This is an interview with Riza of The Solopreneur Drafts.
At a glance:
Current subscriber count: 2,006
Most successful post: Substack is YouTube in 2012 (And most creators are completely asleep!)
Most underrated growth tactic: Commenting
Favorite Substack feature: Paid subscription
One creator everyone should follow: Carrie Loranger
One tool you can’t live without: Coffee (does it count? :D )
Key metric to track: Engagement rate
Main revenue source: founding members (customized growth strategy)
One sentence describing your newsletter: A one-person self-actualizing business through writing built entirely on Substack.
One piece of advice for new writers: To see writing and building a business as a journey of self-discovery, not just business and hustle!
The Beginning
Tell us about your publication. What do you write about and who is it for?
The Solopreneur Drafts is a space for independent writers and creators who want to build a deeply connected audience without losing their soul to the social media hamster wheel.
I write about the psychology of audience building, sustainable growth and the anti hustle approach to solo entrepreneurship. It is for people who are tired of cheap hacks and algorithmic games. People who want to do their deep work for a couple of hours a day, build evergreen assets, and actually enjoy their lives as human beings.
What was your writing journey before Substack?
Hmmm... it is a long story. Where should I start.. Well I wrote about this in one of my posts (the post about my story and how I reached 1200 subs).
I loved writing since I was a kid. I wrote my diary. I wrote stories. And...
8 years ago I wrote a novel. And I was so immersed in this novel that I would connect with my story characters in my sleep at night.
At some point while writing the novel the story slipped out of my hands and it felt like something from inside me was writing it. An 8 year old child who was trapped and doing exhausting work.
I saw that child. I felt him deeply. I felt him so deeply that I couldn’t continue writing. That strong feeling stayed with me for days. And it was my inner child finding a way to express himself...
Ah.. how could I ignore him after that happened...
I stopped writing the novel for a few years and gave my inner child the chance to live again. I read a ton of books by Erich Fromm and Lucia Capacchione and other people who wrote about this and I did the exercises...
The story of writing that novel is long. But honestly every chapter of it had a profound impact on my life..!
To give a short answer to your question, I was always writing! 😅 For me, writing and music are 2 of the ways I express myself!
You’ve built an online business before. How did that prepare you for Substack?
Well, I used to write blogs when I was a teenager (I’m 37 now) and my foundation for online writing goes back to those days.
Writing on blogs and forums was the best kind of connection for me. Until social media came along. And social media was really good at first too. But slowly it became shallow and empty. Very empty...
This whole process had things to teach me.
Blogging taught me how not to limit myself and write as much as I want but at the same time not write nonsense and know that my audience’s time is valuable and whatever I write has to be worth reading.
Forums taught me how to build a community.
Social media taught me that people care more about things you think are very unimportant than the things you think are very valuable!
And honestly, a lot of people (at least there) are not looking to learn or understand anything new. They just want to feel seen!
Honestly, even though I don’t like social media, nothing taught me as much about human psychology and the impact of content on others as social media did. I worked full time on social media for 6 years. And I tested a lot of things. Social media is a brilliant platform for an experimenter. There is nothing like it!
You also built an Instagram audience of 117,000 followers. Why did you leave that behind and start from absolute zero here?
Well. The million dollar question! 😊
Honestly, there wasn’t just one reason.
One major reason was that I don’t know how to play the shallow game. On Instagram I wrote about mental discipline and focus. Yes you read that right; I wrote!
All my posts were text on images. And the time it took to read each post was 4 to 5 minutes.
Well.. imagine how hard it was for me in a space where the audience just wants to scroll and their attention span is a few short seconds!
I also had a side job giving content strategy and designing campaigns for others. And for them I could give content ideas that went viral easily. I did the same thing for myself. I have several posts with millions of views. But you know.. that wasn’t my game.
For me being there was like living a good life in a foreign country but I couldn’t connect with their culture.
I should also say that I made some really good friends there! And I built a separate community of my loyal audience that has 6500+ members. And well, I still write for them now (on Telegram).
But the Instagram space is heavily based on algorithms and hooks and lies and showing off and things like that...
With my background in blogging and forums, I wasn’t a very good fit for that space. I wrote my story in one of my recent posts.
