The March Notes30 Challenge is OVER!
Congrats to all participants who completed the Challenges and who already started to gain traction from Notes and subscribers from the app!!!
We made it!!!
Now letâs announce the winners!
WINNERS AWARDS
Winner from last monthâs Notes Challenge:
â Kathleen Thorne RN, LMT â
Kathleen is (for several months in a row) one of the most active members in the community and Iâm happy to welcome her to another spotlight to share how sheâs growing her subscribers and whatâs next. Congrats, Kathleen!!! I canât wait to jump into our session, Iâm sure itâs gonna be so much fun (again)! Looking forward to it!
Award:
â A spotlight session to talk about your Substack. To give you and your Substack more exposure, I will share this session:
all subscribers
my social media accounts
â Watch all previous spotlight sessions here.
Time to kick off April 2025!
Weâre now growing like crazy from Notes and my custom GPT does bring some virality and tons of subscribers! Unplugged members already see growth:
Jeff Herring already got 300 subscribers from a Note written with this GPT and Daniel P. Hirschi got another viral Note from this GPT which pumped his subscribers (and he has quite a bit of them! - see the Unplugged Hall of Fame below)!
For me? Iâve got one viral, and many others got over 100 likes. Hereâs the proofâŚ
This one got me 125 subscribers and one paid:
And these also contributed to my growth:
And most of the times you get subscribers with no virality, some even paid:
Full disclosure: This GPT helps me write 3-10 Notes per day in just 15 minutes. I donât copy & paste: I generate and edit before posting. The GPT gives me the right structure and tons of relatable ideas for my audience. I wrote here about how I feed it with data for my audience to make sure it writes relatable content.
You HAVE to be on Notes right now!
The effect compounds. Your Notes get impressions for weeks, if not months!
Currently, this process is slow on Substack, but it snowballs when youâre consistent. Thatâs why this Challenge is so important!
If you want 1000 subscribers in 2025, this Challenge will give you everything you need!
I canât stop saying this: You have to be on Notes if youâre serious about growing on Substack!
Itâs because your Substack growth journey is an engine made from two wheels:
Grow free subscribers
Convert free to paid
Because without having enough free subscribers you wonât have anyone to convert. And this Challenge is your one-stop-shop. Not just for free subscriber growth. But for growth of the right free subscribers. Those you can convert to paid later.
The Challenge:
PARTICIPANTS:
This challenge is for paid members only.
Paid and V.I.P. members can:
Join the challenge
Share their Note in the weekly thread
Add themselves to the Accountability tracker
WINNERS AWARDS:
The most active will be entitled to join me in a spotlight session to talk about their Substack. To give you and your Substack more exposure, I will share this session:
all subscribers
in my social media accounts
I know a lot of creators are inviting other popular creators who are already successful but I think people also want to know about the people who are just starting. Not just another success story. Real people with real struggles, real challenges, and real growth insights. Real inspiration.
Rules:
Iâll do these sessions monthly after the Challenge finishes.
Iâll invite one of the most active participants in the Challenge based on the Accountability Tracker. Rules:
1. must be in the Accountability tracker
2. must have completed the challenge (at least one Note every day)
3. you can win the same challenge more than once but in different months
4. you canât win both Writing and Notes challenges in the same month. If you do, Iâll invite the next most active person for a session
Weâll do the session only if youâre willing to. If not, Iâll invite the next most active member until I get a âyesâ. Priority of inviting:
1. most active among the VIP members
2. most active among the annual paid members
3. most active among the monthly paid members
Announcement of the winners: start of next Challenge
When do we do the session: during next month upon your availability
How do we do the session: over Zoom. I ask you questions (we initially agree on the list), you talk :). You can prepare slides if you want to (not a must).
The Substack Notes30 Monthly Challenge
What you need to do?
