The argument in one line.
Commenting on other writers' posts on Substack is the fastest path to building an audience because comments are short-form content you can immediately recycle as notes on your own profile.
Read if. Skip if.
- A Substack writer with less than 6 months on the platform who has published at least 5 posts but hasn't systematized audience-building beyond writing.
- A creator who writes regularly but feels stuck at low engagement and doesn't yet know that commenting can function as publishable content.
- Someone building a Substack audience who has 30 minutes daily available and wants a concrete, repeatable system to generate traffic without paid promotion.
- You already have 1,000+ paid subscribers — this is foundational audience-building advice, not growth strategy for mature publications.
- You're looking for algorithmic hacks or technical platform features — this is entirely about manual engagement and behavioral habit-stacking.
The full version, fast.
The fastest way to grow a Substack audience is to block thirty minutes every morning and comment on ten to twenty other writers' posts, because a comment is structurally identical to a short-form Note and lives inside the same discovery ecosystem. The method is simple: scroll your feed, leave a genuine quick response on each post, and any reply that lands well gets copy-pasted onto your own profile as a standalone Note. Stop overthinking which accounts to engage with or how polished each reply needs to be. The work you already did writing the long-form piece earns you the right to chop, remix, and republish it everywhere. Traction fails from non-execution, not lack of talent.
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01 · Cold open
Question + tease of 'biggest missed opportunity on the platform'
02 · The reframe
Audience guesses 'engage with other people' — Cole reframes: a comment IS a short-form post. No difference.
03 · The 30-minute routine
Block 30 min every morning, comment on 20 people's posts. Miami 2022 WeWork origin story with Dickie.
04 · Permission frame
'Your laptop will not explode if you do this incorrectly.' Sets up the live demo.
05 · Live demo: Roman
Cole writes a real comment on Roman's post about content-as-repository, posts it, then copies it as a Note.
06 · Anti-overthinking beat
'Should we have sat here and thought about this for 90 minutes?' Repetition of the no-overthinking permission.
07 · Your content is yours
The repurpose mantra — copy, remix, combine, expand, compress, cross-post. 'How do I chop it apart in 100 different ways? That is the game.'
08 · Live demo: Jake
Second live demo — replies to Jake's intro post, posts it, 'did my laptop explode?'
09 · The permission ladder
'Is it okay if I? Yes. Should I? Yes. Can I? Yes.' Call-and-response sequence.
10 · The execution-gap closer
15,000 writers through Ship 30. 'Number one reason people don't see traction is not lack of talent — it's that they don't do it.'
11 · CTA: startwritingonline.com
Cut to solo couch set. Pitch for the free master class, lead-magnet popup overlays 'How To Start Writing Online.'
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Commenting on Substack is missed short-form distribution — a good comment is a standalone post that appears in front of an already-engaged audience.
- The 30-minute morning commenting routine targets 20 publications, producing 20 micro-posts before the workday starts.
- Copy-pasting your best Substack comments into Notes immediately repurposes them as standalone content without any rewriting.
- Substack's algorithm surfaces thoughtful comments to publication subscribers, giving commenters organic reach into audiences they did not build.
- Most creators optimize only for publishing output and ignore the comment inbox as a distribution channel.
- A comment that sparks a reply thread from the original author functions as a public endorsement visible to the author's entire subscriber base.
- The 20-publications-per-morning rule creates a minimum viable distribution habit that compounds over weeks without requiring new content ideas.
- Repurposing comments as Notes closes the loop between engagement effort and owned-audience growth.
- Commenting on publications slightly above your own subscriber count puts your name in front of readers who are the right amount ahead of you.
- The opportunity is disproportionate because most writers treat comments as a courtesy rather than a growth lever.
- Short-form output on Substack (Notes + comments) seeds long-form newsletter ideas by surfacing which angles generate the most replies.
- Consistency in the commenting routine matters more than the quality of any single comment — volume builds recognition faster than occasional brilliance.
A Comment Is a Short-Form Post — Write Thirty Per Day
Nicolas Cole shows that commenting on Substack is mechanically identical to writing a short-form post — and that 30 minutes of comments every morning is the fastest path to platform growth.
