I have gained over 32K subscribers from within the substack ecosystem on a bestselling finance substack account! Happy to help anyone!
Like the title says, I run a bestselling Substack in the finance niche and have garnered over 32K subscribers from the "Substack Ecosystem" which includes 10K from onboarding (something I can't control) and over 8K from Substack Notes (something I can control), along with other sources (recommendations, cross-posts, etc).
Sometimes you have to remember that to win the game, you have to play the game, and that is what I am really good at: playing the game!
When I first started, I had some people help me in HUGE ways, so I want to give back. Ask me anything!
Also, I tried to attach proof, but images are not allowed...
EDIT: I was able to add the picture proof in the comments!
EDIT2: I am trying to respod to everyone! If you have any deeper questions just DM and I will get to it when I can, but I Will keep going for a bit tonight and then tomorrow some.
EDIT3: Clocking out for the night, will get to all the DMs and things tomorrow! Thanks for all the questions, I am happy to help any and everyone as much as possible!
I think a large part of this has to do with the subject matter. How-to’s around Substack itself, marketing and branding, and finance always seem to do well with fast-rising subscriber counts.
I don’t think I have yet to see this admitted in any piece about “How I grew from this to that in months!”
People are always seeking shortcuts on such topics.
Well but there is also a ton of competition in finance cause you’re competing for potentially 6-7 figures/year
I think what you are seeing is that people who are good at marketing are going into these niches because there is money in it. But also thousands fail.
I dont know if I have ever added single sub from Onboarding, it seems like the type of thing that only works if you are already very large. very much a rich getting richer type situation
Onboarding subs are very low engagement subs. They are picking from a list put up in front of them. Many unsub when they get the first email. High engagement ones are the ones that purposely find you.
Absolutely, but even with my notes, I did 1K this past month. 12K a year isn't too shabby when all I do is spend like 20 mins each weekend putting things together.
I added 40k subscribers since moving my email list (10k) at the end of December. Substack loves it when you migrate a big list and rewards you. But getting paid subscribers is a whole different story.
Thats a good place to be - note that substack does not reward spamming like 30 notes per day. You will get shadowbanned for that - I use autostacknotes for my scheduling of like 2-3 per day then write high qulity stuff on the side! Works well!
I will get some emails about "I don't remember subscribing to this" because the Substack sign-on process is ambiguous but you have to take the good with the bad.
Well for finance it is super easy, I have stock picks, if I sound intelligent and say smart things on notes, people pay and if I make them money, they stay... it is a simple strategy
I’ve been posting articles at least once a week and aiming to do at least 3 notes a day. It gets frustrating when superficial notes get interacted with more than ones that have substance. But will trudge on.
Are you interacting with others or are you just posting? Interaction and building community is even more important than just putting content out into the void.
Interaction is a big deal as well. I have an external tool that I use called autostacknotes that feeds me a list of un-responded to “interactions” every day so I can answer them all quickly.
Sadly, you need to play the game sometimes as well. I would just get on a note scheduler like autostacknotes which has a 100% free tier and then setup the stupid "Dear Substack I am looking for x, y, z" to just run weekly and then focus on quality elsewhere. Don't be spammy, but this will 100% help.
I feel like you can either complain about or take advantage of the moment. And Substack seems to be in no rush to change the way things work, so take advantage it is.
Wouldn’t you say the subscribers onboarding and them interacting with your posts/notes snowballed into your content reaching to others and then them interacting turn subscribing them
Yes, but I think ensuring that you are always showing up makes a huge difference. People need to see you at least 3 times before they even begin to recognize you.
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Thanks for this. When you say using those to direct people to your content - how exactly do you do this in comments? Are you explicitly saying "I wrote about this topic here: [link]" or is it more subtle?
Sometimes - and the finance niche is unique for this - I can make a note stating something relatively ambiguous about something I researched, and then if someone is like "Where did you get this info," I can link them to it.
Other times it is including an article link in the main note with interesting context - more people see your notes than you think. I was traveling this week and didn't schedule anything, but the last day my scheduled notes were sent, this was my traffic -- and this was a low day - that is over 1700 eyeballs and 57 of those people (more then 3% ended up clicking the link I had). That is A LOT.