For a few years I wanted to detach from Instagram and write somewhere better. But I couldn’t. I was so tied up in it that I didn’t have the time to leave it.
Until the war happened. And everything blew up...
I no longer had to be brave and leave everything behind. Everything was already taken from me! (Temporarily)
But well.. it was a chance to make a serious decision.
I just thought about it for 2 or 3 months. And I left everything I had built with so much effort (except my loyal audience, whom I will always serve) and right in the middle of that war I came and started my Substack!
The Growth Story
What did your first few months on Substack look like?
Well it wasn’t very fun for me. Connecting to the internet was my hardest task back then. And focusing amidst the sounds of explosions and the constant possibility of dying at any moment was not easy..!
But I had a lot of passion.
I liked the space. Sort of like Pinterest for writers 😊
It slowly got better. The first comment. The first subscriber. The first likes...
They felt really good! They gave me the vibe that it is possible! That I can build here.
Back then I was also active on X alongside Substack. I wanted X to be my social media and here to be my newsletter.
In those first few weeks, I messaged one of the creators whose emails I read ( Jack Moses) and asked him if I needed to do that or if Substack was enough?
And he said this place has good potential.
I trusted him and went all in on Substack.
And well.. slowly things got better!
Can you walk us through your biggest growth milestones so far?
Hmmm 0 to 100 was the hardest part I think. And of course the most intimate part.
Everyone in my audience circle was very dear to me. (They still are.) I still remember their names. Cerina, Teresa, Danielle, and...
I remember Cerina telling me early on that if I ever had a product, she would definitely buy it from me!
Wow.. just that simple sentence gave me a lot of motivation! It showed me how interesting the culture is here!!
Unlike Instagram where everyone is skeptical of each other because the space is messy and there is a lot of lying and hypocrisy, it is not like that here.
And I really enjoyed realizing that oh this is exactly where I wanted to be! A place where there is honesty. There is depth. There is value. A platform worthy of writers! (I hope it doesn’t get ruined...)
Commenting got me to my first 100 subs.
Every time I managed to connect to the internet I came to Substack and every time I came to Substack I left comments.
I was around 160 subs when I noticed commenting wasn’t working anymore. I hit a plateau...
I investigated why this engine wasn’t working anymore. And I realized I was leaving comments for the wrong people. People who had no interest in my work!
And I had made a mistake..
To leave a lot of comments I used AI!
And the readers got the exact same bad feeling I got from AI writing.. and one person even did me a favor and told me ugh AI generated comment!!
And I saw that it didn’t work. And honestly I am glad it didn’t.
So I went and found my potential audience read their work and wrote real comments for them again.
A few real comments are better than a lot of AI generated comments!
Growing to 500 took about 2 months. And the main growth engine was strategic commenting.
Going from 500 to 1000 happened very fast. I didn’t expect it myself. And in this phase alongside commenting Notes worked really well!
I have to say one thing.
There were days when I answered hundreds of comments. Hundreds of comments! My whole day was spent answering comments! And I never left a comment unanswered. Even a simple thank you comment!
This is very important on Substack.
The culture of this platform is built on real human connections.
And I am not the type of person in the real world to ignore someone if they say something. I even answer a thank you with a nod or a pat on the shoulder if I don’t want to use words.
So I follow that exact same behavior here too.
What were the biggest growth drivers?
Notes!
One of my notes went viral and brought in a lot of people.
This note
Do you actively use Notes? If so, what kinds of Notes bring you the most subscribers?
Oh yes! I write Notes every day. Notes play a huge role on Substack and I don’t know how some creators ignore them!
The notes that bring in a lot of subscribers are like the one I mentioned above. The ones that show I understand my audience’s pain.
And well.. this is a psychological pattern and it isn’t just for Substack. This kind of content works on every platform.
But my goal with Notes isn’t just to get subscribers.
In fact my goal in the Substack game is to build a community.
If you can’t build a community with 1000 subscribers, you won’t be able to do it with 100K either!
My note writing strategy has multiple layers. One layer is to attract subscribers. The same ones that get the most likes 😅
The rest of the notes have other goals..
What’s something everyone says to do on Substack that didn’t work for you?
Recommendations!
I don’t know why this hasn’t worked well for me! Some good people recommended me too.
