Substack Notes30 Challenge: May 2025
The brand new challenge comes with the brand new Viral Notes Writer Course, revealing my exact system I used to tripple my subscribers growth.
The April 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 let’s announce the winners!
WINNERS AWARDS
For another month I find it hard to select winners, so I want to personally congratulate all of the members who take their growth seriously and stayed active this month:
, , , , ,Congrats to all of you! You’re amazing!
I know there are many others who’re also active daily on Notes but don’t check into the Accountability tracker, and that’s ok. Just know that I need to see you there, so that I can select you for a Spotlight Session (even if you already had one before ;))
Ok, so the winner is….
Winner from last month’s Notes Challenge:
→ ←
Alba is one of the most active members in the community and I’m so happy to finally be able to welcome her to the spotlight to share more about herself and her Substack. Congrats, Alba!!! I can’t wait to jump into the session, I’m sure it’s gonna be so much fun! Looking forward to it!
Award:
→ A spotlight session to talk about your Substack. To give you and your Substack more exposure, I will share this session:
all subscribers
my BiTES atomic newsletter
my other social media accounts
→ Watch all previous spotlight sessions here.
Time to kick off May 2025!
Viral or not, Notes get you subscribers. Period.
I’ve mapped a system and tested it for the last 2 months and I trippled my subscribers’ growth - from 300 to 900 per month. I only focused on Notes.
And with the help of my GPT, it takes me 15 minutes per day.
That system and the GPT are SO GOOD that I couldn’t keep it to myself and created the first bonus course for the SUBSTACK QUEST:
→ The Viral Notes Writer System
Paid members have access, and VIPs can even take a sneak peek into the GPT settings.
Now this course becomes the core of this all-famous Notes Challenge, replacing most of the supporting materials.
You HAVE to be on Notes right now!
The effect compounds. Your Notes get impressions for weeks, if not months! It snowballs when you’re consistent, and I explained how to get that effect in the course. That’s also why this Challenge is so important!
If you want to massively grow your subscribers in 2025, this Challenge will give you everything you need!
I can’t stop saying this: You have to be on Notes if you’re serious about growing on Substack!
It’s because your Substack growth journey is an engine made from two wheels:
Grow free subscribers
Convert free to paid (or monetize)
Because without having enough free subscribers you won’t 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
my BiTES atomic newsletter
my other 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:
I’ll do these sessions monthly after the Challenge finishes.
I’ll 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 can’t win both Writing and Notes challenges in the same month. If you do, I’ll invite the next most active person for a session
We’ll do the session only if you’re willing to. If not, I’ll invite the next most active member until I get a “yes”. 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: Watch the Viral Notes Writer course if you still feel lost in Notes. It’s beginner-friendly and it’s only 3 hours of bite-sized easy to digest lessons.
NEW: Use my custom Viral Notes Writer GPT the way I described in this video (the link to the GPT is below the video). It will turn your idea into 4 viral-ready Notes, you only need to edit and publish. Takes less than 15 minutes.
Post at least THREE Notes every day. We level up! One is not enough if you’re new to the platform. If you have a few thousand subscirbers, you can do one/day - you’ll still grow, but you’ll 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 this video from the course.
Share your Notes in the weekly Notes boost post: I will post one each Saturday, you’ll 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.
If you follow all of the above, I’m confident you’ll pump your subscribers growth and you’ll see the effect immediately. People who do already report significant progress.
The Unplugged paid community is now made of 261 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 can’t do it instead of you.
It’s 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 system from this short but powerful course: The Viral Notes Writer System
The Challenge includes (links at the end of this post):
We’ll simplify everything with the course, now you have only 3 things:
The Unplugged Hall of Fame (link at the end of the post) - I’ve set a place to display all Notes from the Unplugged paid member community that received 100+ likes. If you have a Note woth 100+ likes, DM me with a link, and I’ll add you.
Link to the Accountability Tracker. Add yourself now!
Link to the The Viral Notes Writer System course - it’s only 3 hours, and it has EVERYTHING you need to implement my system. In it you’ll find:
[NEW] My exact system I used to tripple my subscribers growth in a month (takes just 15 minutes per day to write the Notes).
[NEW] How to use my custom GPT to adapt it to your niche and audience (+ prompts)
[NEW] How to use my custom GPT to grow outside of Substack (+ prompts)
As well as everything you had up to now in the pdf, just now it’s I recorded some videos to guide you through (I only removed the 30 writing prompts, because now you have my GPT and it’s much much better) :
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 won’t 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. You’ll 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
A set of 11 Notes Templates (including the one that got me 10 200 likes and 167 subscribers) I’m 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)
Journey (based on my second viral Note with 2k+ likes)
Comparison
Image with simple text are performing well. They are highly re-stackable. I’ve 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 don’t want to stick to my templates, you can use these as references in case you get stuck.
My list of 17 Rules of Short Form Writing I’ve 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.
You have all this The Viral Notes Writer System course (value $197).
Here’s your Challenge pack of resources:
The challenge is for paid subscribers. If you’re a free subscriber, upgrade now!