The problem usually isn’t your tactics. It’s your order.

Most creators build their publication in the exact sequence that keeps it from ever becoming a business, and they don’t find out until a year in. The ones who hit Bestseller fast build it backwards: Offer first, audience second, retention from day one.

2 quick notes before we dive in:

• We highly recommend you listen to the full conversation to get the most value. If you can’t do that right now, save the piece and block 50 minutes on your calendar to do it later this week.

• If you know anyone who is currently trying to grow their paid tier, please share this piece with them, so we can support more creators on this journey.

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Most people build their Substack in the wrong order

Walk onto Substack and the first thing you’ll be told is to grow. Post more, show up on Notes, get your numbers up, and worry about money later.

But an audience you can’t sell to is just an expense. Bringing readers to a publication that has nothing for them to buy costs you time and energy and hands you nothing back.

You want to start at the other end. Decide what you sell first, and turn it into one clear offer. You don’t need many products to become a Bestseller, you need one that solves a real problem, with content built to point at it.

Do that, and every reader you add later is worth more, because they’re arriving toward something instead of into an empty room.

Build the foundation before you scale

That one offer is what everything else rests on. And you pour something solid slowly, before you frame a single wall.

Most people rush this part. They treat the first months as a sprint to market and scale as fast as possible, when the real work is quieter: Getting the offer right, getting the delivery right, and making it a little different from everyone else in your space.

Different matters more than better. Plenty of businesses win by taking something that already exists and making it easier, cheaper, or faster for the customer, not by inventing something new. Find the version only you can run, the angle that comes from your own experience and the work you’ve already done, and let that be the thing competitors can’t copy.

Get the base right, and scaling is mostly turning up the volume on something that already works.

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Design retention in from day one

The most important part of that base is the one most creators never pour: Retention.

Everyone obsesses over more. More subscribers, higher conversion, more paid members. Retention barely comes up, because early on it isn’t a problem standing in front of you. You sell mostly annual subscriptions in your first year and rarely stop to think about who renews.

But in any market that’s even slightly crowded, keeping the customers you have is most of the game. And holding onto someone is far harder once they’ve already decided to go. By then you’re reinforcing the walls in the middle of the storm, when you wanted to build for the weather before it arrived.

In practice that means designing the paid tier so people have reasons to stay: A subscription you keep adding value to, a recurring painful problem you solve on a schedule, and a community strong enough that leaving it feels like leaving a group they belong to.

Retention also starts earlier than most people expect, at onboarding. Most people who pay for something never really start it, so the first job after someone buys isn’t giving them more, it’s getting them to take one action. Make the first step small and visible. An early, easy win keeps them showing up, and the people who show up are usually the people who stay.

People come for the content and stay for the community. A silent publication chat is a wasted retention channel, and one of the easier ones to fix. The Substack Publication Chat OS gives you 18 post types and 54+ ready-to-use messages to turn a dead chat into the most active corner of your publication, so the readers you worked to convert keep a reason to stick around.

Only then does content become your growth engine

With the base poured and retention built in, growing your audience finally pays off, because every new reader lands on something worth staying for.

This is where content stops being random and starts being strategic. Early on, most people publish whatever comes to mind. The change that moves the needle is tying your posts and your Notes directly to what your paid tier delivers, so the readers you pull in are the ones most likely to pay.

In Jana’s case, getting strategic about content was the single shift that took her from around 30 new paid subscribers a month to over 130, and it’s most of what carried her to Bestseller.

The thing readers are actually paying for isn’t your emails or your tools or your ebooks. It’s a transformation: Getting closer to the outcome they came to you for. Keep that at the center, and your posts, your Notes, and your offer all pull in the same direction.

Run the 3 jobs, in the right order

Once the offer is built and retention is designed in, the work gets simple.

You have 3 jobs: Grow new subscribers, convert them to paid, and keep them paying.

That’s the entire game, and it only works because you built the offer and retention before you touched growth.

Get the order wrong, and you can spend a year working hard with little to show for it. Get it right, and growth compounds on top of something that’s already solid.

If you already run a business or a coaching practice and you’d rather not spend the next year piecing this order together by 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, so you skip the guesswork and build in the sequence that actually works.

We built the Substack Accelerator to take you from 0 to 100 paid subscribers. If that sounds right, apply now: substackcoaching.com

Become A Substack Bestseller

But there’s a big problem with that page.

It’s a limited marketing asset that simply doesn’t do a great job at convincing people to upgrade to paid.

If someone lands on that page hoping to understand why they should upgrade, they get a handful of bullet points, and that’s it.

