StackHacks: Get More Readers

Part 1 - How to get more readers to your SubStack

It’s all About the Eyeballs

This is Part 1 of a 4 Part series of ways to get more readers for your newsletter. Here are the 4 parts:
Part 1 - https://pau1.substack.com/p/stackhacks-get-more-readers
Part 2 - https://pau1.substack.com/p/stackhacks-get-more-readers-part
Part 3 - https://pau1.substack.com/p/stackhacks-get-more-readers-part-cb2
Part 4 - https://pau1.substack.com/p/stackhacks-get-even-more-readers

After your first couple of SubStack articles, you feel that you want more people, other than your Mom, to read your work. We’ve all had to like our own (it’s OK to like your posts) sometimes.

So other than some random guy typing in your SubStack URL by fluke, how can we get some more eyeballs to read our great undiscovered awesomeness called our newsletter?

Here’s how. Re-Submit some posts to:

• Tumblr

• Blogger

• Medium

• Reddit

• Hacker News

• Twitter

• Quora

Re-Submitting also helps your writing to become undeplatformable.

Re-Submit

It’s OK to just copy and paste your entire newsletter to the websites below, then click submit and you’re done.

Or you may want to just copy the first paragraph, with a good title, and a hero picture, then add a button to link to the rest of the article on your SubStack site.

Choose one or two posts to start, and see how it works at getting new readers and subscribers. All these platforms are different.

If you are not thick-skinned, I wouldn’t recommend Reddit.

You’ll see in your post statistics how many new readers saw your posting on the new site.

Most of these sites require you to sign up using only an email address. Some may have paid features, but you can get away with the free versions to add our work to an outside site.

Tumblr

Tumblr has been around since late 2007. It is short for TumbleLog. Its purpose is for users to create blog posts using audio, video, images, links, quotes, and so on. A good option to add some of your best posts.

Tumblr was bought by a privately owned company called Automattic. Verizon paid more than a Billion $ for it in 2013. Automattic paid 3 Million in 2019. Matt Mullenweg, who is the owner and co-founder of Word Press, is the CEO of the holding company, Automattic.

It is home to 512 million blogs and in 2019 had over 170 billion posts.
By contrast, SubStack is ranked #2066 in the world and had 33.3 Million page views in February 2022. (Source)

Tumblr is ranked #107 in the world for traffic. (source)
Tips and Tricks for using Tumblr

Blogger

Blogger is an American online content management system that enables multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was acquired by Google in 2003. Google hosts the blogs, which can be accessed through a subdomain of blogspot.com.

Because this is a Google product, they make it easy for you to monetize your site and make money with their AdSense system.

It averages 50 million visits a month property-wide. It is ranked #859 in the world for traffic. (Source)

Medium

Another social blogging platform, similar to SubStack. Medium seems to have better discoverability through their site than the SubStack platform offers. But I think they are both similar.

Anyway, there are a lot of authors who publish the same posts on both Medium and SubStack sites, so why not do that too? Google used to penalize a site for posting content that was found elsewhere on the internet, but that has since changed.

Overall the platform ranks #366 and had 163 million visitors in February 2022. (source)

Reddit

Reddit is the TOP 20th site by visits globally and the 12th in the US. (source). It had more than 300 million posts and over 2 billion comments in 2020. It has 52 million daily active users. Read more at: https://thrivemyway.com/reddit-statistics/

Posting on Reddit is not easy and carefree like the other sites I’m writing about today.

You can’t post anything that can be called spammy or self-promotional. The users in some of the subreddits seem to hate self-promotion. So for a post on Reddit to work for you, you must adhere to the rules of the Subreddit. They are written on the right sidebar and policed by power-tripping moderators (mods) with nicknames like Spamhammer.

Here are the posting rules for one online business based Subreddit:

1. Do not link to sites or blogs within your post

2. Do not post promotional content

3. No Soliciting

4. Be polite and helpful

5. Disclose your affiliation (if applicable)

6. Do not post your store for sale

7. Any 'AMA'-type post must first be approved by mods.

And a big unwritten one: Don’t you dare try to sell a course or an ebook in this sub. You will immediately get banned. And worse.

Worth reading this as well: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion

So adhere to the rules, and choose the best sub to post in. Or multiple similar subs. (should announce that “this article is cross-posted”.)

I posted this listicle to Reddit and got thousands of views: “This Newsletter Does not Exist”. I submitted it in the “r/InternetIsBeautiful“ Subreddit. It had more than 10 times my average views.

So the way to get Redditors to upvote and read your articles is to make your content valuable to the Subreddit users. Make your content entertaining and/or newsworthy to the group.

Contribute to the various groups that you will be posting into. So the other users can get to know you a bit. They will check your posting history, and your Karma score.

Entering a brand new-to-you Subreddit is like switching schools in high school.

It is about a 💯 on the it-sucks chart.

Until the other kids (Redditors) get to know you a bit. You want them to eventually like you, then eventually they will trust you. But it takes some time. Patience is rewarded here.

