The Substack Network Effect: Zooming In

So Newsletter Recommendations compound in weird ways over time.

Jun 17

Image: Substack cofounders Jairaj Sethi, Chris Best, and Hamish McKenzie in their San Francisco offices on March 16, 2022. Photo: Krista Schlueter. via Vanity Fair.

Hey Guys,

I’m not very high on the Substack network totem-pole, when I reach out to big stars of Substack on Twitter or LinkedIn, I mostly get ignored. Which is totally okay!

Full disclosure, I’m new here. So this isn’t exactly surprising. Nobody knows who I am, and that’s fine. It’s preferable sometimes.

At first I was extremely skeptical about Substack’s Newsletter recommendations, I tried it out out (tested it on 90 Newsletters, wrote detailed descriptions), nobody reciprocated. I stopped doing it. But all is not what it seems!

On Substack

Introducing recommendations: simple cross-promotion for writers

Today we are rolling out a new feature to allow writers to directly endorse each other’s publications on Substack: recommendations. A writer can select a number of publications to recommend to new subscribers, and the writers of those publications will be notified and prompted to recommend back…

4 months ago · 282 likes · 171 comments

But Substack is the one with the actual data, and they are pretty positive it works. So let’s think about this: (And hey, I’m glad it works for some folk!)

Recommendations improve niche visibility
Newsletter recommend others in their niche
If you can get a Leaderboard Substack Newsletter to recommend you, you are guaranteed tons of free traffic.
This is the easiest initial traffic spike to get, so get your networking chops on.
Motivationally it can also be good to mix with other Creators in your field

I used to enjoy the solo-utopia of WFH on Substack, but now in 2022 the network effect of the platform is, well, more than considerable! If you have business acumen or great soft-skills this puts you at an incredible advantage. Same if you have a good Twitter following!

The Product Feature that Saves Substack

While Substack walks the edge of the culture wars as dramatized by the New York Times and other mainstream publications, its new product of recommendations (that went live in mid April, 2022) basically partially solves its discoverability problem.

While I haven’t benefited that much yet form this particular product feature personally, I can see how others have:

It Compounds over time (significant ROI in the long-game)
Conversion rates - whatever your conversion rate is, in theory more free subscribers leads to more paid conversions.
Network effect scales as the app goes live on Android (TBA)
Lowest hanging fruit for new Substacks Newsletter and Podcasting Creators (Anchor links are now live on Substack since June 10th, 2022)
Anchor is that crazy easy app to use to record Podcasts on your mobile device.

So if we were to take on positive slant on this, Substack employees have painfully gathered tweets from their Creators on this. It’s sounds generic, but network effect and audio immersion are keys for Creators success on Substack in 2022 and it took me an absurdly long time to actually come to this realization.

We should also make note of this, after all they (Substack) are the ones with the data!

photo of grape fruit — Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

(Green turns to Gold, at the right time).

The Two Golden Apples of Substack Immersion and Discoverability of 2022

In 2022 if you can only do two things on your Substack, make audio content/podcasts and optimize your networking with other Creators in your Niche, since doing these two things could drive monetization that is a make-it-or-break-it moment for your time here.

Podcasting how blown up during the pandemic, just ask digital media, Creators and platforms like Spotify. This increases audience immersion and Substack offers it, so why not!

Playbook

Doing network Newsletter recommendations effectively simply means you need to get people who are more established than you are to reciprocate your recommendation of them. This means either cold calling them or literally just recommending them and having really good lead gen that they notice, and decide organically to recommend you as well (performance reciprocity).

Unfortunately I’m not an expect at networking, but you get the general idea.

So let's head to Substacks’ favorite data point, the Twitter influencers! What are they saying? The bigger you are on Substack, i.e. the longer you have been doing it, the more this product feature actually makes sense. (Recency-evergreen bias of most platforms).

So when a new Substack Creators gets a huge spike in traffic, what actually happened? Just a few things are possible.

They made it on the leaderboards (increasing their visibility by x multiples)
A significant niche peer started to recommend them (which can be seen in stats)
If you know of other triggers let me know

But the Substack Newsletter recommendations are so new (Part of April, May, June, there’s now growing evidence in the data the trickle of free subs compounds over time and starts to add real value).

Even just a trickle, can one day become a waterfall. It’s the butterfly effect of the network effect in online publishing. It’s better than “going viral”, because it’s sustains future growth.

Suffice to say that Substack is rewarding collaborative networking instead of competition. This creates more win-win type thinking, and is a bit like apps biasing their feed to positive sentiment. The drama and attention whoring and clickbait is the “noise” that you want to reduce.

From a product standpoint, this is all substantially good stuff. But it’s how it compounds that’s the magic here.

As your Newsletter becomes more mature and your peers respect you more, your Substack growth goes from 5,000 to 10,000 free subscribers exponentially faster than it took you to go from 0 to 2,000 free subscribers basically on your own. That’s when Creators see a sustainable spike.

Think about that long and hard guys. It’s important.

This ultimately makes Substack more revenue which is kind of the point of their business model.

I don’t know Elle personally, but I’m happy for her. Not just serializing fiction on Substack but learning how to navigate and monetize with NFTs (someone is singing songs poems on TikTok).

Elle Griffin @novelleist

Wow, I hit 5,000 subscribers over the weekend! I've been writing books and newsletters for The Novelleist, my @SubstackInc newsletter, since February 2021, starting with a Tiny Letter list of 1,700. I can't even believe my writing has resonated with so many. I am beyond honored!

Early Signs of Network Effect Supremacy on Substack

Like I was saying we are roughly 75 days into this experiment, it will not be difficult for me to find “social proof” that Substack wants us to have on its Newsletter Recommendation feature.

Gains compound
Gains dramatically improve the longer you do it and the more you grow
Gains involve Creators helping each other

Peter Yang @petergyang

Most of my newsletter subs are now coming from the @SubstackInc network and I imagine it's the same for other writers. It's hard to understate how big of an unlock this is for Substack and writers. Come for the tool, stay for the network.

Podcast integration is the single biggest thing to improve conversion rates to paid for Creators on Substack.
Top of Funnel: Network effect via Newsletter Recommendations
Bottom of Funnel: Good audio content and or Podcast / Video (in Beta)

Hamish McKenzie @hamishmckenzie

This is from the #1 tech writer on Substack. 23% of his subscribers come from the Substack network. We’re only just getting started on driving growth for writers.

Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz

Every now and then I get asked why I use @SubstackInc for my newsletter and not @TryGhost (which my blog runs on). It's because while Substack charges me *a lot* more, it helps the newsletter grow more than what I pay. Some examples: 1. Network features https://t.co/29T4IYKil9

Several of the top leaderboard Creators actually go much further with LinkedIn content as we have seen with Gergely (.e.g. making posts about each other’s content) and his mates.

What’s your Substack Network effect percent?

Business Dev as a Creator?

Substack @SubstackInc

Elizabeth is one of the 700 writers who participated in Substack Grow last summer. She told us, "Substack Grow encouraged me to take risks with my newsletter and helped me meet some very smart, very cool people."

Doing Substack Grow
Feeling the human aspect of growth
Getting rewarded for taking risks

Substack is a great online challenge that reminds you that you have to persevere until the Universe gives your break. If others can do it, why not you?

Substack @SubstackInc

Growing your email list is a balance of hard work & luck. A viral tweet helps, but it may take years of lived experience & months of research to say something that captures that kind of attention. Here’s @Mikeachim advice on how to do just that. [🧵]