metadata. Substack does not currently provide an easy way to obtain metadata, and I have suggested they provide a .CSV or similar file format of metadata so contributers can improve their work.

Readers often won’t tell you what they hate (they’re too polite). You have to infer it from statistical behaviours. Have 100 subscribers, but one article only got 10 views and most get 50? Chances are they don’t like that article. Ditch the topic.

You can also use the metadata inversely - find out what they enjoyed more than usual, then do more on that same topic.

Make Your Articles Interesting

The current ideal format seems to be: subheader, 2 to 3 paragraphs, and either a quote or an example image somewhere in that subsection.

I didn’t actually say any of this - Not Albert Einstein

Interspersing your article with example images and quotes makes it much more interesting. Images should not be horrible, generic stock images - which is what a lot of bad mainstream outlets do - but a screenshot or photo that depicts an example of what you’re actually trying to show.

A meta image example of an image from this article showing an example image

Avoid Attention Fatigue

A study had shown that text that had bold randomly interspersed within the text caused people to have a much harder time reading the article because the bold distracted from the main body of text. People’s brains - and by extension, their eyes - are drawn to novel, annoying, unusual things.

This means an overuse of bold can actually be detrimental, and rather than bringing focus, will draw it away from the overall text, causing attention fatigue. Italics are much easier to ignore, and can still bring emphasis.

Moving images (EG GIFs) are a huge no, and should not be used, unless the moving image is showing a vital piece of evidence. Many sites disable the automatic playback of GIFs, videos and similarly because they cause attention fatigue. Minimise causing attention fatigue.

Engage With Your Community

If someone leaves a comment, do your best to either leave them a like, or give them a direct response. It helps build rapport, and they will come back. Try not to be obnoxious with your community, and be as supportive as possible. If you disagree with a viewpoint, ask yourself if you can just ignore it rather than get into an argument.

If they disagree with you, let them. So long as they’re not being outright abusive, and you can ‘agree to disagree’, keep things cordial and pleasant.

Otherwise, if you agree, or can understand, be supportive and encouraging. Positive words don’t cost any money and everyone benefits from support.

Don’t Waste Time With Trolls

If you encounter a troll, and you’re absolutely sure they’re a troll arguing in bad faith (EG making blatantly factually wrong statements, being abusive, screaming in all caps, etc), don’t get dragged down into tit-for-tat, reputation-ruining insult matches, just ban them, and explain why you’re banning them when doing so, so others know.

Banning is appropriate here, because you stop wasting your precious time, you avoid getting embroiled in any petty abuse hurling (which can hurt your reputation), it is good for the community because it minimises toxicity and stops them wasting time, and it is good for the troll because it gives them a timeout to chill somewhere else so they’re not wasting time fighting with you.

You will need to deploy this if you intend to use Substack professionally. You wouldn’t tolerate abuse in a workplace, so why tolerate abuse in your own personal workplace?

If you’re strongly pro-free speech, then you will have to switch to ignoring the troll instead, however it does mean they can potentially harass and attack other members of your community and ruin the ‘good vibes’. Substackers are adults, and Substack should be on serious, personal topics, actly maturely.

Network With Other Substackers Within Your League

Many Substackers and YouTubers often find success by networking with people within their own league. TommyInnit, for example, would try to embed himself or appear in more popular YouTuber’s videos, drawing attention to himself, leading to rapid growth.

Forming networks with Substackers expands the content pie. Both parties benefit, with both expanding their reach to individuals who weren’t subscribed already to their groups.

Promote Relevant Articles To Groups Who Are Interested In Them

If you were writing a Substack about food prepping, then you’d find food prepper forums, boards, and social media outlets to offer up your written work on. Yes, it takes time to find them, and yes, to register, and to segway your articles (don’t just plug the link and run, give an explanation why they should visit), but that is the nature of marketing.

The Daily Beagle managed to pull in hundreds of views by talking about relevant articles in the ZeroHedge comments section. For example, discussing the history between Ukraine and Russia under articles about the Ukraine war, or mentioning vaccine issues on vaccine articles.

Register On Social Media Outlets And Post Your Articles There

You don’t have to register to all outlets, but find ones you’re comfortable with and publish to them. The Daily Beagle, for example, posts articles to Gab and, just to mildly annoy Elon Musk, Twitter.

You won’t get fast returns from social media, and you do have to follow the consistency rule, but you may pick up one or two more subscribers per week than you would without.