- The biggest missed opportunity on the platform is a question the audience has to answer before they get the reframe
- Writing a comment is literally the same thing as writing a short-form post — the distinction is psychological, not mechanical
- Fastest path to traffic, audience, and platform attention is the same action most people already do for free and do not count as publishing
- Block 30 minutes every morning, comment on 20 posts — this was the daily routine behind the Miami 2022 results
- Consistency compounds — doing it every day is the entire method, there is no optimization layer
- Write the comment on someone's post, post it, then copy it as a Note — one action, two placements
- The live demo removes the abstract — seeing a real comment written and posted in real time is the permission slip
- Copy, remix, combine, expand, compress, cross-post — every comment is raw material for every other format
- The game is not writing more, it is chopping the same material into 100 different forms
- The number one reason writers do not see traction is not talent — it is not doing it
- Fifteen thousand writers across Ship 30 confirmed this — the pattern holds regardless of niche or skill level
Terms worth knowing.
- Substack Notes
- A short-form social feed within Substack (similar to Twitter posts) where writers can share quick thoughts, links, and excerpts that get distributed to their subscribers and across the platform.
- Notes traffic
- Audience engagement and new subscriber growth driven specifically by activity in Substack's Notes feed, as opposed to traffic from email newsletters or external platforms.
- Permission ladder
- A content strategy concept where a creator builds trust incrementally through free value — comments, short posts, free newsletters — before asking the audience to take a bigger commitment like paying for a subscription.
- Cross-posting
- The practice of publishing the same piece of content on multiple platforms or formats simultaneously to maximize reach without creating entirely new material for each channel.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
“I wanna point out the single biggest missed opportunity on the entire platform.”
“Writing a comment is literally the same thing as writing a short form piece of content. A comment and a piece of content are the same exact thing.”
“You block thirty minutes in the morning, and you go comment on 20 people's posts.”
“Your laptop will not explode if you do this incorrectly.”
“On the Internet, your content is yours. You can copy paste it. You can remix it. You can combine it. You can expand it. You can compress it.”
“How do I chop it apart in a 100 different ways? That is the game.”
“Is it okay if I? Yes. It is. Should I? Yes. You should. Can I? Yes. You can.”
“The number one reason why people do not see traction is not because they lack talent. It is not because they don't know what to do. It is simply because they don't do it.”
Word for word.
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Nicolas Cole opens with a tease, not an answer — 'the single biggest missed opportunity on the entire platform' — then makes the audience guess before he delivers the line that powers the rest of the video: a comment is literally the same thing as a short-form post. From there it's seven minutes of one idea, repeated five ways, demonstrated twice live.
Named ideas worth stealing.
Comment = Note Equivalence
A comment on someone else's Substack post and a short-form Note on your own profile are the same artifact — same length, same audience surface, same value. Therefore every comment is one round-trip away from being a Note on your feed.
The 30-Minute Morning Routine
- Block 30 minutes every morning
- Scroll your feed
- Find 10 people you can comment on
- Write a quick reply on each one
- If a comment lands well, copy-paste it as a Note on your own profile
Cole's exact daily ritual from his Miami 2022 WeWork month with Dickie Bush — 30 minutes, 20-30 manual replies a day, every day.
The Permission Ladder
- Is it okay if I? — Yes. It is.
- Should I? — Yes. You should.
- Can I? — Yes. You can.
Three-rung call-and-response rhetorical pattern. Cole answers each of the three questions a creator-in-paralysis is silently asking, in order.
Chop It Apart 100 Ways
Your newsletter is the hard work; everything else is repurposing the same idea in 100 different containers. 'It's not about writing other things. It's about taking the thing you already wrote.'
How they asked for the click.
“If you wanna write online but aren't sure where to start, click the link in the description of this video and check out startwritingonline.com. This is a free master class I put together sharing all of our most helpful frameworks for beginners.”
Hard set-change signals the shift from teaching to selling. Cole goes from desk + Perrier to a totally different couch set in a ball cap — the set tells the viewer 'we're done teaching, here's the ask.' Lead-magnet popup overlays at 6:43 reinforces the verbal CTA visually. Social proof: '100,000 writers have gone through this free master class.'
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Visual structure at a glance.
