Hi friends!
Another Sunday, another issue of Level 4!
(p.s. I may well change the name of this newsletter, so if you’re a reader in the future going through the back issues, sorry for the confusion!)
This issue is going to be a little different. This week, I found myself reflecting a lot on what I want out of the two journeys I track here: Substack and KDP. I was primarily questioning my investment in Substack, so this newsletter is focused on that.
Read on for:
A new direction for my Substack efforts
This week on KDP
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A new direction for my Substack efforts
I mentioned before (here and here) that Substack is far more interesting to me than KDP, and that I am a lot more motivated to continue the Substack journey. I am starting to discern more and more what about it exactly is appealing to me.
What I like about Substack
What I like about the idea of running a newsletter here are as follows:
Expanded space in my life for writing. I enjoy writing. It is a good way for me to process my thoughts and feelings. It helps me become smarter and know where I stand on various topics. Once I process things through writing, I feel lighter. I feel expanding the space that writing holds in my daily life by committing to a newsletter would have immeasurable benefits for both my wellbeing and my intellectual life.
The income model. As a newsletter gets established, it should be quite possible to make a living out of it. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t expect it to happen fast, but it can certainly happen over the course of a few years. Moreover, the potential upside is better than any corporate job. There is an element of organic growth in the newsletter business: as more people notice your writing, you can grow your income without increasing your output. There are of course other ways to monetize an audience, as well. Overall, working to establish a successful newsletter and build an audience through it feels like a worthwhile goal to me. I also consider any side income a useful insurance policy, since I do not consider the corporate job market very reliable (employees have limited control over compensation and performance management, lay-offs happen, finding new work is very labor-intensive and uncertain, ageism is real).
The freedom. If a newsletter ever became my sole income source, it would mean that I would have time and location freedom. I would also probably work alone, so I would have freedom from the schedules, interruptions and demands of many others. I know some people welcome the social aspect of corporate work. I appreciate it to some extent too, but as an introvert, I do not in any way find the thin social life of work to be something to seek after. More importantly, as a human being, I find the constant notifications, pings and meetings of modern corporate life completely draining and borderline exploitative. As such, working by myself (or perhaps with a tiny team) on a newsletter business has an obvious appeal for me.
What I dislike about Substack
Here is what I realized I don’t like about Substack this week…
The Substack feed is a social media platform like any other. I don’t know what the feed was like pre-Substack Notes, but today’s post-Notes Substack feed is a relentless competition for attention the same way Instagram, Twitter (yes I know it’s X, I just refuse) and LinkedIn are. People are posting bite-sized content, one-sentence-a-line at that, in the hopes of attracting eyeballs. Maybe people are shouting less about politics on Substack than on Twitter, but the cheap quality “look-at-me” content is just as abundant.
I realized this fact when I tried to become part of the system this week. I had given myself the goal of posting a Note a day for a week. As each of my Notes gathered zero views day after day, I found myself experimenting with different formats. I turned my paragraphs into one-sentence-a-line flows. I added images. I tried to make them as easily digestible as possible. And everyone is doing just the same. That is why my Substack feed is full of empty calorie Notes designed to grab attention and gain the creator some followers.
I don’t like to consume low quality content (eventually it feels like eating too much junk food). I also don’t like the activity of posting said kind of content and would not enjoy posting them day after day in the name of growth, as many social media experts advise. Would I still do it though, if it would bring me growth? That question brought me the main unlock of this week, explored below.
What does all this mean for my Substack journey?
Toward the end of the week, I realized that I probably should not try to grow my readership through the Substack ecosystem.
To begin with, as I said, I strongly dislike the Substack Notes game. I don’t want to make space in my life for this kind of endeavor. The more I tried to attract attention with Notes, the more I found myself moving away from my own writing and toward generic entrepreneurship or motivation quotes to share. Then there is the matter of how I react to people choosing to engage or not. Considering how minute and meaningless any single reaction to a piece of content I put out ultimately is, I find that any preoccupation or emotional response on my end would be irrational - but I still have those responses, expending mental and emotional bandwidth on them.
Still, I would be willing go through this hustle if I thought it would bring me the right readers. This brings me to the next reason I don’t think I should try to grow through Substack Notes. I am just not so sure that it will bring me the “true fans” who would be the basis of an actual living. Firstly, I know that I personally do not subscribe or stay subscribed too long to people I find through their motivational stuff on Notes. Secondly, I think a lot of people engaging on Substack Notes are creators themselves trying to find subscribers, not readers trying to find new newsletters to subscribe to - or at least that is the state of my feed at the moment. Hence, the chances of finding people truly interested in KDP, or even interested in reading whole newsletters, is starting to seem quite low to me.
I am currently writing a Substack on KDP. Eventually, I want to have a different kind of Substack as well and that one will likely be on business (more clear-cut hence easier to grow, and can be a business expense for subscribers so lower barrier for paid subscriptions). I’ve already been aware for some time that the KDP people don’t seem to be hanging out on Substack (I couldn’t find many newsletters dedicated to it). The people who will be looking to read about the business topics I will write about will probably not be browsing Substack for them either; LinkedIn is a better bet. As a result, I have concluded this week that I am probably better served trying to find my readers outside of Substack (p.s. I listened to this video about Substack growth from Ali Abouletta twice this week, lots of good strategies and none about growing through Notes - this was pre-Notes).
This is my new direction:
Ignore the Substack feed! Yes. Treat Substack as simply my newsletter infrastructure. The feed is not worth my time.
Keep writing on Substack about KDP. Even if nobody reads it, the weekly journaling process is helping me. And if at some point I decide to try to grow this newsletter, it will be good to have a backlog of content.
My dream to build a monetizable business newsletter continues, but is not my first priority for now.
This week on KDP
Well this will be short… This week, I did not do anything for KDP!
I was busy with a course I am finishing up, and preparing for a job interview. Once I wrap up this newsletter, I will go right back to that priority.
I asked myself many times whether to continue with KDP this week as well, just as I did last week. I keep questioning myself, and I keep landing in the same place: I don’t know enough to quit yet. This is such a powerful mindset… I don’t know enough to quit yet. So on I go for now.
Oh wait… I did do one thing. I officially opened an Amazon and KDP account under a dedicated e-mail address.
Next week, I am hoping to:
Publish my first book! I hope to have the time to go through everything properly, so I think this is an achievable goal.
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That’s it for this week, folks! Thanks for reading! Until next week,
-Lori