I probably need to clean up my publication and page design!
This is one of the things I will work on as a project!
Behind the Scenes
How often do you publish, and how did you find that rhythm?
I publish one useful article a week and about 3 to 5 notes a day.
Writing a good post takes time. And given my life schedule one post a week is the best thing I can do to write a high quality piece that is worth reading.
And honestly I think my readers like this rhythm too. Because you know.. they didn’t just subscribe to me! Every publication is writing articles and sending them to their inbox.
A more subtle game is happening here.
Writing in a way that makes your audience actually want to get new messages from you!
I am like this with Justin Welsh and James Clear and Dan Koe. I get happy whenever I see them in my inbox.
But I unsubscribe from the people whose last 3 emails I haven’t opened.
This is doing a favor to them and a favor to myself.
What metrics do you actually pay attention to?
Engagement rate is important to me.
And my email open rates.
These 2 are more important than the rest.
Of course there are some more important metrics that can’t be tracked.. like the size of the impact your writing had on the audience. Or how much they trusted you by reading your text.
Ultimately these are the most important. But well.. out of the metrics you can see those 2 are more important to me. At this phase of my growth on Substack!
What was the biggest mistake you’ve made on Substack?
A collaboration.
I was collaborating with a large publication which was a good offer and I had put a lot of time and energy into it. And fortunately our collaboration didn’t work out. Otherwise, I would have dedicated myself to their work so much that no time or energy would be left for my own page!
When our collaboration failed, I got a bit confused and upset. It was weird!
Anyone else would have jumped at that proposal! But well.. I am very happy now that it didn’t happen.
Was there a moment you almost gave up or seriously questioned what you were doing?
No. Never.
Not even one time!
Never. I like this space and as long as the culture here stays this progressive I will be here.
If god forbid one day this place turns into Instagram, I will probably migrate to Skool! 😅
You’ve mentioned knocking on many doors for collaborations. How did you approach other writers, especially as a brand-new creator?
Good question.
I am new here. But I have 8 years of experience in writing and marketing.
So I used my expertise.
If a post could be written better I wrote it better and sent it to them.
If a sales campaign could be run better I mapped out a better strategy and gave it to them and said go test this and then we can collaborate if you want!
And well.. one interesting thing was that some big creators came to me themselves (probably from the comments since I wasn’t visible anywhere else) and said they can tell I have experience from my writing.
The short answer to this question is that I leveraged my experience and expertise!
What’s an example of a collaboration that had a real compounding effect on your audience?
The reality is that none of them had a huge impact.
But the one that was better than the rest was collaborating with Write Build Scale.
They had a publication called Smarter Substack. They featured top articles there every day.
And they featured my articles a few times too. And this helped me get seen more in the early stages.
But well.. it seems it wasn’t profitable for them and they deactivated that publication.
The Business Side
You recently entered a new phase by launching your paid subscription. What made you feel the timing was right?
Well honestly the timing wasn’t right. I was late!
The right time was after 500 subs. And I activated my paid tier at 1500 subs!
Overall, if you are going to run a business, it is better to activate it from the very beginning and grow that way. You shouldn’t attract people who only want your free content and get upset if they see you have something to sell or are promoting something and feel like you only care about selling!
There is a misconception among people who are here for entertainment that anyone who has something to sell is probably a scammer wearing a suit.
This mindset is very common on social media because there are a lot of cases like that. But it is not like that on Substack. At least I haven’t seen cases like that during this time! And of course producing valuable content is a time consuming process. You have to sacrifice a lot of things and sit down to produce valuable content.
The best case is having an audience that truly receives value from your work and eagerly supports you so you can produce better things and serve them better!
A win win game.
That is why it is good to activate and promote your paid content from the early stages when you slowly get to know your audience and understand their needs and can provide good value.
How did you decide what to offer paid subscribers?
Oh this took way too much time for me.
Randomly putting an article behind a paywall really isn’t my model. I want every article I send on Saturdays to be truly valuable and free. Those are separate and they are not going to become paid.
I looked into different options and finally landed on the monthly masterclass idea!
Every month I write a valuable masterclass that I could sell separately if I recorded it on camera and I send it along with an actionable workbook. These masterclasses are about the different stages of growth on Substack.
