Steal My Substack Growth Strategy. Gain Convertible Subscribers.
If your Notes don't take off, do this! You'll gain subscribers that are more likely to convert to paid.
I keep seeing people outside Substack preaching that the officially stated 5%-10% conversion rates are unreal.
Those people never tried to monetize directly.
Most likely never tried to use Substack strategically.
Substack has its own game.
What works elsewhere doesn’t work here.
What works here can’t be replicated anywhere else.
Why?
Because Substack is a unique place.
It is:
a blog
a newsletter
a social media
and a community with a totally different mindset. People are willing to pay you directly if you have value to deliver.
Substack is not a writing platform. It’s a business place for writers and creators.
Like any other business, it needs:
the right culture (mindset)
solid strategy (for monetization)
sound execution (to ensure you stay consistent)
enough investment (of your time and effort to build it)
and time (and patience) especially when you start seeing progress.
Progress. That’s what fuels motivation. That’s your sign to success.
Here’s my progress:
If you approach it as a business, you’ll find your best way to monetize.
I think I found mine.
And today I’ll share it with you.
It’s Notes!
Look at my Substack Notes performance so far:
321 subscribers
29 paid members
9% conversion rate
Few months ago I decided to look at it from a business point of view.
Not just social media, but a growth channel. I don’t go random with people and content.
I have a content strategy and engagement strategy.
Here’s exactly what they look like…
1. Content Strategy
This is to attract the right people.
Notes connected to my learning curve: I share my struggles. Those are highly relatable. An example:
Growth Notes: I share my results from applying the methods I paywall. People ask me how I do it in the comments, and I tell them to read my newsletter. An example:
Notes connected to my paywalled posts: I write Notes before and after I publish a paywalled post.
Before: I publish some Notes on the same topic.
After: Restack to Notes pieces of the free part of the post.
An example:
I recently got my first Note going viral with over 10,000 likes, over 24,000 clicks and aver 160 new subscribers! In just a few days!
I made a breakdown of it, so you can see exactly what I used to get it go viral.
Pro tip: Define your audience problems, then ask ChatGPT for 10-20 inspirational quotes related to these problems. Then edit a bit and post. These notes are highly relatable and you get to learn more about your audience's struggles.
And here’s what I DO NOT DO by all means:
I DON’T PROMOTE ANYTHING on Notes. I think people are irritated by that.
I DON’T SHARE ANY LINKS on Notes. Except when I restack a quote from my posts.
I DON’T TRY TO SELL on Notes. Just talk about the value of my paywalled content and the outcomes it delivers.
2. Engagement Strategy
This is to get the attention of more from the right people - some of them start reading my Notes and get into the above funnel.
This is especially important if you have less than 2k subscribers coming from the organic Substack channels (imported don’t count). I came up with this number from my research of top-performing bestsellers.
Once you get to that number, things should start peaking off. I’m halfway there.
So here’s what I do:
This strategy is part of the Monthly Notes Challenge I run for paid members. If you’re a free subscriber, upgrade your plan:
Upgrade your subscription now and you’ll never get a price increase in the future!