My Review of Substack

A Personal View as a Substack Contributor

I have been a writer and tutor on Substack for 2 months, first joining on 4^th February 2024. During this time I have progressed to having 20 subscribers, some dropping out, others later adding on. At first, since I am quite savvy on most social media platforms and able to update my own website, I thought I would wing it being on another social media site. But it suredang has been an enormous learning curve. You don’t just post, but utilize that Post as a “Note” and from the Note you share it to all your social media, X, instagram, FB & LinkedIn, etc. Additionally, there’s Direct Messaging, a Thread, a Chat, and a Secret Boudoir [just kidding!]. It seems to me that Substack is trying to do too many things at once. Most of the members are writers, mainly because it’s about writers monetizing their words and worth, ha! More of trying to earn money from your writing below! However, the idea is to write as often as time allows, but this begs the question: Where in the heck do you get the enormous amount of time to partake in all these features? Some of us work, some of us are writing non-fiction, poetry, essays, vignettes, feature articles like Stephen Fry and some of us are writing blog posts as well as novels [look at me, look at me, look at me!]

I post most weekdays, except for Tuesday, when I upload my weekly “Creative Writing Lessons”. Workshops that I have readily onhand as I taught at the Fremantle Arts Centre for 12 years in association with the OOTA Writers Group. So it’s no big deal to now upload these well-structured writing classes to Substack – the work is already done!

Have I made any money yet? No! Needless to say, it does take a long time, someone wrote that they have been on Substack for 5 years and have only reached 100 subscribers.

I changed plans half way through, instead of following other writers specifically, I joined all the other categories, except politics and religion. Two new substackers that I have subscribed to, started following and one subscribed. I am yet to follow so many more, however there is the trick to only connect with those people who are posting currenty. There are many on this platform who no longer post, so it’s best to check the last date they wrote something. My advice is if the last date is 2023 or as late as 2022 they have skipped out.

Since 4th February, I have uploaded poetry, an excerpt from my crime novel, some short fiction and as of Tuesday 2^nd April, seven creative writing workshops. So far, my “Creative Writing Lessons” have covered: Syntax & the Sentence, Writing What you Don’t Know, Writing Images, The Internal & External Narrator, Writing the Senses, Thomas Hardy to Now and Speculative Fiction. All these workshops can be found on my Substack Here. You don’t have to join or subscribe as there is the option to skip all the steps and click ”No thanks”. That way you can browse and read all the current posts.

One thing more, if you subscribe to my Substack you receive part of the workshop [1-2 writing exercises], but if you become a paid subscriber you receive the full workshop [3 exercises] with an additional gift of one of my ebooks. For a limited time only! 🙂

Thanks for reading!