The first one was about commenting and loving the audience. I drew inspiration from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends book and translated that book for use on Substack. How to leave comments (like one point was to go to the person’s profile before leaving a comment and see who they are. Who are you talking to? And then leave a comment with that understanding). Building real connections.. you know..
My overall vision is for everyone in my paid tier to grow very fast. And I do my best to make this happen.
And for now I am doing this with my masterclasses. I will add other ideas to it too. Things that make the biggest impact in the least amount of time!
What was the biggest surprise from launching your paid tier?
I set up a plan for founding members where I analyze their page and give them a customized personal strategy.
I planned it for 20 people in total and 14 of them filled up very fast!
As someone who didn’t have any feedback from satisfied customers to show for this work on Substack, I didn’t expect them to trust me this much.
And this trust is priceless to me. One of my clients even said they think I am the only person on all of Substack who can save their page!
These things are very valuable to me... much more than the money.
It is enjoyable work.. I go read their articles and notes meditate on the page and pretend it is my own page and map out its growth strategy. Each page takes me almost a full week 😅 But I love it. I will be very happy when I see the results!
Now that you’ve opened paid subscriptions, how are you thinking about the balance between free and paid content?
Everything that has been free so far will always stay free.
My free strategy isn’t changing. From the very beginning I treated my free content as if I could make every article paid. I spend a lot of time on my free content, and I want the reader to receive value for the time they spent and have it actually make a positive impact on their process!
But my paid content is something beyond this. Something that could be recorded separately and sold for a much higher price on Gumroad or other places!
Do you see paid subscriptions as the main business model, or one part of a larger ecosystem?
No. They are part of a larger ecosystem.
My goal is to build 1000 true fans. The same idea Kevin Kelly proposed.
And a part of building this trust and separating the audience who can be in my closer circle from the regular audience is the paid subscription!
Overall, this is a 2 way game.
My win = your win. And your win = my win!
What’s Next
What’s your goal for the next 12 months?
Hmmm I really like that orange checkmark! And I want to have a beautiful one of those in the next 12 months (I think my sentence sounded like Trump. Right? 😂)
What do you want your publication and community to become over time?
I want us to be a community of people who experience a rich and creative life through independent writing.
The name of my paid subscription is exactly this: The Sovereign Writers Club
I believe sovereign writers should be able to serve others through writing, make life sweeter for everyone else, make good money this way, and be able to work deeper and better!
We owe it to writers...
Books played a huge role in our cultural evolution.
But now we have the leverage of the internet, and artists or writers no longer need to present their art in poverty and end their lives in poverty.
That era is over.
If someone had 100 subscribers today, what would you tell them to focus on for the next 30 days?
Well.. I would tell them, my good friend.. build a vision for yourself. Something that gives you goosebumps.
And go read other people’s work and leave comments with passion and love.
Right now in this phase, notes and articles are practice for you. They are not your growth leverage.
Write notes every day so you learn how to write better notes.
But the thing that makes you grow is strategic commenting. Real human connection!
Where do you think Substack is heading as a platform, and what opportunities do you see opening up for creators?
Oh Substack has a lot of potential! I hope the Substack team understands this well and does even better.
I wrote an article about how Substack is like YouTube in 2012. Just as untouched and just as powerful.
In my opinion, Substack is a place where many people will slowly migrate to from social media.
But it is very important that Substack’s culture doesn’t get ruined. Very important.
The social media game is full of tips and tricks. Full of psychological manipulation.
A lot of those can be implemented on Substack too. Especially because of the mutual trust that exists in the Substack space.
This is something the Substack team needs to pay attention to and do something serious about.
Otherwise, those psychological manipulations will become widespread here and ruin the overall space...
I hope this doesn’t happen and this place stays as beautiful and dignified as it is right now.
And finally, if you had to explain the real reason behind your fast Substack growth in one sentence, what would you say?
In one sentence
I love my audience’s growth more than my own growth. And I do everything I can to help my audience grow! Unconditional love for your audience.
Lidiya, my good friend. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share these words with your audience :)
Thank you Lidiya my friend, it was an honor 🙏🤍
I had never thought that commenting would be a growth engine, but I'm excited to try!!!