I've Hit a Glass Ceiling on Substack, and I Am Discouraged.

The Math Ain't Mathin'

Let me be completely transparent with y’all…

I’ve been on Substack for a little over two years now. Within the past year, I’ve grown my audience exponentially.

However, my number of paid subscribers has not matched my growth.

I wrote about this last summer, but things have not gotten improved since then. In fact, it’s gotten worse.

Let’s take a little journey, shall we?

Within my first 9 months of blogging Spring 2023-2024, a very high proportion of my readers were of paid subscribers. I’m talking 10-18%, which is outstanding in this industry.

My tiny little audience was eager to support me. Without any paywalls, I received my first paid subscriber within weeks of opening this blog.

For most of that time, I had less than 100 subscribers. I felt completely lost as to how I would ever grow my platform amidst censorship and without traditional social media and I almost quit because of that—but I felt very supported by my small readership.

Then, in Spring of 2024, I published my essay on Pauli Murray. This is when I began to heavily promote my work. I collaborated with various platforms, spoke on podcasts, and a lot of new people were drawn to my writing. Between my activity on notes and the new posts I was publishing, I grew quite organically throughout the year.

More people signed up as paid subscribers. Some people remained subscribed, and some dropped off…

But around this time last year, I noticed that the % of people who were financially supporting my work was steadily dropping. Because for a whole year, my paid subscriptions have fluctuated a bit, but it has never broken past a certain number.

And I’ve remained stagnant in this area, even as hundreds more people subscribed to me, even as my total subscribers doubled, even as I continued to work my ass off, even as I continued to pour my heart out, even as I charged for my work, and even as I kept the same authentic energy that has always fueled my presence here.

And now, one year later, my paid subscriptions have slowly have started to decline.

My haters are just sitting in their dark little corner, foaming at the mouth over this one!

Now, I have my theories about why this may be happening.