five pieces of advice for writing a fashion newsletter
if you're starting a substack in 2024...
January is prime “I’m starting a Substack” season. I published my first post in December 2021, two years ago, with a glossy-eyed excitement towards what a new year could bring, where this newsletter would go, where it would bring me. The Molehill is two years old but I still feel like it’s a new adventure. It feels like the golden age of Tumblr where you would develop random kinships with people on the internet who like the same stuff as you, who hunt for the same eBay deals and obsess over the same Sandy Liang wedding details.
If you are starting a fashion newsletter in 2024, I imagine you’re wondering how to navigate Substack…how to make sense of the writer-reader relationship.
Lesson #1: Readers will come with consistent posting.
This is a graph of my subscribers starting from the day one. Some insights:
It took me 3 months to publish my first post!
I started posting very casually in 2022, maybe once every 1.2 months.
Not every piece is gonna be good but the most important factor is consistency.
2023 was the year I developed the confidence and skills to write more regularly. I started to really understand my own creative process and goals for my newsletter.
Lesson #2: Unsubscribes are totally normal—good, even.
More of my subscription stats: