From Zero to 4,500: My Brutally Honest Year Growing on Substack
Everything I got wrong, what finally worked, and why I’m still building.
What was your goal for newsletter growth on Substack in 2025?
I had low expectations. Because I started from literally zero online presence.
My LinkedIn barely covered my network, mostly connections from grad school. I’d never been active on TikTok. I only heard about BlueSky in 2025. And my X account? Created years ago, then stolen by some crypto guru. So that was gone too.
Zero. That’s where I started.
Given this reality, I set what felt like an ambitious goal: 1,000 subscribers by year-end. I’d been writing on Medium before, and after a year there, I’d barely approached 1,000 followers. So hitting that number on Substack felt realistic but still a stretch.
But that goal started to change midway around April. Anton Zaides and I made acquaintance back then, and when I told him my year end goal on Substack was 1,000, he laughed.
“I think you’re going to get there way earlier than expected,” he said.
He was right. One year in, I’m over 4,500 subscribers. Way above my expectations.
Ever since my subscriber count passed 1,000, then 2,000, I started getting DMs asking: What’s your trick? How did you grow so fast?
To be fair, there are people who grew to 10,000, even 100,000 in less than a year. I’m not one of them. What I can share is the view from someone who started with zero followers, zero presence, and reached 4,500.
But before I tell you what worked, let me share what I got wrong first.
Mistakes That Cost Me Subscribers
Don’t Use a Custom Domain Too Early
This was probably the biggest mistake I made.
At around 2,000 subscribers, I bought buildtolaunch.ai and set it as my custom domain. I thought it would help with branding. Instead, my growth rate tanked.
The months after that switch, growth slowed to a crawl. People weren’t finding me. I wasn’t gaining new subscribers as usual. What happened?
The problem is domain authority. When you’re starting out, your custom domain has zero reputation with Google. Even if Google indexes your content, it won’t rank it high. And AI search tools? They won’t surface your content either because they still use search engines. You become invisible, not just on Google, but across all AI LLMs. (For more on this, see my guide on SEO for AI.)
At that point, the only growth I got came from Substack’s internal recommendation system.
But here’s the even worse problem that really hurt: collaboration content pollution.
When you use a custom domain, your profile’s post section no longer display in chronological order. Every article you write in YOUR newsletter gets pushed to the bottom. But articles you’ve co-authored with others and published on THEIR newsletters appear at the very top of your profile. Even if those collaborations are months old.
So anyone visiting my profile would first see content published on other people’s newsletters, not my own work. It looked like I was more active on other people’s spaces than my own.
There’s no good solution to this. Substack isn’t motivated to fix it, keeping people on the .substack.com subdomain is in their interest. And you can’t exactly ask your collaborators to remove you as co-author. That would be disrespectful.
I had to make the hard decision to switch back to the Substack subdomain. And because many backlinks pointed to buildtolaunch.ai, I had to set up redirects. It was a total mess… technically it works, but it’s messy implementation-wise.
If you’re not technical and don’t want this headache, I strongly suggest against using a custom domain when you’re starting out. Don’t optimize for branding before you have discoverability.
I’m still setting up redirects, hoping the custom domain eventually builds enough authority. But that’s a long game.
Don’t Chase Virality
Yes, virality happens. It happens to friends I closely follow. It happens to some of my clients. It happened to me, once.
But here’s the thing: the content quality across my different articles, notes, and posts is often similar. Virality has a randomness to it that you can’t engineer reliably.
The danger is this: chasing virality without respecting your content strategy will burn you out. It disappoints you faster than you realize. It kills motivation before you even get started.
Even the fastest-growing people I’ve seen, they have maybe a couple of viral pieces. Everything else comes from hard work and consistency.
So do I try to make things fit viral formats? Absolutely. But do I force virality over the content I actually want to put out? No.
Your voice first. Virality is a bonus, not a goal.
