My 13th Month Publishing on Substack: Here's What I Learned

Continued growth leading to growth in new areas

Happy Tuesday, y’all! I’m now officially into my 2nd year publishing on Substack. Another month with slow, but steady growth. I also have some news about a new offering I will have soon at the end of this article.

For now, let’s jump right into the numbers:

Overall, I’m satisfied with these numbers. Views are lower, but that seems to be consistent with what other writers here at Substack have been saying. I keep hearing that views in particular, are down for many publications. Mine were down sharply in June, around 20% it looks like. Open rate held pretty consistent, I’m happy with around 25%. Don’t want to go much lower than that, though.

Here’s some more numbers:

This graph shows daily views over the last 90 days. You can easily see that the views were down a bit in June. If this is really a seasonal issue, then I can expect views to be around this same level in July and August before they start returning to normal. To be fair, this happens every year with views on my blog, They fall during the summer and the last two weeks of the year, like clockwork. So it appears to be the same thing happening here.

Here’s how my subscribers have grown over the last three months:

Overall, subscriber growth has definitely slowed over the last few months. The first 2-3 months of the year, it was really strong, it’s tapered off since. But still, adding 2-3 dozen subscribers a month is solid growth.

Here’s how Followers have grown over the last 3 months:

There are a few dips in sub numbers, but you really don’t see that with Followers. I gained 78 Followers in June.

---

Please consider supporting Backstage Pass by gifting a subscription to a friend or colleague. Monthly subscriptions are just $7.50 and a yearly sub is $60, a 33% discount over monthly rate. Paid subscribers have access to all Backstage Pass content with no paywalls. Paid Subscribers also have access to The Vault. Pro Tip: A gifted sub is a great way to convince that skeptical friend to finally join Substack!

---

Speaking of gifting subscriptions, I want to thank my friend Melissa who has purchased a year subscription for herself, and gifted two, one to her sister and one to a colleague. Thank you Melissa, your support over the years has been so appreciated :)

Adjustments I Will Make Moving Forward

Backstage Pass is now over a year old, and I’m going to start treating it more as a business and less as a social media channel. This is honestly how I will shift my focus for all of Substack. I realized last month that I was more focused on making friends here than making money.

So I plan to become more intentional in how I use Substack. I will be spending more time reading and engaging with publications and writers that can help me and my audience. I will still support a few writers who cover different topics, but I can’t do this as liberally as I have. I will become much more intentional in how I spend my time on Substack.

To that end, I’m excited to announce I’ve developed a new revenue channel: I will be selling digital products on Gumroad. My profile is pretty empty now, but I am working on a digital product now that I will be releasing next week and I’m pretty excited about it. I know it will be a big help to a lot of you, immediately. More on that next week when it launches.

Moving forward, the goal is to release one new digital product a month on Gumroad. I don’t want to just create ‘guides’, but instead sell the same tools I have used over the last 20 years. The tools, frameworks and strategies that have generated real dollars for me. Products that I know can immediately create value for you, because they have done so for me and my clients for the last 20 years.

This will be my second revenue stream after Substack. On October 1st, I will launch a 3rd revenue stream, which will be sponsorships. I’m working on how that will be structured now.

That will give me three revenue streams. The goal for now is to roll out a new revenue stream every 90 days. At some point I will likely need to cap the number of revenue streams as I can’t manage an infinite number. But I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

That’s my June recap. Thank you for reading, and thank you for your continued support! Please click Like if you’ve enjoyed this article. Have a great week!

Mack

---

Backstage Pass teaches you how to better connect with your customers, readers, clients, or donors. The lessons shared here draw on my experience over the last 20 years building customer engagement strategies for companies like Adobe, Dell, Club Med, Ingersoll-Rand, and countless others. I give you real-world research, examples and tactics that show you how to create customer engagement efforts that drive real business growth.

---