24 Comments

Nice work 👏🏼 I appreciate what you’re saying about the variety of topics we can cover and where to get ideas. I’m new to substack and I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about. I’ve started with what I find interesting to watch on YouTube. I share my commentary and experiment with different ideas. Your words give me confidence I’m headed in a good direction.

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I am happy to hear you feel like your heading in a good direction. Something that I realized is so much of this happens organically, over time, while creating. It's natural for us to want the answer and to know what to post, but there's much that can only be solidified through creative expression. I think the best thing to do is start, and know, you can change at any time.

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Totally agree. Just get started and see what unfolds.

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Let me know how it goes.

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It's meta, but guess what, meta happens to be some of my favorite type of content :)

Love the concept of using Notes as a testing ground and expanding from there.

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Thanks Jamie. We don't need to be clever ;-)

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Clever is overrated :)

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I have found Answer Socrates to be another good one for idea curation.

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I've never tried that one but it looks solid.

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Love this! I think this can work for so many things on Substack though.

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100% J.R. Once we see the underlying process/framework/principles you're awareness opens to how many things it can be applied too.

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I use Notes to test ideas, too! Almost all my notes have this purpose.

I noticed they have a very long shelf life. They keep getting views for days.

I'm torn about how many and when to publish, though. Without scheduling and analytics, it's hard to have a precise strategy. What's your strategy?

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My strategy is:

Post at least 1 per day.

Try to post more than 1 per day.

I try not to over think it. I try not to post more than 3, and bank ideas for following days. But I want to be present at least once but I will use additional posts when ideas are flowing or I am plugging content -- Linking back to a post or share a post, etc.

At this point I don't have much data as to the ideal. Have you made any observations?

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Solid advice for anyone regardless of where they're at in this process!

This approach towards generating ideas for yourself is a great way to get into the habit of doing a little bit of research up front with focused thematic notes, and this strategy can be applied to other platforms as well (I've been on X for awhile, and the advice is familiar).

Thanks for this tip, Landon!

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Thanks Vince! Notes are great for testing, similar to how people do it for X. And we can create a content flywheel. Test with notes, build long-form, then use the long-form to create notes. Monitor the data to identify themes and topics and double down in those areas. After I noticed that Substack was doing good I've started to create a bit more about that to see how it performs.

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Thanks for the wise guidance. By the way, I am going to try the broad niche strategy, hopefully, it works 💪 for me👷‍♀️ ! 😉 😀😃🙂🙃😊😇😀😃🙂🙃😊

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Give it a shot!

When you study long enough or a diverse set of people you quickly realize that everything works. Creators like Nicolas Cole promotes niching down, whereas that is contrasted by creators like Dan Koe who say "you are the niche"

When I zoom out I read this as I have the opportunity to choose the path that best fits me.

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Man, you sure don't disappoint. Easiest decision of my day was subscribing to you.

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Thanks Keagen, I appreciate the kind words.

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Stunning.

This sounds dreamy.

I wish I could emulate your success.

Did you give up your day job?

10 K a month is incredible.

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Therese, I don't see why you can't. It may sound dreamy when we view the "moment" but I promise there has been a lot of stress, heartache, and debt a long the way. I took on over 100k of debt to close a failed business in 2018. And ive been self employed for 18+ years building up to the point I am at today.

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Your road to success wasn't easy, it almost never is, but thank you for the inspiration.

I love getting that small kick to the backside that moves me forward that little bit faster.

Thank you,

You are awesome.

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Thank you, you are also, super awesome :)

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Cheers.

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