How Not to Grow Your Substack
There's gotta be a way to do this differently.
It’s a Tuesday evening, and I’m hovering over a BUY NOW button.
If I press it, I will be the proud owner of 4 pre-recorded videos. These videos, I’m promised, will teach me to “grow my Substack”— to double and possibly triple my followers, and eventually my income.
All for $257 USD.
I don’t have an extra $257 USD. (The fact that I feel shame about this is another topic of discussion.) But I really want to make a living writing about what I want to write about.
So this is, like, an investment.
I found the creator of these vides on something called Notes. Notes is basically Twitter on Substack, which is good, because actual Twitter is now a post-nuclear wasteland.
On Notes, I was liking and re-posting and following… and feeling a huge sense of deja vu. In the early days of O.G. Twitter, I worked as a social media manager, meaning I tweeted for big corporations so they could pretend they cared about anything other than becoming bigger corporations. I liked, re-posted and followed, trying to get people to buy more things from them—things that were probably made in sweatshops.
I also was on Twitter as myself—a journalist, aspiring book-writer, and loud-mouthed pre-#metoo metoo-er, liking, re-posting, and following. Trying to Be Someone.
And all of that gave me the deja vu of being a bookworm in the 7th grade trying unsuccessfully not to be bullied.
But here I am.
Here we all are, trying to grow our followings (and our bank accounts). But people have even less time now to read, and even less money to pay for what they’re reading.
So what gives me the right?
Why should I be growing my Substack and have more money and freedom than anyone else? If I’m going to spend money I don’t have, it could go to so many people, who need it to survive.
It feels like being in a burning house, with people in one room being starved and slaughtered, and me in another room, rearranging furniture and putting up wallpaper.
I do not press the button.
And I don’t judge anyone who does. I can’t say I don’t want a comfortable life. I think about it all the time. I secretly admire Rebecca from Ted Lasso. I live in a system, and if I had any ideas on how to make that system go away in an instant (without harming anyone) and get replaced by a better system, I probably wouldn’t be needing to grow my Substack. Or maybe I’d have been assassinated long ago.
But later that night, I discover Caitlin Johnstone, and independent journalist, essayist, painter and poet from Australia who (in her words) writes about her understanding of what a healthy world would look like.
I learn that Caitlin lives only by donation. She says, “I’m going to get paid I want it to be by the healthiest impulses of the healthiest sort of people.”
If you’re wondering how many of those people there are, Caitlin has over 40,000 followers.
In the Buddhist lineage of which I am a part, I’m only allowed to accept donations for my teaching.
The idea is that these teachings were given freely to me, and my responsibility (for which I am deeply grateful) is to pass them on to anyone who wants them, regardless of that person’s financial means. People sometimes find this confusing and challenging (sometimes, I am one of those people.) But it’s also one of the most beautiful, heart-growing experiences of my life.
Potawatomi author Robin Wall Kimmerer puts it like this: the more we decide how much we value something, the more value it has to us. In her example, someone gives you a hand-knitted hat as a gift. You have another hat you bought from the store.
Which one do you value more?
She says:
Or like Amanda Palmer says, you can’t make people pay for art, but you can let them.
Or, like Anne Lamott says: when things get hard, we can remain calm and share our bananas.
As I write this, I remember February, 2023.
I was in a shopping mall, in a fancy store I go to when I want to try to look like a grown-up. I’m changing in and out of three sweaters. They’re all soft and cosy, and for the last ten minutes I’ve trying to decide on which one to buy.
Or two.
Or, you know, Girl, you work hard. Maybe you deserve three new sweaters.
My phone rings. It’s my friend Jasmine.
“I want to send money,” she says, when I pick up.
For a few seconds, I’m confused. Money? Where? For what?
I have forgotten, in this fancy change room with my sweaters, that four days ago, an earthquake killed almost 70,000 people in Turkey and Syria. 1.5 million people will be left homeless.
Turks in cities and villages across the country have been rallying to gather supplies, ship them, get trucks over broken roads, send money, and pull people out of the rubble. To get them food. Tents. Warm clothes.
I’ve been trying to help people send donations to the right places, funnelling money from friends in Canada towards the organizations that seem most trustworthy.
“For the earthquake,” Jasmine says, because I’m still standing there, mute, staring at my reflection in the mirror.
Jasmine came to Turkey seven years ago, on foot from Syria, with her husband and daughter and pregnant with her son, with the clothes on their backs. She earns a Turkish salary, or would if she were working full time. She isn’t. She’s taking care of her husband, who’s been battling cancer for almost two years. Her parents, who still have refugee status, can’t work at all.
I look at the pile of sweaters next to me.
“It’s not much,” Jasmine says, “but I want to. I don’t know where to send it, but I saw your post. You can make sure it goes towards the right people.”
And the sales assistant taps on the wall outside the curtain and asks if I need anything else.
The great equation for freelance artists with a conscience! Thank you for sharing this most relatable piece! 👏🙌❤️
Beautifully put, dear Pen Pal. Thank you. xoxoxoxoxoxox