But unfortunately, most creators don’t take full advantage of their potential because they treat Notes like a shorter version of their long-form articles.

Notes are a completely different content format, with completely different rules than long-form writing.

We learned this early on. When we first joined Substack, Notes were the very first thing we focused on.

Since then, Notes have brought us more than 10,000 new subscribers.

In this workshop, we share the exact short-form writing principles behind Notes that get seen, shared, and subscribed to - and we do a live review of actual Notes from our members.

Principle #1: Format for Easy Reading

Long sentences and paragraphs might work in an article, but in a Note, they get scrolled straight past.

Instead, format your Notes so they are easy to read. Use short, single-line sentences. Leave generous white space between them. Make use of bullet points, bold, or italics.

This is often the difference between a Note that gets seen and one that gets ignored.

The easier you make it to read, the more people will read it. The more people will read it, the more people will engage with it.

The more engagement your Note gets, the more the Substack algorithm will show it to people outside of your current audience.

Principle #2: Bold Your Key Message

Highlighting your most important words or lines in bold works as a pattern interrupt.

It catches the eye of someone scrolling fast, and it works almost like subheadings in a long-form piece.

If someone only reads the bold part of your Note, they should still be interested in reading the rest of the Note.

Don’t overdo it. Only once in your Note is enough.

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Principle #3: One Note, One Idea

A common mistake we see with Notes is trying to pack too much into a single Note.

A Note should deliver one core message, idea, or takeaway. Those often work best.

Don’t treat Notes like mini-essays where you share or teach too much. Leave that for your long-form posts instead.

Principle #4: Open With a Strong Hook

The first sentence of your Note is your ‘hook’. Strong hooks draw attention, create curiosity, and pull the reader into the rest of the Note.

The best hooks are often blunt statements, contrarian claims, or questions that make you think.

If your hook makes some readers disagree, that’s not a problem. It means your work creates an emotional response.

It’s much worse if your Notes aren’t getting any reaction at all.

Principle #5: Use Visual Structure to Your Advantage

A short list with increasing numbers, or sentences arranged so they visually build on each other, instantly catches the eye.

Small formatting choices like arrows, icons, or symbols instead of standard bullet points can work the same way.

They’re pattern interrupts precisely because they’re less common.

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Principle #6: Appeal To The Reader’s Emotions

Many of our best-performing Notes don’t teach anything practical. Instead, they’re encouraging, motivational, or resonate emotionally.

Notes that inspire, encourage, or resonate on an emotional level often get liked and restacked even more than practical advice.

Principle #7: Double Down on What Works

When a Note performs well, don’t treat it as a one-time event.

Simply repost the same Note again a month from now, because it will mostly be seen by new readers anyway (or it serves as a timely reminder for those who’ve already seen it earlier).

You can also take the format, the hook style, or the structure that worked, and create a slightly new variation of your winning Note.

If something is working, the data is telling you to do more of it, not to move on to something completely different.

The full workshop is for premium subscribers only.

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And the hard part isn’t keeping up with the changes themselves. It’s telling the difference between an update that changes what you can actually do and one you can safely ignore.

Three recent updates are worth your attention: Creator Match, tags and segments, and group chats. Together, they push Substack closer to a real email marketing and collaboration engine. The reason that matters now comes down to who’s arriving on the platform.

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Substack is going mainstream, so moving now beats waiting

Over the last 3 months, we’ve watched more coaches, consultants, experts, and speakers move to Substack than at any point since we started. People with large audiences elsewhere are treating a Substack presence as something they can’t skip, and creators who aren’t here yet are starting to feel like they’re missing the party.

A fresh signal landed recently: Substack appointed a head of partnerships for the German-speaking market, covering Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. 🇩🇪🇦🇹🇨🇭

Welcome ! 👋

That points to real expansion into new countries and more publishing in native languages, which has been missing on the platform until now. It matters to us directly, since we’re based in that market.

We’ve been publishing on Substack for over 2 years, recently past 50,000 subscribers and more than 2,000 paying members, and the pace of change right now is faster than anything we saw in the early days.

The takeaway for your business is simple: The audience you want is arriving, but so is your competition.

The creators who build their collaboration and list infrastructure now will own the room when everyone else shows up.

Creator Match, and the overlap number that should change who you collaborate with

The clearest sign of where the platform is heading is a feature built entirely around collaboration.

Creator Match is in beta and currently limited to Product Lab members, so you need Bestseller status to see it today. It will almost certainly roll out to everyone soon, so it’s worth understanding before it does.

What it does is match you with publications whose audience crosses over with yours, so you can find people to collaborate with, and it gives you a message button to reach them directly.

If you already know everyone in your niche, the matching itself isn’t the valuable part. The valuable part is the overlap number.

We looked at a creator in our niche who writes about almost exactly what we write about, with an audience of around 30,000 subscribers. We have 54,000 subscribers, and the exact-match overlap between the two audiences is only 3,000 people.

For the past 2 years, we assumed the big accounts covering our topic shared most of our audience. Now, we know that it’s not necessarily true.

And even if it were, a small overlap isn’t a reason to skip a collaboration, it’s the reason to do it. A live stream or a swap puts you in front of tens of thousands of people who have never heard of you, and puts them in front of yours.

So when you get access, don’t just look at who you’re matched with. Look at how small the overlap is, and treat the smallest overlaps with creators you genuinely respect as your best opportunities.

Most collaborations still start with a message, and that message is exactly where most creators freeze. Our Substack DM Playbook gives you the templates to turn a match into a real conversation that goes somewhere, so a message button doesn’t sit there unused.

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Tags and segments finally give you email-marketing control

Collaboration brings new people into your world. The next feature on our list decides what you do with them once they’re on your list.

Tags and segments were limited to Bestsellers and are now rolling out to everyone. If you’ve used Kit or Mailchimp, this will feel familiar. A tag is a private label you assign to a subscriber that only you can see, so you can filter and segment your list instead of treating everyone the same.

Here’s where it earns its place for a business: You can tag everyone who attended a webinar, so the next time you run one you don’t spam the same people with an invitation they’ve already sat through.

You can tag your existing customers and your premium members, so when you send a promotion to apply or buy, it doesn’t land with the people who already did.

You can tag the creators you collaborate with, so they’re quietly kept out of your sales messages.

You can apply tags three ways: In bulk, individually, or automatically as you import someone to your list.

This is the update that moves Substack from a publishing tool toward something closer to a real email marketing platform. It isn’t at the level of a dedicated tool yet, but with every release it gets closer, and the control you get over who hears what is the part that directly protects your relationships and your revenue.

Group chats, used with intention

Segmentation controls your one-to-many messages. Group chats open a different lever: Small, high-trust rooms.

Substack finally lets you create group DMs. The limits are worth knowing up front: Up to 50 people per chat, and everyone inside can invite others, so you don’t get admin-only control over who joins. Within those limits, there’s a lot you can build.

You can run a beta group for a new product and build it in the open with the people who raise their hand.

You can create a private room for your founding members where they drop in questions and you answer them, which makes a founding-member offer genuinely worth more.

You can pull together a small mastermind of peers you trust and talk about the things you’d never post publicly, like income reports or what’s actually working right now.

One thing you want to avoid: Don’t add people to a group chat without asking first. Getting pulled into a random group is the fastest way to get muted or blocked, so only bring in people you’re confident will be glad to be there.

The pattern behind all of this

Every one of these updates points the same direction. Substack is becoming a place where collaboration and segmentation, not just publishing, drive the growth.

The creators who put these features to work now, while most people are still only posting, are the ones who’ll be positioned when the platform goes fully mainstream.

If you already run a business or a coaching practice, and you’d rather not spend the next year working out how to turn all of this into real income by trial and error, that’s what we built the Substack Accelerator for.

It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication, built around one outcome: Becoming a Substack Bestseller and building real income on top of it. It’s application-based, because we only take people we’re confident we can get there.

If that sounds like you, apply here: substackcoaching.com

It’s a personalized deep dive on what’s working well, what could be improved, and exactly what to focus on to grow faster and attract more paid subscribers.

Today’s audit is from our Substack Accelerator member, .

Francesca runs the Substack publication Feel Something, where she writes about recovering from trauma and regulating your nervous system, drawing on her background as a clinical social work student and trauma-informed yoga teacher.

Francesca’s publication is growing fast, and she’s currently building out her paid tier, which is exactly where most of this audit is focused on.

In this 45-minute audit, you’ll learn:

• The bio tweak that shifts your positioning from listing what you publish to naming the transformation readers can expect

• Why Francesca’s Notes are already working, and the one change that would multiply their impact

• How to repurpose your best-performing Notes instead of starting from scratch every day

• Why your homepage hero section should never feature your latest post, and what to put there instead

• The About page opportunity most creators leave completely untouched

• How to structure and launch a paid tier that people genuinely want to pay for

• The partial paywall strategy that brings in paid subscribers without relying on promotions

• Why you should treat your paid tier launch like a party, not an announcement

Watch the full audit right now to learn practical lessons that will help you build, optimize, and grow your own Substack publication.

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🤝 Want Your Own Substack Audit?

If you’re serious about using Substack to grow your audience, brand, and income just like Francesca, we can help you get there in a fraction of the time.

We offer high-touch coaching where we support you directly to:

• Build your foundation — positioning, paid tier structure, and content strategy that actually converts

• Grow your audience — proven systems for Notes, recommendations, and collaborations that bring in 100+ new subscribers per month

• Monetize strategically — from your first paid subscribers to building a digital product stack that generates real revenue

It’s hands-on guidance from people who’ve built exactly what you’re trying to build.

→ Apply for Substack Coaching here

Is this publication right for me? Does this look like a newsletter worth subscribing to? Is this going to be worth my time right now?

A well-designed publication answers all three questions as quickly as possible, helping your new reader take the step from stranger to subscriber.

That’s why, at Write • Build • Scale, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to design a publication homepage that does two things well: stands out visually, and converts strangers into subscribers.

The result is a homepage built around four elements:

• A hero section with a single pinned post that gives new visitors a curated first resource

• A most popular section that immediately surfaces your best work

• A dynamic call-to-action that changes based on the visitor’s subscriber status

• Posts organized by subtopic so anyone can instantly find what’s most relevant to them

In this video, I’ll walk through exactly how to build this for your own publication, step by step, inside the Substack website editor.

Watch it, then redesign your homepage so it makes a stronger first impression, stands out from the crowd, and converts more visitors into subscribers.

For our premium subscribers, we’ve also included word-for-word templates you can use to optimize different parts of your Substack publication, such as your ‘about’ page, ‘hero’ post, and ‘become a member’ page.

Not a paid subscriber yet?

Upgrade to Write • Build • Scale premium to unlock these templates plus hundreds of other exclusive resources - like workshops, ultimate guides, courses, and our Creator Growth Vault.

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Your first 100 Substack subscribers rarely come from working harder.

They come from being discovered by the right readers, and giving those readers a good enough reason to stay with you.

If you’re the kind of creator who’s been publishing consistently and watching the subscriber count barely move, this post is for you.

You’ll walk away with the exact system we use inside our coaching programs to get creators to their first 100 subscribers from zero, without an existing audience, an email list, or a following anywhere else.

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Your First 100 Are Proof of Positioning

Your first 100 subscribers are not a vanity number. They’re proof that the right people can find you, understand what you do, and want more of it.

If you get those first 100 right, and everything after them compounds.

We’ve worked with over 1,000 creators starting from zero, and we took our own publication to 2,000+ paid members in 2 years. So we’ve seen exactly what moves the needle in the early days, and what keeps people stuck for months.

Your first 100 almost never come from posting more. They come from clear positioning, a clean setup, and showing up where the right readers already are.

Fix Your Positioning Before You Chase a Single Subscriber

Your positioning is all about the work you do before you publish anything.

Your Substack profile and your publication page are public, so when a new reader finds you, they might not have read a single one of your posts yet. All they see is your profile or your main page, and within seconds, they decide whether to stay and subscribe, or leave.

Your publication name and description need to make 3 things obvious, fast: What you write about, who it’s for, and why it matters to them.

Most creators stay vague, and that’s exactly why they stay stuck.

Let’s be honest: If people are seeing your work and not subscribing, it’s rarely because your ideas aren’t good enough. It’s because they can’t tell quickly enough that your publication is worth their inbox space.

If you already have expertise, a business, or a professional reputation, this is where you turn that into a magnet.

The clearer your positioning, the more of the right readers you can turn into subscribers, and eventually into paying clients for your business.

When positioning is right, every other move gets easier: The network knows who to send your way.

Build a Small Starter Library Before You Chase Growth

Once your positioning is set, a new reader needs something to actually read when they land on your page. An empty publication with a single post gives them nothing to trust, and they leave within seconds.

So publish a small starter library first. 3 pillar posts are enough.

One post that explains your core idea or your take on your topic.

One that solves a clear, specific problem your reader actually has.

And one that shows your story or your method, so a new reader understands why they should listen to you at all.

These are your hero posts, and they don’t need to be perfect. Waiting until they are is how most Substacks die before they get started.

They just need to prove, quickly, that subscribing is worth it.

Once your starter library is live, you’re ready to actually get seen. And that’s where most of your first 100 subscribers will come from.

If you want to go the extra mile, add a hero post to the mix:

Get Seen Through Notes, Using the 10-5-1 Rule

Notes are the fastest way to get discovered on Substack right now. They show up in feeds, they get restacked, and the network can push them to readers who’ve never heard of you.

Almost 50% of all new Substack subscriptions now start inside the platform itself, not on Google or social media. That’s a massive shift, and it’s why Notes is the growth engine we point every new creator at first.

But most people get Notes wrong. They treat the feed like a billboard, broadcasting into it and hoping something sticks. That isn’t how the network rewards you.

So we teach a different rhythm. We call it the 10-5-1 rule.

Every day when you post a Note, you like 10 Notes from other people in your niche, comment on 5 that you genuinely find interesting, and start 1 real conversation, either in the DMs or in the comments.

Instead of broadcasting, you participate. The readers you want are already liking and commenting on other people’s Notes, so when you show up generously in those conversations, the right people find their way back to your publication.

But showing up every single day can feel like a massive burden, especially when you’re still figuring out what to post. That’s why we built 365 Substack Notes Templates, so you never invent a Note from scratch again, and consistency stops being the thing that breaks you.

Treat Other Creators as Your Main Growth Channel

Notes bring you readers one at a time. Recommendations bring them in batches, and most writers ignore this channel entirely.

We don’t blame you: That’s how most of us have been trained to grow on social media, where every creator is grinding alone. But Substack works differently, and recommendations are one of the strongest growth levers you can use. Substack itself calls them an unfair advantage, and they’re the reason writers can grow here without hustling on 5 other platforms at once.

So here’s what to do. Subscribe to a handful of publications in your niche. Leave genuine comments on their work. Restack the pieces that actually resonate with you. As your positioning gets clearer, start building toward recommendation swaps, where you recommend each other’s publications to your readers.

When another relevant publication recommends you, their newest readers can subscribe to you with one click, right inside the natural subscription flow.

You don’t need dozens of these relationships. A few genuine ones with creators who serve a similar reader will do more for your first 100 than months of solo grinding.

If They See You But Don’t Subscribe, It’s a Clarity Problem

If you do all of this consistently and people are seeing you but not subscribing, you don’t have an effort problem. You have a clarity problem.

That’s when you go straight back to your positioning and fix it. Every other move you make on Substack starts to work again from there.

The whole system holds together on one point: When the right reader can quickly tell what you do, who you do it for, and why it matters, they subscribe. When they can’t, no amount of Notes, recommendations, or publishing cadence will save you.

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Skip the Trial and Error

If you’d rather not spend months piecing all of this together on your own, that’s exactly what we built the Substack Accelerator for. It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication, built around one outcome: Becoming a Substack Bestseller and building real income on top of it.

It’s application-based, because we only take people we’re confident we can get there. If you already run a business or a coaching practice, and you’re serious about growing on Substack without wasting a year on trial and error, apply here: substackcoaching.com

You’ve probably watched other creators show up every single day, launch constantly, and post like this is their whole job. And you’ve quietly decided that real growth isn’t available to you unless you can match that pace. It isn’t true.

runs a law firm and is raising 3 kids. She’ll tell you straight that she isn’t a writer. She’s about to hit the Substack Bestseller mark, but her story is more useful than most Bestseller case studies, because she’s building the whole thing in the margins of a demanding life, and she’s doing it on purpose.

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Every community that lasts has a “glue”

The communities that fall apart are the ones nobody can describe. The ones that thrive have a shared identity that makes each member feel understood the moment they arrive. You want to be able to say, in one plain sentence, who your community is for.

In Rachel’s case it’s busy women who want to build healthy habits without the perfectionism and without the 90-minute-a-day overwhelm. It all started as a text group. She pulled 5 friends together, they committed for 3 months, and the thing that actually worked wasn’t a program. It was doing it together and keeping each other honest.

There’s a second half to this that most people miss. You want to be IN your community, not above it. The word a lot of people reach for is facilitator, someone who sends prompts and runs discussions from the front of the room. But you don’t need to be that. You want to be the most active member instead, the person who’s genuinely in it. If you’re not all in, you can’t expect anyone else to be.

You don’t have to be a writer, and you don’t have to do this full-time

Being all in doesn’t mean being polished. This is where a lot of qualified people talk themselves out of starting.

You don’t need clean grammar or a professional writing voice. You want to write the way you talk to a friend. The creator who admits she’s the last person who should be running a wellness brand has actually named her own advantage: Relatability. The people you’re trying to reach rarely want a brand talking at them. They want the feeling of one human on the other side of the inbox, unpolished and real.

That feeling is the whole product. Lean into it instead of hiding it behind a more corporate version of yourself.

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Stop treating every post like it has to matter

The same pressure keeps most people off Notes, and Notes is where the momentum actually lives. The first move is the simplest one: Download the app. A surprising number of creators never do, and that’s exactly where the reach and the connection are happening.

Then start small. One Note a day. Rachel went from posting occasionally to 3 or 4 times a day, and the shift started with a single 30-day test of that one-a-day habit. Write about your genuine interests, even the messy mix of them. Reply to every comment while your numbers are still small enough that you can. Spend real time liking and commenting on other people’s Notes, because that’s how they find you and how you collect ideas for your own.

Showing up on Notes every day sounds easy until you’re staring at a blank box with nothing to say. That’s why we built 365 Substack Notes Templates, so you never have to invent a Note from scratch and can stay consistent even on the days you’ve got nothing left.

Build your paid tier around something people can count on

Notes brings people in, but something else has to make them stay and eventually upgrade to your paid tier.

The strongest paid tiers aren’t a pile of exclusive posts. They’re built around a recurring ritual your members come to expect.

For Rachel, that ritual is a seasonal challenge, and the design is deliberate: A hard start date, so people commit now instead of waiting for the perfect Monday. A short window, 2 to 3 weeks rather than 3 months, because busy people rarely finish the long ones. An expert brought in to guide it, and a simple weekly rhythm that moves from setting the foundation, to accountability, to how you keep it going once it ends.

There’s a reframe underneath this that changes how the upgrade feels. Most people don’t go paid purely for content they can’t get anywhere else. They go paid because they want to belong to something and back a mission they believe in. When you ask for the upgrade, you want to name that: They’re not just buying posts, they’re helping build the thing.

One fix worth making while you’re at it: Someone who subscribes today will almost never dig through your archive to find the best thing you ever published. If your strongest paid resources are buried, put them in front of new members on purpose instead of hoping they stumble in.

Turning free readers into paying members is its own skill, and it’s the one most creators guess at. Our Free-to-Paid Playbook gives you tested strategies sorted by subscriber stage, so you find the right next move in minutes instead of guessing.

Make the whole thing easy enough that you’ll actually keep going

None of this works if the system only holds up on your best week.

You want to design for your worst week, not your best one. That means light promotion instead of exhausting launches: Start talking about what’s coming a week or two out, send a few emails, and stop there. It means giving yourself permission to skip a week when life takes over, and trusting that your people will still be there. It means not obsessing over logos and colors while the real work waits.

Simplicity isn’t the compromise here. It’s the thing that lets you still be doing this in 5 years, which is the only timeline that matters.

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Asking isn’t selling, and consistency compounds

That longer view changes how you think about the ask, too.

A lot of creators freeze at the ask because it feels pushy.

But telling your readers they can upgrade, or even that they’re not actually on the paid tier yet, isn’t a sales tactic. It’s information most of them don’t have, and many of them genuinely want to support you once they do. Rachel is being openly public about her push to the bestseller badge, right down to telling her community that reaching it is the one thing she’d want for her birthday. People want to back the things they love. You just have to let them.

And then you keep showing up. 7 years in, Rachel’s community looks to outsiders like it appeared out of nowhere. It didn’t. It’s the result of publishing when nothing seemed to be happening, and publishing again, and again. Consistency compounds in ways you can’t see while you’re in it. The proof shows up later, and it looks like luck to everyone who wasn’t watching you do the work.

That’s the real lesson here: You can build something genuine and profitable on Substack without a full-time schedule, a perfect brand, or a writer’s voice.

What you need is a clear sense of who it’s for, the willingness to show up as yourself, and enough accountability to keep going when the numbers are quiet.

That last piece is the hardest to manufacture alone. It’s why the part of the Substack Accelerator Rachel values most isn’t the tools or the tactics, it’s being surrounded by people taking their publications seriously, people who want it as much as she does.

If you already run a business or a coaching practice, and you’d rather not spend the next year figuring Substack out by trial and error, that’s what we built the Substack Accelerator for.

It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication, built around one outcome: Becoming a Substack Bestseller and building real income on top of it.

It’s application-based, because we only take people we’re confident we can get there. If that sounds like you, apply here: substackcoaching.com

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If you're showing up on Substack consistently and your subscriber growth still isn't matching the effort you're putting in, this piece is for you.

One simple post on your publication can do more sales work than every other post combined, and for most creators, the platform is picking that post by default.

Your publication page is doing conversion work whether you know it or not

Let’s quickly imagine the journey of a reader who isn’t subscribed to your publication yet: Someone finds you through a Note, a collaboration, or a comment on someone else’s content. They like what they see, so they click on your publication.

They aren’t subscribed yet, and they don’t know what you write about. They don’t know if you’re the person they want to spend their attention on. They’re standing at your front door, trying to decide whether to step in or leave.

What they see first on your publication page within those few seconds basically does the heavy-lifting of turning them from a stranger to a subscriber.

And usually, they check out the top section of your homepage - the prime real estate on your publication:

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Featuring your latest post at the top is a missed opportunity

Now look at what’s actually in that spot in your publication right now.

By default, Substack puts your most recent post at the top of your homepage. For most creators, that’s what a new reader sees first.

But your most recent post isn’t necessarily your best work.

It isn’t necessarily representative of what you actually do.

It isn’t necessarily applicable to where a new reader is in their journey.

The odds it happens to be the perfect one-post introduction to your entire publication are close to zero. And leaving that spot to chance means leaving subscribers on the table.

What a hero post is, and what it has to do

A hero post fixes this. It’s one post pinned to the top of your homepage, designed to convert readers. Its job isn’t to be your latest or your smartest piece.

Its job is to turn a stranger into a subscriber.

When someone lands on your publication for the first time, a hero post has to answer four questions in the first few seconds:

1. What is this publication about?

2. Who is it for?

3. Who is behind it?

4. Why should I subscribe?

That’s a different assignment from a regular post. A regular post assumes some familiarity. A hero post assumes a first-time encounter.

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The ingredients that show up in hero posts that actually convert

Every hero post that answers those four questions looks different, because every publication is different. But the ones we see converting the highest share a handful of ingredients.

The strongest opens don’t drop the reader into content the way a regular post would.

Instead, they welcome the new reader, so it’s obvious the post was built for them. That’s followed by a specific tagline in the first few lines.

Not “welcome to my newsletter,” but one clear sentence stating who the publication is for, what they’ll get, and what makes it different.

A new reader should be able to answer is this for me by the end of the second line, or the tagline isn’t sharp enough yet.

Then a personal photo, and a short intro to who you are.

New readers subscribe to people, not to publications. A photo and a few sentences about how you got here build trust faster than any paragraph of content ever will. A short video or audio version of you talking to the reader makes it even stronger.

From there, the hero post gets specific. It names the topics or pillars the publication covers, two to four of them, so the reader can find the thread they care about.

It links to your best posts, not your newest ones, because you’re curating the first hour of a new reader’s experience and you should send them somewhere they’ll enjoy.

And it carries two or three subscribe buttons placed at natural breaks through the post: A reader who’s sold at the halfway point shouldn’t have to scroll to the end to find the ask.

One extra move worth stealing: State what the publication is not about. A reader who realizes it isn’t for them moves on, which saves both of you time. A reader who realizes it’s exactly for them subscribes harder.

Two other things creators get wrong

Two patterns are worth flagging, because we see them cost creators consistently:

The first is the title. Don’t call your hero post Start Here or Welcome. Both sound like a placeholder. A new reader scrolling past sees the title, learns nothing, and clicks something else instead. Give it a title that makes a specific promise. Something like “Want to navigate an uncertain economy where the old rules no longer apply? Start here.” is doing the work of pulling the right reader in. “Welcome” is doing nothing.

The second is the About page overlap. A common hesitation is: My hero post is going to sound like my About page, and I’ll look repetitive.

But you aren’t repeating yourself, because your reader hasn’t been paying that much attention to you. You’ve lived with your work for years. They’ve been on your page for less than a minute. The About page and the hero post are two different entry points into the same publication, and a lot of readers will only ever see one. Say the same core things in both, and know that saying them twice is closer to the right number than you think.

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If you’re not sure what to write, write it anyway

There’s one more objection we hear from creators putting this off, and it’s simpler than the first two: I don’t know exactly what my publication is yet, so I can’t write a hero post.

But writing the hero post might actually lead to more clarity because it forces you to sit down and answer, in plain language, what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for.

If you already run a business or a coaching practice, that clarity is worth more to your revenue than any single “growth hack.”

And don’t forget that you can always go back and edit or replace your hero post. Your publication will evolve, and the post will evolve with it. Doing the exercise now with the information you actually have is worth infinitely more than waiting for a future version of you who has it all figured out.

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Your homepage is a conversion asset, not a scrapbook

The hero post is one lever, and it’s the biggest one, but it isn’t the only one.

A dynamic call-to-action on your publication. A featured section of your two or three biggest subtopics, so a new reader instantly finds the thread they care about. A layout that has one clear primary choice, not six competing headlines fighting for the same click.

Every one of these is doing the same job as the hero post: Making it obvious to a new reader that they’re in the right place, and easy for them to subscribe when they realize it.

Most creators spend all their energy chasing new readers to their publication and almost none on what those readers see when they arrive. The math on that is bad. You worked hard to get them there, so give them a reason to stay.

If you already run a business or a coaching practice, and you’d rather not spend the next year figuring Substack out through trial and error, that’s exactly what we built the Substack Accelerator for. It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication, built around one outcome: Becoming a Substack Bestseller and building real income on top of it.

It’s application-based, because we only take on people we’re confident we can get to Bestseller status in 12 months. If that sounds like you, apply here: substackcoaching.com

For Our Premium Members Only: The Hero Post Template

The information above is useless if you don’t actually sit down and create your hero post.

That’s why we created a comprehensive template to make it easy for you to take instant action:

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Then you look at a Bestseller’s Note in the same feed, same format, same length, and it has 300 likes and 40+ replies.

The obvious conclusion is that they know something you don’t: a better hook, a sharper opener, some formula you haven’t cracked yet.

I wanted to know if that’s actually true, so I pulled 2.46 million Notes written by the 9,081 accounts Substack has tagged with a Bestseller badge, and compared them against a 254,000-Note random sample of everyone else.

I checked hook style, length, and the ratio between likes, restacks, and comments at every level of reach. Two of the three explanations you’d guess don’t hold up. The third one does, but it points in a direction that’s actually useful if you don’t have the following yet.

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The gap, before you control for anything

Averaged across the whole dataset, a Bestseller’s Note pulls 49.9 likes, 6.4 restacks, and 2.9 comments. A non-Bestseller’s Note pulls 10.9 likes, 1.1 restacks, and 0.9 comments. That’s a real gap, and it’s not small.

If you only look at this table, the Bestseller badge looks like a cheat code. The rest of this piece is about what happens when you try to find the mechanism behind it.

It isn’t the hook

The obvious next question is whether Bestsellers open their Notes differently. I checked two common opener types across the full dataset: a question in the first sentence, and a first-person “I” opener. I also checked whether the Note led with a number.

None of these move enough to matter. Question hooks are used at nearly identical rates in both groups. Non-Bestsellers actually open with “I” slightly more often than Bestsellers do. If hook formula explained a 4 to 6x gap, you’d expect Bestsellers to cluster around one winning pattern. They don’t cluster at all.

Length barely moves either

Length is a little more honest than hooks, but it still isn’t the story. Across the whole dataset, Bestseller Notes run 280 characters on average against 260 for everyone else, an 8% gap. When I controlled for reach and compared only Notes with similar like counts, the median length was 172 characters for Bestsellers and 147 for everyone else. Bestsellers write a bit more, about 25 extra characters at the median, but that’s a short clause, not a different length category. It isn’t the “write three times as much” or “keep it under twenty words” gap a hook-and-length formula would need to explain a 4 to 6x engagement multiple.

What actually splits, once you control for reach

Here’s the part that surprised me. I sorted every Note into three reach bands (0-15 likes, 16-60 likes, and 60+ likes) so I could compare bestsellers and non-bestsellers landing in roughly the same place, instead of comparing a bestseller’s typical Note to a small account’s typical Note. In the middle band, the match is close: bestsellers average 30.4 likes and non-bestsellers average 28.7, essentially the same audience reaction. That’s the cleanest apples-to-apples comparison in the dataset, and it’s where the real pattern shows up.

At matched reach in the middle band, non-Bestsellers pull 0.106 comments per like against 0.091 for Bestsellers, a 16% gap in the smaller creator’s favor. Restacks run the other way: Bestsellers get 0.096 restacks per like against 0.081 for everyone else, a 19% gap favoring the Bestseller. The same split holds up in the low band (0-15 likes) and the high band (60+ likes) too, smaller at the extremes but never reversing.

What actually drives comments (it isn’t reach at all)

I pulled the highest comment-per-like Notes from both groups to see what they had in common, and the pattern was almost too consistent. It wasn’t topic. It wasn’t tone. It was a direct, low-effort question, usually with an explicit format for answering.

Look at what these three have in common. None of them are clever. None of them use a number or a bold claim.

Each one hands the reader a question they can answer in five words without thinking hard, and each one landed a comment count that dwarfs its like count.

Geoff Talbot’s Note pulled 318 comments on only 29 likes, a ratio over ten times higher than the dataset average.

Rebecca Day’s pulled 414 comments on 50 likes. Neither account needs a Bestseller badge to make that work, because the mechanism has nothing to do with reach.

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The payoff: what to actually copy

Given all of the above, the two things worth optimizing are not what most Note advice tells you to optimize. Hook cleverness and note length are close to parity between Bestsellers and everyone else, so there’s little to gain by obsessing over either one. The two real levers are structural, and both are available to you regardless of subscriber count.

If you want comments

Ask a direct question with a low-effort answer format. Not a rhetorical question, and not an abstract one. Give the reader something they can answer in one line without having to think.

If you want restacks

Restacks reward the account more than the individual Note, which means the compounding advantage Bestsellers hold is really a function of accumulated reach and reputation, not a trick available to you today. The way you get there is the least exciting answer in this whole piece: show up often enough, for long enough, that restacking your work starts to carry the same signal restacking an established name already does.

_{Sample: 2,459,728 original Notes from 9,081 Substack-tagged bestseller authors, compared against a 254,056-Note random sample of non-bestseller accounts (roughly a 2% sample of that population). Restacks of other authors’ content were excluded from both groups. All figures are public engagement metrics as of July 2026.}

🎉 We’re celebrating 2 Years of Write • Build • Scale on Substack

We’re running a massive birthday promo for our paid tier to help YOU become a Substack Bestseller: The first upgrades get up to 99% OFF on our premium resources.

👉 Grab your discount before the best tier sells out

If you’re currently building a Substack publication (or thinking of starting one), this post is for you.

We launched Write • Build • Scale two years ago with a simple goal: Helping creators and experts turn their knowledge into income.

Since then, we’ve grown to over 53,000 subscribers and almost 2,000 premium members. While doing that, Substack has become one of the biggest growth channels for our own business.

A lot has changed on the platform in those two years. Notes matured. The recommendation engine got sharper. Video moved to the front. Pricing and promo strategies have become more complex.

That’s why we decided to compress 200 of the most valuable lessons we’ve learned into a single post for you. Here’s how you’ll actually grow on Substack right now:

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Table of Contents

• 🧠 Substack Mindset

• 💬 Substack Notes

• 📝 Substack Posts

• 📓 Substack Publication

• 👤 Substack Profile

• 📄 About Page

• 📹 Substack Livestreaming

• 💰 Substack Monetization

• 🌀 Subscriber Psychology and Retention

• 🤝 Substack Collaboration

• 👥 Community Building

• 🛠️ Substack Tools

• ⚙️ Substack Systems and Productivity

• ✍️ Online Writing Advice

• ❌ Dealing with Setbacks

🧠 Substack Mindset

Every successful Substack starts in the mind of the creator before it ever shows up on the platform. Consistency, patience, and long-term thinking carry you through the quiet stretches, and there are a lot of quiet stretches. Get the mindset right, and the rest of this list becomes 10x easier to apply.

1. You grow by publishing, not by planning. Clarity comes from action, not from another strategy doc.

2. Your Substack is not just a blog. Substack is a publishing platform, an audience-building engine, and a business-growth tool in one.

3. You only start from zero once. Every post, comment, and Note you publish adds to a permanent foundation.

4. Consistency beats intensity almost every time. A steady weekly cadence outperforms a burst you can’t sustain.

5. Detach from the daily numbers. The trend line matters, the daily blip rarely does.

6. Growth is rarely about going viral. It’s about going deep with the right readers.

7. Repetition builds recognition. Your best ideas need to be said more than once, in more than one way.

8. Rejection is redirection. When someone unsubscribes, the right reader has more room to find you.

9. Done beats perfect. Nobody can engage with a piece of content you didn’t publish.

10. Believe in your value before your audience does. If you wait for external validation, you’ll wait forever.

11. Treat your top 10 readers like they’re 10,000. How you show up now sets the template for what happens later.

12. Your experience is your unfair advantage. No one else has your specific mix of skills, industry, taste, and scars.

13. Every post is a compounding asset. Good ideas keep working long after you hit publish.

14. Long-term thinking is the real cheat code. Most creators quit right before their curve turns up.

15. Comparison is the fastest way to kill your momentum. Someone’s year 3 was your year 1 once.

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💬 Substack Notes

Notes are still the single fastest way to bring new readers to your publication. Two years in, they’re the reason a big chunk of our audience found us, and they’re the first thing we tell every writer we coach to prioritize.

16. Publish at least one Note every single day. Visibility comes from showing up daily, not from perfect Notes weekly.

17. Follow the 10-5-1 rule for engagement. 10 restacks, 5 replies, 1 Note per day builds compounding visibility.

18. The first line is the whole game. If it doesn’t stop the scroll, the rest never gets read.

19. Keep every Note to one idea. Clarity always beats cleverness on short-form.

20. Read every Note out loud before posting. Anything that sounds clunky spoken will read clunky on screen.

21. Batch your Notes in one sitting. A single focused morning gives you a week of content and a lot of peace of mind. That’s exactly why we built our 365 Substack Notes Templates, so you never write a Note from scratch again.

22. Turn strong post comments into fresh Notes. Your readers are already telling you what to write next.

23. Republish your best Notes every few weeks. Most of your audience missed them the first time, and the algorithm treats them as new.

24. Restack your own top Notes. It’s the easiest way to resurface a great idea without writing a new one.

25. Study your best 5 Notes every Sunday. Find the shape that worked, then write more of it.

26. Mix personal stories with practical takeaways. Story creates the trust, the takeaway earns the follow.

27. Test raw ideas on Notes first. The ones that resonate deserve to be expanded into full posts.

28. Reply to every comment for your first 6 months. That’s how a community actually gets built.

29. Follow the writers whose Notes you enjoy. Your feed quietly shapes your sense of what’s possible.

30. Short and punchy beats long and layered on Notes. People scroll fast, respect that.

31. Notes are the discovery engine on Substack today. Full posts alone barely move new subscribers anymore, so if you want new eyes, Notes have to be a daily habit.

32. Use Notes to stay top of mind between posts. Consistent visibility is what makes people open your emails when they finally arrive.

For more on Notes, see The 2026 Substack Notes Playbook and our breakdown of 6 Types of Notes Every Substack Creator Should Post For Faster Growth.

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📝 Substack Posts

Notes are how readers find you. Posts are how they decide to stay. Every long-form piece is a chance to turn passing attention into real trust, and eventually into a paid upgrade.

33. Publish at least one post per week. Consistency is the real growth lever.

34. Write like you’re talking to one specific person. Connection is impossible when you’re writing to “everyone.”

35. Follow a fixed publishing schedule. It conditions your readers to expect you to show up, and it conditions you to actually create.

36. Open with a hook that earns the click. The first 3 lines decide whether the rest gets read.

37. Give every post one clear takeaway. Specific beats broad almost every time.

38. Cross-link inside your own posts. Keep readers moving through your work instead of leaving after one piece.

39. Break up long blocks of text. Short paragraphs and generous white space keep people scrolling.

40. Use subheadings to guide the skimmer. Structure turns a skim into a full read.

41. Use personal stories to make lessons stick. People remember feelings, not bullet points.

42. Edit for clarity, not perfection. A clear message always beats a beautiful sentence.

43. Write when you’re inspired and edit when you’re not. Creative mind and critical mind rarely work well at the same time.

44. Turn your best Notes into full posts. If a short idea resonated, expand it and give it a real home.

45. End with a real invitation. Ask a specific question you actually want an answer to.

46. Add one internal link per post minimum. That’s how you build a body of work readers can wander through.

47. Use the same header style across all posts. Visual consistency signals professionalism at a glance.

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📓 Substack Publication

Your publication isn’t just a feed of posts. It’s the home your readers return to, the page a curious stranger lands on, and the place where a follower decides whether to become a subscriber.

48. Make the promise instantly clear. If a stranger can’t tell what your publication is about in 5 seconds, rewrite the header.

49. Build a strong “Start Here” page. It helps new readers hit your best work first instead of scrolling through your worst.

50. Feature your top posts on the main page. Highlight what’s already working, don’t hide it in the archive.

51. Use a consistent visual style. Cohesive colors, fonts, and title images make your publication feel like a brand, not a hobby.

