What Does it Mean to Empower Progressive Writers?

Thoughts on writing, growth strategies, notes, Substack and Medium

Hello Everyone!

It has been a very busy month, but a lot of good things are happening and I’m pleased to have the opportunity to share them with you.

I know I mention

Kristina God

often, but I like to give credit where credit is due. I’d been pretty lethargic in my use of Substack for about a year—mainly because I’d been doing so well on Medium. But when I hit 100 subscribers, I thought I’d take it more seriously and invest in some growth and marketing strategies.

I signed up for Kristina’s newsletter, and it’s really given me a nice surge of momentum that hasn’t tapered off. I hit my first 1,000 subscribers in the beginning of May and I’m sitting at just under 1.7k now:

I’m still doing a LOT of experimenting to see what this newsletter is going to be, but I feel as if it’s coming into shape. To put it in terms of art, I feel as if the outline has been sketched in now.

I’ve implemented a lot of changes after watching Kristina’s interview with Substack superstar

Sarah Fay

. One of the things she mentioned was that it’s best to keep your newsletter free but to enable paid subscriptions so that people can support your work.

That model sits well with me, and I’ve created a couple permanent coupons to provide more options.

Thanks to everyone who is in a financial situation where they can support me. For those of you who can’t, hopefully I’ll be able to provide you with some actionable strategies to get there in this newsletter, so let’s get going!

I think of Medium as a Newsletter with one million followers

I recently did a guest post for

David McIlroy

where I first started thinking about how to integrate Medium and Substack (I’m also reading his book, which is good).

So, here’s the first thing I’m going to say to sabotage myself…

Tip #1: If you’re serious about writing for a living, the first thing you should do is become a paid member on Medium (even before you become a paid subscriber to my newsletter… sigh).

This is where I wish Medium still had their referred membership program because I would have actually gotten paid for promoting them like this. But that program is gone and I’m still recommending that writers sign up.

The reason I’m doing this is because once you sign up for Medium and get into their partnership program, you’ll quickly earn the membership money back.

As of now, it’s only $60 a year. If you put up an article a couple times a month, I’m pretty confident you’ll make that $60 back. Remember, I’m a Boost nominator, so the Medium advice I offer in this newsletter will maximize your chances of earning even if you don’t get Boosted.

Here’s some proof from a story that wasn’t Boosted:

That one story earned almost enough to cover a Medium membership. I’d prefer it if you were all Medium members for a variety of reasons. So, even though I know that money is always tight with writers (believe me I know), I encourage you to sign up for Medium, and then use what I teach you to start making money there. When you start making decent money, toss me a tip. Seems fair right?

• Sign up for medium

• Start making money

• Then… support Walter’s Newsletter

That’s fair though, I don’t feel you should pay unless you’re getting equivalent or greater value out of the subscription.

Empowering progressive writers and notes

You’ve probably been seeing what I’ve been doing with Substack’s notes lately. Essentially, it’s the opposite of a growth strategy. I’m deliberately trying to stir people up so they reveal their true prejudices so I can block them.

Why am I doing this?

It’s because I know my writing advice works and I don’t want malicious forces to use my ideas to promote hate speech.

My family is an immigrant family and anti-immigrant hate speech has become one of the fundamental elements of the Republican party. They claim that’s not true, but they’re a bunch of lying liars who lie.

I’m annoyed by this on a lot of levels, but one of the things that really gets me is that even though they’re irritated with “undocumented immigrants” they always just shorten it to “immigrants.” Americans are too ignorant to realize that the word “immigrant” means everyone in this country who does not have Native American heritage.

Basically, the Republican party has been spending the last 10 years bragging about how they’re going to take out EVERYBODY, and crowds and crowds of people always show up to pump their fists and scream approval. It’s sickening.

The newsletter name change

After watching Sarah Fay’s interview, I began tinkering with my newsletter’s name. I don’t know if you saw it, but I went through a variety of choices. Let’s see if I can remember them:

• Walter Rhein’s Newsletter

• How to Make Money Writing

• Notes from Walter Rhein

• Empowering Writers by Walter Rhein

• Empowering Progressive Writers by Walter Rhein

I started off with the generic “make money writing” title because the main reason I’m on Substack is because Medium doesn’t really like those kinds of articles.

I switched to “Notes from Walter Rhein” because I’d been giving people a lot of notes on their stories, and I’d been using Substack’s notes. I only left it with that title for about a week.

For my next change, I’d thought of something like “Notes from the apocalypse” or “Empowering writers to make a better world.” Eventually I landed on “progressive” as the most accurate and succinct descriptor of what I was trying to do.

Plus, the word kept turning up in my notes, so there you have it.

I might just shorten the title to “Empowering Progressive Writers” and leave off the byline, but for now that doesn’t seem like a big issue.

I’m being overwhelmed by excellent comments

I’ve got to be a little careful with Notes because I’m finding I can spend the whole day there if I’m not careful. I’m also finding that the number of comments I’m getting across Substack and Medium is something I need to manage better.

Your comments are very useful to me. Quite often readers manage to sum up the gist of my articles in a way that provides me with new insight into what I was trying to say. That’s very important, and it helps guide my selection process as I consider new topics to write about.

I already try to tackle my comments in the evening when I’ve already finished my article for the day. Reading comments is what you should do when you’re fatigued from finishing your work. If you wake up in the morning and dive right into comments, you might not get an article done.

So, I’m doing my best to respond to everyone, but sometimes the interface makes it easy to miss comments. If I don’t respond, it’s not for a lack of trying, I just got buried under a landslide and couldn’t get to you. I’ll get the next one.

That’s all for today. Please don’t hesitate to ask your specific questions and I’ll get to them in a future newsletter. I had about 10 more things to say, but this article is already getting long.

I’m excited about the trajectory of this newsletter. I feel the USA and the world need more people with a rational message who are equipped to get eyeballs on their writing.

My objective is to provide you with the strategies to achieve just that. Thanks for reading!