Rethinking Outreach in 2024

Substack made me a believer

This week on the ComicLab podcast, I talk about some of the ways I’m rethinking outreach in 2024. And at the top of the list is — Substack. Here’s a short clip…

Listen to ComicLab Ep 319, Rethinking Outreach in 2024.

For a long time, I was reluctant to consider using Substack for my email newsletter. I had been with Mailchimp for ten years, and I was, for the most part, content. Moreover, I was underwhelmed by Substack when it first came onto the scene. Once Substack released its latest features, however, I was compelled to give the platform a second look. And that's all it took.

Substack’s discoverability

I used Mailchimp to send a newsletter to readers of my comic, Evil Inc, for ten years. During that time, I had amassed a little under 500 subscribers. This was a result of prominent links on my website and weekly mentions on several different social media platforms. Mailchimp cost me about $30 per month.

I had gained a grand total of five new subscribers in 2023.

I started Substack on December 9th. In a little over a month, I had 20 subscribers — one of whom was a paying member.

At the end of eight weeks, I have 497 subscribers. If you subtract the 461 I imported from Mailchimp, that’s only 36. But the number of paid supporters has grown to 6.

In other words, I went from paying thirty bucks a month to earning money. And I have seven times more new free subscribers in eight weeks than I got from using Mailchimp in an entire year.

Switching was a no-brainer. And we haven’t even discussed…

• The sophisticated promotional aids

• The ability to spread messaging through Notes, Restacking, and Recommendations

• The jaw-dropping analytics (pay attention, Patreon!)

We’ll be talking about Substack a lot over the next several months. In the meantime, you can hear me talking about this at length on this week’s episode of ComicLab, available wherever you get your podcasts.