52. Organize your posts into clear sections. A clean structure helps readers find the specific thing they came for.

53. Track what performs and let data guide you. Every post teaches you what your audience really wants.

54. Feature reader comments inside your posts. It signals you’re listening, and it makes the next reader more likely to comment too.

55. Build a dedicated page for your paid offer. Explain the value clearly and make upgrading a one-click decision.

56. Use consistent naming for post series. Recurring formats train readers to open and share.

57. Create learning tracks for your key topics. Bundle related posts so readers can go deep without hunting.

58. Add a dedicated section for video or livestreams. It gives your visual content a home and makes it bingeable.

59. Update your publication description every quarter. Your positioning sharpens as your audience clarifies.

For more on getting your publication right, see our guides on designing your publication for subscriber growth and 13 quick tips to improve it in under 15 minutes.

👤 Substack Profile

Your profile is often the first thing someone sees when they discover you on Notes. It’s also the smallest surface area on Substack, which makes every element on it worth optimizing.

60. Use a friendly, recognizable headshot. Readers connect faster when they can see the face behind the words.

61. Use the same photo everywhere. Consistency across platforms builds recognition faster than any bio can.

62. Make your bio benefit-driven. Tell readers exactly what they’ll get by following you.

63. Keep it short and specific. One or two sharp lines beat a vague paragraph every time.

64. Use the keywords your ideal reader would actually search. Clarity helps the right people find you.

65. Include one personal detail. A single human touch builds trust fast.

66. Skip the buzzwords. Speak the way you’d introduce yourself to a friend.

67. Link your website and socials. Make it effortless for a curious reader to explore more of your world.

68. Curate which subscriptions show on your profile. Only display the ones that align with your positioning.

69. Highlight your Bestseller badge if you have one. It’s social proof that does its work while you sleep.

📄 About Page

Your About Page is one of the most-visited pages on your entire publication. It’s also one of the most neglected. Fix that, and you’ll convert a lot more of your casual visitors into subscribers.

70. Match the tone of your writing. The About Page should feel like a natural extension of your voice, not a corporate bio.

71. Open with a clear sentence on what your publication offers. Don’t make readers scroll to figure it out.

72. Explain exactly who your writing is for. The more specific, the more it pulls the right person in.

73. Share your “why” in one or two lines. People connect with purpose more than credentials.

74. Link to your best posts directly on the page. Let new readers hit your strongest work in one click.

75. Mention your publishing schedule. Set the expectation for how often you’ll show up in their inbox.

76. Include a short personal bio. Let readers connect with the human behind the words.

77. Add a personal photo. Faces build trust in a way text never will.

78. Show the value of the paid tier. Tell readers exactly what they get when they upgrade.

79. End with a clear next step. Guide readers toward subscribing, upgrading, or reading a specific post.

📹 Substack Livestreaming

Livestreaming is one of the fastest ways to build real trust with your audience, and it barely requires any equipment. It also gives Substack a strong signal that you’re active on the platform, which helps your overall reach.

80. Pick a focused topic before going live. Clarity upfront keeps viewers watching to the end.

81. Create a simple outline. It keeps you on track without making you sound scripted.

82. Use a real mic. Clear audio matters more than perfect video.

83. Position your camera at eye level. It creates a natural, direct connection.

84. Light your space well. Natural light or a cheap ring light makes a bigger difference than most creators realize.

85. Minimize distractions. Mute notifications and put your phone in another room.

86. Start on time. Respect for your audience’s time is a brand signal.

87. Test your setup in Substack’s preview room. Catch audio issues before you go live, not during.

88. Reintroduce your topic every few minutes. New viewers join at different times.

89. Repeat every question out loud before answering. Chat won’t show on the replay, but your answer will.

90. Ask your viewers questions live. Interactive streams hold attention way longer than monologues.

91. Bring on co-hosts from your niche. Two voices double the reach and take the pressure off you.

92. Cross-promote with every guest. Double the audience, half the work.

93. Post the replay to your publication. The replay often outperforms the live stream over time.

94. Repurpose stream highlights as Notes. One 45-minute stream is a week’s worth of Notes content.

For our full approach, see The Ultimate Guide to Livestreaming on Substack.

🎉 Halfway there. Our tiered birthday discount is live right now, with up to 99% off the paid tier for the fastest movers.

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💰 Substack Monetization

Making money on Substack rarely requires a massive audience. It requires clarity on who your paid tier is for, a clear transformation on the other side of the upgrade button, and repeated intentional promotion. Get those three right and monetization becomes a natural extension of your writing.

95. Be specific about who your paid tier is for. Generic offers rarely convert.

96. Sell a clear transformation, not a list of features. Readers buy outcomes.

97. Keep your paid tier simple. Complexity creates hesitation.

98. Anchor your price against something small and familiar. “The price of one coffee a month” still works because it’s true.

99. Mention your paid tier often. If you don’t talk about it, people forget it exists.

100. Include your paid tier in your welcome email. Set the expectation from day 1.

101. Use the free + paywall structure. Give away the “what” and charge for the “how.”

102. Build a premium content library. Exclusive, evergreen access is one of the strongest reasons to upgrade.

103. Repurpose your best posts into paid-only PDFs. A polished download often justifies the upgrade on its own.

104. Push the annual plan almost every time. Annual subscribers churn less and give you a whole year to earn the renewal.

105. Add a soft P.S. about your paid tier to every free post. Subtle repetition is what actually converts.

106. Run dedicated promo campaigns a few times a year. Sprint launches convert more subscribers than months of passive mentions.

107. Use tiered discounts to create real urgency. When early upgraders can see the best deal disappearing, hesitation drops fast.

108. Highlight testimonials from paid subscribers. Social proof shortcuts every hesitation.

109. Send a personal DM to your top 10 free readers. A direct invitation almost always beats a mass CTA.

110. Tease your paid content in Notes. Curiosity converts better than pressure ever will.

111. Show the transformation, don’t just describe it. Case studies do more than any sales page.

112. Turn free readers into paid subscribers with a proven system. Our Substack Free-to-Paid Playbook gives you 100+ tested conversion strategies filtered by subscriber stage, so you find the right move in minutes.

For a deeper walkthrough, see How We Hit 1,000 Paid Subscribers on Substack and How to Become a Substack Bestseller Fast.

🌀 Subscriber Psychology and Retention

Subscribers rarely buy just information. They buy emotion, clarity, and the feeling of being understood. And once they’ve upgraded, keeping them is a completely different skill than winning them in the first place.

113. Subscribers upgrade when they feel understood. Speak directly to the pain they haven’t voiced yet.

114. Free subscribers upgrade when they see the transformation. Show the “after,” not just the offer.

115. Use urgency and scarcity only when they’re real. Fake countdowns train your audience not to trust you.

116. People buy when they feel included, not pressured. Community around the paid tier converts better than pressure inside it.

117. Engaged free subscribers are your warmest leads. If someone replies to your emails, they’re closer to buying than the whole “cold” side of your list.

118. Use open loops to spark curiosity. Teasing what’s coming next keeps readers reading now.

119. Reassurance reduces hesitation. A visible refund policy and a clear “here’s what you get” description remove the last excuse to wait.

120. Personal stories build loyalty. When you share your own path, subscribers feel like they know you, not your brand.

121. Frame content around problems, not topics. Solutions convert. Topics inform.

122. Show clear outcomes to justify the spend. People need to see the “worth it” before they hit upgrade.

123. Make paid subscribers feel like insiders. Early access, exclusive Q&As, and behind-the-scenes moments beat more content almost every time.

124. It’s rarely a subscriber problem, it’s a retention problem. Keeping a subscriber is 5x cheaper than finding a new one.

125. Check in with your paid subscribers every 60 days. A quick message keeps you top of mind and opens the door to feedback.

126. Share what’s coming next. A simple roadmap builds anticipation and reduces churn.

🤝 Substack Collaboration

Collaboration is the single biggest growth lever we’ve had over 2 years. It’s the reason we hit our first Bestseller badge, it’s the reason we hit Bestseller Level 2, and it’s the reason we’re closing in on 2,000 paid subscribers. If you’re only doing one thing to grow, make it this.

Our core mantra: 1 + 1 = 3. In a real collaboration, you win, your partner wins, and your audiences win.

127. You grow faster by growing together. A good collaboration puts you in front of aligned readers you’d never have reached alone.

128. Give before you pitch. Public support builds the trust that makes every future ask easier.

129. Start with newsletter recommendations. They’re the lowest-effort, highest-return collaboration on the platform.

130. Use interviews to feature others. It builds trust with your guest and your readers in one move.

131. Guest post swaps double your reach with half the work. A well-matched trade often outperforms your own top posts.

132. Keep a running list of dream collaborators. Don’t wait until you’re “ready” to reach out. Reach out now.

133. Make your first ask easy to say yes to. Aim for low-effort, high-alignment. Big asks come after trust is built.

134. Bring the plan when you pitch. Creators love working with someone who takes the coordination off their plate.

135. Follow up after every collaboration. Most opportunities live in the follow-up, not the first conversation.

136. Mention your collaborators by name in your posts. It signals appreciation and makes them more likely to share your work.

137. Recommend other newsletters in your P.S. It’s subtle, generous, and it strengthens your ecosystem.

138. Build a simple collaboration tracker. Know who you’ve pitched, followed up with, and published so nothing falls through the cracks.

139. DMs are where most real collaborations start. Get comfortable there or hire someone who is.

Most collaborations start in the DMs, which is exactly where most creators freeze. Our Substack DM Playbook gives you the templates to start real conversations that go somewhere.

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👥 Community Building

Substack is a people platform disguised as a publishing platform. The real growth happens when you stop counting followers and start building genuine community. That’s when subscribers turn into advocates and readers turn into buyers.

140. Substack rewards community over followers. Meaningful conversation compounds faster than one-way broadcast.

141. Define your community’s purpose clearly. A clear purpose attracts the right members and repels the wrong ones.

142. Tell people exactly why joining is worth it. Vague invitations rarely convert.

143. Invite your email list and social followers to join. Your existing audience is the fastest way to seed a community.

144. Show up consistently with useful content. Regular value keeps a community alive between events.

145. Encourage member interaction. Ask questions you actually want answered and reply to what comes back.

146. Host regular community events. Live moments create the connection that content alone can’t.

147. Reward your most active members. Public recognition, early access, or a shoutout goes a long way.

148. Create a welcoming onboarding. How you greet new members sets the tone for how they participate.

149. Gather feedback and act on it. Communities that feel heard stay. Communities that don’t, leave.

150. Share the wins and the misses. Vulnerability builds loyalty faster than curated perfection.

151. Build a community ritual. A weekly check-in or a recurring thread turns casual members into regulars. That’s exactly what we teach inside the Substack Publication Chat OS.

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🛠️ Substack Tools

The right tools make consistency easier and creativity smoother. We’ve tested a lot over 2 years. These are the ones that earned their place in our workflow.

152. Use Wispr Flow to write with your voice. Dictate your ideas and turn them into Substack-ready drafts in a fraction of the time.

153. Use WriteStack to study what’s working. Analyze top-performing Substack posts and headlines to sharpen your strategy.

154. Use Substack Globe to find local creators. Country-based connections make collaborations easier to start.

155. Use SideStack for collaboration partners. It’s a growing directory of writers open to swaps and cross-promotion.

156. Use Raindrop to save great Substack posts. Build a personal swipe file of ideas and inspiration you can revisit anytime.

157. Use Notion to manage your content. Plan posts, track ideas, and organize your workflow in one place.

158. Use Canva for branded visuals. Consistent title images make your work look 10x more professional.

159. Use Substack’s own analytics. They tell you exactly what to make more of and what to quietly retire.

⚙️ Substack Systems and Productivity

Successful creators don’t run on motivation. They run on systems. The ones that survive year 1 have a repeatable workflow that turns consistency into a default, not a decision.

160. Build a system that gives you structure and support. That’s exactly why we created Substack System, so you don’t have to figure it all out on your own.

161. Use a content calendar. Planning kills stress and boosts consistency.

162. Use a repeatable Notes workflow. Daily engagement is easier when the process is already set.

163. Track your growth weekly. What gets measured gets improved.

164. Set up a guest post outreach system. A proven pitch template makes getting featured almost systematic.

165. Store all your ideas in one place. A Notion dashboard, a Notes app, anything, as long as it’s one place.

166. Build a simple content funnel. Guide readers from free to paid content naturally, not with pressure.

167. Keep a running list of headlines. Great titles often exist before great drafts.

168. Use a publishing checklist. Consistency reduces stress and stops silly mistakes.

169. Create posts and Notes in batches. Focused batching beats scattered daily writing almost every time.

170. Repurpose the same idea across formats. One strong idea should live as a post, a Note, a livestream, and a piece of paid content.

171. Set realistic weekly writing goals. Small, hit-consistently targets beat ambitious targets you miss.

172. Write one piece at a time. Multitasking kills quality and slows you down.

173. Use scheduling to protect your rest. Substack’s scheduling feature is what turns a 6-day writing week into a 4-day one.

