Almost 200 of you joined me and Philip Hofmacher from Write • Build • Scale in this amazing live to talk about how we got our orange Bestseller badges.
I just got mine and it still feels surreal a bit. There are only three of us in our niche who reached that level on Substack.
Here’s what we covered in a nutshell:
Start with the product, not the audience.
That’s the one thing Philip and I did the same, and neither of us had a viral post or paid ads to thank for the badge. I built my paid offers first and then started growing subscribers.
Growing an audience before you have an offer is like advertising a shop with no products inside of it. Don’t do this!
After that you have 3 jobs:
grow new subscribers,
convert them,
keep them paying.
I covered all of these in detail in this post:
Retention is the name of the game.
I said this in our first live together over a year ago and it sounded strange, because in year one especially if you sell mostly annual subscriptions (like me), churn is not a problem standing in front of you. Yet.
I spent 15 years in telecom, a market with an average 2 SIM cards per person, so retention is the whole business.
Substack is the same. So design the subscription for retention from day one.
My 3 ways:
keep adding new things to the paid tier so people see what’s coming,
solve a problem that comes back every month, and
build a community people don’t want to leave.
Philip’s add: onboarding. In their Substack Accelerator you can’t unlock the other spaces until you’ve read the values and introduced yourself. The Teachable team told him in Rome that 90% of people who buy a course never even start it. People who don’t use what they bought don’t renew.
Two different growth engines, both worked.
Philip’s approach: a strategic launch every 2 to 3 months, each one a spike, and the curve got steeper with every launch.
Me: launches make me sick, so I automated the promotion of the paid tier with a 30-day sequence in Kit. Different approach, same badge. Find your way, but you have to ask. Nobody buys what they don’t know exists.
What changed for me in April.
I finally got strategic about content and connected it to my paid offers. I went from 30 new paid subscribers a month to more than 130. That’s what got me to 1,000.
Notes vs posts.
Posts convert. Notes are the signposts that get people to your profile. Which is why your profile description has to say what you do for your paid members. It’s not a CV.
On AI.
Someone in the chat said “please no AI for notes.” I don’t recommend dumping a prompt into ChatGPT. I built a tool called the Viral Notes Writer with 2+ years of my own data and templates inside of it, and Lisa Garvey from my VIP members who also ways in the live shared she got 650 subscribers from one note written with it, using her own context.
You can get the Viral Notes Writer from the Unplugged toolbox in my perks.
One last thing…
Philip and I are cooking something up together. We’ll share more on that soon.
Until then, remember: becoming a bestseller is all about three things:
grow new subscribers,
convert them,
keep them paying.
Philip Hofmacher and I both cover this in our publications, so join us if you haven’t already. We’re two of the ONLY three on Substack with more than 1,000 paid subscribers. You can join the Write • Build • Scale here:
There’s no better proof than that!
Yana
P.S. I’m starting QUEST LIVES in September, where we go on Zoom every week for about 6 weeks to optimize Substack for a high conversion rate. And I’m increasing the prices, this time significantly, as my VIP will become my group coaching. Join my VIP and lock the current price forever.