No in-depth explanation of what they’re unlocking.

No sense of the outcome or transformation they can expect.

No social proof to back any of it up.

It’s simply not enough to convince most people to join your paid tier.

That’s where a Become a Member page comes in, and it’s by far the most profitable page on our entire Substack.

What The ‘Become a Member Page’ Is

Think of your ‘Become a Member’ page as a sales page that does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to marketing your paid tier.

It’s a custom page you have to create yourself from within your publication settings (I show in the video exactly how to do that).

The goal is to create a page that builds trust, shows exactly what someone gets when they upgrade, and makes it clear what outcomes or transformation they can expect from joining your paid tier.

Once your page is set up, you need to create enough entry points to it so more of your readers visit the page - and convert from free to paid.

We recommend adding it to your navigation bar, linking to it from your about page, and regularly linking to it from within your posts.

A high-converting ‘Become a Member’ page should include the following two things:

#1: Clarity on the Offer

This is one of the biggest contrasts with the default Substack pricing page. On that page, you get three bullet points to explain your offer. That’s it.

On your ‘Become a Member’ page, you can actually go deep - so walk through each perk of your paid tier individually. Don’t just name it, but flesh it out.

Show specific examples to make the offer tangible.

If it’s workshops, show some examples of workshops you’ve run. If it’s templates, name a specific one and what it helps people do. If it’s guides, mention some of the best guides and what they cover.

Then, explain what your premium content does for the subscriber.

What outcomes does it lead to? What pain point does it solve? What changes for them once they’ve upgraded and actually used it?

Someone reading this page shouldn’t just understand what they’re buying. They should understand how it will actually improve their life.

That’s when upgrading becomes a no-brainer.

#2: Social Proof

This is one of the most important elements on the entire page, and one most creators skip entirely.

It’s one thing for you to say your paid tier is valuable. It’s completely different when someone else says it.

Social proof builds trust like nothing else. And trust leads to sales.

If you already have paid subscribers, ask them to leave a testimonial and feature those on the page (ideally with their full name and picture).

If you don’t have paid subscribers yet, feature testimonials from your coaching clients, program buyers, or even free subscribers who’ve gotten real value from your work.

Just be transparent about who they are. Frame it as “what others have said about my work,” rather than implying they’re paid members if they aren’t.

(Note: If you don’t have any testimonials at all, highlight your own story, transformation, or results as a case study to build more trust.)

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Your Copy-Paste ‘Become a Member’ Page Template

You now know that setting up a ‘Become a Member’ page is one of the most effective strategies to attract more paid subscribers.

To make it as easy as possible to create this page, we’ve created a word-for-word ‘Become a Member’ page template for our premium subscribers.

Not a premium subscriber yet?

Upgrade to Write • Build • Scale premium to unlock this entire template and hundreds of other exclusive resources including in-depth workshops, ultimate guides, courses, and our Creator Growth Vault.

Upgrade To WBS Premium

Click the button below to access the ‘Become a Member’ page template:

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What if the boring niche you keep apologizing for is the biggest advantage you have?

If you’ve ever looked at your topic and decided it’s too small, too specific, or too far from whatever’s trending, you’ve probably never let yourself find out.

And that one belief quietly costs you the thing you’re actually after: A real audience and a business that pays you back for what you know.

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Substack is bigger, older, and hungrier for new voices than you think

The doubt about your niche usually rests on 2 doubts. The first is that Substack already feels saturated. The second is that your specific readers won’t be on it.

A lot of creators are moving over right now and treat Substack like a brand-new platform because it often gets presented that way.

And to be fair, most people just aren’t aware that Substack has been around for almost a decade, and it pulls in hundreds of millions of website visits every month. Millions of people currently pay for premium content, and tens of thousands of publications are making real money from their work.

This isn’t a small platform you showed up too late for. It’s busy, it’s still growing fast, and there’s a large audience actively looking for new voices to follow.

The size isn’t even the best part: It’s who these people are.

Substack is built for readers, learners, and curious minds. Nobody lands here to kill 10 minutes scrolling a feed. They come to read, to learn, and to go deep on the topics they care about. That’s the exact person you want on the other end of your work.

And your people are already here. Open the leaderboards and see for yourself. There are best-selling publications in gardening, philosophy, history, film, personal finance, and parenting. Almost any topic you can name is already represented.

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A specific, unusual, even boring topic can be your edge

The bigger surprise is what your niche does for you once you accept the platform is fine. A narrow topic isn’t necessarily a disadvantage. For most creators, it’s an edge.

There’s less noise. When you serve readers on a subject almost nobody else is writing about, standing out gets much easier.

