Monthly Round-Up: February'25 Earnings Report
February was all about growth. I made a lot of changes
What gets measured gets done. I’ll never get bored saying that.
If you struggle with growth, the answers are in your data. You just have to look.
Time to look at February 2025.
As usual, this is what I have:
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
I made three major changes in January and I finally started seeing results in February.
1. A Lead Magnet for Substack.
When I started on Substack, I thought this was not necessary. After all, people subscribe from Notes and Recommendations, and both have no room for lead magnets.
But I was wrong.
I overlooked something major: the subscriber journey. Yes, people subscribe from Notes, but where do they decide?
Mostly looking at your profile and/or subscribe page. That’s where promote my lead magnet.
It works.
2. A Welcome Sequence that Converts
This lead magnet is a 10-day sequence that educates my new subscribers about my content. And gently push them to upgrade. People need to get oriented in your Substack, especially when you have tons of content, and I’m not sure if Substack will ever develop sequences. That’s why I use Kit.
Right after
This started in mid-January, but I started seeing results in mid-February.
It takes time.
But it works.
3. The all new Notes Writer GPT
This one is a blast! I’m getting so much positive feedback from people who use it, and my Notes are exploding.
For those of you who missed it: I upgraded my custom Notes Writer GPT - I trained it using hundreds of viral Notes and now it writes Notes that go viral and turn likes into subscribers.
Not a joke! Don’t believe it? Here’s a proof:
Got me 124 free subscribers and 1 paid so far. It’s still going.
And another one proof:
And I have more from people reaching out to me. You have to use that GPT, you’re seriously missing out if you don’t!
What I did with it in February? Started posting Notes about my Substack growth again. In December and January I paused this, as I wanted to see whether I can grow with different type of content. The problem? It’s not what my Substack is all about!
Lesson learned: You Notes should be the starting point of your funnel. Everything must be connected. No random stuff on Notes.
So I pushed for tons of Notes about running a paid newsletter (which is the core focus of my Substack). I also started posting at least 3 Notes per day. Before that I was posting 1 per day.
It works.
Here’s the proof:
My Substack Subscribers Growth Doubled After Applying This Simple Hack
There’s a lie circling around newsletter growth.
I made sure all of my free content is focused on that.
So those three changes started delivering in February.
I also started working more actively on growing recommendations, as this is the other powerful growth engine (almost) no one talks about. We tend to hype over Notes, but let’s be honest: recommendations drive your growth while you sleep.
I used to overthink them: who I recommend and why? Doesn’t matter. I now recommend everyone I like, regardless of the niche. I only want to see quality content and to be honest, there’s a lot on Substack.
I’m now very much open for a “res-for-rec”. (NOT “sub-for-sub” - this you can’t monetize.)
Monetization
I went back to paywalling my growth challenges. In November I decided to open participation to free subscribers, with the idea to boost engagement, but I noticed that mostly paid subscribers were active. This change didn’t work, I kept it for three months till January and from February I’m back to paid.
And this worked again (like in September and October. discard November, I had Black Friday deals and some promos celebrating my Bestseller badge).
Here’s how my paid subscribers growth looks like:
I also did an affiliate promotion with
’s Substack System which worked well. I’d do that again. Collaborations are more powerful than competition.What about my earnings?
Close to all time high! Here’s the breakdown: