hi guys welcome my name is CLA Venus I am an engagement consultant mentor and I'm delighted that you've chosen to spend a little bit of time with me I've made this video or I will make it right here and now um because there are repeat questions that I get asked about setting up on substack and there are a lot of blocks I think for folks when they're first coming to the platform around how to set up correctly the things that you should do or can do when you're setting up and I wanted to just make it really really easy for you guys to set your publication up properly um understand what your writer profile is in combination with your publication and set your set your substack up so it'll be really easy for people to press that subscribe button and so I'll go ahead and share my screen if you're new to um knowing my work I um have a best a background in festivals and events and before I started working on substack and online um I was running beautiful arts development projects in communities in the northeast of England in the pandemic I decided I wanted to diversify my income and part of that was um coming to the online space and working out if there was a space for creatives who liked to write and I found substack in 2022 so I've been building my substack spaces since 2022 I started with a personal blog type space which was very much Memoir writing and a place to write long form in the kind of the first eight months of using that space I decided to move my MailChimp newsletter to be sent um primarily from substack so rather than email people a substack newsletter or a Blog and then also a MailChimp newsletter I combined the whole thing so I moved 350 subscribers into substack in October 2022 and then have been growing my spaces since so this is my substack education space Sparkle on substack um and it's really a hub for members and people who want to grow joyfully and sustainably on substack over at creatively conscious um that is still my um beautiful blog um type space where I make space for myself as a creative who wants to write more on wholehearted living Business Development um and really kind of leaning into that that craft of memoir writing I'm really excited about spending more time honing my craft and so I use this space right to I think 3,200 people here um and share some of those words and some of those um pieces that I ordinarily wouldn't have anywhere for them to land so that's what this space is and then like I said Sparkle on substack is my substack education space so here in my dashboard I can toggle between the two spaces I've got a few um archive spaces this was one that I run I ran over the summer which was a summit that all took place on substack so I keep these on because they're useful to reference um but that's why there are so many here I would really really recommend only having one substack if you have anywhere over I don't know maybe like two and a half thousand subscribers you could maybe think about niching out and niching down but you don't need to the difference between subst and other spaces online is that you can be wholeheartedly yourself so yes I have two different spaces but if I wasn't teaching substack that membership space would exist somewhere else on another membership portal um like teachable kajabi podia those sorts of places it just makes sense to have it on substack so here on creatively conscious you'll see that I have a color palette set up for this publication and I've thought quite carefully about that I've got a course called your beautiful substack mag magzine which you guys can purchase if you'd like to um if you're not in my diamond membership where it's included and with that you can understand the layout and the storytelling The Branding that goes into creating a substack website essentially that's what it is so we get a URL you can also have your own URL domain name that you've bought that you can point your substack to so that's all possible and so when people land on your substack homepage this is where they get to and you can display this in a myriad of different ways um so as we scroll down you'll see there are various different posts on various different themes topics um and there's a whole load of organization that goes into this with sections and tags none of that you need to know when you're just setting up your substack but I'm just giving you that overview so this is probably my most simplistic space and I'm going to talk you through how I use this one and how I set this one up today because I think that'll be the most useful and relevant to you so in terms of the about page that is definitely the place to start there are a couple of workshops that you can take if you're in the membership that really go into what to put in your about page but think about it as a page that is for your readers and about you as well so it's a combination of the two things you want to be adding in Social proof you want to be demonstrating what somebody is going to get by subscribing to this this space so I have some images in here um and some explanation around what's free and what's pay you can go ahead and have a look at that that is open to everybody um there's loads of different ways that you can approach the about page but I think just holding in your mind it's for your readers and it's also about you it's not a CV it's just that blend that beautiful blend of the personal and the professional of about you and what people will find within your substack publication if you're still growing into what substack can be for you don't worry about it too much but change the um the holding text that's stack leave there make sure that you change it and put something that is personal to you so whether that's um a nice set of photos um and a couple of lines it doesn't have to be long you can grow into it but definitely edit that as the first thing to do when you've set up your writer profile so this is me over here um and this is actually it's confusing for you guys but this is where I've put the logo so um I decided to use a photo of me in our camper van looking out to see as my Lo in the logo space but when you head over here you will set up your writer profile so when you've done this and you might have already done this so if you've arrived as a reader to substack and you've clicked through it might have already set this up for you you'll be invited to set up a little profile picture here and then your Publications will exist under your writer profile um section here now if you're not seeing them but you know that