✍️ Online Writing Advice

Online writing isn’t just about words on a screen. It’s about ideas that connect, sentences that carry momentum, and edits that turn a draft into something people actually finish.

174. Great writing is strong ideas plus sharp editing. One without the other rarely works.

175. Follow mentors whose goals actually match yours. Advice from the wrong role model can cost you a year.

176. Structure your sentences intentionally. The first and last words of every sentence get the most attention.

177. Create emotional value through story. Information informs. Story sticks.

178. Read your writing out loud. It’s the fastest edit you’ll ever run.

179. Use editing tools, but don’t outsource your voice to them. The tools flag issues. You decide what stays.

180. Cut clutter. Every word should earn its place.

181. Make every sentence earn the next one. Momentum is what keeps someone reading to the end.

182. Match your opening and closing. Deliver on the promise you made at the top.

183. Balance substance with lightness. A great post nourishes and entertains at the same time.

184. Be specific with your advice. Vague inspiration is forgettable. Specific instruction is shareable.

185. Embrace imperfection. Perfection kills more publications than criticism ever will.

❌ Dealing with Setbacks

Setbacks are part of every creator’s second year. A dip in engagement. A post that flops. A month where growth just stops. What matters is how you respond, not whether they happen.

186. Setbacks aren’t signs to stop. They’re signals to simplify and refocus.

187. You’re not failing. You’re gathering the data success is built on.

188. A slow week doesn’t erase your momentum. Keep showing up and the results compound.

189. Growth is rarely linear. Expect dips and push through them.

190. Not every post will land. Every post still takes you closer to the ones that will.

191. Your job isn’t to go viral. Your job is to stay visible.

192. If you can write through discouragement, you’ll outlast 90% of creators. Consistency is a moat that widens with time.

193. Zoom out to see the real progress. Daily stats hide the trend line.

194. A bad writing day is still a step forward. You’re building the habit, not chasing perfection.

195. You can fix a draft. You can’t fix something you didn’t write.

196. Readers remember your voice, not your stats. Keep speaking even when it feels like no one’s listening.

197. Setbacks feel personal, but they rarely are. Algorithms don’t care, so try not to take it personally.

198. One post can change everything. But you rarely get there without the 100 before it.

199. Every quiet day is still building your audience. Readers watch a lot longer than they engage.

200. The days you want to quit are often the days right before a breakthrough. Stick with it.

We hope this list helps you as much as writing it has helped us.

Which lessons stood out to you the most?

Drop the numbers of your favorites in the comments. We’d love to know which ones hit home! 💬

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🎉 Celebrate 2 Years With Us

To thank the community that made these 2 years possible, we’re running one of our biggest promotions for our premium resources.

The earlier you upgrade, the bigger the discount you lock in for as long as you stay subscribed.

Inside our premium tier, you get access to our full library of workshops, templates, downloadable PDFs, the Creator Growth Vault, and everything we publish behind the paywall every week.

If you’ve been on the fence, this is the moment to jump in.

To the next 2 years,
The Write • Build • Scale team

Help creators and experts turn their knowledge into income.

Since then, we’ve published thousands of pieces of content and have grown our community to over 53,000 subscribers and almost 2,000 premium members.

If you’re serving that large of a community and working with thousands of creators, experts, coaches, and consultants every year, you learn first-hand what people on this platform need to thrive and build Bestselling publications.

That’s why we are constantly publishing new resources and subscriber perks to help YOU build a best-selling Substack publication.

This is your time to jump in:

If you’re not a member of our paid tier yet, this is your chance to upgrade with our special 2-year anniversary deal right now.

🔥 Tiered Promo for Our Annual Paid Plan:

• 🙌 The first 5 upgrades get 99% OFF (SOLD OUT)

• ⚡ Next 10 upgrades: 90% OFF (SOLD OUT)

• 🚀 Next 15 upgrades: 80% OFF (SOLD OUT)

• 🎁 Next 20 upgrades: 75% OFF (SOLD OUT)

• ⏳ FINAL 25 upgrades: 70% OFF (SOLD OUT)

When it’s gone, it’s gone

We rarely offer this type of promotion for our resources. There’s no fake urgency here. When the first tier fills, the 99% rate is gone. When the second fills, 90% is gone.

And when the whole promo closes, prices go back to normal.

If you’ve been circling the paid tier and waiting for the right moment, this is your chance to jump in.

When you upgrade, you’ll instantly unlock resources to help you:

• ✅ Build a Bestselling Substack publication without wasting any time

• 🎓 Scale your income through digital products and services

• 🧑‍💻 Work smarter instead of just publishing more

• 🤝 Build high-leverage partnerships with top creators in your space

👉 Click here to check out some of the resources you’ll instantly get access to.

Thanks for reading, supporting, and building with us.

Let’s make year #3 even bigger—starting with your upgrade today.

– Sinem, Philip & Jari

If you’re planning to start a Substack in 2026, or you already have one that isn’t growing the way you hoped, this post is for you.

What separates the publications that take off from the ones that quietly stall is almost never talent, ideas, or writing quality.

Instead, it comes down to six simple but crucial decisions most creators aren’t even aware of.

A quick note before we start: The whole article is free to read, and so is the video. But at the very end, our paid members will find a hand-picked set of resources from our Creator Growth Vault, one map for each decision, so you can move from reading to actually implementing this same week.

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Decision 1: Stop writing about a “topic”

When asked about their niche, most people answer with a topic.

They say something like “I write about productivity,” or “I write about marketing.” But a topic isn’t a person, and the Substack algorithm can’t match you with a topic. It matches you with readers.

That’s why you want to pick one reader to focus on.

One specific person with one specific problem you can genuinely help them solve.

If you write for that person week after week, the algorithm starts working in your favor: It finds thousands of others who think and struggle exactly like them.

If you run a coaching or consulting practice, that one reader isn’t just a reader, it’s your future client.

The clearer you are about who they are, the faster your publication becomes the front door to your business.

And if you’re just starting out and don’t yet know who you can help, don’t treat that as a limitation. Instead, think of one person you could help right now with what you already know. Often it’s a version of your past self, because we usually understand our audience so well precisely because we’ve been them in the past.

Your topics will expand over time. But for now, treat this as a chance to be focused and sharp. Getting this one right makes every decision that follows easier.

Decision 2: Treat your publication as an entry point, not the final destination

Once you know who you’re writing for, the next question is what you’re actually building. Most creators get this wrong because they think their publication is the final destination.

Your Substack publication is where readers find you, learn to trust you, and eventually invest in your work at a deeper level. It’s the front door, but it doesn’t have to be your entire monetization strategy.

That single reframe changes what you publish and how you think about money from day one. You stop treating every post like it has to pay you directly, and you start treating every post like the opening line of a relationship.

If you’re in your early days, this should take some pressure off. You don’t need to monetize everything in week one.

If you already run a coaching, consulting, or expert business, the game gets even more interesting. Your free publication becomes the one thing that can fill your coaching offers, cohorts, courses, and any other product or service you sell.

The creators who miss this end up in a content hamster wheel: Publishing endlessly, stacking paywalls out of habit, and never reaching enough of the right people to make any of it pay off.

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Decision 3: Publish before you feel ready

Here’s a harsh truth you may not want to hear: Perfectionism kills more publications than bad writing ever will.

You redesign your logo. You rewrite the About page for the fifth time. You keep telling yourself you’ll launch once everything feels ready, but that day never comes.

If you have high standards, or you lean even slightly perfectionist, you’re never going to feel ready. Instead, you’re just keeping your best ideas hidden from people who might desperately need them right now.

Remember: Your first few posts don’t need to be your best work.

They need to do one job: Show a new reader that you understand their problem and can genuinely help them solve it. A handful of articles that each teach one specific thing will always outperform one perfect piece nobody finds.

If you’re already an established expert, this can be harder. You have a reputation. You don’t want to put anything out that feels less than polished. But the same rule applies to you as well: Your readers don’t need perfection. They need to feel understood, and they need proof you can help them.

Publish the posts that show people you’re worth subscribing to, even if the publication doesn’t feel perfect on your terms yet.

Decision 4: Pick one growth engine and run it every week

Getting posts out the door is one thing. Getting them in front of the right readers is another. Most beginners think this part is impossible when they’re starting with no audience. It isn’t.

Substack has two engines that work with zero audience. You don’t need both running perfectly from day one. You need one running deliberately every week.

The first is Notes. Notes are Substack’s short-form feed. Think of them as short posts, sometimes just a sentence, shown to readers well beyond your subscriber list. When a Note resonates, the reader can subscribe to your publication in one tap. It’s like posting on LinkedIn, X, or Instagram with an instant button to grow your email list.

The trap is treating Notes like a game of likes. Show up consistently with short, genuinely useful thoughts that pull the right readers back to your publication. A Note with a thousand likes from people who’ll never care about your work isn’t helping you. You want the right readers, not just big numbers.

But showing up on Notes every single day can feel like a massive burden, especially in the early months. That’s why we built our 365 Substack Notes Templates, so you never have to invent a Note from scratch again.

The second engine is recommendations. Other publications point their readers toward yours. Over 800 publications now recommend our work, which has sent more than 10,000 subscribers our way. But we didn’t sit down and pitch 800 creators one by one. We built genuine relationships with a few dozen we truly respect, and the effect compounded from there.

So keep this simple. Focus on a handful of strong relationships with creators whose work you actually vibe with, and let it grow from there.

Pick the engine that feels most natural to you right now, and start there. Let it compound.

Decision 5: Get paid to lead somewhere, not just to write more

With growth handled, the money question is the one that reframes everything else.

At Write • Build • Scale, paid subscriptions are less than 10% of our total revenue. Our publication with almost 2,000 paid members isn’t the main money maker. It’s a lead generation machine. Once that clicks, your whole relationship to money on Substack changes.

If you’re just starting, this should take pressure off. You don’t need to turn on paid subscriptions in week one, or even month one. You turn them on once you’ve earned real trust.

And when you do, your paid tier has to feel like an actual product with a clear transformation. Not just the same free content sitting behind a paywall. People pay for a result. They don’t pay for more words in their inbox.

If you already have expertise, this is where it gets really interesting for you. Your free publication becomes the top of a funnel that leads to the work you actually get paid well for: Coaching, consulting, courses, cohorts. When you approach Substack with a clear sense of how it fits into your business model, the return on your time and energy stops being a gamble.

Decision 6: Decide what you refuse to do

This one almost nobody talks about, and it might matter most in the long run.

You can build a Substack that grows and still end up trapped by it. Publishing constantly. Chasing every new feature. Running on empty. Slowly starting to resent the very thing that was supposed to give you freedom.

So think about what you’re not willing to do. A publishing frequency you won’t push past, even in a good week. A comparison you won’t indulge, because someone else has been in the game for years and you just started. The content you won’t write just because it might go viral, even though it has nothing to do with the readers you actually want to reach.

The creators still here and still thriving 2 years from now aren’t necessarily the most talented. They’re the ones who built something they could sustain. Something that gave them freedom instead of quietly taking it away.

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The bigger picture

Get these six decisions right and starting a Substack stops feeling like a gamble. It starts feeling like something completely doable, especially with the right system and the right support around you.

If you already run a business or a coaching practice, and you’d rather not spend the next year figuring Substack out by trial and error, that’s what we built the Substack Accelerator for. It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication, built around one outcome: Becoming a Substack Bestseller and building real income on top of it. It’s application-based, because we only take on people we’re confident we can get there.

If that sounds like you, apply here: substackcoaching.com

For Our Premium Members Only: The Creator Growth Vault Implementation Kit

The six decisions above are useless if you don’t actually implement them.

That’s what our Creator Growth Vault is for.

Below is a hand-picked list of vault resources mapped directly to each decision in this post, so you can stop reading about growth and start building it into your publication this week:

Upgrade Now & Get Instant Access

Read more

If you’ve ever talked yourself out of a room because it didn’t seem like your world, this post is for you.

A few weeks ago, our Customer Success Manager at Teachable invited us to an invite-only mastermind in Rome. And our first instinct was to politely decline.

I had a picture in my head of what a mastermind like that would look like.

Marketing bros in expensive (and ugly) sneakers.

Lots of talk about revenue numbers and growth hacks.

A room that feels more like a stage for a few people than an actual conversation.

And that’s not really our world at Write • Build • Scale. We’ve spent the last two years quietly helping over 1,000 creators grow and monetize on Substack, and we care about the work more than the theater around it.

But we said yes to the adventure, and to be honest, it turned out to be the exact opposite of anything I would have expected from a mastermind trip.

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I filmed the whole thing so you can come with us.

If you’re skimming rather than watching, here are the three business reframes I brought home from Rome. Any one of them would have been worth the trip.

The 88% Stat That Changed How I Think About Our Products

There were only a handful of keynotes across the entire content day, and one of them was from the Teachable team itself, and they dropped a number that stopped me mid-sip of coffee:

88% of people who buy an online course on Teachable never open it. Not even once.

Read that again.

For years, my mental model has been: create something great, sell it, then move on to the next great thing. What I keep coming back to now is that the sale is barely the beginning.

