Substack Growth Manager

SUBSTACK GROWTH AND PAID MEMBERSHIP MANAGER
Make Me Visible

ABOUT MAKE ME VISIBLE

Make Me Visible is being built for people who become invisible when families, healthcare systems, employers, professionals, law enforcement, courts, and other institutions fail them.

The publication investigates what happens after the first failure: when evidence is ignored, responsibility is passed from one institution to another, continuity disappears, and a vulnerable person is left to fight alone.

Its subjects include chronic and complex illness, disability, family abandonment, financial exploitation, healthcare failures, professional misconduct, institutional inaction, wrongful criminalization, retaliation, broken witness chains, and the difference between appearing protected and actually being protected.

This is not content created from a distance. It is a founder-led publication built from lived authority, direct experience, evidence, and years spent confronting the systems it examines.

WHERE THE PUBLICATION IS NOW

Make Me Visible currently has 47 subscribers, including two paid subscribers.

The audience is still small. That is exactly why this opportunity matters.

The person hired will not inherit a publication that someone else has already grown. You will have the chance to help build the readership, paid membership, distribution system, and public identity from the beginning—and to prove that serious writing about vulnerable people can become both influential and financially sustainable.

ABOUT THE POSITION

We are looking for someone who can turn Make Me Visible’s Substack into a growing publication and committed paid community.

This person will be responsible for subscriber growth, distribution, free-to-paid conversion, reader retention, publication partnerships, and making sure every strong article reaches the people most likely to care about it.

This is not simply a writing position, a social-media posting position, or a job where someone publishes an article and waits for readers to appear.

The founder will continue to provide the lived authority, original thinking, arguments, frameworks, and central voice of the publication. Your job is to make sure that work is packaged, distributed, positioned, and followed through with the seriousness it deserves.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

• Develop a clear growth plan for increasing free and paid subscribers.

• Determine which audiences are most likely to read, share, support, and pay for Make Me Visible.

• Identify where those readers already gather, including newsletters, podcasts, advocacy communities, professional groups, patient communities, disability organizations, legal communities, and publications covering institutional accountability.

• Build relationships with aligned Substack writers, newsletter publishers, podcast hosts, advocates, researchers, journalists, and community leaders.

• Pursue newsletter recommendations, cross-publication opportunities, guest contributions, interviews, partnerships, and other credible paths to new readers.

• Create a distribution plan for every article rather than treating publication as the final step.

• Turn each long-form article into strong promotional material for relevant channels without stripping away its meaning or making it sound generic.

• Strengthen headlines, subtitles, opening sections, article descriptions, calls to action, and paid-subscription invitations.

• Help determine what should remain free, what belongs behind the paywall, and how the free portion should establish enough value that readers understand why the paid work matters.

• Develop clear reasons for readers to become paid subscribers beyond simply “supporting the mission.”

• Build welcome, conversion, renewal, and re-engagement messages for free and paid subscribers.

• Identify which subjects generate subscriptions, replies, shares, paid conversions, and long-term readership.

• Track where new subscribers came from and what caused them to subscribe.

• Study subscriber behavior and recommend what should be continued, changed, expanded, or stopped.

• Maintain an editorial and distribution calendar so articles, follow-ups, partnerships, and promotional opportunities do not disappear.

• Provide weekly reporting that shows completed actions, subscriber movement, paid conversions, distribution results, unresolved opportunities, and the next actions required.

PROTECTING THE VOICE

Make Me Visible cannot sound like generic nonprofit language, motivational content, or recycled advocacy slogans.

The publication’s value comes from saying what institutions, professionals, and comfortable observers often refuse to say. Its writing must remain direct, specific, evidence-conscious, and grounded in what vulnerable people actually experience.

The person in this role must know how to strengthen the presentation of an article without flattening the founder’s voice or rewriting lived authority into bland marketing language.