There’s higher intent. Niche readers aren’t there to be entertained. They’re there because they need what you know, which makes them far more likely to subscribe, and eventually to pay.

And expertise beats personality. When you serve people on a topic they truly care about, you can stay on your core subject without chasing the algorithm or reaching for growth hacks. All you’re doing is being genuinely useful.

If you show up with real depth, people won’t skim. They’ll connect, they’ll feel understood, and they’ll stick around long enough to become paying members.

Your niche being small or unusual is rarely a ceiling. Look at it as an advantage instead.

The whole path comes down to 3 steps

Knowing your niche is an edge is one thing. Building on it is another, and the path is the same one we teach every creator we work with, whether their topic is trending or completely niche.

Create means building a small library of genuinely useful articles that prove you know your subject inside out. In a specific niche, you don’t need dozens of clever takes. One deeply helpful guide that solves a real problem does far more. You’re not trying to go viral. You’re trying to become the obvious person to follow on your topic, so the moment someone finds your work, they know they’re in the right place.

Connect means getting that work in front of the exact people who need it. On Substack, you do that through Notes and through real relationships with other publications in your space. Even if your niche feels tiny, your future readers are already on the platform, already subscribed to publications sitting right next to yours. Your job is to keep showing up where those people already are, consistently, until they find you.

Convert means making your promise clear and then giving people something genuinely worth paying for. In most niches, stacking more articles behind your paywall rarely moves people. What your reader wants is a specific outcome, not more content. Your paid offer can be a simple guide, a system, or a product that finally solves the problem they keep running into.

But turning free readers into paying members is the part most creators guess at. Our Free-to-Paid Playbook is full of 100+ tested strategies for doing exactly that, filtered by subscriber stage, so you find the right move for where your publication is right now.

None of this changes because your topic is unusual. The only thing that changes is the details you fill it with.

Get clear on your reader before you write another post

Filling in those details starts before you write another post. Get completely clear on your intention for the reader. The simplest way to do that is to sit down and honestly answer 3 questions about your topic:

• Who exactly is this for? You’re looking for the one specific person whose problem you understand better than almost anyone else.

• What do they want that they can’t get anywhere else? The more underserved they are, the bigger your opportunity.

• What could you give them that would genuinely change something? An article, a resource, a product, or even a decision they’ve been stuck on for months.

Answer those clearly and your topic isn’t too small. You’ve got a real best-selling opportunity sitting in front of you.

And if your niche honestly feels boring or too specialized to ever work, these questions matter more, not less. A trending topic can ride novelty for a while, but that rarely lasts. A proven track record in your field lets you stay sharp and build something meant to last.

Your real edge is clarity: A sharper reader, a sharper promise, and a sharper reason for that reader to care. The more specific you’re willing to get, the more that so-called boring topic quietly becomes your biggest advantage.

The same pattern shows up across wildly different niches

We’ve watched this exact pattern play out across nearly every niche you can imagine.

One of our favorite examples is a publication on healthy aging called We Get Better With Age.

It’s about as far from a trendy topic as you can get. The creator was so nervous about the niche that she almost didn’t turn on paid subscriptions. Within a few months of working with us, she crossed 100 paid members, earned her Bestseller badge, and now sells digital guides on top of a publication serving over 22,000 readers.

Another of my favorite examples is a publication in global mobility called Digital Citizen. It’s covering the whole world of living, working, and moving across borders, and it’s a Bestselling publication with 4.2k total subscribers

But the pattern goes well beyond those two publications. Inside our community and coaching programs, we support so many brilliant creators with different expertise in various topics, from completely different corners of the world, and the same result every time: A thriving publication serving thousands of readers.

Some niches monetize faster, and it helps to know which you’re in

To give you the full picture here, it does make sense to mention that not every niche behaves the same way.

Some topics monetize faster than others.

If your niche solves an urgent, expensive problem, people tend to pay you fairly quickly. If your topic is more of a slow-burn interest, it takes longer to build the kind of trust that leads to paid support.

That’s real, and it helps to know upfront which situation you’re in.

But slower growth can also mean more sustainable growth, especially if you value trust and high-quality relationships with your audience. A patient, consistent creator building in an underserved niche often ends up with something far more durable and profitable than a quick spike in an overcrowded one.

Your clarity is the key

Whichever camp you’re in, one principle holds: Your topic was almost never the thing standing between you and a thriving Substack.

What decides it is your clarity about who you’re helping and how. Less competition, higher reader intent, and an audience that’s been waiting for someone to take their specific topic seriously are all real advantages. Most people talk themselves out of them before they ever start.

