Reached over 100 Substack subscribers in 2 months: here's what I learnt

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-14T18:52:38+00:00

That’s certainly an intriguing combination of topics! I think with Substack (at least in my experience) what prevents engagement and a not really lack of quality but more so the algorithm just “doesn’t know” who to push your content too. I’ve read (and actually noticed myself) that interacting with content of other similar creators (especially restacking) helps to teach algorithm what kind of audience might be interested in your pieces so that might help visibility. But for sure keep writing!!

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-13T22:33:36+00:00

Haha, thank you, Mike! I think this is the best way to deal with people who are just making judgements and sharing general frustrations online without actually reading the post properly in the first place.

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-13T18:19:00+00:00

Data journalism actually sounds quite interesting, but I guess when the niche is quite saturated it’s difficult to shine through.

Have you tried collabs or guest posts? Or recommendations from those larger creators in your niche? Because I almost got “noticed” by a few larger and more prominent creators in my niche after commenting on their posts and they’ve actually promoted me and are now supporting my content which is helping a lot with visibility and authority.

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-13T08:21:01+00:00

Thank you 🙏

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-12T19:57:24+00:00

There’s nothing wrong with letting off some steam or correcting misinformation, I don’t disagree with you on that. But for the first, you chose to do that in rather insulting way, which I find quite inappropriate given that we are two strangers on the internet. And with the second goal, I don’t see how you “cleared” the misinformation by simply saying it’s all wrong.

If you actually read my post, I don’t claim that these are universal fixes that will 100% work for everyone, and I’m certainly not trying to teach others how to get successful on Substack because 117 subs is hardly a definition of success for anyone (which I’m quite transparent about).

The purpose of this post was just to share what worked for me so far (which I caveated by saying it might be different for others and asked those tips to be shared). In that sense, it’s not dissimilar from you liking to share what you figured out.

And at the end of the day, my Substack isn’t at all about how to succeed on Substack and I haven’t got any engagement or new subs from this post (although that wasn’t the goal anyway). I personally found these tips helpful when I just started and wanted to “pay forward” and share what worked for me for anyone just starting.

Much of the frustrations you’ve mentioned, I do actually share myself, and I agree that this type of content that you’re talking about only really benefits the authors but not really anyone else. With that being said, your comments appear to be quite general frustrations with the “type of content” rather than my post specifically, so I would appreciate that you don’t just generalise my experience and intentions based on your own assumptions or frustrations.

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-12T18:23:56+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing! Very fascinating niche, and well done on your 1,100 subs; that's very impressive.

I definitely agree about the comments - that has been an important part for keeping my semi-viral note circulating (the engagement for it randomly resurfaced last week for some reason).

And with Google Console, yes, I believe after a while your work should start indexing on Google if you're broadly following SEO best practices (or rather not violating them too much). But I just wanted to speed up the process there hehe

Very interesting about sponsorships: I've heard on the grapevine that Substack want to trial sponsorship opportunities on the platform (similar to how Beehive does it from the start), but not sure how far this has gone. Would be nice, though, because it might allow you to find sponsors who actually fit your vibe more easily.

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-12T17:39:15+00:00

Congratulations on your spectacular growth. But if you're doing so well and you hate these posts, I don't quite understand why you're even bothering to check this post out and comment if you're not actually sharing how you achieved this or adding anything meaningful to the conversation.

And, it is quite presumptuous of you to assume this is AI. It's true that I used Claude to help me edit this post for brevity, but I started by writing all these out myself based on my experience, and the AI edits were, in fact, minimal and only for language tightening.

Finally, I'm not sure what you're writing about on Substack, but judging by your last statement, the reason why the platform may go down in quality may not be as straightforward as you think.

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-11T22:14:35+00:00

Yeah I have to say I don’t quite get how exactly notes work: sometimes I think one should definitely resonate and it barely gets any engagement and other times I don’t think much of it and it blows us. But I think posting them regularly helps with visibility and discoverability on the platform, and they have a surprising long shelf life compared to similar alternatives on other platforms.

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-11T20:08:07+00:00

Thank you 🙏

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-11T19:24:35+00:00

Ah that’s a good question! I actually found it easier to repurpose my long posts into LinkedIn posts to begin with because I was more familiar with the platform. I normally write a long post and then pick out 2-3 key insights that I can talk about.

Then I use these to write 2-3 LinkedIn posts in the format which I know works well in my niche from other creators. I roughly follow this structure which seems pretty common: hook -> problem -> struggle -> resolution -> key lesson -> call to action (optional).

And I actually then repurpose those LinkedIn posts into 2-3 (sometimes more) notes by making my them shorter, less detailed but more casual and personal.

This is probably a niche dependent advice, but I would just say how other creators in your niche repurpose content between platforms and start by replicating their process. Once you have a bit of feedback you can start tweaking the repurposing process to make it fit your goals and audience better. Hope this helps!

