I absolutely love this article by Lenny's Newsletter (669,000 Substack subscribers) as it speaks to my tech background and startup life before being acquired by Adobe. Thank you Lenny and
for inspiring this post or “Stack.” All tips including the last one on being Substack Featured and that whole experience, is all free for you to learn from :)
“1. 📈 Maintain a sense of urgency to drive compound growth”
That section “had me at hello.”
“To get the best long-term gains, you should always have a sense of urgency. The quicker you launch winning experiments, the quicker those changes impact your growth. Not only that, but these improvements compound!” Sean Columbo
Urgency is hard to sustain unless you love the mission and are fully behind it! Then your teams will rally behind you and help you build a great business. I have seen this with my own eyes. But how do you translate this into your mighty Substack with 10, 100, 500, 900 subscribers?
Treat your Substack like Duolingo, a SaaS unicorn!
For those not from this world of tech, SaaS, or recurring revenue models, the simplified explanation of why SaaS is valued more than non-SaaS is repeat recurring revenue and a highly scalable model.
Makes sense right? While you always have to grow and find new Subscribers (Customers), you continue to build a recurring repeat following. You obviously have to continue to innovate (in this case create valuable content).
While I am approaching 4k Subscribers on Substack, I am treating it as if I am already a larger 100k+ subscriber business so I can grow as large as those on the Substack Top 25 Finance List.
Here are some of my tips that are working for me, but I would love to hear in the comments, thoughts or ideas not on this list that worked for you. I will peel the onion on each one on the podcast edition.
Help this go viral ok?!
And for the Top Finance Substacks. I and surely the entire community, would love your feedback and tips too!
Tips and Tricks
Create content you love to create, or your Urgency will wane, then the quality and frequency of content will drop off.
Create content consistently and let your readers/listeners know a loose schedule. Think of how annoying it would be if your favorite show had no release schedule!
Content compounds! Older posts still bring in new subscribers. Both free and paid
Network effect
- Turn on Substack Referrals (Leaderboard)
- Gifting
- Collabs
- Restack with notes other’s content that is on brand with yours
- Linkedin
- X
- YouTube
- IG
- TikTokRecommendation Exchange
on an interview that their team would be happy to help others grow and all we would need to do is message them politely. I did this and to my delight they checked out my content and added me to their recommendations page. They even comp’d me for a while to their paywall. I converting to paid shortly after (Hint! See #14)
This one deserves it’s own number. I heard
My point is that you should seek out like minded Substack pages in your category where you think their is an overlap of audiences, and message them to setup a recommendation exchange. You will certainly get no’s. I certainly did. But you will get a few important Yes’s. To this date, has helped with more new subscribers to my Substack than even Doomberg!
PS - Reciprocate and pay it forward!Leverage the Podcast, Audio and Video features of Substack.
Substack makes the workflow so easy to do. I know as I create a daily podcast 5 times per week and it is distributed to Apple Podcast, Spotify and others. But the key here is that those platforms are even bigger than the Substack ecosystem. There is a chance one of my podcasts go viral and bring more new subscribers back to Substack, growing the size of the upper funnel.Press isn’t free. Road shows (Doomberg is everywhere on YouTube)
This is something I should be doing but I take inspiration from Doombergand I will get there.Engage! Comment and Chat.
Feed the algorithmDon’t be lazy, customize the welcome email for new subscribers!
Assume they subscribe to more than 1. Assume they don’t want to be served a template email 10 times.Take a break - Don’t get burned out. Creating content is not easy. I simply let my subscribers know in advance when I need a break, like working at a company with an unlimited PTO policy. They will understand!
- For Paid Substacks-Test new strategies for growth
Just One example: Leverage the Subscriber search and create messaging for specific levels of free subscriber engagement (no star, 1 star, 2 star, etc)
*If you continue to grow only the low engagement pool of subscribers, your response/open rate will naturally continue to fall!I sent three separate offers to three distinct free groups. Look at the variance of open rates! The 5 star activity group had 88% open rates vs 6% for the no star group! Free subscribers continue to convert to paid from all three emails, even after a week later (See #3)
*PS - I didn’t even know I could bucket groups and email them, until I stumbled on it in the Dashboard. Did you all know this?
