How The Author Stack grew to over 31,000 subscribers

Russell Nohelty wears lots of different creative hats. He’s a bestselling fiction author. He organizes live conferences. He sells online courses. And over the last few years he’s put much of his energy into building The Author Stack, a newsletter focused on helping writers and other creatives in their careers. He’s grown it to over 31,000 subscribers, and it’s increasingly become the central hub for all his creative businesses.

In a recent interview, Russell walked through every aspect of his growth strategy, including how he generated his first 16,000 subscribers by running sweepstakes with other writers, how he leverages paid marketing, why he utilizes multiple email platforms to send his newsletters, and why he thinks social media marketing is a waste of time:

I don't use social media at all. I'm on Substack. Substack drives subscribers And then I do a lot of paid growth. My business partner is on more social than me. I think it's a waste of time for almost everyone because they do not convert. It's all good feelings and good vibes. Sometimes Facebook will convert if you're in the right groups, but I've never seen anything I've done on Instagram, TikTok, any of those things actually convert to subscribers or paid money. We do have a Circle community for ourselves and my business partner does have a Facebook group for our businesses that I sometimes go into, but I do not post for myself and I haven't for about a year.

Watch our interview in the video embedded below:

If video embeds don’t work in your inbox, then go here.

How to listen to a podcast version of this episode

As a paid subscriber, you get access to a special podcast version of this episode. There are two ways to listen to the episode.

1. Visit the episode page on Substack and listen to it either on the Substack website or app.

2. Visit the episode page while on your mobile browser. From there, just click on the “more options” button. This will create a pop-up menu that will allow you to plug the RSS feed into your podcast player of choice. Once you’ve imported the feed, then all new paid episodes will show up in your podcast player for as long as you remain a paid subscriber.

I posted two screenshots below to show you how it works: