Transcription
We recently hit 50,000 subscribers on our Substack publication Write Build Scale. And before I dive into the video, I want to be upfront about something. We didn't achieve this goal by doing everything right from the start. We did it by being careful about a handful of decisions that most creators skip. So, over the next few minutes, I'm going to share five of these decisions with you. Let's get right into it.
The first thing I want to talk about is our paid subscription pricing, because this is one of those decisions that looks counterintuitive on the surface, but makes complete sense once you understand the logic behind it. Our monthly plan is set at [music] $20. That's intentionally higher than the average, because most Substack publications sit between $5 to $10 a month. But, here's the thing. We don't actually want people on our monthly plan. Our goal, and this is the deliberate part, is to get as many members as possible onto our annual plan, which is $85 a year. Now, 85 compared to 12 * 20 a year on a monthly basis is a significant discount, and that's exactly the point. The monthly price is high because it makes the annual one feel like the obvious choice. Less than 5% of our paid members are on our monthly plan right now, and that's not an accident. It's the outcome of an intentional decision. And here's why this matters beyond just the revenue math. An annual member is a completely different relationship than a monthly member. When someone commits to a full year, they are more engaged, they actually use what we offer, and they stay long enough to see results. This depth of relationship is what builds a community that people genuinely want to be part of. So, even when we run heavy promotions for our publication, launch weeks, special events, discount windows, we almost exclusively promote the annual plan. We never discount monthly to make it more accessible. We make annual feel like the smart move. So, if you are running a paid publication and you haven't thought about this intentionally, it's worth sitting down and asking yourself, which plan do I actually want people on and is my price structure guiding them there? And if you actually want to experience what it is like to be a premium member at Write Your Own Scale, I have put a 50% off discounted link for our annual tier into the description box below.
Now, let's talk about Substack Notes because this one surprised us the most. Around 10,000 of our 50,000 subscribers came directly through Substack Notes. That's 20% of our entire subscriber count from one feature that a lot of creators either ignore or use without a real strategy behind it. And I want to share something specific here because we recently co-published a deep analysis with our friend Orel from Write Stack and the data in that piece genuinely changed how I think about notes. Orel analyzed over 9,000 Substack Notes from over 600 writers looking specifically at which notes actually converted readers into subscribers. It's not likes, it's not restacks, it's real valuable data. And the finding that stood out most had nothing to do with posting frequency or timing. The notes that converted best were the ones where the opening sentence led with a specific verifiable Not a hook about the topic, not a question, a specific credential. Something like, "After 6 years building an online business, here's what I wish someone had told me." Notes that opened that way converted at 20 times the rate of notes that didn't. And when I read that, it made immediate sense. Substack Notes is a feed of strangers. Someone scrolling past your note hasn't read your publication, doesn't know your results, has no reason yet to trust what you're about to say. The first sentence is the only moment you have to signal that you are worth listening to, and the credential does that work instantly. So, when you are writing notes, lead with what you've actually done, not just with the inside. The inside becomes 20 times more credible when the reader understands why you have the authority to say it.
The third thing is Substack Lives, and I want to be specific about why this has worked so well for us, because it wasn't just the format. My co-founder and husband, Philip, has spent years as an interview host at Der Brutkasten, which is Austria's leading startup news platform. His job was interviewing founders, running live conversations, hosting events. So, when Substack launched live streaming, he probably was more excited than any other creator on the platform, because he already understood what live content could do for a business. So, we started experimenting with live streams early on, and have done hundreds of streams by now. And to be fair, it's probably one of our strongest advantages. [music] And there are two reasons for that. The first one is trust. Live streaming is unfiltered, unedited, and real-time, and that makes it the fastest trust-building format that exists right now. On a live stream, you get things right, you get things wrong, you answer questions you weren't prepared for. That's exactly what makes it powerful, because people connect with humans, not with polished, perfect content. [music] And the second reason is growth. We have hosted hundreds of live streams with collaboration partners, and what that means in practice is that their readers show up, discover our work, and a meaningful percentage of them subscribes to our publication as a result of the stream. Every collaboration live is essentially being introduced to a new audience by someone that the audience already trusts. This compounds in a way that isn't possible with solo content alone. So, if you are on Substack and you haven't experimented with live streaming yet, especially collaboration lives, this is one of the higher leverage things you can do right now to grow. Now, if you are building on Substack and you want a clear starting point, we have built a free Substack starter kit that walks you through the exact setup you can use. The link is in the description box below. It's free and it will save you a lot of time.