How to find your people? Use this search program to find similar Subreddits: https://anvaka.github.io/sayit/
Here’s the results for the term “blogging“:

You can click any or all of the Subreddits. Join some. Read a bunch to get the feel of the folks there. See the top posts in a specific Subreddit. Comment. Then after you have a bit of “Karma“ you can start re-posting your newsletter content. Or a link to it and add a description when appropriate. Remember, no spam! Spread your posts out over time. Start slow. Study the top posts this month/year/all time:

When posting the same posts over to different Subreddits, remember your content has to be a good fit for the Subreddit’s readers.

One last note: When using Reddit as a platform to share some information, be prepared to have your feelings hurt. You must have thick skin because a lot of these commenters ARE just sitting in dimly lit parent’s basements and have no real-world experience other than with their like-minded buds that want to wreck some good-hearted person’s day.

A fellow writer shared these unwarranted comments:

• "Jesus, I hope OP is embarrassed, because if not, I sure am. This is the most cringy blogspam ever."

• "It's fine to want to become a more talented writer and for people to see your work, but this is spamming articles that people don't want. It's why you're getting downvoted right now; your content simply isn't good."

• F*** You

He later wrote “I've literally had to take months off of posting before because I couldn't deal with the hate I'd sometimes get. Despite the good comments, I wasn’t sure if I was actually adding value or just being a leach. It took me a bit of emotional recovery and a re-read of the comments to realize that more people were thanking me than flaming me (and to fix the errors for which I got flamed).“ (source)

Hacker News

Here’s a great article about what Hacker News likes: https://lucasfcosta.com/2023/08/21/hn-launch.html

and I wrote about this here:

How to grow your Newsletter with Hacker News

Twitter X

Update: September 2023 - Don’t even bother with X - twitter…

Twitter is the 5th highest ranked site in the world. Just behind Facebook and Instagram. It had 7.1 BILLION visits in February 2022! (source)

Have you tried to make a Twitter Thread out of one of your SubStack articles? On average, the threads received 63 percent more impressions than individual Tweets.

🧵 How to Make a Thread:

It’s best to start pasting a paragraph as one tweet in a thread (up to 280 characters -about 50 words) from your blog into this counter I made for you (free). Add a number in front of each new tweet paragraph. This number will count your threads in order after you post them. Example: 1/12 or 1 of 12, or just 1/.

• Use hashtags (Ex: #Ukraine) so people will find your threads.

• Use pictures, emojis, and gifs to help with the readability of the thread.

• Use a headline for each tweet.

• Use lists and bullet points

• Use the 1/3/1 posting technique. The single-sentence opener can act as your “mini-headline,” the three sentences in the middle can be turned into a bulleted list, and the one-sentence closer acts as a strong conclusion that leads to the next tweet in the thread.

• The 2nd last tweet should be a Call to Action directed to your best, most important post/ebook/course, etc.

• The last tweet in the post should be a TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) summary tweet. It should be a single bullet point (per tweet) as a summary of the entire thread. (source)

How to Create a Twitter Thread

1. Open the Twitter website or the official Twitter app on your iOS or Android device.

2. Tap the compose icon to begin a new tweet. ...

3. Type your first tweet as usual. ...

4. Select the blue + (plus) icon in the lower-right corner.

5. Type your second tweet. ...

6. Repeat until you've finished your Twitter thread.

7. Tap Tweet all

Try it out and let me know how it works for you. Be sure to add your SubStack URL to your Twitter profile:

Quora

Upate: Here is a recent article I wrote about Quora:

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Quora is a discussion forum / question and answer website where people can ask and search for their queries and seek replies from experts. Usability: - Quora aggregates questions and answers to topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.

Quora is the 75th-ranked website in the world and 54th in the US. With over 530 Million views in February 2022. (Walmart.com is ranked just ahead at 73rd).

Quora results often rank at the top of Google search results. So it is worth trying this one out. You’ll find after a while you will be asked to answer questions specific to your niche. You can add links back to your SubStack any time you write an answer, question or comment.

If you want to use Quora, I highly recommend reading this book by writer Nicolas Cole:

Top Writer and published author Nicolas Cole shares some of his popular and favorite Quora answers from 2015. Many of these answers went on to become huge hits amongst the Quora community, accumulating hundreds of thousands of views. Nicolas Cole has amassed well over 8,000,000 article views at the time of this book's publishing, and is best known on Quora for writing about personal growth and self development. His unique style blends these important lessons for readers with his own unique stories of persistence, overcoming challenge, and his own development as a person. Nicolas Cole's story is most often recognized for his beginning as one of the highest ranked World of Warcraft players in North America as a seventeen year old, while simultaneously living undiagnosed with Celiac Disease. He is also recognized for drastically transforming his body from being unhealthfully skinny and becoming a fitness model and bodybuilder.

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This article is getting a bit long so I will add a few other ways to reach more people next time. Thanks to our Subscribers! Comments would be nice. -Peace for Ukraine

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Part 1 - https://pau1.substack.com/p/stackhacks-get-more-readers

Part 2 - https://pau1.substack.com/p/stackhacks-get-more-readers-part

Part 3 - https://pau1.substack.com/p/stackhacks-get-more-readers-part-cb2

Part 4 - https://pau1.substack.com/p/stackhacks-get-even-more-readers