How To Gain 750 Subscribers in 3 months Writing About Anything You Want

A brutally honest guide to escaping beginners hell ASAP

These are the 2 things I did to gain 750 newsletter subscribers (3 of them paid), writing about anything I wanted, in just 3 months on Substack.

I felt reluctant to write this. It's not really my "niche," so to speak. But if I can give you one (profound) idea that sparks a positive change in your habits or perspectives on how you live your life, then I've fulfilled my purpose. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why I’ve decided to write this.

I want to keep this as short, and as actionable as possible.

No paywall.

No bullshit.

No “click here and pay me to get the real secrets.” I’ll be as honest as I can, because I’m still learning as I go.

If you’re looking to:

• Start writing and growing here on Substack (if you’re a complete beginner, or maybe you’re already here)

• Write about anything you want (and maybe go somewhat-viral like I did compared to my other posts, I’ll show the stats)

• Gain more subscribers who actually read your posts every week

• Get more traffic to your Substack posts

Then I believe I can help you stay away from making the mistakes I made.

And don’t worry.

You won’t have to start a newsletter teaching people how to start a newsletter in order to grow. I would avoid doing this as a beginner, personally, because you have no authority to speak on building a newsletter when you have 3 subscribers. Don’t put the cart before the horse.

One thing I can say I have authority on, is how to grow a newsletter to 750 subscribers, in less than 3 months, posting one 2000 word newsletter a week.

That's it. And all I did was talk about my own interests but in the right way.

Because you can genuinely talk about your interests and build a real audience.

Right now, I can’t tell you how to get millions of subscribers or 100k views. But I can tell you what helped to get me to where I am as of right now :) .

If I was starting from day one, right now, this is exactly what I'd do.

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Two problems need addressing

To prevent myself from rambling like a majestic bunny, chaotically hopping around from one hot stone to another, I’m restricting myself to solving two problems here:

1. Writing about anything you want and still getting people to click

2. Gaining subscribers organically

Let’s begin!

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Problem 1: Writing about anything you want and still getting people to click

It all comes down to your title.

This. Is. Everything.

A title is a problem people want solved. The secret is to include your interests within your perspective of solving a very common problem that lot’s of people want solved.

And you need to pick a title that massive amounts of people have shown to click onto.

Let’s say you fucking loved reading Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis (like I did), and you want to write about it. Maybe you want to write a 2000 word newsletter helping others who want to learn about the text, or who have trouble understanding it, or whatever.

Pouring your heart into a newsletter, writing about why you loved the book so damn much, probably won’t attract a massive amount of clicks. And this isn’t a bad thing. You're just writing for a very small, distinct audience. Most people I know (unfortunately) have never even heard of the book.

Here’s a profound idea.

What if you were to create a unique perspective in trying to solve a high-performing problem, a title like "How To Actually Find Your Purpose," an idea that has shown to get millions of clicks online because it's a problem for most people, and talk about the book that way?

You’ll need to get creative (which is the fun part of writing), but now you're cooking.

I did this in How to Beat Distraction Forever. I wanted to talk about:

• how writing is my therapy and obsession

• how obsession positively impacted my life

• how much I hate social media at times

It still got 170 likes and lots of restacks because people found it valuable. I wrote about what I wanted to write about, while still solving the problem with the reader in mind (I added “value” to the reader in a novel way).

In How to Become an Expert in Anything FAST (and think like a genius), I talked about:

• how shit I was at school

• how much I hated learning Irish essays

• How To Read A Book by Mortimer Adler (I couldn’t shut up about this book at the time)

People liked and shared my newsletters because I was providing my own unique perspective to a commonly addressed problem. This is how you make your writing authentic and stand out. It’s all just perspective.

This is how you write about anything you want, while also giving people what they want. The perfect blend of art and business.

If you want ideas for titles to write under, I’d go straight to YouTube. I have 5-10 main creators talking about interests I love to talk (and annoy my girlfriend) about for hours. Find 5-10 of their most popular videos, and see if you can write something unique under a similar title that genuinely interest you while helping to solve the problem for others simultaneously.

It’s not “stealing” if your perspective on the problem is unique. You don’t want to copy, you want to see what works for others and to do the same in your own distinct way.

If 10 million people clicked on a video titled, "How to read a book," then the problem of reading a book is a high-performing idea, and obviously a common problem.

Another example is How to Actually Read a Book (Save 1000 Hours). I was happy with this one actually, I think it stands out as really being my own perspective. And people liked it; 86 likes and 22 restacks.

I really wanted to talk about How To Read A Book and I just followed the principles outlined above; it worked.

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Problem 2: Gaining subscribers organically (also, views)

From my own observations, everyone on Substack swears by the notes feature for gaining subscribers.

Personally, I’d go a step further.

I swear by the restack with notes feature, but using the PAS persuasive writing framework.

PAS stands for problem, amplify, solution.

This gets me subscribers and views on my posts I want to promote.

For How to Become an Expert in Anything FAST (and think like a genius).

I hated this post. I thought the writing was shit. But using the PAS framework got me lots of traffic, and people found it incredibly valuable.

3,100 clicks from 27,605 views. That’s a conversion rate of 11.2%.

Here’s How to Beat Distraction Forever.

I posted this newsletter one week after How to Become an Expert in Anything FAST (and think like a genius) went up.

Conversion rate of nearly 11.8%.

Last week’s newsletter, How to Destroy Anyone in an Argument.

Conversion rate of 9.8%.

Here’s what I’d do if I was you.

Once you’ve written a newsletter under a high-performing title that has proven to get clicks for other creators, now it’s time to share it with the restack with notes feature.

For each restack, I usually post it 1-2 days after the newsletter goes up. In it, I address;

• Problem: An uncommon perspective on a problem to grab attention

• Amplify: a hint at a unique solution, or what will happen to the reader if the problem isn’t addressed

• Solution: A hint at the solution (usually a framework or “3 steps”) to prevent the problem

A lot of this just takes practice. Have a look at the three examples I’ve showed as ask yourself why they work (I’ve been doing this, it’s helped me improve my persuasive writing a lot).

If something does well for you, content-wise, study it. It works for a reason.

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I’m going to leave it here.

I could go on for hundreds of hours about this, and I won’t at this minute.

If you have any questions please leave them down below. If you have any requests for any specific guides on how I write my newsletters and such, let me know. Shoot me a direct message if you’d like me to read over your work. I want to help in every way I can.

Thanks for reading, you’re an absolute legend!

- Craig :)

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My previous newsletters if you’d like to study what we’ve talked discussed: