Report of my first 29 days on Substack

What I learnt and stuff you may find interesting.

This is the first instalment of what will become a monthly (or bi-monthly) check-up on my Substack journey throughout the first year.

(Ps. I opened my account on the 25th of November, but 25th of December didn’t feel like a good day to post… so here we are).

As opposed to many great writers on here who seem to have a clean, clear and realistic schedule for publishing - I do not.

Ps. Thanks

Sara Petersen

for making me feel less alone in my unrealistic passion-driven pursuits by sharing your “tomatoe and mayonnaise”.

I’m all about unrealistic, dreamy goals. You know the kind that you never expect to happen - and maybe, just maybe… that’s why they will?!

If one is to “expect the unexpected”, which you (if you read my post “How to balance motherhood and business”) know has served me well through the years of both entrepreneurship and mothering, then dreamy goals are *technically* just as realistic as any other goals. They are unexpected. And you expect the unexpected. So therefore… They may happen… Right?!?!?!

But more than anything, I don’t want to kill the creative joy I get from going with the flow. As the name of this publication suggests: I am a “Follow your gut” type of a person.

At this stage of my artistic career (having financially lived off my creativity (modern hand embroidery to be precise) for 7 years of which 3.5 have included motherhood too (a feat in and of itself)), I know what vibes work for me and which don’t.

I know that if I am to schedule topics in advance, I will feel as though someone put hand-cuffs around my wrists and end up loathing both myself and the situation. In addition, I’ll most likely get a full-blown writer’s block whenever I have those precious 20-minute write-windows when baby naps.

As a result, I have consciously chosen to opt out of a set publishing schedule and instead focus on regular reviews of my progress and take-aways. Hopefully this will not only be insightful to me, but also for you.

Ps. I’ll write a separate post on my inverse strategy to reach unrealistic goals another day, so be sure to subscribe to not miss out on that one.

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What are my goals with these reviews/reports?

First, I think they’re great to read (and write). I love to read about other people’s experiences and based on engagement statistics of my posts this month - You do too.

Secondly, it will serve as a motivator (I hope?!) to continue to stay consistent and honor my passion to write. I’m still far from where I want to be with my writing. Thus, to regularly review my experience of this new creative writing endeveaour will bring more clarity as to where I need to focus my efforts.

Thirdly, it will create a completely transparent insight into what works and what doesn’t for everyone to enjoy. I don’t want to become a “how-to-succeed-on-Substack” writer (though I clearly aim to succeed). But I do want to become a go-to for inspiration and encouragement that you can realistically follow unrealistic goals by listening to your gut.

I believe that I am a living example that it’s possible to build a life guided by your own creations. You don’t have to settle for less if you don’t want to. It’s not selfish. It’s simply what it means to be a passion-driven person and you should never have to apologise or justify for being one.

Now, let’s get to the juicy stuff:

What happened this month (25Nov-23Dec 2023)?

A LOT OF AWESOMENESS.

From a user experience perspective:

I’m blown away by the experience so far. As an artist who used to be knee-deep in MSM (Mainstream social media), I have loved to get back to slow content (both creation and consumption).

From thoughtful comments on my last post “what I learnt from having 500k across social media”, I know that I’m not alone.

Kate Eskuri, DNP

also found solace here on Substack as well as

Claire Venus

. Others like

Rachel Vogeleisen

,

Kerani Arpaia

and

Sarah Styf

are seeing the new possibilities to shine and are re-questioning their use of mainstream social media.

Disclaimer: Modern hand embroidery is everything but a quick-fix. It meant that I had to get very creative on how to constantly share fresh content of an otherwise SLOW art-form (which definitely proved a challenge at times).

Slow consumption of written art is what lays the foundation for strong writer-reader relationships. Substack limits external influences to disturb your attention (as opposed to the all too familiar doom-scroll…).

The interface for both writers and readers is clean without ads and I love how I can easily customize what I want to see/read independent from what an external algorithm estimates I *should* see.

That said… I still want to send a ray of gratitude to the algorithms involved. They picked up on reader engagement to what became my first month’s most read post “How I plan to stay consistent on Substack”. It led to a Substack feature and 24 new subscribed readers to my just newborn publication, which I think is fabulous. Thank you!

Had I opted to start a regular blog instead, I would’ve never reached that many readers so soon (considering I start this publication from scratch).

I also want to send out a warm hug to my first pledge to pay for my work. WOW, thank you Michele from the bottom of my heart.

Even though I haven’t turned on my paid option yet, I feel as though I already scored jackpot. I’m a wanted writer. Let me sit with that for a minute.

This truly became a beautiful example of the “expect the unexpected” principle. I’m floored with gratitude.