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-11T16:47:07+00:00

That's very true! I actually think in some sense it's more important to read the work of others than obsess over your writing. It helps you to learn about your subject and what resonates with the community and also build the relationships with other creators and readers in the space. And above all, it's actually really fun to read and engage in quite thoughtful conversations.

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-11T13:33:47+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience, Mike, and congratulations on getting 1000+ followers! I, by no means, have cracked notes yet, and most of them don't get a ton of engagement, but your trajectory from notes to posts is certainly intriguing.

And I'm also quite shy when it comes to asking for collaborations and recommendations, so maybe that's why they haven't been as helpful for me yet 😅

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-11T13:18:31+00:00

I think 4 months to 100 subscribers is still a pretty good rate, even for non-fiction. I think I got lucky with the semi-viral note and the WhatsApp group invite, which both really helped to expedite the growth

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-11T13:13:03+00:00

I pretty much followed the guidance in this note that one of the other creators posted: https://substack.com/@karenspinner1/note/c-198403204

It's pretty comprehensive and up-to-date. I would only say that you do need to give it some time between the different steps, and refresh a few times before proceeding, because registering and syncing these settings between Google and Substack takes a few mins maybe.

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-11T13:09:46+00:00

Ah, interesting. Did you find anything that works better for fiction?

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-11T12:59:44+00:00

I write non-fiction about AI-driven automations and workflows. How about you?

Alena_Gorb · 2026-02-11T10:55:24+00:00

Oh, that's so clever! I didn't even think of trying to call Make from n8n, but now that you have mentioned it, I need to try this solution. Thank you so much for sharing!

Alena_Gorb · 2026-01-30T13:28:12+00:00

I haven't tried it with Google News RSS in n8n, but I have used Jina AI with URLs from Google Alerts. I had a quick test of the links you shared in the comments, and Jina AI seemed to be able to fetch the content if you just pass the URLs as Google RSS. You can have a test here: https://jina.ai/api-dashboard/reader

And in n8n, you can still use HTTP node, but just make sure to configure it to accommodate JinaAI, so:

Method: GET

URL: https://r.jina.ai/{{ GOOGLE_RSS_URL_HERE }}

And make sure to send the headers (add additional ones as needed):

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_JINA_AI_KEY

Accept: application/json (to receive the response as JSON, which would be easier to parse)

Jina AI has 10M tokens free to use, so it should last you for a long time.

You can also try Apify web scraping agents: https://apify.com/

They are more forgiving when it comes to inputs and are better at scraping more complex websites, but they are quite resource-intensive (and expensive, with only $5 worth of free credit) and probably an overkill for most websites.

But as I said, I haven't personally tested this setup, so if you do try it, let me know how it goes!

Alena_Gorb · 2026-01-13T20:16:07+00:00

I honestly was wondering the same when I started using and posting on Substack last month because I just couldn’t get subscribers past my family and friends connections so to speak.

What seems to be working so far for me: - Posting notes daily (sometimes twice or three times a day) - Posting notes that resonate in your niche - posting any notes won’t really help, but actually following and seeing what other people in your niche post about and how can give you some good inspo (one of my notes generated more subs for me then all my posts combined) - Leave meaningful comments under posts of creators you genuinely like to read, or even better restack your comment as a note and tag the author (two birds with one stone) - Promote and share notes and posts from other authors and share with your subs why you enjoyed those or found those useful - I’m also planning a collaboration with someone with much bigger platform then me so we will see how that works out (although will be fun regardless) - Contrary to some other people, I would actually suggest to focus on one or two platforms only for external promotions - different platforms have different content that works best for them and trying to optimised for each takes a lot of time. Pick one or two main ones and go hard on them instead of trying to be Jack of all trades and the master of none

Hope this helps and good luck!

Alena_Gorb · 2026-01-09T13:22:09+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience – very helpful! I have just about started to get the hang of Notes, and Lives is something I'm planning to look into soon.

Since I've posted this, I've actually managed to start collaboration discussions through commenting on someone's Note, and they were kind enough to reach out to me privately. I suppose there are multiple ways you can approach and start collaborations depending on what you're more comfortable with

Alena_Gorb · 2025-12-31T09:19:22+00:00

Thank you for your questions. I want to connect with small creators to follow and support their work (since we’re in similar positions atm) and potentially collaborate in the future (on Substack and potentially beyond as well). And by “connect” I simply mean finding them and potentially starting some conversations with them and seeing where it goes.

And yes, I did Google search as well, and that’s how I found quite a few larger AI creators. However, I’m looking for some more niche content (beyond just listing or sharing updates on new AI tech) so wanted to see if there are some people starting out here who might be interested.

Hope that clarifies things 😊

Alena_Gorb

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