Don’t Force Your Content Calendar
I tried to plan all my content in advance. Every topic mapped out weeks ahead. At the week of publishing, it felt forced, like I was writing to a schedule instead of writing what I actually wanted to say.
I also tried outsourcing parts of my writing to AI to help me fit in a tight schedule. It’s still not 100% there. The voice wasn’t quite mine.
Some things can’t be systematized before you find your voice. The irony is that forcing consistency often kills the very thing that makes your writing worth reading.
Don’t Obsess Over Big Newsletter Recommendations
Substack’s recommendation system is weirdly lopsided. Some newsletters on the list get surfaced constantly; others barely at all. It’s not a level playing field.
Here’s what that looks like in practice: I’m on some major newsletters’ recommendation lists. I’ve received 3 subscribers from them. The number I’ve sent their way? 36. Twelve-to-one ratio, and I’m supposedly “recommended.”
So if you don’t feel comfortable asking big newsletters for recommendations, don’t. That’s totally fine.
I personally didn’t chase the big names. But I also didn’t refuse when peers asked me.
Don’t aim for the whales. Grow with your peers. (More on what actually works in the next section.)
The Honest Uncertainties
There are things I still don’t fully understand.
Similar quality articles perform wildly differently. There’s a specific trick to how things resonate with people, and I don’t fully decode. Sometimes I sit here watching other newsletters with similar content quality, wondering: why does their article perform so much better than mine?
When people ask me how to stand out, my honest answer is: I don’t know. And that should be how you feel right now. That’s totally fine. (I’ll come back to this question at the end, because there is a deeper answer that only reveals itself over time.)
Those were expensive lessons. But mistakes only tell you where the walls are, they don’t show you the door.
Here’s what actually opened it.
What Actually Grew My Newsletter
Find Your Growth Cohort
Find a group of people growing at about the same pace, starting around the same level as you. Truly make friends with them. Engage with them. Join their activities. Encourage them.
But here’s the part no one tells you: finding your cohort is a numbers game.
Before I encounter that group of people to grow together with, I’d already had conversations with hundreds of people. Most of those didn’t turn into lasting connections. Some faded. Some never responded. Some became acquaintances but not collaborators. That’s normal.
I found my people through commenting on articles, through random encounters in notes, through other communities that overlapped with Substack. There was no shortcut, just showing up, being genuinely curious, and eventually recognizing the handful of people who felt like peers.
I started writing not expecting to build relationships, but these connections became the most valuable thing I gained from writing online. The vulnerable part: many of them grow faster than me.
Some have huge X followings. Others have massive LinkedIn connections. By comparing myself with them, I realized how much I was doing wrong, and how much I could learn.
But don’t let comparison become envy. Instead let it become education. And the most important part is finding people where you’re actually growing together, so you don’t feel alone.
Say Yes to Guest Posts
Be open to collaborations and guest posts. Even if you’re writing about the same topic as someone else, open up the opportunities.
Why? You never know what might resonate with people. Different people subscribe for different reasons. If you and someone else write about the same content, your subscribers will overlap eventually anyway. And if the content helps the other person’s growth, it inevitably helps with putting your name out there too.
If you’re starting low, any opportunity counts.
How Newsletter Recommendations Work
This is different from collaboration. Recommendation exchanges are about the newsletter recommendation feature—when someone subscribes to a newsletter, they see a list of other newsletters to check out. Getting on those lists matters.
Karo (Product with Attitude) has stressed this enough, and she’s right: don’t feel discouraged about requesting recommendation exchanges.
How do you actually ask? DM, email, whatever works. There’s no magic formula. Just be genuine and direct.
The newsletters most likely to recommend you aren’t the huge ones. They’re the ones in the early tens, hundreds, and thousands, growing fast alongside you. My biggest growth came from these mid-sized newsletters. They’re in a high growth phase themselves, and the chances of appearing on their recommendation list were much higher than trying to land on a massive newsletter.
