every single time a platform starts growing, the same guy shows up. you know the guy. he was “early” to crypto. he was “early” to nfts. probably had a dropshipping store during lockdown. did the four-hour-workweek thing for a summer. now he’s telling you substack is the next big unlock, the next tiktok-in-2012, the next thing you’d be an idiot to miss.
he’s not lying about the opportunity existing. he’s lying about what the opportunity actually is.
“how to blow up on substack” course sellers are bs-ing you. substack doesn’t make you a writer. it makes writing easier to sell. two completely different products. only one of them is yours to build.
the gold rush was never about gold
the people who actually made money in the california gold rush weren’t the miners freezing in rivers for months. it was the guy selling shovels. levi strauss, selling denim that didn’t rip. most miners went broke. the shovel guy built an empire.
that’s substack right now, almost exactly. the “gold” is a sustainable writing income. the shovels are the “how to get your first 1,000 subscribers” courses, the notes-growth-hacking threads, the “i turned my newsletter into a 6-figure business” case studies that are actually selling you the case-study-writing service. not the newsletter.
i’m not saying it’s all fake. some of these people genuinely built something real. i’m saying pay attention to whether the person teaching you to strike gold ever struck it themselves, or just got really good at selling shovels to people who wanted to.
“early” doesn’t mean what tech bros think it means
this one makes me a little angry, ngl.
the tiktok-in-2012 pitch works because it makes success sound like a matter of timing instead of substance. if only i’d gotten there first. if only i’d claimed my username before it got crowded. like writing is a land grab and not just, you know. writing.
does being subscriber 40 versus subscriber 40,000 change whether what you wrote was good? being early doesn’t make your sentences sharper. doesn’t give you a point of view. you can be the first person on a brand new platform and still have nothing to say, and no algorithm fixes that.
and the guys pushing “get in now before it’s saturated” energy are almost never talking about their own writing. they’re talking about their growth numbers. not the same conversation. a lot of people are getting sold one as the other.
where i stop being annoyed
underneath the hustle-bro noise there’s something real, and it deserves more credit than the grifters give it.
think about what used to stand between “i’m a good writer” and “i get paid for it.” you needed a publishing house to say yes. an editor’s inbox that actually responded. a newspaper willing to run your byline. an entire industry of gatekeepers between your sentences and someone’s wallet, and the answer, most of the time, was just no. not because the writing was bad. because the infrastructure to say yes to a nobody didn’t exist.
13yo me used to write and tell stories. i had a blog on wordpress called ‘demosthenic cue.’ wrote for a bit, but taking care of everything around the writing took more effort than the writing itself. tried to turn it into an actual writing org at one point. it was a headache for a kid who just liked writing
there wasn’t a single platform back then that handled hosting, distribution, and an algorithm to find you readers, all in one place. that infrastructure exists now. that part isn’t hype. it’s genuinely new, and i think it’s the most underrated thing about this whole moment.
look at casey newton. spent years at the verge building beat expertise and trust before platformer existed. the newsletter didn’t create his authority, it gave his already-earned authority a direct line to people willing to pay for it, without needing a masthead to vouch for him first.
that’s the version of this i actually care about. not “everyone should start a newsletter and get rich.” if you’ve spent years being good at something, you no longer need a gatekeeper’s permission to get paid for it. for a lot of writers, that’s everything.
here’s my actual point
if you’re writing because you have something to say, and you want the version of the world where good writing can quietly, slowly, honestly become a living? i’m completely on your side. that dream is old and good and substack is a genuinely great tool for it. keep going. be consistent. get better. let the income follow the writing, not the other way around.
but if you’re here because some guy with a ring light told you this is the next tiktok and you don’t want to miss it, sorry to break it to you but there is no “it.” no land grab. no unclaimed territory where mediocre writing becomes valuable just because you showed up before the crowd. the crowd was never the opportunity.
writing has paid people for a very long time. substack just removed one of the dumbest barriers in its way. the part where you needed someone else’s permission to get paid. that’s the whole opportunity.
get good. say something real. let the tool do what it’s actually good at, which is getting out of your way.
yours inquisitively,
Nush <3
grifters sell maps to a gold mine they've never entered; the writer is still down in the shaft, covered in dust, digging for something that might actually gleam, maybe the real treasure was always their audacity. One earns a living while the other deserves one and somehow, the shovel still costs more than the prose.
Promises of wealth often ring hollow.