This is a podcast by Helen Redfern and Claire Holden.
Hello and welcome to our third episode of our podcast about our Substack journey.
Today we are talking about (and it’s a bumper one!):
How we have both got on during the month of March. It’s definitely had its ups and downs.
Claire asks can we take days when we don’t post now we have paying subscribers?
How consistent does consistency have to be?
We are honest about our frustrations which often revolve around growth - although we acknowledge how it feels different to wanting to grow on Instagram.
Our realisation that we no longer hide under our desk when it comes to our creativity.
Helen’s Substack re-launch.
Claire having a weekly Substack content cycle and Helen deciding on a monthly content cycle.
Thinking about paid subscriber benefits. And the different strategies for free and paid subscribers. Plus the difficulty of asking to be paid in a noisy online world.
Plus lots more.
Claire and I are feeling our way forward with the Substack platform and could talk about it for hours. Do let us know in the comments how your Substack journey is going or how you feel about some of the issues we’ve mentioned.
Links to items we mentioned:
Helen’s Monthly Summary
Helen’s Substack Re-launch
Our Substack Story is a podcast about our progress on the relatively new medium of Substack. What works, what doesn’t. How we grow, the mindset issues we struggle with and how we hone in on what we want to write about. Plus the often icky subject of money and charging for subscriptions.
Helen has been on Substack since June 2022. And Claire launched her Substack in January 2023.
We are both coming to Substack from different places. Helen has around 15,000 followers on Instagram, a small YouTube channel and a previous mailing list. Claire has a smaller Instagram with no previous newsletter.
We want to share how we get on with Substack, how we use the platform, how we use it as a place to share our writing, how we grow subscribers, create a community, and hopefully make an income. At the same time as writing our books and, in Helen’s case, creating videos on YouTube.
If you are launching your Substack, or thinking about it, or if you’ve been on here for a while we would love you to join in and share your experiences.
Our Substack Story: March Reflections | Episode Three