Substack Referrals (Leaderboard) - Lower the bar! You can always change the program. If no one can attain the reward then you will earn less referrals. When I lurked on other Substack leaderboards I noticed almost no one got to the 6 month comp. How frustrating that must be! Referrers are working hard so reward them.
Learn to use Substack Notes, be an early adopter. I failed to do this on X, Threads, Youtube etc. I will not fail here on Substack Notes.
Create a testimonials page. Unless you already have an audience, readers have many choices for their time and money. Social proof is very important for the brain to decide to part with its hard earned cash. (Read any Amazon reviews lately?)
Upload free and paid versions of the podcast or audio and distribute.
I will talk a little about my workflow
Substack has a playlist on YouTube. Here are two videos to get you started
16. Turn on the 7 day free trial offer in settings.
Substack says that attaching a short free trial coupon to paywalls increases the rate at which users pay to read a publication by 10% to 20%. See #5 (Doomberg gave me a free preview too.) And who am I to argue?
Last one is controversial. Being Substack Featured is not a magic bullet!
Sure, that is easy for me to say after being featured 3 times. But hear me out.
The reason this is the last tip to grow is because it is the least important. There I said it. Now I want you to stand up and say it, “Being Substack Featured is not a magic bullet!”
I have asked others who have been featured and the consensus is that it is an unbelievable honor. No doubt about this! On average, being featured will yield you anywhere between 500 - 2000 new free subscribers within that 7 day window!
“Screw you NYUGrad! Tell me now! How do I get Featured!”
- Everyone reading this
HOW DO YOU GET FEATURED?
Short answer: “Do what it says on the tin” - Hannah Ray.
Hat tip
who serendipitously published a piece today called “How to Be Featured by Substack” that pointed me to the podcast below with Hannah Ray.Long answer: Art and science. Talented Editorial team, suggestions from the Substack community, data, and YOU the Substack creator! Your content has to have the potential to delight!
Tip: Do not spam the Substack team. That probably will not help your cause!
You never know when it may come too. You will usually see a spike in new sign ups Sunday night, before the Monday you get the congratulatory email from the Substack team. See my befuddlement here.
Prior to the 1st time I was featured, I had less than 500 free subscribers. And I wasn’t ready for it! No custom welcome email, no testimonials page, Referral program turned off, no paywall, I hadn’t started podcasting yet, not many recommendation exchanges etc.
So my advice is be ready. Create great content and deploy some of my tips above and be ready to be featured, so that if and when it happens you can maximize the flood of new subscribers and create value for them.
Another important tip for life after being Substack featured is that you may see a dip in open rates, and you will see a few of those new subscribers leave quickly. Huh? What?!
This is not a bad thing and a very good value exchange. Just the nature of the beast. Think of it like a Super Bowl ad for your Substack about Hot Yoga. You are going to get Yogis, Barbarians, and Sloths subscribing.
Many new subscribers who found you via the feature may be coming in from other categories and had a passing interest. Maybe some were not your primary target audience. The great part is now go see #9 above. You get the opportunity to win hearts and minds and slowly delight, convert and retain.
And if you don’t get Substack Featured this year, don’t kick yourself!
They can only feature 5 Substacks every 7 days across every category. that is only 260 Substacks per year! But I guarantee that if you leverage some or all of my tips above, you will grow your mighty space here on Substack whether you are featured or not. Go at your own pace and enjoy the journey!
I am sure I missed a few tips and tricks, but leave me a comment and give me feedback. Will you deploy any of this?
If you want me to do a part 2 on the perilous journey of deciding to going paid, leave me a comment below. Maybe you will hear it on The Active Voice podcast with Hamish McKenzie or Substack Grow in the future.
Also if you found me through this post, but are more on Substack for fiction, Yoga, tech, career, love advice etc…however, you also have a Stock portfolio, 401k, Roth IRA, or general interest in investing, please consider subscribing. Here are my Testimonials.
Whether you subscribe for free or paid, you will gain value and ability over time to see stock market price movement in a way Wall St does not want you to see.
At the very least, improve your own education so you can grade your financial advisors homework and performance!
Financial Freedom is not free, but the treasure is worth the pursuit!
52 cents USD per day
Share this post