How I Grew My Substack to 800+ Subscribers in 30 Days (Without Paid Ads)
A proven week-by-week strategy to grow your Substack audience, boost engagement, and attract paid subscribers—organically.
What’s the Real Strategy for Growing on Substack?
Here’s What Actually Worked for Me.
I believe more people deserve to hear the truth - not just fall for tactics that benefit someone else but bring no real value to you.
So today, I’m sharing what I learned in my first month on Substack - lessons and strategies that actually worked.
They helped me:
Grow my audience - from zero to 800 subscribers;
Increase engagement - with over 50+ comments across my posts;
Attract and retain PAID subscribers
To wake up the algorithm, even when it’s in “pause” mode;
Grow my income even when I’m sleeping;
Let’s be honest.
If there’s one thing I refuse to fall for on Substack, it’s the “Sub for Subs” propaganda.
It didn’t work on Instagram. It didn’t work on TikTok. And it definitely won’t work here.
Substack is a platform where people come for quality - not just numbers. You can’t expect that strategy to succeed here, and that’s perfectly fine.
Another myth is that the advice people give for Medium applies to Substack.
Sorry to disappoint, but these are two completely different platforms with two completely different algorithms. You can’t expect the same results.
I’ve tested both. Not a single dollar earned on Medium, while in the same time I was earning from Substack & growing my audience. And I wasn’t surprised!
Because the way my content appears there is nothing like how it shows up in Substack’s feed.
I hope more people realize this, so they stop chasing advice that’s based on someone else’s platform experience.
Week 1 – Learn the Platform Before You Chase Money
In my first week, I focused on understanding how Substack works. If I could go back, I’d do it all over again. This includes:
I spent time exploring the Dashboard & Settings;
I set my blog category - that’s how I target the right niche for me;
I customized my welcome email - my new subscribers recieved something meaningful from the start;
I also learned how to use Stats to track where my audience is located - this helped me build a posting schedule that actually aligned with peak hours for my readers.
Of course, I published content - three posts in that first week.
I’ll be honest with you - articles I believed would touch more people actually ended up with just 2–3 comments. It took time to realize that this is normal. Not everything we write will be successful, but we shouldn’t take it negatively.
On the contrary, accept it as experience.
You’ve researched, you’ve learned what’s being read at this stage - and if you’re still interested in writing on a topic that didn’t grab attention initially, you can always unpublish your essay and republish it later when you’ve built the right audience.