The Teachable team walked us through where in the customer journey people are most likely to buy again, which segments matter, and why the more someone actually engages with what you’ve made, the more likely they are to come back and buy the next thing.

These learnings reframe the entire job description for a creator with different products and services.

Our job is not only to sell the course, the workshop, the templates, the paid Substack. It’s to get people to actually USE what they paid for because that’s what makes them come back.

If you’re building anything on Substack right now, this applies to you directly. The article that gets read, the resource that gets downloaded and used, the community post someone actually replies to — those are the moments that turn a one-time paid member into a long-term one.

The Hiring Line I Can’t Stop Replaying

By Day #3 we were out in Frascati, a small village in wine country just outside Rome. Instead of another conference room, we spent the afternoon at a family-run winery, tasting wine and having conversations that just kept going.

One topic that came up over and over again in our conversations is hiring.

We’re at a point at Write • Build • Scale where we can’t keep going with the freelancer-only setup we’ve had for years. We need to build a team. And honestly, that’s been making me a little nervous.

But one of the creators in the room said something I can’t stop thinking about:

“When you choose good people, you’re not responsible for them.”

This simple line made me realize that the biggest task in front of me isn’t “managing people” right now. It’s getting really clear on who we are, what we’re building, and where we actually need help. If I get that part right, a lot of what I’ve been worried about probably takes care of itself.

The lesson isn’t “hire good people.” Everyone knows that.

The lesson is that your job as the founder is upstream of the hire, not downstream. Get the clarity right, and the management gets easier.

Why I Finally Changed My Mind on Black Friday

I have always hated Black Friday marketing. As a consumer, I hate the way my inbox floods. So for the past decade, we refused to run a Black Friday campaign. We always launched right before, or right after.

And honestly, part of that was me wanting to be the cool person who doesn’t do Black Friday.

But every single creator I talked to over dinner and wine that afternoon was basically saying the same thing: “OF COURSE, you run Black Friday campaigns!”

They even described it as a “money glitch.”

Even with steep discounts, it’s often their highest-earning stretch of the year. People are literally waiting to spend money in those few days.

Sometimes you just need to hear a very obvious thing at the right time, from the right room, for it to finally click.

So heads up: we’re running a Black Friday campaign this year. (And I’ll walk you through exactly how we build it! 🤫)

The bigger lesson underneath is that being the cool person in your industry is often just another version of being stuck. Sometimes the position you’re holding as a principle is actually just an excuse to skip a hard thing.

The Real Lesson From Rome

None of these three reframes required us to fly to Italy.

The 88% stat is on Teachable’s website. Every founder book has a chapter on hiring. And half the internet has already told me to run Black Friday.

The reason I heard them this time is the room.

Sitting across from someone who has quietly sold $10M of a photography course, or built a global aviation training business, changes what you’re willing to consider. Their reality shifts your reality, over three days, in a way no blog post ever will.

That’s the actual lesson: the rooms you’re hesitant to walk into are usually the rooms you should be in. Not because you’ll be the smartest person there. Not because everyone else has it figured out. But because the conversations in those rooms quietly reshape what you think is possible.

If you’ve been sitting on an invitation, a workshop, or a conversation that feels slightly out of your comfort zone, take this as your nudge to just go.

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If you’re a coach, consultant, or expert who wants to grow and monetize your Substack with a small group of creators and our direct support, our Substack Accelerator is the room we’ve built for exactly that.

Learn more about Substack Accelerator: substackcoaching.com

P.S. If you want a taste of what Philip actually taught from the stage in Rome, he broke down one specific idea from his keynote for our Substack audience.

The framework is called the 7-11-4 rule, drawn from Google’s Zero Moment of Truth research.

The idea is simple: before someone trusts you enough to buy from you, they need about seven hours of content with you, across roughly eleven meaningful touchpoints, on four different platforms or locations.

It’s the cleanest single explanation we have for why Substack works so well as a trust engine, and it’s the one Philip walked the Rome room through in detail.

Here’s Philip’s full breakdown of the 7-11-4 rule for building trust on Substack:

It’s a personalized deep dive on what’s working well, what could be improved, and exactly what to focus on to grow faster and attract more paid subscribers.

Today’s audit is from our Substack Accelerator member, , who is the founder of The DIY Data Scientist - a publication helping professionals build real-world analytical skills so they can stand out at work and advance their careers.

With 14 years of experience in data analytics and a LinkedIn Top Voice badge to his name, David brings serious credibility to everything he publishes - and it’s no surprise he recently crossed the 1,000+ subscriber mark.

In this 38-minute Substack audit, we cover:

• How to redesign a Substack homepage so new visitors can instantly find what’s most relevant to them (and turn into subscribers more easily)

• Why your pinned post title matters more than most creators realise - and how to rewrite it to create curiosity and optimize it for conversion

• The exact reason why we believe David’s paid tier is built in a way that will bring him lots of paid subscribers

• How to use the dynamic call-to-action feature to warm up free subscribers to a paid upgrade over time

• Why collaborations, recommendation exchanges, guest posts, and co-hosted lives, should be David’s primary growth focus right now

Watch the full audit right now to learn practical lessons that will help you build, optimize, and grow your own Substack publication.

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🤝 Want Your Own Substack Audit?

If you’re serious about using Substack to grow your audience, brand, and income, we can help you get there in a fraction of the time.

We offer high-touch coaching where we support you directly to:

• Build your foundation — positioning, paid tier structure, and content strategy that actually converts

• Grow your audience — proven systems for Notes, recommendations, and collaborations that bring in 100+ new subscribers per month

• Monetize strategically — from your first paid subscribers to building a digital product stack that generates real revenue

It’s hands-on guidance from people who’ve built exactly what you’re trying to build.

→ Apply for Substack Coaching here

So they default to one of two things: locking away their regular articles, or creating a vague “paid subscriber exclusive” that doesn’t feel meaningfully different from what they already give away for free.

Neither works.

Free subscribers don’t upgrade because they can access more of the same thing. They upgrade because you’re offering them something that feels worth paying for.

But coming up with genuinely compelling paid content ideas doesn’t require hours of brainstorming.

It requires ten minutes and three questions.

Question #1: What Are the Biggest Pain Points of My Audience?

Pain points are specific, personal, and urgent. They’re the things your readers lie awake thinking about. The problems they’d pay to solve today, not eventually.

Being specific matters. “Getting healthier” is a topic. “Not knowing why I keep losing the same five kilos and gaining them back” is a pain point.

Likewise, "writing a book" is a topic. But "having a half-finished manuscript sitting on my laptop for two years because I don't know how to get unstuck" is a pain point.

If you’re not sure what your audience’s biggest pain points are, look at the evidence you already have:

• What questions do you get asked most in DMs and comments?

• What topics generate the most replies to your newsletters?

• What things did you struggle with that kept you up at night?

• What did your audience indicate in your surveys or polls?

• What do clients consistently tell you they’re struggling with?

Write down the most pressing pain points your audience faces, and zoom in on one for your next paid post.

Question #2: What Would Help Them Solve This Pain Point?

Free content teaches the what and the why.

It explains the problem, shares your perspective, and gives readers a reason to trust you. It’s your stories, your frameworks in broad strokes, and your take on why something matters.

Paid content delivers the how.

The step-by-step process with detailed action steps that people can follow along with to get the results they’re looking for.

At Write • Build • Scale, most of our free posts are about what growth & monetization strategies to focus on and why.

Our paid content (workshops, templates, playbooks, guides) gives members the exact tools or processes to implement these strategies.

So, ask yourself:

• If a reader used what I’m about to create, what would actually change for them?

• What would they be able to do, decide, or avoid that they couldn’t before?

• Would it help them solve the pain point they’re facing?

If you're confident about the answers, that’s when you know your paid content is at the level it should be.

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Question #3: What Format Delivers This With The Highest Perceived Value?

Content format matters more than most creators realise.

The same information packaged in a different format can instantly boost - or decrease - the perceived value of your premium content.

That’s why we recommend - for paid content - thinking beyond the standard newsletter article format.

Formats with higher perceived value are:

• A checklist or template they can save and reuse

• A pre-recorded workshop that teaches a skill in video format

• A step-by-step ultimate guide the reader can follow along with

• A case study that shows exactly how you/someone achieved a specific result

• A behind-the-scenes breakdown of how you do something in your own business

• A decision framework that helps them make a specific choice with confidence

When you create premium resources with the formats above, your paid tier starts feeling more and more like a premium membership instead of ‘just another paid newsletter’ where you just unlock more of the same.

So, ask yourself:

What format makes this feel like something worth paying for instead of something I could have found for free?

A personal finance writer, for example, could take the pain point “I never know where my money actually goes” and turn it into a monthly budget audit template.

That’s a very different product from a post explaining why budgeting matters.

Instead of just sharing more information, it’s a reusable resource their readers keep coming back to. And that’s the type of content people pay for.

Combining The Three Questions

When you answer all three questions, you end up with a paid content idea that’s specific, valuable, and genuinely different from what you give away for free.

It sounds like this:

“My audience’s pain point is [X]. A piece of content that would meaningfully help them is [Y]. I’ll deliver it as [format] because that makes it feel premium and saves them [time/effort/guesswork].”

That’s your next paid post.

Run this exercise once a week, and you’ll never stare at a blank page wondering what to put behind the paywall again.

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Looking for inspiration? Check out some of our premium resources, all using different content formats from our usual free posts:

What you're seeing isn't a bad week or a broken algorithm: The whole attention-chasing model is winding down, and a different growth engine has quietly taken its place.

Here’s what’s actually working right now, and the strategic mistake we see serious business owners make that stops them from ever building real income.

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The old growth model is over

For most of the last decade, growing an audience meant feeding the algorithm.

You post, you hope, you perform for reach, you do it again tomorrow.

That model still runs, but it’s getting more expensive to play and less predictable to win. Every platform gets more ad-loaded, every post gets less organic distribution, and the followers you built rarely belong to you the moment the platform decides to change the rules, so we stopped playing it. The result is our best growth run in 11 years of running online businesses: Over 50,000 subscribers and 1,800+ paying members in under 2 years, without a single Instagram dance or hook-fishing short.

The reason it worked isn’t a clever tactic. It’s a structural shift in what platform we chose to build on.

What Substack actually gives you

Everything on Substack is built to make you independent, and that’s the piece most creators miss when they first look at it.

Followers on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn stay useful right up until the platform changes its algorithm. Then the audience you spent years building becomes a rounding error overnight.

On Substack, you don’t get followers, you get subscribers, and their email addresses are yours. Payments run through Stripe. The platform is ad-free, so readers open your posts without wading through a mall of promotions first. And you can actually message people directly, which on the other social platforms has become an anti-signal.

That combination of subscriber ownership, direct messaging, and an ad-free reading environment, means you actually own your audience instead of renting it from a platform that can change the rules on you tomorrow.

The mistake almost every creator makes

The structural advantage is real, but what most creators do with it is the mistake.

They optimize the entire publication for paid subscribers. They obsess over the paywall. They stress about their conversion rate. They read every article on Substack growth and ask the same question: How do I turn more free readers into $8/month?

That’s a fine question, but it’s the smaller game.

If you already run a business or a coaching practice, your paid subscribers are almost never the biggest revenue line your Substack produces.

What Substack actually gives you is trust at scale with the exact people who could become clients for your real offers.

The paid tier is an arm-raiser: It tells you who’s serious, who’s ready to spend, who’s leaning in. Some of those people will stay paid subscribers for years. Others will book a call, buy a course, or hire you. Most of the real revenue lives downstream of the paid tier, not inside it.

Optimize for that, and every decision you make about your publication changes.

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What actually belongs inside your paid tier

Once you stop treating paid subscriptions as the finish line, the next question is what you put behind the paywall.

Most people believe that the answer is to just publish more posts and put them behind the paywall, but that’s the worst way to think about your paid tier.

Nobody becomes a paid subscriber because they wanted another email in their inbox.

They pay because they want transformation faster, premium access, a shortcut. When someone joins our paid tier, they get a Notion database we use every day, bestseller interviews, behind-the-scenes access, and a set of resources that would look absurd for $85 a year on any other platform. It’s built that way on purpose, because the paid tier isn’t the offer. It’s the door to a longer relationship.

Pricing is only one lever in the free-to-paid problem, and it’s the one most creators guess at. Our Substack Free-to-Paid Playbook is full of 100+ tested strategies for turning free readers into paying members, filtered by subscriber stage, so you find the right strategy in minutes.

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The mechanics that compound trust

Once the strategy is right, a small number of mechanics do most of the work. These are the ones that reliably moved the needle for us.

Personalize at scale

Every new subscriber gets a personal message asking why they subscribed and what they want to build. Not an automated welcome sequence, but an actual message. Some conversations lead nowhere. Some lead to paid subscribers. Some lead to coaching clients. All of them teach you what your audience actually wants, which is worth more than any market research you’ll ever run.

