To Write Daily or Not? What Beginner Writers Should Know About Finding the Right Publishing Rhythm

Discover the right timing for writing daily—and when it’s time to stop: for better engagement, more creativity, and faster progress on Substack.

Hello, guys!

This is actually my first time publishing two long posts that are one week apart from each other. If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know that I used to write daily.

For this newsletter, I want to share what I’ve learned from this switch, and I think it’ll be helpful for beginner writers with no prior online writing experience who want to be more efficient in their writing efforts here on Substack.

First, I just want to put it out there that while I know one week isn’t enough time to conclude the best publishing frequency in the long run, I have strong indicators that writing once a week is definitely more efficient than writing daily, both for personal growth and, of course, audience growth.

Now, let’s get into it.

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If you’re a new writer, you’ve probably heard a lot of big-name online writers suggest that publishing daily is the way to go because each piece you publish is like adding a soldier to your “growth army.” The more pieces, the higher the chance you’ll be able to cut through the noise.

They always say quantity > quality, and that you just need the right volume in order to take off.

I was once that newbie writer who firmly subscribed to this idea.

I wrote long posts religiously for a full 60 days, but growth was so slow that at some point, I thought I just needed to keep pushing.

However, during those 60 days, I only gained 13 new subscribers from Substack; the rest were imported from outside Substack.

Just last week, when I stopped writing daily and switched to writing once a week, I gained 10 new subscribers in a week! —that’s more than one per day! Compare that to the 13 I gained in 60 days, which averages out to 4.62 days per new subscriber.

That’s a huge difference!

Not only that, my posts are now getting more traffic from the app itself, rather than just from my email list. This means they’re getting clicked and read more.

Since then, more and more of my posts and notes have been getting more engagement and views. I’ve also had the chance to connect with many talented writers out there. 

It’s only been a week, but it feels like the progress I’ve made since I stopped writing daily has been more than I achieved in 60 days!

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So, what changed?

I had more time to engage on the platform instead of just pushing out content.

One thing that makes Substack unique is that it’s as much a social platform with its note feature as it is a writing platform. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that in order to grow, you need to interact. 

You can’t just wait for readers to find your work—you need to actively seek them out.

Since the switch, I decided to write 3 notes per day and actively engage with posts I genuinely like, at least 7 posts a day. Reading about 7 posts and engaging with them would take me about an hour, which, when I was writing every day, was all used up just drafting my post. Usually I do this part during my lunch break, since it is not a heavy task. 

The three notes I write each day get completed throughout the day. Some of these notes are spontaneous thoughts I want to share, and others come from my “Idea Bank,” where I store potential note ideas to retrieve whenever I need them. 

But there is always one note in a day that came from my previous long post. 

This is actually one perk of having written tons of articles in my first two months is that I already have a ton of content to draw from.

I believe some articles on Substack don’t get enough views and engagement, not because they’re bad, but because they haven’t managed to break through the noise and reach the intended audience. 

So every day, I pick one article and see if I can write a note about it. Some articles can even be turned into multiple notes!

This note :

Is from this Post:

I had more time for learning and other things.

Now that I’m spending less time writing and editing, I have more time to consume content, generate and store new ideas. When I was writing daily, especially on busy days, I didn’t even have time to read a book or consume much content. But since I now write once a week, I have plenty of time to discover something new, and I have more stored ideas because I’m only publishing once a week, compared to 7 times a week and I grow more  as a person outside of writing. 

I had more time to think about my content strategy and evaluate my direction.

One big downside of writing daily is that, because you’re constantly releasing content, you barely have time to plan a content strategy. You’re basically under a daily deadline, so you just have to write and publish whatever you’ve got.

I also believe that in order to be a better writer, you should live your life fully. Writing daily took up so much of my time that I had little left for side projects that could potentially enrich my learning and the things I share here.

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What do I think moving forward?

Although the three reasons I just mentioned point to the negative side of writing daily, I don’t think you should avoid it altogether. 

I think writing online EVERYDAY is great for absolute beginners for these reasons:

Consistency is key.

One of the best ways to develop the habit of consistent writing is to write daily. For me, this was exactly the case. I wanted to make writing a long post a daily habit before I transitioned to writing less frequently. So that the switch would be much easier and I already have cultivated my commitment enough to stay here. 

It helps you improve your writing skills faster.

Every article you publish is a chance to practice. 

You’ll become more aware of the common mistakes you make, the small details you often overlook, and your overall pattern recognition will improve.

Also, you’ll start noticing your writing habits and slowly begin tweaking them to make everything more efficient. During this stage, you’ll develop a writing routine because writing daily helps you figure out what works and what doesn’t. 

Writing daily forced me to create systems for generating ideas, writing, and editing—systems which I've also shared here  in previous posts.

Writing daily helps you identify your niche sooner.

As I mentioned earlier, writing daily can limit your ability to plan a solid content strategy, but you can’t really have a strategy if you don’t know your niche. Writing daily helps you figure that out faster. 

Once you’ve figured out what works, you can move forward with crafting a focused content strategy.

Writing daily helps you build your library faster.

It’s more likely for someone to subscribe to a Substack with tons of posts than just a few. 

A Substack with a full library of content shows that the writer is actively producing and taking their work seriously. It also shows readers there’s plenty to read, which builds credibility and experience. Plus, with the added bonus of the hack I just shared, you’ll have a huge library of content that you can later turn into notes, which helps you reuse your content and increase your reach.

If I had been writing daily for the past two months, every time someone visited my publication, there’d probably be a lesser chance for them to subscribe. This is because I would’ve only covered a few topics, and my content theme would still be unclear since I was still figuring things out. 

Writing daily ensures that when the opportunity arises, you’re already ready.

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Now that I’ve laid out the pros and cons of writing daily vs. not writing daily, what’s the bottom line?

For beginner writers, I suggest the best approach is to start writing daily, but only up to some point.

Once you feel like you’ve created enough content for your library, and you’ve trained your consistency muscle, and have a clearer idea of your niche  you can switch from a quantity-based approach to a more deliberate one. At that point, you can reduce your publishing frequency.

This way, you can maximize the impact of the effort you’ve already invested.

For me, it took 2 months to finally decide to switch from daily to weekly, and so far, the results speak for themselves:

• Engagements have gone up.

• Views have increased—on my new articles and even the old ones that had been dormant for weeks. Some are getting new engagements.

• Subscribers have also increased.

• The free time I gained has been invested in other aspects of my growth, such as engagement and building my network.

I hope this helps anyone who’s on the fence about how often to publish!

That is all for today and have a good day!