Monthly Round-Up: February & March'26 Earnings Report
10,000 subscribers. 500 paid. A scaling engine finally in place. Here's what happened in February and March.
It’s been… a different kind of two months.
Not the “everything is exploding” kind, not at all. More like the quiet kind where things lock into place.
And to be honest, those are the months that matter the most.
A lot of invisible work. System work. Scaling work. The kind that stays invisible but compounds into things that hopefully will surface in the next month (they already started in April, but more on that below).
So what happened?
Two milestones: 10,000 total subscribers. 500 paid.
To celebrate I wrote a comprehensive “Substack for Beginners” course in one single post:
Then turned it into a printable cheat sheet, get it for FREE here:
Now. Let’s get to what actually happened these two months.
As usual, this is what I have for you today:
Content: strategies I implemented and their outcome
Distribution: platforms I used and how they performed and why
Monetization: what I did to sell, how much I earned (total & by channel)
Outlook: what I plan to start, stop, change or continue in the future, and why
Let’s begin!
Content & Distribution
One new mini course
The QUEST Bonus Course: Self-Selling Offers - The Data-Driven Copywriting Course. It’s the formula behind building offers that sell without manipulation, fake urgency, or guru tactics.
I’m genuinely proud of this one. It packages 15+ years of selling subscription products into one framework you can apply to your newsletter tomorrow. You can check it out here:
Both are included in your VIP paid membership. If you haven’t gone through them yet, do that before you read anything else.
The Viral Notes Writer GPT
I worked heavily to bring the Viral Notes Writer - my most famous custom GPT - to Claude.
This resulted in a new update of the GPT with a new template inside, and a brand new skill for Claude - I’m publishing this one tomorrow, stay tuned.
Why do I do this?
Because everyone is moving to Claude lately. But I’m keeping the GPT, not sunsetting it. Claude does perform better lately, but when it comes to short-form writing, especially the type for Notes, my data shows that the custom GPT is the better one.
I’m just giving you the Claude skill, because you asked.
Scaling strategy
This is the work no one saw but that I feel everywhere.
In February and March I put the scaling infrastructure in place. Ramped up the strategy, made all the necessary decisions and set the systems I needed in place.
Out of all the trial and error testing, few things surfaced - things that can help this business scale beyond the $10k a month.
Results should follow in the months ahead. And I mean that with data behind it, not just a gut feeling. You know me, I make data-driven decisions. Nerdy, but it works.
More on that in the Outlook section below.
List consolidation and backend cleanup
This one was long overdue. And it’s not new, I did it in December, just didn’t document. So here it is…
I finally consolidated my email lists on Kit and Substack into one clean, working system.
I imported subscribers from Kit into Substack - about 2.5k of them.
I removed cold subscribers from Kit. And I installed automation to handle this ongoing, so I never have to do it manually again.
I still keep them in Substack, because why not. Some people need 3 months before they buy from you, some 6, some 12 and some a few years. When the timing is right.
So I never fully delete a subscriber from my list.
But I don’t want to pay for them in Kit. Just efficiency.
On top of that, I got approved for Kit Ads. And I got approved for Amazon Influencers (my bookshelf store is coming in the near future).
These aren’t revenue streams yet. But they’re growth infrastructure that will show up in future reports.
I did test Kit ads already with my other newsletter - the CREATIVE BiTES. Looks good so far.
Collaborations (lots of them)
February and March were probably my most collaboration-dense months yet. Phew, that was intense.
But I see a pattern: collabs in non-meta niches (fashion, fiction, trauma recovery, public speaking) routinely hit the same engagement as Substack-focused content, sometimes higher. My audience is curious beyond Substack. Worth noting.
Ok now
Monetization
Now let’s get to the most juicy part - revenue breakdowns by month, by source, how my conversion rates changed after consolidation how much I actually earned since launch and how.