How I Started my Substack with Zero Subscribers

and STAYED SMALL and kept working my day job

This is my actual subscriber graph. If you look to the left side, you can see the big fat ZERO I started out with.

If you’re on Substack Notes then I’m assuming you have seen one of hundreds (thousands?) of posts from writers that say something like, “How I grew my Substack from zero subscribers to a bajillion and made a crap-ton of money IN THE FIRST YEAR.” It’s like clickbait around here.

So you take the bait, you go read their article (which boosts them toward that lovely algorithm that keeps feeding their stats), and somewhere in it they probably admit that their initial spike in subscriber numbers was “caused mostly by being selected as a Substack featured publication.” I posted my own note about this very issue recently. My first thoughts?

This is privilege.

It’s the same old story we hear time and time again. “I worked hard,” they say. “I earned everything I have from working hard every day, from scraping by, and YOU CAN TOO if you just work hard enough.” And to an extent I think there is some merit to meritocracy. Yes, working hard does work. But it only works if you have someone clearing a path for you, removing barriers, and possibly giving you a gentle nudge toward your subscriber base.¹

But that’s not even meritocracy. It’s leveraging the power someone else gave you. No bootstraps required or involved.

And for those of us out here who really did start with zero subscribers (I challenge ALL of the people posting these types of notes to show me how they actually started with no one subscribing to them), if we’re not making thousands of dollars by the end of our first year, then clearly we are underperforming, we’re not working hard enough, and we have only ourselves to blame.

For the record, I’d also like to make clear that the only people I see promoting the Substack meritocracy myth are white, affluent, neurotypical, non-disabled, cishetnormative folks.

Well good for you! Way to go! And thanks for helping out your community here by giving us a post to read about the six tips you’re sharing so that we can also have that level of success.²

And in honor of this type of community-building exercise, I’d like to share with you a little about my journey here on Substack.

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Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash

I launched my Substack, That Trans Friend You Didn’t Know You Needed, on January 24, 2023. I didn’t post anything until February 2 of that year, at which point 3 subscribers mysteriously found me.

Let’s pause here. Of the 3 subscribers I gained that day, 2 of them were friends I happened to talk to about my writing. I did not call my mom and ask her to subscribe. Nobody in my family even knows I’m here. As far as I know, no one from my work domain subscribes, reads, or knows anything about my Substack. I had no other online presence at that time, and what I have now is paltry.

And also, as a trans person who suddenly decided to start writing intimate details about my life, my experiences, and my feelings, it was really nice to have a space like this to share those things and still feel like I wasn’t risking too much vulnerability or exposure. So that division between my personal life and this space was very intentional.

Did I see the potential for making money on Substack? Sure. It’s advertised pretty well.

Did I think I would make any money doing this? Absolutely not. I didn’t even start with payments turned on out of the imposter syndrome feeling that my work does not “deserve” to be paid because it is not “good enough” or “of a quality” on par with “real writers.”

By April of 2023 I had 23 subscribers and FELT LIKE A GOD.

Stop for a minute and imagine, if you will, being an online nobody, posting stupid stories about aspects of your life that you think somebody might snicker at, and somehow still managing to find 23 people who wanted to read that tripe? I was posting twice weekly (a tempo it turns out I could not maintain), and I felt enormous gratitude anytime I got one like on a post. That was one person who actually gave a shit about something I put out into the world. They stopped and read my words.

I have plenty of privilege in my life. But the challenges between me and a writing career have always been largely insurmountable. Maybe this feels relatable to you. I take to my notepad or laptop and write in the margins of life because I cannot make space for this work elsewhere. That space is full to bursting with an incredibly demanding full-time job (that includes 24/7 on-call support provided by yours truly), a family life with two young kids, and a host of other responsibilities that make me look like your average human desperately trying to survive in a capitalist society.

Writing a Substack newsletter will never pay my student loans, my healthcare costs, or even my grocery bill.

Early on in my Substack I earned my first serious troll. He wasn’t the kind to find me in passing and move on when I deleted his comments. He was vicious and focused, and he still shows up regularly (as in this week). Turning on paid comments was the only solution I could see at the time to make him go away. So I set up payments, changed how I approached my writing, and hoped for the best. And while I am far from the first or last person to be targeted, bullied, or annoyed by folks like that, it’s important to acknowledge the barrier to writing that such things creates for us. When there are tears in your eyes from seeing one person like your post, and the next thing you see is hatred spewed all over your work, deciding to keep moving forward with it is hard.

At no point did I become a Substack Featured Publication.

Nobody was promoting me.

As a Substack writer, I knew that it was also super cool to find other writers, authors, creators, and artists. I started out here by subscribing to Erin in the Morning, so I knew there had to be other great stacks to find and read. I went looking for them, and – knowing that feeling of success and how great it can be – I subscribed, I liked, and I left comments.