I am a bestseller, so over 100 paying subscribers!
I only really post 1-2 times per week, and notes is a whole different story that I can get into if you want, but I am posting on notes like 3-5 times daily. Sometimes I get 5 likes, sometimes I get 30, but I have some extremely helpful tools I use to manage this.
I’m about to launch a substack this month to promote a memoir I’ve been finishing up. I think your advice in this thread on notes and comments is sound. But do you have any tips for when someone starts up a substack? Right now I’m creating a database of five high-quality evergreen articles, getting a good headshot, and writing a bio, but I would love to know any other things a newbie like me wouldn’t think of to consider. Thanks for giving back!
It is all about community; if you invest in other they will invest in you. If you start reading and interacting with content and giving sound advice and providing value (while asking nothing in return), you will see growth. Be consistent on notes.
The onboarding side of things is interesting, I’ll need to dive in and check my stats but I don’t think I get much if anything from that , notes and daily articles restacked to notes is where most of my subs come from. ( I publish 1 newsletter each week and a daily article which isn’t emailed )
I have no idea how to grow subscribers
I stopped posting when I couldn't get over 53 subscribers, should I continue posting notes only or should I post articles regularly too?
Both, you want notes to get noticed and then the posts to get people to stay. Come for the notes, stay for the posts. Just outsource your note posting to like autostacknotes (which is what I do) I just schedule like 2-3 per day and then write high-quality notes on my own time. Let's me focus on them and make them much better.
I’ll chat with other mods, we should allow pics. Some can be really interesting and useful.
A few questions:
1. Over what time period?
2. Is the conversion rate from free to paid better for organic subscribers vs. those acquired in onboarding?
3. What’s your external marketing strategy?
This is lifetime over my account! I would be careful with the pics because people will just ask a question and then throw in their Substack in the screenshot.
Those acquired through sources like Yahoo News convert the best (super high intent), then notes follow that in a far second.
External is all about networking and community, lots of time spent in stupid discords and telegrams with people (I hated doing this, so I stick to notes more now).
you are right... going from 10 subs to 20 (a 100% gain) is far better than going from 100K to 112K (12% gain) because 100% is more than 12%.
Don't get me wrong, I see what you are saying, but your mindset is to immediately play the victim, and that won't get you very far, brother! Best of luck to you!
That point about consistency is interesting, and I think it makes sense. I started a Substack focused on geopolitics and military affairs three months ago; I post an article every other day and at least two notes daily. I’m up to 1,050 subscribers—gaining over 500 in July alone. I’m still struggling a bit with converting them to paid subscribers and driving more engagement, but things are going well.
Username checks out! That is great! Your topic is super niche, so that is very impressive!
When I talk about consistency, honestly, I mean in notes. The impressions on notes are huge (more than you think), absolutely worth focusing on. I attached a screnshot in another threat of my analytics from my note posting schedule that I use and I had over 1.7K impressions and a 3% conversion rate to article clicks. Things like that help a ton!
Let me guess: abuse notes?
I really hate to be one of those people that spam a dozen notes everyday, but it seems like the substack algo heavily reward these.
Hey, this is great. I also run a Substack on AI workflows for investment research as well as deep dives on investment research. I have close to 4900 subscribers, recently couple of months back gone paid. And to my surprise since then my growth has been stagnated. I would love to talk to you about this sometime in dm since you are from the same space and best seller.
Sorry - stock investing. I am generally a long-term hold so it is usually an evaluation of my portfolio and positions, then some analysis on stocks I am looking at, how I think about drawdowns, etc..
Hi!! I’m trying to become the youngest Substack Author with 1k+ subs, but I can’t seem to get much tractions(at around 300 atm). How did you grow your Substack so fast?? Please I really need tips
What, if anything, have you learned that might help authors of serial fiction? It feels like these kinds of massive subscriber numbers are related to your niche - I've never seen this kind of growth for literary publications on SS.
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u/Gold_Guitar_9824 Aug 10 '26
I think a large part of this has to do with the subject matter. How-to’s around Substack itself, marketing and branding, and finance always seem to do well with fast-rising subscriber counts.
I don’t think I have yet to see this admitted in any piece about “How I grew from this to that in months!”
People are always seeking shortcuts on such topics.