Monthly Round-Up: Sep & Oct'25 Earnings Report
Last month I hit $10k. This is how I did it - what worked, what didn't, and what's next in the Unplugged.
It’s official!
I finally hit the $10k month in October’25.
Exactly 13 months after I went all in on Substack.
And here I’m gonna share exactly how I did it.
Note: I’m not gonna convince you to directly replicate it, but for sure you can reuse what I did, adapt it to your newsletter, and make it work for you.
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 (full breakdown by channel)
Outlook: what I plan to start, stop, change, or continue in the future, and why
Let’s begin!
Content & Distribution
Few major changes happened on the content side:
September was the month when I announced my first collab product with Finn Tropy - the Substack Pro Studio GPT Bundle - where you can analyze the best times to post, bulk write viral ready Notes with my GPT and batch-schedule them with the Chrome extension. It was free for Unplugged members for the first month after launch, now it’s 50% OFF (Finn’s courtesy).
I also launched the AI and automation extension of the QUEST - the QUEST LABS. I started with the automation funnel that brought me 100+ paid subscriber while I sleep (not a joke) and went deep into the social media automation.
In October I launched my brand new automation app - the CREATIVETECH HUB which, for now, allows you to extract your latest 20 Notes from Substack. More actions will come soon in the LABs. I’ve built some automations with it in make.com available in the LABS.
I also launched my brand new and fully automated Masterclass about how to grow a consistent $5k/month newsletter with AI and automations, on the side of your job, working just 2 hours per day. It made me $2,180 in the first 10 Days, and in this post I explain the entire framework I used to do that.
On the distribution side:
I started writing daily mails from my Kit and Medium accounts promoting my masterclass. Strange as it sounds, but Medium gets me subscribers I can only reach through Medium writing, so I’m back on daily posting there as well. I simply repurpose my emails from Kit there, just to make sure people on my Medium list also get them.
I also launched paid ads on Facebook promoting my masterclass. Not sure if I’m gonna import these subscribers to Substack, probably it’s a good idea. For now my Kit account is growing from this too.
Of course, I don’t just show what you can do with automations and social media. I use it, and I already started seeing traction. Here are some first engagement results from my automated carousels on TikTok -810 views, 38 likes, 14 saves:
What I continued doing is everything else that I do, I didn’t stop anything. Maybe I’m slow on some things, but I still deliver them all.
What’s more important is that the effect compounded to a $10k month.
Monetization
Here’s the full breakdown of my revenues:
what actually helped me reach my first $10k month
what are my conversion rates