Monthly Round-Up: July & Aug'25 Earnings Report
Nearly 6k subscribers, 6.9% conversion rate, stable ~$5k/month, stable growth & retention rates. Here's what worked, what didn't, and what's next in the Unplugged.
All of your answers are in the data, you just have to look.
In these roundups, I look at my data and talk about what worked, what didn’t and what’s next.
Today I’m bringing the data for two months in a row.
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
Content wise I finished the main part of the QUEST and prepared for the (most interesting for me) - AI and automation - QUEST LABS.
I published my very first avatar video made by AI at a level of quality I was comfortable with. It saved me tons of time filming myself and editing the video.
I created a new custom GPT for writing high converting CTAs - I believe this one is going to be the most powerful of them all (yes, even the Notes writer), because it does bring you cash (provided you have something to sell).
Speaking of the Notes Writer GPT, I created my first collab product with
- The Substack Pro Studio GPT Bundle, which gives you access to the GPT, lets you create the right prompts very fast and also enables scheduling in the most active times for your audience.It’s FREE for Unplugged paid members - valid till tomorrow.
I implemented the scheduling based on the best timings, and I did see faster growth. So did some of the paid members too. Overall, I’m still growing relatively fast due to my Notes system.
I’ve got 531 new subscribers in the last 30 days:
Last but not least, I (finally!!!) had my first viral post, now with more than 10,000 views, 500 likes (to me that’s viral), which keeps delivering subscribers, months after publishing.
To be honest, I prefer viral posts than viral Notes, because the effect is longer and the growth is healthier.
I’ll probably write a post about it to break down what made it viral, but for now, if there’s one hint I can give you, it’s this: add a poll at the top of the post. It will boost engagement and helps the algorithm to pick it up.
Social Media, Automations & AI agents
The conversion data is still promising, and I’m still working on optimizing the Agents to post automatically. I’m also in a process of figuring out visual content - images & videos. Right now I do them manually.
As a reminder:
Why do I even bother about social media and why invest all these efforts in this?
Many reasons:
I don’t want to count only on 1 growth source (Substack)
The only way to scale to bigger numbers is with paid ads (if you know how to do them properly, which I have the confidence that do), and social media is a sweet spot, followed by google search
What’s the connection with paid ads? Well, only people who actually know how paid ads work, can tell you that they are hugely influenced by the organic content of the advertising account.
It’s a strategic move I always wanted to make, and now is the time to do it. It’s now live and working for my BiTES newsletter on Kit. I’m still testing it, and of course, once I find a proper strategy for implementation for Substack, I’m gonna publish it in the QUEST LABS.
That’s also the reason why I organized the QUEST LABS mostly around this.
Paid ads
I mean, Substack is *NOT* the best platform to use as a landing page. Period.
No matter what I tried, it just didn’t work. The subscriber flow for someone new to the platform is insane:
Welcome page
Subscribe page
Recommendations page
Share page and who knows what more…
And if you skip the welcome page, you go to the About page.
This is why these two pages are crucial for converting traffic to subscribers.
I tried EVERYTHING I could think of, and this is what I came up with for a welcome page:
I never knew I could use a wider image as a banner. Plus: you have to show you face, not a logo. I tested a lot, this is what finally worked.
I started getting leads at a relatively good price (not great but also not terrible, and half the average revenue per subscriber per year, so I’m happy with it).
PLUS: I finally started converting them. Yes, the rates are lower - it’s 3%, but I never expected more. So I’m happy. This will come in the LABS soon.
Monetization
In August, I had my 42nd birthday so I wanted to do something wild.
I created a “spin the wheel” with a discounts promo in just few hours with the help of ChatGPT and launched it for free subscribers. My paid members got the opportunity to get a crazy lifetime access deal.
And yes, I sold more.
But I also sold less than what I aimed for.
Lesson learned: one more time I got a confirmation that decreasing the price by 50% will NOT lead to increasing the sales by 50%, rather 5%.
Meaning you’re only generating opportunity costs, unless you aim for the numbers and not revenues.
I’d rather stay with the Substack - Kit automation that helps me sell while I sleep (instead of doing promotions every month like crazy). It brought me 101 paid subscribers so far. Enough to become a bestseller.
Full disclosure: you have to also deliver fresh content, it won’t sell by its own.
Tomorrow I’m hosting a live Zoom workshop where I’ll recap the strategy and help few of my paid members write a sales sequence with AI using mine as a reference. More info here.
And in case you’re wondering, I’m good with retention too. This is the most important metric you need to look. Retention rate is the name of the game - I know it from my 9-5. So far I’m looking good:
My methods are working. At 6.9% conversion rate and the above retention rate, I’m more than happy:
What about my earnings?