Add to that the 5 incredible souls who now recommend my publication:

Kat River

Claire Venus

Alexander Semenyuk

Renaissance Reflections

The Gentle Roadmap

You’re golden ❤️

Another metric that matters to me is the 30-day views. I’m at the stage where I wish for my work to get spread and read. It’s only the humble beginning of something I dream to grow quite substantially. It may take 6 months or 6 years, only God knows. But I’ll make my best effort to speed up the process.

Not because I’m greedy. I’m just impatiently excited. Giddy like when you send a text to your new love. I can’t wait to see the response as much as I don’t want to because it’s scary as h*ll to put yourself out there.

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I read a fabulous article today (The five best bits of advice I received this year) by

Daisy Buchanan

where she, among other things, highlight the reality of self-doubt being a chronic creative condition. And that the only way forward is to learn to deal with it (and hit publish anyway).

I shared a similar thing earlier this month; To simply post you’ve already increased your chances to succeed by 100% compared to if you never post.

Yet, no matter how many times you hit publish (throughout my artistic career it’s been tens of thousands of times….) you still feel the flicker of self-doubt that makes you want to run and hide to avoid seeing the response - all while you can hardly contain your excitement for “what if” people will actually enjoy it?

To be a creative is like being locked in a never ending emotional roller-coaster. Add to that that I’m an HSP (highly sensitive person), you can imagine the emotional turmoil that sometimes overflows in there (

Christine Marie

knows exactly what I’m talking about). It’s like a stormy ocean that I’m committed to sail through.

And I think there are a lot of you out there trying to sail through as well. A note I did in response to

Daisy Buchanan

quickly sailed up to become my best performing note to date. The chronic creative condition is not a unique thing - it resonates with MANY.

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Moving on to some other highlights…

I naturally have to re-share my cringey fan-girl moment again from last week… The international bestselling author

Jeff Goins

that I look up to and have read through the years, read my work and liked it! How cool is that!

More than anything, it confirms my experience from ones having been among the largest Instagram accounts in my niche (you know back in the ol’ days lol), that no matter how seemingly “above” you are - we’re all just regular people doing regular things. Or my post was just *that awesome.

Here’s that post by the way, in case you fancy a read too:

Write what matters for those who care

Now begs the question…

What did I do to reach such wide readership in my first month?

Before you jump to conclusions based on my previous artistic success. Here’s my stats for how much readers come from within the Substack network (ps. Thanks

Linda @ Substack

for recently sharing how to look up the network effect).

I sent out one email to my list for my embroidery art where I mention my new writing project (not related to embroidery). 41 beautiful people created an account to be able to read my stories. Another handful I believe may overlap with the light orange of readers who already had a Substack account before.

But the vast majority of my amazing 193-198 (the screenshots of the stats weren’t taken exactly at the same time #ihavekids) subscribed readers come from within the Substack platform. That’s remarkable and goes to show that

Substack

does what it has set out to do: Support writers to reach readers.

So what DID I do? I posted… a lot.

6k views in just under 30 days is not the result of one article. It’s not the result of one article per week either.

In the past 29 days I’ve posted 16 pieces of writing (including this one), which means I gave myself 16 chances for new readers to discover my work (the results of this article will be accounted for in the next report).

Before rounding up, I just want to share a few thoughts on the whole story of going paid…

I do think this may fit for an entire article, but I just want to pop in some major thought-patterns (take in mind that I haven’t studied any of the Substack experts just yet… it’s only been me and my stubborn “learning by doing” approach for this first month to try and get into the groove of things).

I notice that many have paid options turned on fairly early (if not already from the beginning).

However, I cannot desipher whether this is the majority or not. But in my super generalised impression I didn’t see anyone yet who doesn’t have it turned on… (what’s your experience?!).

Personally, I want to wait as long as possible.

At this point my focus is to solidify my writing habit, improve my prose and get my mind back into a creative mode after a (unfortunately) longer than anticipated post-partum break after baby #2.

In addition to that, I hope my work to get spread and read as much as possible as this will help me to develop my writing further.

Like, do we vibe on the same things? Am I clear in my expression? Is my non-native English understandable? Lots of questions…

I secretely also want to make a big banger launch at one point in my career. The first time it all grew slowly and steadily - But this time I’d like to build up some momentum first and then hopefully have lots of readers be hooked (can I become THAT good?) so that they all want to come join me as soon as I turn it on…

As I said above: This can take 6 months, or 6 years - I don’t know. But I’m excited to find out.

Thank you for reading despite the *VERY inconvenient timing of the year (I didn’t plan it out this way, as you know..),
Elin x

If you enjoyed this report, please let me know in the comments so that I know if this series is of interest for others than just myself!

Also don’t miss to click the little ❤️ icon to tell Substack that this is worth to feature too (but only if you think so of course).

And of course - come and subscribe if you’re curious to see the journey as well.