Go live

In the age of AI, almost everything can be faked: The image, the voice, the video, the writing. What can’t be faked yet is a live stream. Get on camera at least once a week, miss your words occasionally, answer real questions in real time. That’s how trust compounds now, because it’s the one signal your audience rarely confuses with a bot.

Publish one skyscraper article per quarter

Every so often, put 5x the normal effort into a single post. A deep, definitive piece that people save, share, and come back to. One of ours documented 365 lessons from our first year on the platform. It went viral, brought a flood of new subscribers, and we paired it with a birthday promotion that filled our annual tier in days. You can’t do this every week, but you should do it a few times a year.

Use Notes as pointers, not as your product

Notes are signposts on the road into your town. Their job is to send passers-by toward your publication, not to build your entire brand on their own. Post them consistently, keep them tied to the same core message as your publication, and treat them as awareness rather than depth.

Focus is what makes all of it work

None of this compounds if you’re doing it across 5 different topics at once. We get asked constantly whether someone should run 3 to 5 different newsletters because they’re interested in a lot of things. If Substack is a hobby for you, do whatever you want. If it’s a business, you want one publication.

You want to be known for one thing. You want to be the person someone recommends when a specific problem comes up. That rarely happens when your energy is spread across five topics, and it doesn’t happen when you try to be a generalist on a platform that rewards depth.

Start in a niche so narrow it feels almost embarrassing. We started by teaching people who already wrote on Medium how to make more money from their writing. From there, we expanded to writing online, then building audiences, then scaling income. The niche was the on-ramp, and the expansion came later, once we owned the ground we started on.

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The window is still open

Substack isn’t LinkedIn yet. It isn’t Instagram. It may never be, and honestly, that’s the point: A platform that stays this good is one that doesn’t try to become everything for everyone. Traffic is up, the network effects are working, and most creators, especially outside the US, still have no idea what it is.

Two years from now, that won’t be true. The people who take Substack seriously right now will have a compounding advantage the latecomers rarely buy their way out of.

If you already run a business or a coaching practice, and you’d rather not spend the next year figuring Substack out by trial and error, that’s what we built the Substack Accelerator for. It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication, built around one outcome: Becoming a Substack Bestseller and building real income on top of it.

It’s application-based, because we only take people we’re confident we can get there.

If that sounds like you, apply here: substackcoaching.com

You have a business, a proven offer, and the strong reputation that you’ve spent years building. When you think of launching a podcast, you want to get everything right, and that’s exactly one of the things that might be holding you back.

Here’s what you need to know to take the leap and actually build a podcast that not only attracts listeners but converts buyers:

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Consistency Is the Most Overrated Advice in Podcasting

Consistency doesn’t earn you money. You can publish every single week for a year, on time, without fail, and still sell nothing.

But consistency still matters, for a reason most people get slightly wrong. When you say you will show up every other week and then you don’t, you break your word. And a listener who watches you break a small promise starts to wonder about the bigger ones.

Every episode you release brings a new listener meeting you for the first time, so the promise is always being tested.

The real commitment isn’t a posting schedule. It’s the long haul.

Evergreen episodes that keep converting months after you publish them, working quietly at every stage of your funnel, only pay off when there are enough of them. Roughly 100 episodes, which is about 2 years. If you are not willing to commit to something like that, podcasting probably isn’t the right channel for you, and that is a completely fine answer.

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Sell the Outcome, Not the Format

Most Substack paid tiers are built as a list of features:

• Monthly Q&As.

• A roundtable.

• A private podcast feed.

But the problem with a list of features is that it contains no outcome.

Nobody upgrades to your paid tier to attend a roundtable.

They upgrade for what the roundtable does for them.

The good news is that you can rebuild the same tier around the shift it creates and everything changes.

In Jen’s case: Profit from your podcast without burning out. Position your content so it saves you hours instead of eating them. Be home in time for dinner. The features can stay exactly the same. The framing is what sells.

This points at a deeper habit worth stealing. Most creators pick the format first. They settle on creating a podcast, a PDF, a video, a Notion page, and then go looking for something to put in it.

But you want to reverse the order. Start with what the thing is supposed to do for the person on the other end, and the format becomes an easy, almost boring decision.

A “private podcast feed,” on its own, tells your audience nothing about what they are actually getting.

The outcome is the product. The format is just the packaging.

Good Content Doesn’t Convert When You Never Actually Sell

The most common reason that podcasts don’t sell is a stupidly simple one: you’re not selling enough.

If you want to build a profitable podcast, you need to make clear, attractive offers to your audience, something they can’t just shrug off

You don’t want to run an entire ad in your episode, but you do want to place clear, simple calls to action and regularly mention how your work can support your listener.

When the whole episode points toward the same next logical step, the offer stops feeling like an interruption and starts feeling like the obvious thing to do. Say it clearly. Say it more than once. Tie the episode into it from the start.

There are 2 habits behind this: The first is to protect your real estate and sell your own stuff.

Every guest you bring on to promote their thing is a moment you have pointed your audience somewhere other than your offer, and a confused buyer rarely buys, so lean on your solo episodes, especially early.

The second is to get comfortable being the most convicted person in the room. Your strongest content is whatever you are most convinced of. No competitor and no guru can take that from you, and belief is contagious: If you don’t believe in the next step, nobody listening will either.

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How People Actually Choose Whether to Listen

Before anyone hears a second of your podcast, they have already judged it several times over.

It works the way you pick a restaurant in an unfamiliar town: You go where the cars are, because a full lot is social proof, and you skip the empty one.

Then you evaluate from the doorway, checking whether it’s clean, whether the food smells good, whether anyone greets you, whether the wait is too long.

A podcast gets the same treatment. Someone searches a topic, and a wall of shows comes up. They look at the cover art first, before a single sound.

If the art clears the bar, they read the title. If the title makes sense, they read the description, and the description had better be about them, because if it’s all about you and your credentials, they’re gone.

Make it past those doors and they reach the episodes, where the same test repeats.

An episode titled “Episode 1” wastes the most valuable space you have.

A description that opens with “in this episode” wastes it again, because they already know where they are.

Instead, you want to hook them immediately and make it easy for them to scan the practical signals: Episode length, whether the length is consistent, how often you release, and whether anyone has left a review, which is social proof all over again.

Your Podcast Isn’t Broke. It’s Just Unplanned.

Strip all of it down and one idea is left standing: A podcast, a newsletter, or any channel you build doesn’t make money because you were consistent or because you bought the right microphone. It makes money because you led with strategy, built it around a real outcome, and actually made the offer.

That is also the whole difference between talking into a microphone and building an asset.

If you already run a business or a coaching practice, and you’d rather not spend the next year figuring Substack out by trial and error, that’s what we built the Substack Accelerator for.

It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication, built around one outcome: Becoming a Substack Bestseller and building real income on top of it. It’s application-based, because we only take people we’re confident we can get there.

If that sounds like you, apply here: substackcoaching.com

They fill it in once when they first sign up, write a few sentences about themselves, and never touch it again.

That’s a mistake, because your About page is one of the highest-leverage pages on your entire publication.

Think about what happens when someone discovers you for the first time.

Maybe they found one of your Notes. Maybe a friend sent them one of your articles. Maybe they stumbled across your publication through a recommendation.

The first thing many new readers do is check your About page.

They’re not ready to subscribe yet. They’re scanning. They’re asking one question: is this worth my inbox?

If your About page doesn’t answer that question clearly and quickly, they leave.

After analyzing hundreds of About pages across Substack publications in every niche, I’ve seen the same mistakes made over and over again (and the same patterns in the ones that actually convert).

In this video, I’m sharing real-world examples of high-converting About pages from our Substack Accelerator members (, , and ).

How to Structure Your About Page

Based on what I’ve seen across hundreds of publications, the About pages that consistently convert follow a clear structure.

#1: Start With the Reader, Not Yourself

The most common About page mistake is leading with yourself.

A stranger landing on your About page isn’t asking “who is this person?”

They’re asking, “is newsletter for me, and worth subscribing to?”

Your reader’s most urgent need is to know whether your newsletter is relevant to them. Answer that first.

That’s the key difference. About pages that convert are the ones written for the reader, not for the creator.

Your opening section should answer three questions for your reader straight away:

• What is this newsletter about?

• Is this newsletter right for me?

• What will I get from subscribing?

The goal is to make the right reader nod within the first ten seconds and think: yes, this is exactly for me.

Include a short list of outcomes. What will a subscriber learn, experience, or be able to do after reading your newsletter consistently?

And put a subscribe button right below that section, before you’ve even introduced yourself.

If someone is already convinced after the first section, make it easy for them to act on it immediately.

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#2: Highlight Your Story + Credentials

Once the reader knows the newsletter is for them, they want to know who’s behind it.

This is where you introduce yourself, but with a specific goal in mind. You’re not writing a biography. You’re building trust.

Two things matter here: a clear description of who you are, and a few concrete credibility signals.

Not vague claims about being “passionate” or “dedicated.”

Specific, measurable things: years of experience, results you’ve achieved, people you’ve helped, problems you’ve solved.

Then explain why you started this newsletter (the origin story).

The most effective origin stories come from one of three places:

• You had the problem yourself and solved it

• You kept seeing others struggle with it

• Or you noticed nobody was talking about it yet

Pick whichever is true and say it plainly.

This is also where you add personality. Share something real and personal about yourself.

The reader already knows the newsletter is relevant to them; now they want to know if they resonate with you. Give them a reason to.

Add a photo of yourself here too. A clear, natural photo makes the page feel personal. It’s a small detail that makes a big difference.

Add another subscribe button at the end of this section.

#3: Add Social Proof (If You Have It)

If you have genuine subscriber feedback, this is the place to include it.

Three testimonials are enough.

And if you don’t have testimonials yet, skip this section for now. You can add it once you’ve collected a few genuine responses from engaged subscribers.

The simplest way to get testimonials is to DM three to five people who regularly engage with your content and ask if they’d share one or two sentences about what they’ve found most useful.

Most people are happy to help when you make it easy.

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Your ‘About’ Page Template

If you approach it the right way, your About page is a true conversion asset.

Every section should serve one purpose: moving a stranger one step closer to becoming a subscriber.

Lead with the reader. Follow with your story. Back it up with proof. Make it easy to subscribe at every stage.

When your About page is doing its job properly, it works for you around the clock, converting curious visitors into subscribers without you having to do anything at all.

To make it as easy as possible to create a high-converting About page, we’ve created a word-for-word About page template - exclusively available for our premium subscribers.

(Not a premium member yet? Upgrade to Write • Build • Scale premium to unlock this fill-in-the-blank About page template plus hundreds of other exclusive resources - like workshops, templates, ultimate guides, courses, and our Creator Growth Vault.)

Access the ‘About’ page template right here:

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We recently crossed 50,000 subscribers at Write • Build • Scale, and if I look back at our 2-year journey on Substack, most of our growth didn’t come from doing more:

Instead, I claim that our rapid growth is based on a handful of smart decisions that most creators skip.

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We Don’t Want You on Our Monthly Plan

The price of our monthly plan is $20, which is higher than the average on Substack:

Most publications sit between $5 and $10 a month, so ours looks expensive next to them, and that’s on purpose. We don’t want people on our monthly tier, and thanks to that decision, less than 5% of our paid members choose the monthly plan.

Instead, we want our members on the annual plan at $85 a year.

When you set the monthly price high enough, the annual plan stops feeling like a discount and starts feeling like the obvious choice.

The revenue math is the smaller half of the story: An annual member is a different relationship than a monthly one.

Someone who commits to a full year shows up more, actually uses what we build, and stays long enough to get results. That’s the depth that turns a list of subscribers into a community people want to be inside.

So even during launch weeks and promotions, we almost only promote annual. We rarely discount monthly to make it easier to say yes.

If you run a paid publication, the question here is which plan you actually want people on, and whether your prices are quietly steering them there.

But pricing is only one lever in the free-to-paid problem, and it’s the one most creators guess at. Our Free-to-Paid Playbook is full of 100+ tested strategies for turning free readers into paying members, filtered by subscriber stage, so you find the right move in minutes instead of guessing.

Notes Brought Us 10,000 Subscribers, and One Sentence Did the Work

This one surprised us more than anything else. Around 10,000 of our 50,000 subscribers came directly through Substack Notes, a fifth of everything, from a feature most creators either ignore or post to with no real strategy.

Here’s the part that changed how I think about it. We co-published a deep analysis that looked at over 9,000 Notes from more than 600 writers. Not likes. Not restacks. Which Notes actually converted readers into subscribers.

The finding that stood out had nothing to do with timing or how often you post: The Notes that converted best opened with a specific, verifiable credential. Not a clever hook. Not a question. A credential.

Notes that opened that way converted at 20 times the rate of Notes that didn’t.

It makes sense the moment you picture the feed: Notes is a scroll full of strangers. The person passing your Note isn’t familiar with your work yet, doesn’t know your results, and has no reason yet to trust a word of it.

The first sentence is the only moment you get to signal you’re worth listening to, and a credential does that instantly. The insight that follows becomes much more believable once the reader knows why you have the standing to say it.

So lead with what you’ve actually done, not just with the insight.

If you are serious about growing on Substack, you really can’t miss out on Notes.