you have set up a publication it's because you need to convert your publication into a substack website and you do that within your settings page so you would do that in dashboard settings so when you go here you'll be able to see one of these and then when you go into settings there'll be an item that says convert into substack website that's what you need to do and then everything will appear here if it doesn't appear here it's because it's not published yet so the only place you'll see it is in activity so um let's see when I last wrote something um this one so when I last wrote something and you'll have this it'll just pull through when you publish I did a lot of notes yesterday well anyway it doesn't matter but just so that you guys know that is your activity on substack notes which is so substacks inbuilt social media and then your Publications as well and then when you head over to posts it's going to go through all of the different posts that you've published in there but you need your Publications to show through here for everything to work properly within substack so if you want to edit your profile you for my um money you need to be using your name so your writer name um or PUD name here so people won't remember it if it's like daffodil 123 like you just need to have your name you need to claim your name and that needs to be the same as your handle so people can remember it the bio again it's a little bit about you so it's not about what you write it's about you and who you are and then obviously you can write more about what people can expect in your Publications in the explainer there put in your Social Links because why not um unless you're trying to have a bit of a kind of figuring out secret space and you don't want people to cross over but I think um crossing over can be really super helpful I've got my books there I need to put in um my substack book actually um I'll do that now so you can see how easy it is how to build a world CL substack and then I need to grab the Amazon link because um there we go our book is available on pre-order and my C offer is working very hard on getting that image sorted um there we go I'll have to just copy that link super easy to do put that in my bio save that pop your website in I mean Twitter's on there but I don't use it and I don't use Facebook I'm actually G to just take that out because I really don't use Twitter so I don't need anybody going over there and then as you scroll down so you can have the option if you do write two Publications to toggle between them so I um have sparkle on substack as my primary publication and I also have creatively conscious switched on and then the others aren't there and then it goes down into your reads as you scroll down past your reads anything that you're reading there's a lot of them um you can hide your likes or your bestseller badge that'll that'll come up there if you are a substack bestseller just to explain I mean they'll probably move it by the time anybody's watching this video because they do that but at the moment that's where you find all that good stuff um so we're going to say done and then if you go into your writer profile settings so that one was edit profile and and then this one is settings and then within settings um this is where you can create a new publication so if all of this isn't making sense and you haven't got a publication this is where you create your publication and then it's going to show me my subscriptions it's going to invite me here to turn on smart notifications so that means that I can only read in the app and so even though the language is super confusing I promise if you have this top one ticked you will only be receiving substack emails in your app and on the substack website and they not be coming into your email inbox so you can have different things toggled on here you can set things up to be the way that you want it to be set up in terms of direct messages um and chat but I'm not going to go into all of that today I just want to keep it really simple for you guys but if you're looking for something that's to do with the way that you experience substack it's going to be in there so just to show you again profile picture settings that's going to be everything that you need to experience substack and to create publication dashboard and settings is going to be your dashboard here so this is giving me a bit of an overview of what's been going on on my publication um for the last 30 days you'll find that these um numbers go up and down so it's saying that I'm down three paid subscribers and that I'm up 92 free subscribers which doesn't surprise me because I'm on a push for free subscribers at the moment and not on a push for paid so it's just relating it to the last the the 30 days before so it hasn't really gone down it's just that it's gone down compared to when it went up so don't be too disheartened by these numbers at the Top If they are looking gray it doesn't matter and then it's telling your subscribers from the app and then um you've got your your 30-day views and your open rate there as well so once you have your overview of your publication the next place that you need to know about is this set settings page here so within settings for your dashboard of your publication this is where you can change everything that you need to change to do with your publication so write your profiles over here and publisher um publication um dashboard is here you can change the name and how it displays so I described to you that I have a little logo that isn't a logo at all because at the end of the day what I'm doing here is personal Memoir writing so I don't need to have a logo for that I'd rather invite people into a little bit of my world so it's a bit of a kind of selfie for introverts um I just quite like it because it's a moment in my life that I'm inviting people to share in that's a bit more personal and then the short description I have a workshop with a brilliant copywriter um on micro copy so you can grab a copy of that if you're in the membership it's included if not it does sell separately on my website just give me a shout if you want that um but it's really helpful to be really clever and canny about what you put in that short description that invites people in the default language is English and then your categories here this is important in as much as it is going to show you in a position in the explore page um related to what category you choose as your primary category so this is your primary category here