So if you’ve been holding back because you decided your niche is too small, too dry, or too different to work, drop that story today.

And if you already have real expertise in your field, but you’d rather not spend the next 2 years 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 and niche, 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, head to substackcoaching.com and fill out the short application form to see if we’re a fit for each other.

By the end, you’ll know the half of the equation almost nobody talks about, and why working harder on the other half won’t fix it.

For the better part of two years, I published steadily and kept waiting for the growth to follow. It never really did, and the reason had nothing to do with how much I was writing because I was only ever working half the equation.

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You’re not starting from zero

Let’s clear one thing up before anything else, because it quietly shapes every decision you make: When people talk about starting on Substack, they call it starting from zero, but you almost never are. You’re bringing years of work, a skill, a point of view, an audience you built somewhere else, or simply a life that taught you something worth sharing.

I started writing back in 2018, long before I went all-in on Substack, turning the in-person workshops I was running into written articles.

So by the time I landed here, the blank page wasn’t really blank.

This matters because the “zero” story is where comparison creeps in.

You look at someone further along and assume they had something you didn’t. Usually they just started earlier, or started iterating sooner. You’re not behind. You’re deciding what to build from here.

Consistency is only half the equation

For years, I believed that growth would happen if I just kept publishing.

Everywhere you look, the advice is the same: Be consistent, show up, publish more.

And that advice isn’t wrong. But it’s one side of the coin, and on its own, it barely moves you forward.

I know because I lived the other version. I published long-form articles steadily for the better part of two years, heads-down on creation, and I barely made progress. I was pouring everything into making the work and almost nothing into checking whether the work was landing.

Think of it like a car. Consistency is the engine: Without it, you don’t move at all.

But an engine with no hands on the wheel just takes you in circles faster.

The steering is the other half, and the steering is iteration: Looking honestly at what’s working, what isn’t, and adjusting as you go.

You can publish hundreds of posts, but if nobody is reading them, you’re not necessarily making progress.

Consistency on its own doesn’t automatically compound, it piles up without direction.

None of this means consistency is optional.

Showing up is real work, and some days it’s a slog to come up with something worth posting. That’s exactly why we built 365 Substack Notes Templates, so you’re never staring at an empty Note wondering what to say. It clears the friction from the half you control, so you’ve got energy left for the half that actually steers.

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

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You have to earn attention, and the scoreboard usually lies

Once you accept that showing up isn’t enough, the next trap is obvious in hindsight.

A lot of us start out with a quiet sense of entitlement: I made something good, so people should pay attention.

It feels reasonable. It’s rarely true. You can write something genuinely excellent and still have to earn every reader, because attention doesn’t move in lockstep with the quality of your work or the hours you put in. When you assume it does, you focus on the wrong things and end up down rabbit holes that feel productive and aren’t.

The scoreboard makes this worse, because most creators are watching the wrong numbers. If you come from Instagram or LinkedIn, you’re used to likes arriving fast and in bulk.

But 100 likes on Substack is not 100 likes on LinkedIn.

You rarely see tens of thousands of anything here, and that’s not even the point either.

Substack works differently.

A post I published months ago still picks up comments and restacks today.

It behaves less like a social feed, where a post is dead within a day, and more like a library that keeps working long after you hit publish. So the instant-gratification scoreboard, the one that tells you a post failed by Tuesday, is measuring the wrong thing. You don’t need thousands of likes for a publication to be profitable and to carry a real business.

Model what works, then make it yours

The answer isn’t always more output. Sometimes, it’s just better input, and you get that by borrowing before you invent.

The moment I stopped only creating and started studying, everything sped up. I became obsessed with Modeling of Excellence: Finding what already works for people ahead of you and figuring out how to apply it in your own space.

Back when I was still doing this on the side, interning full-time, I quietly maxed out my copier card printing articles that were going viral. I sat with a yellow marker and studied how they built their hooks, how they opened, how they structured the whole thing.

That’s the input the “just publish” advice leaves out. You want to keep creating, but you also want to stay genuinely critical about what you’re creating, so you’re not spending a year producing work that reaches a handful of people when it could reach far more.

Then you add the part that keeps it yours. Model the pattern, but run tiny experiments on top of it. Take something you admire and ask what you’d change to make it feel more like you. Most of these experiments are small, which means you have almost nothing to lose. Some fall flat. Some become the thing your audience actually responds to. You keep what works, and you move on to the next one.

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The things you’re obsessing over probably don’t matter

Notice what wasn’t on that list: A perfect posting schedule.

