My Ninth Month Publishing on Substack: Here's What I Learned
Now I see why everyone says use Notes
Happy Tuesday, y’all! Please Like and Restack this issue to help increase its visibility on Substack. Thank you! And if you getting value from my articles, please consider supporting me by subscribing to Backstage Pass. Free subscribers get access to all articles as they come out, after one month, older articles are paywalled. Paid subscribers have access to all Backstage Pass content with no paywalls.
I joined Substack in May of 2024, and officially started writing Backstage Pass in June of last year. Since then, I decided to every month recap what I learned from the previous month. I wanted to do this for a few reasons. Mainly, I wanted to share what I was learning about the platform. And to also give greater transparency to the entire process of growing a substack.
I appreciate you taking the time to read these monthly updates on the growth of my Substack. February was another good month, building off the growth I saw in January.
Let’s jump right into the topline numbers:
Mostly green numbers, so that’s good! I added 58 subscribers over the last 30 days, versus adding 30 in January. So I almost doubled the number of subscribers added, but I did miss my goal of 60 added for Feb. Barely.
My goal for March will be to add 120 subscribers. This is a big goal, but it would move me into the 2nd phase of growth (more on that later in post).
Let’s run through some more numbers from Feb:
Here’s my subscriber numbers for February. Note that from February 10th-15th in that 5 day period I picked up a grand total of 0 new subscribers. That’s frustrating, because those 5 days caused me to miss my goal of 60 new subs in February. Ah well.
Here’s my follower numbers:
I picked up 151 followers in February, or a little over 5 followers a day, compared to 1.9 subscribers a day. The jump in followers for Feb gives me the perfect segue (Hey that's a big word for us Southern boys!) into a discussion of the biggest change I made over the past month.
Did Y’all Say Use Notes to Grow?
After hearing everyone on Substack for MONTHS say ‘Gotta use Notes to grow’, I finally started using them more seriously over the last 5 weeks. I made a conscious effort to leave at least one Note every weekday. What I found was by the last week or so of February, I would typically leave 3-5 Notes a day.
And I think it made a big difference in my growth. First, my extra Notes help explain the growth in Followers. Secondly, I think it really helped visibility for my Substack. Look at the daily views for Feb:
Twice in February I set a record for the most views in a single day. First on February 4th, then I broke that record on February 27th with 392 views. Then the next day, I set a record for the most views on a day when I didn’t publish a new issue of the newsletter, with 192 views. Strong close to the month, and I am convinced that my additional Notes usage played a large role in that.
BTW, this one Note I left on Jan 28th is by far my most popular one yet, it had 209 Likes and had generated 8 free subscribers by the end of February:
And yes, I restacked and Liked my own Note. See,
? I pay attention to you!One last thing on numbers, let’s look at the sources for my subscribers:
Before I started writing on Substack in June of 2024, I imported a MailChimp list that had 868 people on it. At first, that was 99.9% of my subs, now as you can see above, it’s down to 71%. So in reality, I’ve gained about 300 subscribers in 9 months on Substack. Just offered for full transparency because I hate seeing Notes and articles talking about ‘How I gained 1,000 subs my first month here’, and not being upfront about the fact that the 1,000 subs were imported!
Consistency is the Key
One reason why I wanted to do this series was to have it serve as a sort of digital diary of my progress. And to be honest, I knew that committing to writing this series meant that some of the first few months in particular would look really bad. But I thought the transparency would be helpful to everyone, and it would help build trust in my writings. If you’ll notice, I am using the same engagement tactics in growing this substack that I advise companies to use in their own content strategies.
Also, I wanted to show that consistency is the key to growth. If you go back and look at my third month review, I lamented that I had ‘hit the wall’. Growth was almost nonexistent, it was basically sideways for most of the month.
talks about how many creators and companies often stop working on building a presence on a platform if they don’t see results within the first 3 months. I can see why, but I’m glad I stuck with Substack, because now it’s clear momentum is starting to build.One last thing; I’ve removed the paywall from all the monthly reviews. You can read them all here:
Before I wrap up this monthly recap, I want to send a special shoutout to several people who have been a tremendous help in growing Backstage Pass. They have given me advice, written wonderful comments, restacked issues, and so much more. All are wonderful follows and subs if you are looking for new reads:
What’s Coming Up in March?
On Thursday, I will have the Monthly Marketing Minute update for this month.
Next week I debut a new series: The Brand Diaries. This will feature some of my favorite people on Substack sharing what they love about a particular brand. Next week the series will debut with the one and only
sharing what she loves about In N Out Burger! I’m super excited about this series, and so happy Neela will write the first entry. And as a bonus, I will also be writing a post for Neela on her sub next week as well. All of you SHOULD be subbed to Neela already, but if you haven’t, please take care of that now!The third week of the month will feature Marketing and Movies: Smokey and the Bandit, as well as Marketing and Music: MTV Goes Unplugged.
Have a great week, see you on Thursday!
Mack
Thanks for the mention Mack. You've inspired me to use Notes more!
Thanks for the mention Mack! February was actually my slowest month of growth for some reason. March is growing well so far. I’m also experimenting with doing more notes which I haven’t really done much of up to this point. I’m almost at 250 subscribers now and am pretty pleased with that ✨