How to be a successful Substack author

Boost your career as a writer with these five simple tips

Hey everyone! I’ve had a bit of success on this site, hitting 900 followers in less than a month. Presumably follower growth is exponential, meaning that in just a few months every human on Earth will be reading my posts.

I do not want to be alone in my success, and therefore, I’ll share some tips on how I got to this point.

1. Write posts about how to be a successful Substack author

This one goes without saying. You goal is for everyone on Substack to subscribe to you. You want to write about cars? The car people will subscribe. You want to write about politics? The political animals will subscribe. You want to write about philosophy? The philosophers will subscribe. You want everyone into Substack to smash that subscribe button? Then write about Substack.

Some of the most successful authors on this site do nothing but write about how to be good at writing on Substack. Even their notes get thousands of likes. Just as, for Aristotle, God is nothing but pure thought thinking about pure thought itself, so your goal is to be a pure Substack writer writing on nothing other than pure Substack writing.

I know what you’re thinking: “But if my Substack is not successful yet, then how will I be knowledgeable enough to write about how to be a successful Substack author?” This is the classic Socratic dilemma: how can we discern what virtue is, if we have to already know virtue in order to identify it? You forget that you already know the answer to this question, since I just told you the right answer. The way to get successful on Substack is by writing about how to get successful on Substack. What do you write? Well, now you know how to be successful on Substack, so write on that.

2. Write correct things

You don’t even need to read further, since you now know how to create the ideal Substack. But in the off-chance that you ever have the erroneous desire to write about something other than how to be successful on Substack, you will need to do things other than tell people to write about how to be successful on Substack. You will also need to learn other truths to post.

People do not want to read incorrect things. If you say incorrect things, people will comment, “That is incorrect,” and then not subscribe. They will post the same thing regardless, but if you post correct things, then such commenters will only be the ones too stupid to discern correct from incorrect, and so they will not know that (conditional on your being wrong) it would be incorrect to share your posts and subscribe to you. This phenomenon alone got me about 200 followers from one post. Therefore, you get the most subscribers by writing correct things instead of incorrect things.

Some examples of correct claims are: (i) Everyone capable is morally obligated to be a vegan; (ii) weakness of will is not real; (iii) no principle ineliminably justified by intuition has moral authority; (iv) you can be a successful Substack author by writing about how to be a successful Substack author; and (v) Bayesianism is correct about empirical knowledge. Make posts arguing for propositions such as these, and empirically, your following will grow.

3. Have correct beliefs

In order to write correct things, you have to have correct beliefs, so that you can write them. You may think there are other methods to achieve this end; for example, you could have only false beliefs, and then write the opposite of what you believe. There are three problems with this strategy. First, having only false beliefs is just as hard as having true beliefs, since you’d have to find the correct thing to believe and then believe the opposite. Second, when you start writing a post and intend to write the opposite of what you believe, you will have a false belief about what you believe, causing you to write what you believe, which, we assume, is false. Third, false beliefs can contradict each other, meaning any proposition p follows from them. You will therefore believe that p does not follow from your beliefs, and so you will write a post saying that p does follow from your beliefs, which would give people the impression that you believe p. But p was arbitrary, so p could be false, meaning you just got dangerously close to writing something incorrect.

When I look at my account and contrast with those with fewer followers, the common denominator is that the others do not have correct beliefs.

4. Write about things that are worth people’s money

It is not sufficient to have correct beliefs in order to write correct things. Were this sufficient, then you could become a successful by repeatedly typing “2 + 2 = 4” and posting it. You cannot become successful by doing this, and therefore writing correct things is not sufficient. One thing that is worthwhile to people is money, and therefore a good heuristic would be to post things that are worth people’s money.

There are two ways for something to be worth someone’s money. First, it might be worth some amount of money greater than what they might sacrifice. Second, it might be worth more than an arbitrary amount of money.

The only thing that is worth more than an arbitrary amount of money is a good will. Now, you cannot sell someone a good will, but what you can do is give them writings to help them achieve one. Thus, if you want to write something worth people’s money, a safe bet is to write about ethics. Remember, of course, that you also need to be correct about ethics. Since moral beliefs are conclusions of practical reason, the only way to have correct beliefs about ethics is by being a virtuous person. Therefore, if you ever sin, you seriously damage any possibility of being a successful Substack author. Some examples of ethical truths are: (i) utilitarianism is false; (ii) you should be vegan; (iii) anyone can be morally perfect whenever they want; (iv) eating flesh is immensely more immoral than voting for Biden or Trump; and (v) saying anything but what is correct and relevant, barring extreme circumstances, is manipulation and therefore immoral.

The other, less safe way to make your posts worth people’s money is by making them merely worth more than some amount of money. Therefore, you might write about how to sell cars, because selling cars well gives direct financial benefits. Or you may give advice about relationships, since many people value good relationships more than even considerable amounts of money. But remember the previous advice; you do not merely want car salesmen or those who forego their autonomy to enter romantic relationships to follow you. You should, therefore, write about what is universally applicable. Most generally, that would be how to be a successful Substack author, but if you want to go beyond that, you should write about ethics, since everybody has to correctly conclude practical deliberation and thereby act.

5. Don’t make people pay for your posts

Even though your posts will be worth people’s money, do not charge people money for them. First, that will cause you to have fewer followers, and arbitrarily limit the number of people exposed to important truths about ethics and about how to be a successful Substack author.

Second, it is immoral. This post is not about how to become a rich Substack author, but rather a successful one. The word “successful,” if used without qualification, refers to achievement of the highest good, which is perfect virtue and happiness in accordance with virtue. Therefore, you need to be virtuous, which means not charging people money to read the truths you have to express. Such would be contrary to the exercise of your duty to beneficence and to not hinder the perfection of others.

Moreover, if you make people pay for your posts, then they will think of your writing as commensurable with mere money, causing them to poorly understand the correct things that you post. This will mean your post will have been as if it contained incorrect things, causing the disadvantages described above.

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The above is nothing more than what have I have done; follow the above advice, and I cannot think of any reason why you will not be as successful as me. May you have perfect virtue and happiness in accordance with virtue.