Most people getting started fixate on the same details: how often to post, what time of day, whether to match the unofficial one-free-one-paid-a-week cadence. These rarely make the biggest difference. If a single paid piece takes you hours and a weekly rhythm isn’t realistic, you don’t want to force it. One strong paid piece every two weeks, or one substantial thing a month, can serve people better than a schedule you resent.

The bigger truth sits underneath all of it: On strategy, there’s almost never a clean, universal answer. When someone hands you a flat “here’s exactly when to turn on paid subscriptions,” you want to be skeptical, because the honest answer depends on your time, your goals, and where you’re trying to go. The setting questions have clear answers. The strategy questions have your answers, and those are the ones worth getting right.

That’s also the whole case for a real feedback loop instead of a year of guessing.

Where this leaves you

If there’s one thing to carry out of all this, it’s this: Stay consistent, but don’t confuse motion with progress.

Model what already works, run small experiments on top of it, and pay close attention to what’s actually landing. That’s the pattern worth repeating in your first year, and it’s a lot less lonely with someone checking your direction while you drive.

If you already run a business or coaching practice and you’d rather not spend the next two years figuring Substack out by trial and error, the Substack Accelerator might be your perfect next step.

We help experts become Substack Bestsellers and leverage their publications to grow their reach, audience, and income.

» Apply here

There are many different features and strategies you can use to grow your paid tier organically.

One of the most effective ones is what we call the ‘Free + Paywall Strategy’.

We use this strategy with practically all of our premium posts, and it brings in new paid subscribers organically every single week.

In this video, I walk you through exactly how this feature works, and how we’re using it to grow our own paid tier.

The mistake most creators make

A common mistake I see when reviewing Substack publications is that creators lock their premium content completely behind a paywall without showing any substantial part of it for free.

By doing so, your free subscribers (who might be interested in upgrading) don’t have any idea what your premium content is actually like.

They have no sense of the quality of your premium resources, so they hesitate to hit the upgrade button.

Instead, it’s more effective to give part of your premium content away for free (by using this Free + Paywall Strategy), so your free subscribers actually get a taste of how valuable your premium content is.

I always make the comparison of running a bakery.

If you run a bakery but you never let people see the cakes, never let them smell what’s baking, or never hand out a small sample to taste it, how would anyone actually know if the cakes are worth buying?

They wouldn’t, so they’d walk right past your bakery.

But if you show the cakes, people can smell them, and you give away a small sample, now you get people interested in actually buying the whole cake.

Premium content works the same way.

When you let free subscribers read a substantial part of your paid posts, they get a clear sense of the quality of your premium resources.

This actually makes them more interested in upgrading, because they’ve received a taste of your premium content.

That’s what makes this Free + Paywall Strategy so effective. It’s not pushy, because you’ve already given real value before ever asking for anything.

And it’s not guesswork for the reader, because they already have a clear impression of what they’d be unlocking. And more clarity leads to more sales.

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Applying this strategy to video posts

Substack has designed this feature also for video posts, which converts very well for our publication.

In the following video, I show exactly how to implement the Free + Paywall Strategy specifically for video posts:

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If you’ve got a paid tier on Substack but almost nobody’s upgrading, the problem usually isn’t your offer: It’s that visitors can’t see it.

This post is for creators who already have a clear direction with their publication: Coaches, consultants, educators, experts, people with real knowledge to share and a clear sense of who they’re serving.

If you’re still figuring out who your paid tier is even for, this isn’t the thing to focus on yet. But if you already have expertise, resources you can repurpose from other channels, or a publication that’s converting slower than you hoped, this is one of the highest-leverage things you can set up right now.

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Your paid tier has been a sign on the door, not a shop window

Here’s the part most creators underestimate about their paid tier: A first-time visitor makes the decision to pay you in seconds. And until recently, Substack gave you almost no room to help them make that decision because all we had was the default subscribe page:

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On the standard subscribe page, a visitor sees a short list of benefits, a price, and a subscribe button. That’s it.

The list says something like “access to weekly articles, community chat, exclusive Q&As,” and the reader can’t picture what any of it looks like.

They can’t tell what they’d get today versus 6 months from now, and they can’t tell whether they’d even like it. So they close the tab.

That’s the real cost of the old setup: You could have the most valuable paid offering in your niche, and it wouldn’t move a single upgrade, because nobody browsing your page can see it.

With Perks, we now have an additional opportunity to convert people by highlighting the real value they’re paying for when they become premium members.

Perks is a new native tab on your publication that shows every paid reward you offer as a visual card: An image, a title, a short description, and a button to claim it.

A paid member who lands there gets the code, the link, or the download on the spot.