But we know that showing up every single day can feel like a massive burden. That’s why we have created 365 notes templates for you.

You can get full access for only $47 right now.

Live Streaming Is the Fastest Way to Build Trust

When Substack rolled out live video streaming, we dived in right away and have probably hosted more sessions than any other publication.

And that’s for two reasons:

The first is trust.

Live is unfiltered, unedited, and in real-time. You get things right, you get things wrong, you answer questions you didn’t see coming.

That’s the whole point, because people connect with a human thinking on their feet, not with polished, perfect content. It’s the fastest trust-building format on the platform right now.

The second is growth, and this is the one to pay attention to.

Most of our streams are collaborations. A partner brings their audience, those readers discover our work inside a real conversation, and a meaningful share of them subscribe. Every collaboration live is a warm introduction to a new audience by someone they already trust. That compounds in a way solo content just can’t.

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Saying No Is a Growth Strategy

When we were building this publication, there was a constant pull to be everywhere. Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X. Every platform feels like an opportunity you’re wasting by not being on it.

But we made a deliberate choice: Substack was the one thing.

Our philosophy is to go deep on one platform at a time so we can ignore anything else.

What most creators miss is that being everywhere doesn’t automatically multiply your reach or revenue, but it instantly divides your energy, and usually means nothing you’re doing is working particularly well.

The creators growing fastest right now aren’t doing the most things. They’re doing fewer things at a consistently high level.

If your attention is split across platforms and none of them is really moving, that’s probably your answer. Pick the one with the most potential for your goals and go deep. For us, that was Substack, and 50,000 subscribers later I have no regrets.

The Right Platform at the Wrong Time Is Still the Wrong Platform

I learned this one the hard way. A lot of creators are either on the wrong platform, or on the right platform at the wrong moment.

I’ve built my email list on Kit since 2020. That’s where my core list lives and where my automated sales run. I first joined Substack in 2021, then left. Back then, Substack was essentially a simple email tool. You could write and send emails, but there was no real discovery, no Notes, no recommendation network, no way for a stranger to stumble onto your work. For someone who already had a list, there wasn’t much reason to be there.

When I came back in 2024, everything had changed. Substack had built the discovery infrastructure that turns it into a genuine growth engine: A recommendation network, Notes, explore options, and so much more. It had matured into something that could actually put my work in front of people who’d never heard of me.

That’s when it made sense to go all-in because the features finally matched what I needed to grow my business.

The best platform isn’t just about your preferences. It’s about whether the platform’s current toolset serves your specific goals right now. A platform that was wrong for you two years ago can be the perfect fit today.

None of This Was a Shortcut

Every one of the points above was a deliberate choice, and deliberate choices compound. The more intentionally you make them, the faster they pay off.

If you already run a business or a coaching practice, and you’d rather not spend the next year figuring these decisions out by trial and error, that’s what we built the Substack Accelerator for. It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication, built around one outcome: Becoming a Substack Bestseller and building real income on top of it.

It’s application-based, because we only take people we’re confident we can get there. If that sounds like you, you can apply here: substackcoaching.com

Over the past two years we’ve grown Write • Build • Scale to over 52,000 subscribers, with almost 2,000 premium members, and along the way we’ve changed our mind about most of the standard monetization advice.

And let me be honest upfront: A lot of what follows runs against what you’ve probably been told. Skim the takeaways that land, ignore the ones that don’t, and go deeper wherever you want.

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Your paid tier is a hand raiser, not a paycheck

If you already charge premium prices for your real work, a $10 a month subscription isn’t going to change your life. It’s simply not where the value is. The value is that someone raised their hand.

Picture a bridge: Free content on one side, paid on the other. What matters isn’t what sits on either side. It’s that you invite people to cross. Because the moment a reader makes that first small investment, they don’t just give you money. They give you their attention and their focus, and those are the things that eventually turn a reader into a client.

Stop giving people more content. Give them the next level of support.

The most common paywall mistake is treating “paid” as a synonym for “more.”

More articles, more emails, more posts. But more content is the last thing your reader wants. We can all pull infinite content out of AI for free now. Nobody is wishing their favorite expert emailed them twice as often.

What people pay for is a shortcut to a result.

And here’s the part almost nobody plans for: Overwhelm cancels more subscriptions than your price ever will.

Hand someone a thousand things and they finish none of them, feel behind, and quietly leave. Some people would genuinely pay more to have less.

Think about your bedroom: You sleep better when the floor is clear. A membership works the same way.

Take people from A to B, add a small bonus or two, and cut everything that isn’t pulling toward the result.

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The 99% paywall

This strategy works like a charm: Write a complete guide to solving one problem. Teach the whole thing. Hold nothing back.

Then place the paywall at 99%, and put the one thing that makes implementation instant behind it: The template, the script, the fill-in-the-blank version.

Free readers walk away with real, usable value. Paid members pay for the shortcut.

Nobody feels cheated, and the value gap speaks for itself.

Stop arguing about price. Chase the badge and the annual plan.

Coaches love to agonize over whether the subscription should be $6 or $8.

Here’s the blunt version: Until you’re past your first 100 paid members, the difference is a couple hundred dollars either way. It’s noise.

What moves the needle early is the bestseller badge, the little piece of social proof people recognize and trust in a second.

So do two things instead of fiddling with price.

Push people toward the annual plan. Nobody becomes a superfan overnight, and annual buys you the months you need.

And price it so annual is the obvious choice: If monthly is $20, make the year $80. The math sells itself.

Write your book in public

If you’ve got a book in you, and most experts do, don’t disappear for a year to write it in private. Serialize it. Release a chapter as paid content each month. You get paid to write it, and your audience shapes it in real time with their feedback.

Keep the bigger picture in view, though. A book isn’t the finish line, it’s a branding asset. It’s a bestseller badge you can physically hand someone. It builds trust, it explains your method, and it quietly pulls in higher-ticket clients. The publishing world flipped, too. You used to write a book to build an audience. Now you build the audience first, and the publishers come to you.

Own your email list, even while you grow on Substack

Substack will save you thousands of dollars a year, and its built-in email tools keep getting better. But if you want to do genuinely advanced email marketing, a dedicated tool like Kit still wins. The good news is you don’t have to choose blindly. You can pipe every new Substack signup straight into your email platform with a simple automation, so you’re building an asset you fully own no matter what any single platform decides to do next.

One golden rule while you do it: Never pitch someone a product they’ve already bought. Keeping people happy is mostly about not annoying them, and nothing annoys a good customer faster than being sold something they already own.

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Tell people what’s coming next, or watch them leave

Picture a member, call her Sarah, who’s quietly wondering whether to cancel because she’s not sure she’s getting enough out of it. If she has no idea what’s coming next month, canceling is the easy, logical choice.

Now picture the opposite. You tell every member what’s coming this quarter: This live stream, that guest interview, this new mini-course. Sarah only needs one of those to feel worth it, and she stays. So announce what’s ahead. Be proactive about it. And when you’re deciding what to build next, don’t guess in a vacuum. Ask your members. If you actually pay attention, they’ll tell you exactly what they’d pay for next.

Where to go from here

Everything above comes down to one shift: Stop thinking about how to get more money out of your readers, and start thinking about how to get real results for them. Results are what turn a $10 subscriber into a long-term client.

If you’re a coach, consultant, or expert who wants to turn your Substack into a business instead of a hobby, this is the exact work we do with people inside the Substack Accelerator.

Learn more about the Substack Accelerator: substackcoaching.com

What’s the one thing you’ve been unsure whether to put behind your paywall? Drop it in the comments and let’s figure it out together. 💬

They need more trust.

Because on Substack, people rarely become free subscribers, paid subscribers, or buyers after seeing one good post.

They need repeated touchpoints.

They need to understand who you are, what you stand for, and why they should pay attention to you.

In other words, they need to trust you.

Now, you cannot force people to trust you. But you can be strategic about building it.

That’s been our entire approach at Write • Build • Scale for the past two years.

And the framework behind it comes from Google’s Zero Moment of Truth research — something called the 7-11-4 rule.

The idea is simple.

Before someone truly trusts you enough to buy from you, they need:

• 7 Hours of content

• Across 11 different touchpoints

• In 4 different locations

Not seven hours in one sitting.

Seven hours accumulated over time — five minutes here, thirty minutes there — across multiple content formats.

That’s what builds real trust. Not one viral post. Not a perfectly written sales page. Repeated exposure, in different contexts, over time.

Substack is one of the best platforms in the world for this — because it gives you multiple distinct touchpoints, each serving a different purpose.

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Touchpoint #1: Notes — Build Attention

Notes are your top-of-funnel.

Their job isn’t to turn someone into a superfan. Their job is to get you seen.

There’s no easier way to be discovered on Substack than through Notes. If you publish three a day, people start seeing you everywhere — in their feed, in the discovery tab, in the comments sections of posts they’re already reading.

A Note I posted about being invited to fly to Rome to host a keynote for Teachable brought in 144 new free subscribers in a single day.

Just me sharing what was happening in my life. No pitch. No strategy. Just a real moment, shared in real time.

That’s the power of Notes done right.

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Touchpoint #2: Long-Form Posts — Build Credibility

If Notes get attention, long-form posts build credibility.

This is where people go from knowing your name to trusting your expertise.

Three things make the difference here.

#1: Teach your method, not generic advice.

Anyone can write a how-to post. What builds credibility is a framework that’s distinctly yours — something that comes from your own experience and thinking, not something ChatGPT could have written.

#2: Provide evidence.

Back up everything you say with screenshots, data, and behind-the-scenes proof. Claims without evidence are just opinions. Evidence turns opinions into authority.

#3: Structure your writing for reading, not writing.

Short paragraphs, clear headlines, plenty of white space. The internet is not a book. Format accordingly.

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Touchpoint #3: Publication Chat — Build Community

Most Substack content is one-directional.

You create; they consume.

Chat flips that dynamic. It’s where your audience stops being an audience and starts becoming a community.

Content creates a relationship between you and your readers.

Chat creates relationships between your readers and each other. And when members of a community trust each other, that trust extends to everything you create.

An active, engaged community is one of the most powerful trust signals you can build.

Touchpoint #4: Podcast — Build Affinity

Podcasts create what I call passive intimacy.

People listen while they’re walking, cooking, driving, working out. They’re doing something else — but you’re in their ear. That’s a different kind of connection than reading a post.

The mistake most creators make is turning their written articles into audio versions. Don’t do that.

Use your podcast to tell the story behind your ideas. Share how you arrived at a framework, interview someone interesting, go deeper on a topic than a written post allows. Give people a reason to listen that they can’t get anywhere else.

A podcast is also the best place to repeat your core beliefs. The things you stand for, the principles you keep coming back to — say them here, often.

Repetition is how ideas become associated with a person.

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Touchpoint #5: Live Streams — Build Proximity

This is my personal favourite — and the most powerful trust-builder of all.

Live streams create proximity. People experience you in real time, unedited and unscripted.

They see how you think. They watch you respond to questions on the spot. They feel the energy of being in the room with you.

It’s also the one touchpoint that AI cannot replicate.

Notes can be AI-generated. Posts can be AI-generated. Even podcasts are starting to be. But a live stream is human. That authenticity is increasingly rare — and increasingly valuable.

At Write • Build • Scale, many of the creators who join our Substack Accelerator were regular live stream attendees long before they ever became paying clients. The live stream is what tipped the trust.

Touchpoint #6: Paid Tier — Identify Your Buyers

The paid tier isn’t primarily a revenue tool.

It’s a hand raiser.

It tells you who has crossed the line from “I enjoy your free content” to “I trust you enough to pay for you.” And that distinction matters a lot — because someone who has spent even $7 with you is dramatically more likely to buy from you again than someone who hasn’t spent anything.

Getting a new customer is hard.

Keeping a customer and deepening the relationship is much easier.

Use your paid tier to identify who your real buyers are. Then serve them exceptionally well.

Touchpoint #7: Direct Messages — Qualify Your Leads

When someone subscribes, we send them a DM.

Not to pitch them, but to understand them.

Where are they in their journey? What are they trying to build? What’s blocking them? Are they a fit for what we offer?

DMs are your qualification tool — and qualification goes both ways. You’re figuring out who you can genuinely help. They’re figuring out whether you’re the right person to help them.

When it’s a match, it doesn’t feel like selling. It feels like a conversation between two people who can do good work together.

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The Bigger Picture

Seven hours. Eleven touchpoints. Four locations.

Every Note you publish, every post you write, every live stream you host — it all stacks up.

Trust isn’t built in a single moment. It’s built across dozens of small moments, repeated over time, across different formats and contexts.

Substack gives you all the tools to do this in one place.

Use all of them.

Exclusive For Our Premium Subscribers:

To help you build more trust with your audience, check out these exclusive resources inside the Creator Growth Vault — available to our premium members only.

(If you aren’t a premium member yet, click here to upgrade to unlock all our exclusive workshops, templates, and step-by-step guides to fast-track your Substack growth.)

These resources will help you create high-quality content, refine your brand identity, and sharpen your core message:

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