Post Weekly (Or Become Invisible)
Here’s a simple rule: try to post weekly. If you really can’t, do bi-weekly at minimum.
Monthly posting makes you obsolete. The algorithm forgets you. Your readers forget you. You lose momentum and have to rebuild it every single time.
It’s about staying present. A consistent rhythm matters more than occasional brilliance.
Promote Yourself Without Apology
You have to do the promotion work yourself. No one else will do it for you.
Promote through notes. Promote through articles. Promote to your own audience. Promote to larger newsletters (try to collaborate with them, try to publish onto their platforms). Promote to your friends, people you know, your family members. When you’re just starting, you need every single moment of visibility you can get.
This is a reminder to myself too. I know I’m not doing it enough. And I need to do it more.
You have nothing to lose. You’re only losing what you already don’t have. But if you gain support from even a few people, they can become your very first loyal audience, the ones who stick around when it matters.
Focus on What You Can’t Automate
There are things you can scale and automate: reformatting, tone adjusting, repurposing, auto-publishing, scheduling notes. I’ve written about my notes creation system before for notes specifically, and I even built a note-generating app to automate parts of this. I have my own private extension that I’ll open up to paid subscribers. But if you want commercial-grade support, I recommend ’s Substack Notes Scheduler or ’s WriteStack.
But the non-scalable stuff, that’s your real job: comments, connecting with people, building your products, gaining experience in the craft itself. If you’re building products alongside your newsletter, check out the Vibe Coding Builders directory — it’s where I feature builders turning expertise into AI-powered products.
The Three Phases: 0→100→1000→Beyond
Getting your first 100 subscribers is the hardest part. Everything feels impossible. You’re shouting into the void. This is where most people quit.
Getting to 1,000 is the second hardest. You have some momentum, but the work still feels disproportionate to the results.
After 1,000? It doesn’t suddenly get easy, but it gets different. The compounding starts to show. Recommendations matter more. Your existing audience brings in new people. When I hit four months on Substack, I started to feel that shift.
Know which phase you’re in. The strategies that work at 50 subscribers aren’t the same as the ones that work at 500 or 5,000.
When to Launch Paid Subscriptions
This one varies person to person, but here’s what I’ve observed.
Some of the best moves I’ve seen: people who held off on opening paid subscriptions until they had 1,000+ subscribers, then did a grand launch. They announced it with fanfare, positioned it well, and gained a significant number of paid subscribers overnight. That approach was genuinely inspirational to watch.
If I were to do it again, I’d probably follow that route. But I’m not a strategic person. I tend to do things first, then adjust my position afterwards.
Here’s what I want you to know: don’t feel bad about wherever you are with paid subscriptions.
If you’re under 100 subscribers and you’ve already opened paid, congratulations. You’re starting early. You might get paid members from the very beginning, and that’s encouraging.
If you’re over 1,000 and still haven’t opened paid, any time now is probably one of the best situations to do it properly. Put together a real launch. Make it land.
And if you’ve been wondering what happens after you open paid subscriptions, here’s my experience: my first few paid subscribers came from unexpected places. An unintentional comment answering someone’s question. A piece that resonated deeply with someone I didn’t know.
Nowadays, paid subscriptions come from even more unexpected sources. Some come from people who read a guest issue, some from a simple Google search. The variety of how people find you and decide to pay is surprising.
The point is: you won’t know until you open up and try.
Your Niche Matters Less Than You Think
Some of you might say: “Well, it’s easy for you, you’re writing about AI. That’s a hot topic.”
And yes, that’s partially true. But writing is still writing. I write about AI, but it’s still about expressing my opinions, my takes, my personal experience. Sure, some niches grow faster, such as AI, writing about writing... but behind the scenes, the concept is the same for everyone who gains traction. Content, promotion, networking, engagement. The fundamentals don’t change.
I even tested this. Using my Substack newsletter MCP, I searched for the fastest-growing newsletters across different topics: AI, finance, burnout, gardening, education, engineering, politics... The overall growth rates were nearly the same across all of them. I’ve analyzed my niche before, and the niche matters less than you think.
