Being on Substack is the Fastest (and Easiest) Way to Grow an Email List Right Now

And I’ll prove it.

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You’ll have heard it said before: without an email list, you can do nothing; with an email list, you can do anything.

I’m a firm believer in the power of email.

Social media is waning. It’ll be around for a long time to come, of course, but it’s not what it once was.

If you’re building a business or personal platform purely on the back of your socials, you should take a second to consider where that’s going to take you in the next few years.

Nurturing a healthy, engaged audience of people you can reach directly via email is the future of sustainable business.

But how do you grow that list if your entry points are all social media-based?

• What if very few people actually see your posts because of algorithmic suppression?

• How many will click through to your lead magnet?

• How many subscribers can you expect to gain that way, and what will that growth rate look like a year from now when things are even worse?

Exponential growth

I had a tiny email list of 179 people on Substack by November 27, 2023.

It’d taken me five and a half months to get to that stage because I wasn’t paying much attention to the platform. I posted regularly enough, but I wasn’t trying to grow there.

Screenshot.

I was still laser-focused on converting social media followers into subscribers for my other list, The Quiet Solopreneur. That’s what all the big gurus said I should be doing.

How could they be wrong, after all?

I had 182 subscribers in that audience, and again, it’d taken many months to get them there. It was a slog, but the gurus said it’d be worth it.

None of them were talking about Substack. Most of them still aren’t.

Then, at the end of November, something clicked for me.

I started engaging on Substack on a daily basis. I posted in Notes. I connected with other writers. I collaborated with guests. I created a strategy, and stuck to it.

And my subscriber list started to grow.

Screenshot.

By the end of December, I imported my Quiet Solopreneur list into Substack and established two publications. On February 20, 2024, I set up a third publication focused solely on my fiction writing.

As of today (May 22, 2024), I have around 7,000 email subscribers across 3 lists on Substack. I’m currently growing at a rate of over 1,000 subscribers a month overall.

And that’s entirely within Substack and Medium. I do zero promotion on social media (not counting anyone who stumbles across my publications on my X/Twitter profile, which I doubt are very many).

The only active call-to-action I use is in each of my Medium articles, but the vast majority of growth happens internally on Substack through Notes and Recommendations.

Fast, easy, sustainable growth

Substack is the best platform for fast email list growth in 2024, hands down.

Other platforms are great, of course, but unless you’re paying for subscribers or already have a massive following to draw from, nothing else truly compares in terms of speed and minimal effort. Not right now.

If things continue as they are (it won’t be like this forever), I’m on course to have a five-figure email audience by August. Which is pretty good considering I had under 300 subscribers in total at that time last year.

And if I can convert just 3% of my free subscribers into my paid tier, my Substack income will eventually cover 100% of my monthly expenses. It’ll effectively be my full-time gig.

Things can change, of course. I know that. I’ve come to expect it after getting burned by platforms in the past. The best laid plans, ‘n all.

But for now, I’m glad to have found a home on Substack and Medium. I barely look at social media these days. There’s no need anymore.

Who knows where things will be by this time next year?

PS. If you’re still on the fence about solopreneurship, take my free email course and find out if its right for you.

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Read this next:

If These Awful Visibility Rates on Social Media Don’t Convince You To Change Your Focus, Nothing Will

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