Now, let's get into lesson four because here's something that doesn't get talked about enough. Saying no is a growth strategy. When we were building the Write Build Scale publication, there was a constant pull to be everywhere. Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, and I understand why that pull exists because every platform feels like an opportunity you are leaving on the table if you're not using it. But, we made a deliberate choice early on. Substack was the one thing we wanted to focus on. My co-founder Yari is a huge fan of the book The One Thing by Gary Keller, and the central question that book poses is, "What's the one thing you can do such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?" When you apply that question to your platform strategy, the answer gets clear pretty quickly. If you build an engaged, growing audience on one platform, if you go deep instead of spreading yourself thin and across five different channels, you remove the pressure to also be consistently active on every other one. Your Substack compounds, your email list compounds, and your discoverability builds through the platform's own recommendation network. Trying to be everywhere doesn't multiply your reach. It just divides your energy and usually means that you're not doing anything particularly well on any of the platforms that you're showing up on. The creators who grow the fastest right now are not the ones doing the most things. They are the ones doing fewer things at a consistently high level. So, if you are currently splitting your attention across multiple platforms and none of them feels like it's really working, that's probably your answer. Pick the one with the most potential for your specific goals and go deep on that one. For us, that was Substack. At 50,000 subscribers later, I definitely have no regrets about that decision.
The last lesson is one that I learned the hard way and I want to share it because I think a lot of creators are either on the wrong platform or on the right platform at the wrong time. I have been building my email list on Kit since 2020. That's where my core list lives. That's where my sequences run and where I make automated sales of my products and services. And I actually joined Substack in 2021 for the first time and then I left because in 2021, Substack was essentially a simple email tool. You could write and send newsletters, but there was no real discovery, no notes, no recommendation network, no way for someone to stumble across your work without already knowing that you existed. So, for someone who already had an email platform and a real list, there wasn't much reason to also be on Substack. So, I left Substack and I stayed on Kit, which was doing exactly what I needed. But in 2024, I came back to Substack and I saw that everything had changed. Substack had built the discovery infrastructure that makes it a genuine growth engine. A recommendation network, notes, explore, a reader app. The platform had matured into something that could actually help you find new readers who had never heard of you before. And that's when it clicked for me. Not because Substack had gotten trendy, but because the features had finally caught up to what I actually needed. And here's the principle behind that. The best platform for you isn't just about your preferences. It's about whether the platform's current feature set actually serves your specific goals. So, a platform that was wrong for you a couple of years ago might be the perfect fit right now. The question worth asking isn't should I be on this platform? It's does the platform right now have the tools to help me reach my personal goals. For Substack in 2024, my answer was a clear yes, and I'm glad I came back at that exact time instead of wasting my time years ago.
So, those are the five things that actually moved the needle on the way to 50,000 subscribers on Substack. The pricing structure that keeps your best members committed, the note strategy built around credential hooks, live streaming as a trust and growth engine, the focus decision that makes everything simpler, and the timing of platform commitment. Now, none of these are shortcuts. They are deliberate choices that compound over time. And the more intentionally you make them, the faster they will work. And if you want to go deeper on the growth side specifically, I made a video on the three Substack tweaks that will double your growth in 30 minutes. Some of the most high-leverage changes you can make to your publication right now. I'll see you there.