My 21st Month Publishing on Substack: Here's What I Learned

Slower month, a lull as winter ends?

Can you believe we are already into the 3rd month of 2026? Time is flying so fast!

February was a bit of a slow month for me, and it likely was for you as well.

Let’s start with free subscribers:

I gained a total of 49 free subscribers in February and ended the month with 1,181. My free subscriber growth hasn’t been a priority for the last few months as I have been getting my content and conversion strategies in place. I have been following the process I detailed in this post:

Three Strategies You Need to Create a Successful Substack

The process is you focus first on getting your content strategy (including positioning) set first. The next step is you build a solid conversion strategy. I’ve done that, as I’ve gained 40 Paid subscribers in the last 6 months and my conversion rate has gone from 0.5% to 4%.

The next step is building a solid engagement strategy. I had planned to shift more into focusing on engagement starting with this month, when I got an interesting DM from a Follower.

She told me that she didn’t want to be rude (you can always tell something incredibly rude is coming next), but then asked, if I was teaching people how to grow on Substack, how come I only had 1k subscribers?

The funny part is, a lot of people think growth on Substack is simply about having a lot of subscribers. While the timing was coincidental, I am still going to push to have more free subscriber growth over the next few months, at least. That may lower my overall conversion rate a bit, but I expected to recover that with a boost from getting the first level Bestseller Badge in a few months.

I plan on running some engagement experiments this month and next, and of course will be sharing with you what works and does not.

Here’s how daily Views have trended over the last 3 months:

Views were down by a decent bit in February. I’m not sure why. I do know Substack has been doing a ton of tweaking with the newsletter stats and the algo, so it simply be that. We’ll see how March looks.

This was my best-performing post in February:

The 5 Stages of Substack Subscribers

And here’s the stats from it:

My Open Rate is currently 32.2%. Substack did some tinkering with how stats are counted around deliverability and Open Rates as well:

Stats update: We’ve updated how Delivery Rate and Open Rate are calculated to better reflect how posts are received and viewed across email and the Substack app. In some cases, subscribers who view posts in the app were not fully reflected in delivery and open metrics; these updates ensure that app inbox receipt and views are accurately counted. As a result, publishers may notice these rates increase on new and historical posts.

My Open Rate seemed to improve by 1-2% an issue, and deliverability rates jumped from around 88% to 99% per issue. I would love to get my Open Rate to 35% as there’s speculation that Substack’s algo gives your content a slight boost if your Open Rate is in the 35-40% range.

I haven’t talked about it in a few months, but my SEO efforts are slowly improving as well:

This is the search traffic that’s coming to Backstage Pass. It’s now getting about 100 clicks a month.

What You Can Expect Here in March

In January, we focused on how to design a stellar content strategy for your Substack. In February we focused on how to design a solid conversion strategy.

In March we are going to shift gears and focus on designing an engagement strategy. So if you are trying to figure out how to get more Likes, Comments, Restacks, or build a community on Substack, this is for you! We will cover designing your Notes strategy next month, which will be a sort of extension of this month’s content.

I am putting the finishing touches on the content here for the month, so let me know which areas you need help with the most:

Since we have 31 days in March, there will be 9 posts total. Paid subscribers will have access to every post. Free subscribers have access to this one, and 5 more posts throughout the month. Another free post drops on Thursday, where I update my current engagement strategy on Substack!

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