NEW: Post at least
oneTHREE Notes every day. We level up! One is not enough if youâre new to the platform. If you have a few thousand subscirbers, you can do one/day - youâll still grow, but youâll grow much FASTER if you post more. The effect compounds. As you saw in my examples from above, I get just a few subscribers from each Note => MORE Notes = MORE Subscribers!Add yourself to the Accountability tracker.
Engage daily with at least 5 Substack members. Apply everything described in the slides below (end of this post).
Share your Notes in the weekly Notes boost post: I will post one each Saturday, youâll get it in your inbox. The next one comes on Saturday (post on the most recent one till then). And remember to read, like, comment and restack some of the other Notes you like. This is how we help each other grow.
The Unplugged paid community is now made of 238 members:
Thank you so much for joining! And I know you paid me to get something out of this.
But you need to act! I can help you, but I canât do it instead of you.
Itâs time to make the most out of your paid subscription and get a proper return on your investment! Join that challenge!
And make sure you have proper positioning and a good offer first, so that you gain not only subscribers, but monetizeable subscribers.
The goal?
To gain subscribers who are engaged with your writing and who can (and will) be converted to paid subscribers later.
How?
Follow my guide - attached file at the end of this post.
The Challenge includes (download links at the end of this post):
[NEW] The Unplugged Hall of Fame - Iâve set a place to display all Notes from the Unplugged paid member community that received 100+ likes. This is work in progress, Iâll be adding in the following days. Right now I have Daniel P. Hirschi , Desiree Brown-Quilty and Jeff Herring. If you want to see yourself faster, give me a DM :) You can use these Notes to study and templatize them if you like. I added a slide with ChatGPT Prompt to help you do that with AI.
Link to the Accountability Tracker. Add yourself now!
My custom GPT Notes Writer trained to write Substack Notes that go viral. I just upgraded its training using 460 Notes with more than 100 likes each, mostly from writers with smaller audiences (value $69.99) (invite only, you wonât find it in the ChatGPT Store). Read more about this upgrade here.
The right way to use the GPT Notes Writer in order to turn likes into subscribers (like me, Jeff and Daniel). Three SIMPLE steps to achieve it (you do the first two only once).
ChatGPT Prompting Strategy to help you write more relatable Notes based on data collected for your audience with the standard ChatGPT 4o model.
My Content Strategy: what type of Notes get the most traction - I incorporated this in the custom GPT.
My Engagement Strategy to attract new subscribers that are convertible to paid. Youâll have three modes:
EASY: engage with at least 5 new accounts per day
HARD: engage with at least 10 new accounts per day
TURBO: engage with at least 15 new accounts per day
[NEW] A set of 11 Notes Templates (including the one that got me 10 200 likes and 167 subscribers) Iâm using with a short guide on how to write them and an example from my Notes:
Image [with Canva template]
Opinion
Mini story
Mini listicle
Mini how-to
Mini analysis
Success story
Personal update
Personal Story (based on my first viral Note with 10k+ likes)
[NEW] Journey (based on my second viral Note with 2k+ likes)
[NEW] Comparison
Image with simple text are performing well. They are highly re-stackable. Iâve prepared a Canva template you can easily edit (see resources below).
My Notes Guiding Principles on how to use Notes to gain convertible subscribers. A set of short rules about:
How to write powerful hooks
What types of Notes to write currently
How to engage with others on the platform
List of 17 types of Notes Ideas you can easily craft. If you donât want to stick to my templates, you can use these as references in case you get stuck.
A set of 30 Writing Prompts Formulated as Questions to provoke thinking rather than give a direction. A new set will arrive each month.
My list of 17 Rules of Short Form Writing Iâve proven to be working on Substack. I used them to train the GPT. The majority of these rules also work on Medium, X, LinkedIn, Quora. You can use them anywhere.
All this will arrive in a short presentation (find the link below). Use this knowledge as a reference. Adapt the templates and guidelines to your niche and style.
Hereâs your Challenge pack of resources:
The challenge is for paid subscribers. If youâre a free subscriber, upgrade now!