A free subscriber sees the same cards with a prompt to upgrade.

So the same page works as both a benefits page for the members you already have and a sales page for the ones you don’t.

The strategic part is the gating.

You can attach specific perks to specific tiers. Some go to every paid member, some to annual and founding only, some to founding alone.

This means every tier finally has a distinct, visible, tangible reason to exist.

That’s the big shift: Your paid tier stopped being a description on a sign. It’s a lit shop window now, with the products in view.

Every tier needs its own promise, not just its own price

That shop window only works if there’s something different in each part of it. And this is where most paid models quietly fall apart: Charging different prices for the same thing is one of the fastest ways to stall your conversions.

Most creators launch with a monthly price and an annual price, and behind both, the same offer: Access to paywalled articles, maybe a private chat.

The annual tier is just a small discount.

The founding tier, if it exists at all, is basically a donation box.

That’s rarely a model anyone rushes to upgrade into, and to be fair, it was hard to build anything better before Perks existed.

Now you can structure tiers around access and transformation instead of price, and make each level visible.

There’s no single right answer here: How you structure your tiers depends on what you already have, how your content is built, what your existing offers look like, and what stage you’re at.

Someone 3 months in makes very different calls than someone with a 5-year archive and a full course library. So take what follows as a menu, not a formula.

Here’s the general shape that works for most educational publications:

Your monthly tier is the entry level.

Keep it accessible enough that a curious reader says yes without much friction: Access to your paywalled articles, maybe one rolling perk you rotate every month or so. It’s a low-friction invitation to keep exploring your world.

Your annual tier is where you concentrate the substantial resources.

Courses, template packs, resource libraries, an ebook, cheat sheets, the guides that took you weeks to build. The annual tier should feel like the reader is claiming a whole body of work, not just a longer subscription.

Your founding tier is where you put personal access or your highest-leverage product.

Founding members want to go deeper with you specifically, so this is where DM access, coaching calls, private sessions, or an exclusive high-ticket product make the most sense.

At Write • Build • Scale, we’re revamping our founding tier right now to include a personalized audit, where we show a Substacker exactly what’s holding their publication back and what to change to build toward Bestseller.

We made that call because we recently published a few audits we’d done for private coaching clients, and readers loved them. It’s an asset creators will happily pay for, so it’s going into founding.

That same tier could just as easily be built around one product, a full course, or a private cohort. Whatever your highest-leverage offering is, that’s usually what belongs there.

The principle underneath all of it: Tiers aren’t about price, they’re about PROMISE.

Every level should give the reader a concrete answer to what they get by taking one more step with you. Perks is the tool that finally lets you answer that visually.

But structuring tiers is only half of the free-to-paid problem, and it’s the half most creators guess at.

Our Substack Free-to-Paid Playbook is packed with 100+ tested strategies for turning free readers into paying members, filtered by subscriber stage, so you find the right move for exactly where your publication is right now.

The full setup, step by step

Once you know how you want to structure your tiers, building them takes about an afternoon. Before the walkthrough, one requirement: Perks only shows up for publications that already have payments enabled. No paid tier, no feature in your dashboard. That’s less a limitation than a signal. Perks is a monetization tool, so there’s nothing to gate until you’re monetizing.

If you’ve got a paid tier, here’s where to find it.

Go to your publication dashboard, click into Settings, then Payments. Scroll past the tier descriptions and you’ll find a section called Subscriber Perks.

Click Manage. You’ll see any perks you’ve already made and a button to create a new one.

Click Create Perk, and Substack walks you through 3 steps.

Step 1: Choose the perk type

You get 5 options, each with its own use case.

Discount or Promo Code is a code your subscribers redeem somewhere else: A discount on one of your own products, a partner publication, a course, a coaching program. Anywhere a code applies.

Digital Download is Substack hosting an actual file for you. A PDF, an ebook, a workbook, a template pack. Subscribers get it straight from the Perks page.

Community Invite is a link to a private space you run elsewhere. A Discord server, a Circle community, a WhatsApp group, a private chat.

Link is the most flexible option, a private URL your subscribers get access to. Use it for anything that doesn’t fit the other categories: Private Notion pages, hidden Substack posts, resource libraries, custom landing pages.

Substack Live Video gates a scheduled Substack Live session for paid subscribers. If you run private lives or masterclasses on the platform, this is how you close them off.

Pick the one that fits, then move on.

Step 2: Write the perk content

Next, you’ll add a title, a description, and an image:

The title can run to 200 characters and the description to 1,000, but claiming a perk is usually an impulse decision. Your reader scans the card in a second or two and either taps the button or scrolls. So the copy needs to be sharp and clear. Don’t fill the character count just because it’s there. Use what you need to make the value obvious, and cut the rest.