and this is your secondary category so it all helps with substack organizing who to show you to and where that should all be but just so you know that's what it is so you can change these up you know don't have to keep them I could go ahead and put myself in health and wellness for a change why not sometimes it can be feel hard to pigeon hole what it is we do so it doesn't it doesn't matter massively but it'll matter as you're starting to build and starting to look for any sort of leaderboard position so for example Sparkle on substack is top 10 on the leaderboard and that felt really important to try and strive for and get because I'm going to get more and more subscribers the higher I get up that leaderboard because of the visual position of that um so then as we're scrolling down if you want to turn on your paid subscriptions um what I would say is you want to be at around about a, free subscribers because your conversion is only going to be between 1 and 10% on average so rather than thinking you need to start from the off creating separate paid content for people you can start to just build up and try and hit that thousand subscriber Milestone nurturing your audience along the way learning substack and then you can turn pay paid on that said I turned paid on from the off I had people support me from the off we used to have lovely meetups around creativity I really enjoyed the work it took me about six months to feel that I was being properly paid for my work so there's two different ways to look at it but where substack is Right Here and Now in December 2024 while I'm recording this I would say get to a th000 first before you do paid this is all integrated with stripe so you would just integrate that and the process was really quite seamless for me to set that up so it's quite easy to do and then you've got your benefits for free subscribers and then your paid subscriber benefits there and then that's really it so it's that decision really as to whether you want paid turned on or not in terms of the other things that you should know about substack so we've talked about you having your substack website you can also post into notes which is substacks inbuilt social media feed um you can start chats with your subscrib which is like a WhatsApp chat but people need to be using the app or the desktop version so I wouldn't advise doing that from the off until you know that you've got a lot of subscribers who are using the app or the desktop version of substack easier to think about it like a mailing list or a blog or both so if we go ahead and go to write a post um which let's face it that's where we want to get to so if we're going to do actually I'll just go back a step so if you wanted to do an audio a um or a note into the Twitter sphere of substack then you can and you can do your new chat thread there but what we're doing is we're doing a text post um we can choose a section because I've got those set up we can add a subtitle we can start writing we can put a quote in there um we've got subscribe buttons which is good to put a subscribe button not to in every time you can um put a get the app button so there's all sorts of different things some bullet points can put images in um you can search for anything this is just the unsplash library so it's really really easy to find nice imagery to put within your substack I mean I think it's brilliant if you can use some of your own photography you know we've all got access to brilliant cameras in our pockets with our phones these days so if you have got a selection of photos you can use and make it more personal if not decide on your color palette and then just bring those colors in so it's all working together so that's all done we'll continue you and then we'll say okay it's for everyone we're not going to add any tags but I have got some tags set up there tags are not tags like they would be in any other place on the internet so tags are a way to help organize your posts see my other videos on those if you need to know about that um it's going to give us a social preview it's going to ask us whether they want to send via email and the substack app whether we want to schedule it so if we untick that box and press publish now we're simply going to going to be publishing it as a Blog if we send it via email it's going to go out to our subscribers so whoever has signed up with their email address to our substack it's going to go out there um and then you can schedule it as well so I like to look at the countries the range of countries that my substack is being read in and then I decide on a publishing time that fits both with them and with me I want to be around for comments I want to make sure that the Cadence works with everything else that I'm doing in my life and online during that week so I have a bit of a think about that you can schedule stuff up to three months in advance so you've got that there okay so we'll cancel that off um if there's anything else that you guys want to know I have recorded tutorials on absolutely everything in the membership so this was just really a Whistle Stop tour to make sure that you understood that you had those two separate places you write a profile or you create create a profile if you like and then your publication dashboard and then everything else you will figure out as you go but if you're looking for something specific if you think that I can help you with that then come out over to the sparkle on substack membership we meet twice a month we have an a to zed of all of the tutorials there's a thriving community that are all there to support and cheerlead you and your work um if you want to stay quite small and quite introverted and quite cozy as you arriving to substack and figure it all out then you know that that's there for you in the future that I'm here for you and that's how I started so I've grown my spaces to over 12,000 subscribers which I know if you are comparing that to kind of the way things have been on social media um it can take people a long time to build a list of that size and I've done that in two two is years um so I'm incredibly proud of the work that I've done and how I understand the substack platform it's definitely one of my special interests um and it's been lovely to spend a bit of time with you today um I know that that was quite fast-paced but hope hopefully it's given you some insight and some of the sophisticated Nuance in terms of how much I understand the platform and I'd be really pleased to help you further thanks everyone