It is easy click-bait, for one thing.
“Get your first 1000 subscribers with this one simple hack”
Enticing, yes?
Yet, allow me to offer some cautionary historical context:
So since the flood, Noah’s accursed son Ham began a ham business. All the dinosaur meat was gone because of the flood, but pigs were abundant. So, Ham found out that if you feed pigs ham, you can speed up the whole ham business. Better yet, if Ham taught others the pig ham-feeding secret, then Ham would make a killing. So, he went from town to town teaching this ham-hack secret for a price and got very wealthy.
Alas, after he left, everyone started getting sick and began hunting Ham.
Then Ham got a better idea,
“I can hide and chage my name to Sham. Then I can teach others how to teach Ham-hacking. I would not only avoid being hunted, but I could live in my luxurious hide-a-way and reap a cut of their profits. Ha. Haaah!”
Ham then died suddenly by choking on a pork-chop bone.
Ham: the father of MLM
Todays modern version goes like this:
LinkedIn marketer sells her course for LinkedIn marketing. Everyone on LinkedIn naturally wants to get better at LinkedIn, so they gladly pay 997$ to unlock all the LinkedIn mysteries. She becomes wealthy. Soon customers find out the marketer’s main example is her own LinkedIn marketing which attracts people on LinkedIn who want to learn LinkedIn marketing. Buyers remorse sets in, but they don’t ask for a refund because they are not sure if the LinkedIn hacks really worked, or if they would have had the same results just investing that time into LinkedIn outreach without a course.
The substack version:
Substack writers offers a paid subscription about growing substack subscribers.......
Just find and replace any platform, and generate a marketing Ponzi scheme that will get any Ham-marketer fast growth.
Granted, there are marketers who had cut their teeth in another industry and grew it successfully on LinkedIn. These guys and gals have something to say.
But when I see people using a hack, I kind of up-chuck in my heart.
E.g. What is this thing where everyone is post “Subscribe to me and I will subscribe to you.”
Why?
You will not get the audience you are really looking for.
Maybe it works on substack, but so what.
Substack will be potentially obsolete in 5-10 years.
That’s why I focus on helping Christian who have written books (platform agnostic) build their email list (platform agnostic), and get on podcasts (platform agnostic).
Each medium has survived and thrived multiple decades. Books especially.
And you should focus on those 3 too if you want long-term audience building.
Speaking of, do you want to get booked on podcasts? Helping Christian authors get on podcasts is something I offer. Here is the link:
https://www.outofthinblair.com/p/get-booked-on-podcasts
Blair
P.S. I actually don’t believe Noah’s family knew anything about dinosaurs. The earth is ancient. The theory of evolution is also false. Dinos were spontaneously created by God millions of years before humans and went extinct millions of years before humans. I also know that meat eating was not an option before the flood. But Ham might have had a burger or two.
A great read