The image needs to be 1,200 by 800 pixels, and you can build it in any tool you like. We use Canva for most of our visuals. Design one clean, branded template and reuse it across every card. That’s what makes the page read like a real product page instead of a pile of random resources.

Step 3: Choose the audience

This is where the gating happens. You can open the perk to all paid subscribers, to annual and founding only, or to founding only. Pick the tier this perk belongs to based on the structure above.

Click publish, and it goes live on your Perks page immediately.

What to actually put behind your perks

Knowing the mechanics is one thing. Sitting in front of a blank Perks page with no ideas is another, and that’s where most creators stall. So here’s the menu of what tends to work.

If you already have digital products, start there. Any downloadable resource sitting on your hard drive that took real time to make is a perk.

If you’ve built a private community somewhere, that community is a perk. Anything where people gather around a specific topic can be gated this way.

If you run discounts on your own products or partner with other businesses, those codes are perks. A 20% off code on your Gumroad course, a discount to a partner publication, a code for software you genuinely recommend.

If you host live sessions or masterclasses, those become perks too. Gating a Substack Live behind a tier turns a regular live into a real reason to upgrade.

And if you’ve got deep knowledge you haven’t packaged into anything yet, this is the fastest reason to start. A one-page cheat sheet for the thing your audience keeps asking about, a swipe file, a template you use for your own work. Those take an afternoon to build and can go live as a perk the same day.

The rule is simple: Start with one perk. Pick the thing readers ask you about most often in comments or DMs, build the smallest useful version of a solution, and add it. Then build the next one when you have time. You don’t need 10 perks on day one. You need one that’s genuinely useful, and the habit of adding to it whenever you make something your audience will value.

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The part most creators miss: Perks keeps members, too

Setting up the perks is most of the work. Using them well is what makes the work pay off, and it comes down to where the page lives and how often you point people back to it. Once your perks are live, they appear on a new Perks tab in your publication’s navigation bar.

Anyone visiting can see it, click it, and browse your rewards. That’s the discovery layer, running for you in the background.

The bigger opportunity is baking Perks into your welcome email. That email is one of the most-opened messages you’ll ever send.

Adding a single line, “if you’re already a paid member, here’s your Perks page,” or “here’s what you get when you upgrade,” turns your welcome sequence into a soft conversion moment for every new subscriber.

Here’s the reframe most creators miss: Perks isn’t only a conversion tool. It’s a retention tool.

Think about how most paid memberships go: Someone upgrades, gets a burst of value in the first few weeks, then slowly loses track of what they signed up for. That’s when cancellations start, and it’s rarely because the work got worse. It’s because they lost sight of everything they had access to.

Perks fixes that. You can send paid members back to the page regularly: In a post footer, a monthly reminder, the community chat.

Every time they land there, they see everything they own laid out in one place. The course, the templates, the codes, the community, the live sessions, all of it clearly labeled and visible.

That’s what turns a subscription into a real product in the reader’s mind. Instead of paying for “more articles,” they can see exactly why the fee is worth it.

And members who feel like they own something rarely cancel after a month or two.

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Build the first version this week

If you want a paid tier people upgrade to and stay with, Perks is one of the highest-leverage things you can set up right now.

The first version can take an afternoon, and it changes how visitors see your publication, how new subscribers experience your welcome flow, and how existing members feel about staying. Start with one perk, match it to the tier where it fits, add to it over time, and point your members back to the page so they never lose sight of what they have.

If you want to go past the setup and build a Substack that generates real revenue on top of all this, that’s the work we do inside the Substack Accelerator.

It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication: Positioning, paid tier structure, launch strategy, and everything else that decides whether your publication stays a hobby or becomes a real income stream.

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

When it was finally done, it first felt like a relief. You thought you arrived at the finish line.

But it didn’t take long to realize that the end of the writing process was barely the starting line.

If you’re an author, coach, or expert who poured everything into a book and then watched it sell to friends, family, and not many people after that, this post is for you.

By the end you’ll know why the selling stalled, and what actually turns a book into a business: The book was never the product.

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Finishing the book is where the work starts

Most authors treat the last page as the destination. You typed the final sentence, and it felt like the whole project was behind you.

But that’s the moment the real work begins.

We see the same pattern constantly. Someone pours a year into a manuscript, publishes it, sells a handful of copies to the people who already love them, and then sales flatten and stall.