If you stopped here and just did these things consistently, you’d grow. But after a year of doing this, I’ve realized there’s something underneath all the tactics that matters more.
Beyond the Tactics
Why AI Makes Writing Slower, Not Faster
This seems contradicting the purpose of AI: AI makes writing take longer, not shorter.
In the beginning, one article took me 3-4 hours from start to finish. Now, with AI integrated into my process, my Wednesday article (my main newsletter day) takes at least 8 hours. Experiments, content collection, iterating on words and concepts with AI. 8 hours is the minimum.
Daria Cupareanu and I had this discussion a while ago: “I don’t know how other people are able to write articles within an hour or two hours. I find it so hard, because experimenting, collecting, and doing all those requires enormous amount of effort.”
AI doesn’t make writing faster, it makes it deeper. And once you create content that earns real feedback, you can’t stop. You want to keep going. It’s addictive.
You have to acknowledge the effort required from the beginning. Doing an experiment is one thing. Writing it up is another. Distributing it is yet another. Respecting your reader’s time means putting in the work to make it worth their while.
The Discovery Process
Remember when I said I don’t know how to stand out? Here’s the deeper answer that only reveals itself over time.
I started out chasing 30 AI projects to build in public. I never arrived at 30, not even 10. But that’s not the point.
In the process of trying, I discovered what voice works for me. What group of people I belong to. What rhythm works best. What schedule is least disruptive. What philosophy I believe in. What do I actually want to focus my attention on.
You don’t stand out because you try to stand out. You stand out because you become clearer and clearer about who you are and what you want to deliver. Then people start to recognize you.
Strange Signs You’re Making It
There are weird milestones that suggest you’re on the right track.
First: impersonation accounts.
Apparently, when you gain momentum on the platform, fake accounts start appearing, pretending to be you. Many of my friends have been impersonated: Elena Calvillo at Product, Chris Tottman, Karo (Product with Attitude), Wyndo... Philip Hofmacher made it clear that these are inevitable, and if you report them, they get taken down almost immediately.
Gabriele Cimato put it perfectly: “That’s when you know you made it, they’re trying to clone you!”
Big shout-out to Gabriele and Jose Antonio Morales who told me about my impersonator, and we could take down the account quickly.
Second: someone offering to buy your account.
I was shocked when this happened. Of course I said no! I took all the effort to grow it to this size and build up all the connections I care about. It’s priceless to let go now. But that’s exactly the point. If someone is willing to buy your account, you’re probably on the right track.
The Real Game
I’m still nobody compared to the newsletters with tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
But to the 4,000+ people who decided this was worth following, thank you. It’s not over. I’m still figuring things out, and probably always will be.
That’s the point though.
It’s not about chasing numbers.
It’s about finding the people who care about what you’re trying to say, and learning to say it better, louder, with more clarity each time.
You don’t win by growing crazy fast.
You win by staying in the room long enough to be recognized.
So if you’re starting from zero, good. That’s where I started too.
Keep showing up. Keep writing things you enjoy writing, even if no one sees them yet.
Be intentional to adjust, evolve, listen, repeat (and automate). That’s how the work gets sharper. That’s how the voice gets clearer.
And somewhere along the way, you’ll realize: you’re not just growing a newsletter.
You’re becoming the kind of person who could have written it.
That’s the real game.
And it’s worth playing every time.
What you might also enjoy:
I Didn’t Expect This Prompt to Go Viral. Here’s What It Taught Me.
Claude Code for Everyone: From Zero to Your First Project in 30 Minutes
Wow these are some of the most valuable takeaways for Substack for this year, genuinely! I appreciate you so much for putting these together Jenny! Thank you, and I'm so happy we got to meet this year 🥰❤️
You forgot something, Jenny.
You are consistently cool, generous, kind, and positive.