In March and April, my subscriber count grew in ways I couldn’t have imagined 9 months ago when I joined Substack full-time.
But I must be honest.. I’m conflicted to tell you the hard numbers.
Why? Well.. because..
Writing about writing always gets more likes - This is the secret few want to talk about. Writing about Substack and writing gets likes. I almost feel like it’s a cheat code. It’s almost like those growth numbers don’t even really count. Which is why I made a second profile and write Notes there that aren’t about writing!
I don’t want you to feel like crap - The “How I grew my Substack by 1,395,849 subscribers with Notes” stuff makes everybody feel like crap. Giving people that feeling goes against what I stand for as a writing teacher. The downside for me is, it also works INSANELY well to attract new paid subscribers. The “pull” to market my work like that is immense because I want to get compensated for my knowledge, but luckily I sold out to money in the past and know now that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
But I’ll be honest, y’all.. I don’t want to be the Substack police, either. I don’t deserve to be. I just want to give you advice about how to write better stuff here that doesn’t make you feel like crap.
You can choose to read any Substack expert you like. They’re all, most likely, great people who just want to help you.
The name for this presentation is “How To Write Viral Notes On Substack” - I recorded it a few weeks ago. I kind of regret that name, so I decided to title this post “How To Write Daily Notes People Love” because I don’t want to feed jealousy, which is a monster that hounds most of us creators on social media.
Like I said, I’ve written a few Notes about writing that have done well here on Substack recently. But I almost don’t count them, which is why I write more personal Notes on my second profile,
. You can check the stats on those Notes. They’re nowhere near the 1,000’s of likes, but they sometimes get more than 100!And if you have a decent follow-up strategy, you can likely convert many of those “likers” into subscribers. My point is, you don’t need 1,000’s of likes on your Notes to grow. You only need about 30-40 to really start growing if you have a good follow-up DM strategy.
And this presentation will absolutely teach you how to start getting 30-40 likes on your Notes every day. No matter what you write about!
I promise! Because I made sure to give myself an actual test by writing Notes that aren’t about writing on my second profile.
I plan to release more trainings on how to write better Notes in the future as this space inevitably changes and evolves. It’s a fun space! Here’s a breakdown of what’s included in the training, along with timestamps:
8:48: The first rule of writing better Notes
13:42 The second rule of writing better Notes
14:35 The third rule of writing better Notes
18:20 Low-effort Note ideas that do well
21:41 Secret Note formula #1
23:23 Secret Note formula #2
28:12 Secret Note formula #3
31:14 Secret Note formula #4
35:28 Secret Note formula #5