That’s not a failure of the book. It’s the build-it-and-they-will-come myth catching up with them, the same one that convinces people a finished course or a live publication will sell itself. It rarely does.

A book nobody knows about can’t open a single door. So the work that matters most starts after the writing is done.

Nobody makes money selling books

The money was never in the book.

Think about what selling books one copy at a time actually looks like. You chase a sale here, a sale there, onesies and twosies, and the effort is enormous for the return. It takes about the same effort to sell 100 copies as it does to sell one, if you set it up the right way. Bulk sales, speaking engagements, workshops, coaching, partnerships: That’s where the return lives.

In Susan’s case: Half a million copies of a first book, sold to a single company. It sounds enormous, and the income behind it was not. The lesson isn’t that big numbers are worthless. It’s that the book itself is rarely the thing that pays.

So you want to give the book a role. Not “how do I sell more copies,” but which doors you want this book to open and what you want it to do for your business. Speaking. Consulting. Filling a coaching practice. The book becomes the credential that gets you in the room, and the room is where the revenue is.

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Marketing stops feeling gross when it fits who you are

Give the book a real role, and the next wall most people hit is the marketing itself.

Marketing has a bad reputation for a reason. Most people picture the used-car-salesman version and decide they’d rather not sell at all. So the book sits there collecting dust.

But you don’t have to market in a way you hate.

Marketing you’re uncomfortable with rarely works anyway, because you can’t put full conviction behind something that feels wrong to you. The stronger move is to find the approach that fits your strengths, the one you’ll actually enjoy and keep doing.

We learned this on our own calls. When we first started running applications for our coaching program, a call with a prospective member felt like it was supposed to be a “sales call,” and we dreaded the performance of it. So we dropped the performance.

We sat across from someone who already liked our work and had a real conversation about their goals and whether we could help. It converted better, and it was a lot more fun. The same is true for your book: A genuine conversation beats a pitch every time.

Substack turns publishing into an ecosystem

That kind of genuine conversation is exactly what the right platform is built for.

Publishing on most platforms is a one-way street. You put the work out, and that’s the end of it. No reply, no relationship, no next step.

Substack works differently, and that difference is the whole point. It’s a conversation. Readers respond, a community forms, and you get direct lines to the people who care about your work through the chat, through DMs, through recommendations and guest posts and live sessions. Your book stops being a static object on a shelf and becomes the center of something living.

That’s what lets you build an ecosystem instead of a product. Your message, your book, and the next book after it can all live in one place, feeding each other. For an author who plans to write more than once, that compounding is the real asset.

Growth is a garden, not a button

An ecosystem like that doesn’t appear in your first week. It grows.

A lot of people arrived on Substack recently, and many walked in expecting to blow up inside a month. It happens, but it’s the rare exception, not the plan. Getting frustrated after 2 weeks only guarantees a long, frustrating road, because building an audience takes time on any platform, not just this one.

There’s no instant button and no magic algorithm waiting to hand you a crowd. What there is: The slow, reliable work of planting seeds. Treat your first months as foundation. Learn the platform, publish your Notes, publish your first long-form posts, and build for the long term. The growth comes, but you can nurture it, you can’t rush it.

Publishing isn’t distribution

Publishing more is not the same as being seen.

You can post constantly and still have almost no one find you, because writing is creation and getting seen is distribution. Those are two different jobs, and the single most effective distribution move on Substack is collaboration.

Guest posts put you directly in the inbox of another creator’s subscribers, with your profile and a link back to your publication attached. Newsletter recommendations are a win-win you set up once and then let run on autopilot. Live sessions, like the one this post came from, introduce you to a whole room of people at once.

Most of those collaborations start in the DMs, which is exactly where most creators freeze. If reaching out cold makes you stall, our Substack DM Playbook gives you the templates to start real conversations that go somewhere. It’s the difference between waiting to be found and going out to build the relationships that find you readers.

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The book is the door, and you still have to walk through it

None of this works if you keep treating the book as the finished product. It’s the door. The business is on the other side of it: In the rooms the book gets you into, the ecosystem you build around it, and the relationships you’re willing to go start.

If you’ve already built real expertise, and a book to prove it, and you want Substack to carry it further into authority, audience, and income, that’s what we built the Substack Accelerator for.

It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication and your specific book, built around one outcome: Turning your work into real income and authority on Substack.

It’s application-based, because we only take people we’re confident we can get there. Susan, whose approach runs through this whole post, is in the program right now.

If that sounds like you, let’s have a fit conversation: substackcoaching.com

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.

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

Upgrade To WBS Premium

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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.

👉 Lock in your discounted access before the best tiers sell out

💰 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