You must be able to identify the central argument, the question that makes someone stop, the insight that belongs in the headline, and the reason the reader should continue into the paid edition.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

• Free and paid subscribers increase through identifiable sources.

• Every article has a distribution plan before it is published.

• Strong articles continue circulating after publication day.

• Readers understand what makes Make Me Visible different from general advocacy content.

• Paid editions contain enough original value to justify the subscription.

• Free subscribers receive clear and credible reasons to upgrade.

• Partnerships and recommendations produce measurable readership.

• Subscriber responses and behavior inform future decisions.

• No promising lead, partnership, reader question, or promotional opportunity is lost because someone failed to follow up.

Specific growth targets will be set after the person hired reviews the publication, its existing content, current subscriber sources, and available distribution channels.

WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT

This is not posting the same article link repeatedly and calling it a growth strategy.

It is not buying subscribers, chasing meaningless impressions, using engagement groups, or filling the list with people who will never read the publication.

It is not copying tactics from unrelated lifestyle newsletters and assuming they will work for serious advocacy writing.

It is not waiting for the founder to identify every partner, write every promotional message, select every excerpt, and remind you about every follow-up.

We are not looking for activity that creates the appearance of work. We are looking for readership, paid conversion, relationships, and visible forward movement.

NON-NEGOTIABLE WORK STANDARD

Make Me Visible exists because too many people fail to act after they know that someone is vulnerable. That failure will not be repeated inside the team building this publication.

You must be consistent. You must finish what you start. You must communicate before a deadline is missed, not after. You must maintain accurate records, follow up without being chased, and return with solutions when the first approach does not work.

You are expected to study the publication, understand its arguments, research independently, and make informed recommendations. You will not be spoon-fed every idea, contact, caption, or next step.

If you need constant reminders, disappear when a task becomes difficult, submit generic work, miss commitments without warning, or confuse being busy with producing results, this position is not for you.

Repeated inconsistency, silence, unfinished work, excuses without proposed solutions, or an inability to take ownership will end the working relationship quickly.

WHO SHOULD APPLY

Apply if you:

• Have experience growing a Substack, newsletter, membership publication, media platform, or mission-driven audience.

• Understand both free-subscriber growth and paid-subscriber conversion.

• Can show where prior audience growth came from and what you personally did to create it.

• Know how to distribute serious long-form writing beyond social-media posting.

• Can build relationships with writers, publications, podcasts, advocates, and communities.

• Can work with sensitive subjects involving disability, illness, abuse, institutional failure, and injustice without sensationalizing vulnerable people.

• Can preserve a founder’s voice while strengthening headlines, positioning, and reader conversion.

• Use numbers honestly and can distinguish genuine readers from vanity metrics.

• Take action without waiting for repeated instructions.

• Follow opportunities through to completion.

• Want to help build something that protects vulnerable people while proving that the work can sustain and expand itself.

PROOF-OF-ABILITY REQUIREMENT

Before an interview, applicants must submit:

A 30-day growth plan for taking Make Me Visible beyond its current 47 subscribers and two paid subscribers.

Five specific audiences that should be reading Make Me Visible, including where each audience can realistically be reached.

Ten specific newsletters, writers, podcasts, organizations, or communities that could introduce Make Me Visible to aligned readers.

An explanation of why each of those ten choices is relevant. Famous names without a credible connection will not count.

One partnership or recommendation request written for the strongest person or publication on the list.

One example of how an existing Make Me Visible article should be packaged and distributed, including a proposed headline, description, promotional excerpt, call to action, and free-to-paid transition.

A weekly reporting structure showing how you would track subscriber sources, free subscribers, paid conversions, partnership activity, distribution, follow-ups, and completed outcomes.

Evidence of a newsletter, audience, membership, publication, or community you have previously helped grow. Clearly explain your individual contribution and the results you can verify.

Generic growth plans, copied marketing advice, unverifiable results, purchased lists, and applications that do not show a real understanding of Make Me Visible will not be considered.