Give the universe the things you want to get back from it.

Notes launched in April 2023, engagement with other people got easier, and by the end of the month two of my writing friends started recommending TransFriend on their own stacks. By the end of the month I had 63 subscribers. What’s more, 2 subscribers had signed up to pay for my work. Two. Two real people were willing to invest money in the things I had to say.

I went from feeling like a god to feeling immeasurably small and humble.

And suddenly I was terrified. I was afraid that I would say something that might hurt someone’s feelings. I was afraid to use my voice. I was afraid to offend, to make a mistake, to regret.

I hovered just under 100 subscribers for nearly 6 months, and during that time I figured I had plateaued. It wasn’t a bad feeling. It was actually really great. I had around 97 people regularly tuning in to hear my words sent out to them. In September 2023 I wound my pace down to one post per week, a much more sustainable rate for writing, for planning, and for coping with all of the distractions that kept me from writing when I wanted to. I admitted to my audience that I was going to write a memoir, and that small crowd of just under a hundred people was the proof I had needed all along that there was someone out there who might actually want to read a book I would write.

This is why I came here. I came here to prove that if I wrote something, people might want to read it. That a guy like me could write a memoir, and that there was an audience for it.

Book publishers want to see that you’re marketable. They’re happier if you can demonstrate that you have a crowd who knows you, who would show up, who might even be willing to show that they would pay for your work. And I finally had that.

I had written posts that were getting 8 or 9 likes. Folks were leaving encouraging comments. I received emails from new subscribers thanking me for being here, for speaking up, and for showing them that they were not alone in the world.

No, I do not know what it feels like to have a post get over 500 likes. But have you ever gotten a direct email from a subscriber telling you that your words helped them feel seen as a human being?

I broke 100 subscribers on November 6, 2023. It was a Monday.

Passing that arbitrary three-digit marker felt significant. It weighed on me. I worried that my desire for bigger numbers would drive a wedge between me and that small pool of readers. Would they still feel connected to me if I continued to grow? I secretly desired to stay small, to be less significant, to step away from any notion of a limelight. My community of queer and trans folks is already small and scattered. I wanted to reflect that, to stay humble to how many of us have no voice and no representation.

I feared success as a weapon. After all, the pursuit of success for me meant leaving someone else behind, and that was a cost too great to pay.

Nonetheless, I decided to stick my neck out when a small group of writers collaborated on the project #SubstackersAgainstNazis. It was an issue I felt passionate about, and I was already waffling about my future on a platform that supported so much anti-LGBTQIA2S+ content and creators. By the end of 2023 I had 173 subscribers, and that number was angling higher nearly every day.

On March 21, 2024, slightly fed up with my inability to find the other trans and queer creators here on Substack, I posted a note that quickly gained momentum.

Is it too much to say, “it went viral?” Why yes, yes it would be. While my original post garnered 82 likes and got 49 restacks, and then it went on to inspire several other notes and restacks, it didn’t actually get Substack to create a Queer content category. Not yet anyway. But it did increase my visibility within Substack as a trans, queer, out-and-proud guy who was friendly and looking to build up our community. Within a week I shot up over 300 subscribers.

As of today, I have 376 subscribers, 138 followers who apparently don’t subscribe, 3 paid subscribers (whom I love dearly and am in awe of constantly), and 17 publications recommending mine.

This is my 99^th post.

I still work my 40+ hour-per-week job. I worry all the time that I will run out of things to say here. My memoir is chugging along very slowly, but I haven’t lost hope. I’ve met some truly incredible friends in this space, some who make me laugh, some who sit with me when we cry, some who have given me valuable information about getting published, and others who are just working up their courage to share their own stories. I still pay attention to every single subscriber who thinks I’m worth taking up space in their world, and I really look forward to getting those emails from anyone who wants to engage on that level.

Passing that 100-subscriber threshold was likely more meaningful to me than it ever was to someone who got promoted and had their path paved in praise. Passing 300 subscribers was equally meaningful. There have been so few hands reaching back to help me along that I can tell you each of their names. I know their faces. And I know how hard they, too, are struggling to get published, to build a reader base, and to keep working their jobs and raising their families while they pursue their passion for writing.

I still want a Queer category for all of us here.

I still feel undeserving of paid subscribers.

I still feel conflicting emotions about growing bigger.

So that’s it. That’s the whole story. That’s how I went from zero subscribers (like actually zero) to over 300 in just a bit more than a year. I didn’t build a damn thing. I showed up and did some hard work, I wrote the best content I could, I promoted myself in the smallest ways possible, I asked for help, I engaged, I tried to help others, and I watched a small and beautiful community gather around me.

Imagine what small writers like me could do with just a hint of the privilege those other folks have. What would you do with that kind of power?

Your trans friend,

Robin

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1. So actually no. Meritocracy is bullshit.

2. That was my sarcastic voice.