How to succeed as an anonymous writer on Substack

Lessons from two years as an anon

Here I will break down everything I have learned on how to succeed as an anon writing under a pseudonym on Substack. The assumption will be that the reader is starting, as I did two years ago, with a fresh account and no contacts, reputation, or following on other platforms. I hope that non-anons will also find much of value in this piece.

Success here does not necessarily mean garnering a large audience (although these steps will help in that regard) but can equally mean producing high-quality work and making a few good friends with whom to collaborate on other ventures.

In order to keep this piece concise and targeted to the objective at hand, I will not break down all the conventional steps that all authors, anon or not, should take in setting up a Substack. I trust my high-agency audience to find good guides elsewhere. I’d recommend looking up interviews with the team at

Doomberg

, who have approached this thoughtfully and found great success.

This article will focus on overcoming the challenges which are particularly acute for anons. A lot of the first generation of Substack successes were either already big names, or grew substantially via Twitter when the platform was Substack-friendly. These options are not available to new anons, who face the following challenges:

1. New anons have no contacts or following elsewhere, so no audience to provide initial traction and get the ball rolling.

2. Anons have no ‘social proof’. Social proof helps when potential readers discover a publication with lots of followers and a Bestseller badge, as they have an immediate indicator that other people consider this work to be high quality, so they are more tempted to invest in checking it out themselves. Anons lack this advantage.

3. Anons’ identity and biography are hidden, making it difficult for a new reader to understand at a glance if they share an identity and worldview with the anon.

Here are my recommendations to overcome the above.