Keyword Bait Search Engine Optimisation

This is okay because Google and their ilk are evil. Eyeball things like Google trends, and steal keywords from those searches and embed it (somehow) into the article you’re going to publish.

Search engines often index current trends, and will thus also sometimes pick up yours: Germany World Cup meets Costa Rica in a bar with Germany Japan.

This is an approach TommyInnit would do by writing, effectively, a nonsense paragraph in the bottom of his video descriptor mentioning all the hottest video trends in order to bait the YouTube algorithm into referencing his own videos.

Example of Search Engine Optimisation bait by TommyInnit

Persistency Is Key: Growth Is Slow And Slightly Exponential

Many people dive in expecting themselves to become the next top ten greatest hits. Truth is, no-one has heard of you, and with how search engine suppression works, most never will.

Growth is often slow, and slightly exponential. This means, the longer you churn away at your task, the more your website will grow. More followers draws more followers, as people talk about you to other people. You start out with zero followers, meaning you draw zero followers. Once you start gaining followers, you will climb faster the more you stick at it.

Doing all of the above tips will help massively with this, but there is no one trick for overnight fame, besides figuring out an extremely effective way to exploit a trending system, and those are often a once-only deal, patched by the system in short order.

Don’t just keep churning away though. Every new article should bring with it an improvement. You don’t keep using the same old computer tech for years and years, you upgrade. Your creative work should be the same, being constantly upgraded.

Copy The Best

There’s no shame in copying the best. This doesn’t mean steal and copy their content. This means, learn what excellent methods and techniques they use, and adopt the ones that work.

You might try to develop a good sense of humour like Edward Slavsquat, or the philosophical edge of uTobian, or the diverse array of topics like Common Sense, or the ‘interaction burger’ the Daily Beagle uses. Dibs on the dog face though, that one is ours.

A good approach is to look at many successful Substacks and see what they’re offering to achieve that success. Get feedback, learn what you love or like about them, then implement your own version of that. And if you feel really bold, improve upon it.

Experiment

If all else fails and you can’t figure anything else, experiment. The best way is to change one thing at a time and see how readers react.

For example, the prompt messages The Daily Beagle uses for the buttons has been altered and iterated over time to find ones that are more effective. Shorter ones were better than longer ones. Ones with more universal appeal did better than niche ones. Custom prompts do better than generics.

Avoid Negativity

Hardest part, especially if your topics are about corruption and the monsters in the basement. Negativity drives away readers subconsciously. They will experience negativity burnout.

This is why a lot of people watch upbeat, positive, fun, light entertainment videos. Because they absolutely ooze positivity. How do you get positivity into your ‘negative’ article? There’s a few of ways.

Have a positive action the person can take. Steve Kirsch often invites readers to email, give feedback or show to support to suppressed people.

Another approach — often adopted by Edward Slavsquat — is to use tongue-in-cheek humour to soften the horrendous blows, and mock the Deep State with jester-like glee.

My favourite article title of his is “Moscow's mayor is obsessed with your face”, mocking the invasiveness of facial recognition. Other great lines include mockingly calling his work “Blog Terror” and talking about the “voluntary compulsory vaccination”.

You can also intersperse your work with triumphs and success, like the article I did about Canada’s new hope, to introduce positivity. Finally…

It Is Simple, But Hard Work

Don’t be deceived on creativeness. It isn’t easy work. Most online creators give you the false impression it is easy.

You’d think the ‘Lets Play’ videos where people record themselves playing video games were the easiest in the world - but it is difficult to both talk to the audience throughout and concentrate to play the game competently. You can find me struggling to do that in my ‘Debate Tactics & Pseudo Ganondorf Speedrun’, where I either screw up the run or stop talking to concentrate:

The other issue is editing. Recording sessions can fail, data can get mangled and deleted. None of the creative jobs are “easy” and the most talented ones make it look effortless, only through sheer experience. It is genuinely a grind.

You can expect the same of Substack article writing. You will want to quit and give up, and it will feel like slog. But slog is how you know it is genuine work. So keep it up.

The Daily Beagle is back baby! And we need your support to become financially viable and not fall to the evil health passport system. Consider becoming a paying subscriber and save the day:

The Underdog is now available for hire! Feel free to drop an email in response to any of the Daily Beagle articles if you want to discuss.

Know some other Substackers who might find this information useful? Be sure to let them know and share!

Or, as always leave a comment below, and drop a like on the way past: