Saturday Morning Coffee ☕ #59

Featuring a brand new section!

Mar 15, 2025

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Hey friend!

Quick question:

Your answers will help shape the future of my podcast, so thanks in advance!

And you can catch the latest episode with

Emma Nelson

right here:

206: Going behind the scenes with a Ghostwriter (featuring Emma Nelson)

David McIlroy and Emma Nelson

Mar 11

Read full story

So, I’m trialling something new in the roundup this week - a Q&A section!

Yesterday, I asked subscribers in the How to Write for a Living chat the following question: What’s your number one question about Substack right now?

A few of you came back right away, and several of the replies overlapped to some extent. I think I can summarise them as:

How do I build community here?
How do I grow my audience?
How do I get more paid subscribers?

So let’s dive into those right now. Here’s my take on each:

1. How do I build community here?

I think community is absolutely key to the success of any publication on Substack (and maybe newsletters in general). If you can build a sense of community around the things you publish on the platform (posts, notes, videos, etc), everything feels more connected.

You’ll soon find yourself working with an ecosystem rather than with a collection of separate entities. That’s far more sustainable (and a lot more fun!).

To build community, I’d suggest making good use of your publication’s Chat function. Ask questions, invite engagement by inspiring conversations, connect with your audience. If you can get your subscribers to interact with each other within your Chat threads, you’ll know you’re on to a winner.

The same principle applies to the other chat spaces in your publication, like the comments sections in your posts, your Live video reply feed, and the responses to your Notes. Your audience members connect in those places, so that’s where you should encourage them to go.

2. How do I grow my audience?

Simple answer to this one (counting them on my fingers): Notes, Recommendations, and publishing rhythm.

I’ve written more about it here, but if you can develop a consistent, sustainable publishing pattern (for posts and Notes) and work on building up the list of other publications recommending yours, your audience will start to grow automatically.

But you have to work at it. You have to show up on the platform regularly in an authentic way (don’t write or act like a robot, unless you want people to think that’s what you are). That doesn’t mean spending hours here every day, either - just stay visible. Become familiar. Be someone others are glad to hear from.

And above all, be patient. It takes time.

3. How do I get more paid subscribers?

Ah, the question we’re all trying to answer!

There are so many different ways to approach this, and several of them flow from what I’ve already said in response to the previous question.

But I’ll add this for now: make sure your readers understand exactly what you offer in your paid tier, and remind them about it every time you publish a post.

They’ll skim by most of your calls to action. When they do read them, they’ll soon forget. People are busy and have a million things coming at them at once on the internet. So tell your audience what to expect from your paid membership, and tell them often.

What do you think? Was this helpful? Should I do more of these?

Let me know in the comments! 👇

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Some interesting thoughts from others:

Contributions from our Paid Members:

A good video:

A good Note:

Go deeper:

Have a brilliant weekend, gang! ⌛

PS. You can read all previous editions of Saturday Morning Coffee here, and you can upgrade your subscription here.

What’s next?

I’m ready and waiting to support you in the next stages of your creator journey. Here’s how I can help:

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