Content Creation Q&A and Videos

Question: Why don’t you consider Substack a top funnel channel that could be more top funnel if there are more AI newsletters created in the last year and VC newsletters being the most popular and others profitable (I read somewhere that The Pragmatic Engineer is estimated at making 1.5M with 727K subscribers if they monetized a good chunk of their subscriber base?...not sure how true that is). 

One of my Substacks has open rate is 40-60% with a varied click thru rate depending on content/ask (I have had Substack for a year now, that was based on an email list I maintained for 9 years). I know there are often less subscribers that actually are paid on Substack.

Question: What other ways can I try to segment my knowledge/info from my long-form content (capture somehow in the short form) that can still be engaging but less exhausting and intensive that can help with channel growth / sales? I'm a Substack creator, writer/author.

Background: I feel like a lot of your successful engineering examples came from people who worked at household name startups and FAANGMULA companies that had bigger followings. Because I never worked for a big household name even if I am considered a market leader/authority in my field, my following is still smaller than I prefer.

I released a book on my subject matter expertise a few years back, feel I did a less good job at marketing after publishing was at over 2.5K followers (I'm at about 6K now on LinkedIn, Twitter and less on IG/FB Fan Pg and haven't broken that 10K mark on any channel which frustrates me), I haven’t seen a ton of growth.

All my friends who broke 100K-1M followers either all have worked at FAANGMULA, or have been asked to model/act professionally so I feel this is at my disadvantage to a degree as I dislike showing my face and objectifying myself further to society’s physical image standard. Some of my Gen-Z friends have lifestyle IGs with 50K+ followers with a lot of engineering memes (short vids) and while I admire them to a degree for their ability to capture a large following, I find that my posts are always much longer form and easiest with Substack, Medium or the written word. For 4 years fans have asked me to livestream, release a podcast, or start a YouTube, all of which is a ton of work, energy, has some value, but I feel a ton of pressure to edit pixel perfect content, be “on” for a performance or get propositioned for dates. Do you have examples of content creators that don't show their face on screen that are able to scale?