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

Here's why the second month was better than the first

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you had a good weekend! While you are thinking about it, please press the Like button. It will help this issue gain visibility on Substack, and I think it will help others to see what happens in the first month or two of writing on Substack. Thank you!

Today I wanted to share what I learned from my second full month of publishing on Substack. I began publishing on Substack at the beginning of June, so I’ve now published two full months, 2 issues a week (Monday and Thursday).

Before I get into my takeaways and what I learned, let’s start with the raw numbers, since I know that’s what most people are interested in:

Main numbers all green, except for open rate being down a bit. I think I’ve determined the reason why, more on that later.

Here’s daily number of views through the end of July:

The spike every 3-4 days is when the new issue of Backstage Pass goes out. And the highest view total was for the last issue of the month, 374 views on July 29th. So ending the month on a high note, that was good to see.

Ironically, the issue I published a month ago recapping what I learned in June actually jump started traffic, at least from Substack. Prior to publishing the post on my June results, I would see less than 1% of my daily traffic be from Substack. But since publishing that post, 5-10% of my daily traffic now comes from Substack! The above graph is my views from all sources. Here’s the same graph, but only measuring Substack as a source:

As you can see, from July 4th on (The day the June recap issue published), there has been a noticeable jump in referral traffic from Substack. Either the website or app. You can also see it seems to be tailing off a bit the last 10 days or so of the month. It will be interesting to see if this issue boosts Substack traffic again. My guess (and it’s just that) is that the Substack algos are more favorable toward shared content that mentions Substack.

What’s up with the open rate?

Ok lets return to the open rate. It was down a little over 1% for the month, and I’m noticing it seems to be falling more than that for recent issues.

Before I started publishing on Substack, my assumption was that open rate would gradually INCREASE over time, as more and more subscribers came from the pool of Substack users. My assumption was that subscribers on the Substack platform would prove to be more engaged than ‘regular’ email subscribers, and as a result my overall open rate would only increase over time as more and more Substack users subscribe.

Instead, the opposite seems to be happening. I think the reason why lies in how Substack seems to be measuring open rates.

I checked

Neela 🌶️

’s stats. For those of you who are new to Backstage Pass, I adore Neela. She is amazing in every sense of the word and a better friend I could not ask for. She reads, comments, shares and promotes every single issue of Backstage Pass.

But according to Substack, her open rate is 25%. Because Substack is tracking open rate as the percentage of times she opens an email from Backstage Pass. Which is technically the correct way to track Open Rate in regards to newsletters.

But Neela has read and engaged with 100% of the issues. So technically her open rate is 25%, but her engagement rate is 100%. She’s reading every issue, she’s just not always reading it via opening an email.

Something to keep in mind if you are tracking your open rate. I’ve seen other writers mentioning their open rates falling, and I suspect they are seeing their’s fall for the same reason.

The Three Stages of Growth for Your Substack

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been closely studying the information that some writers here have been nice enough to share about their progress and growth. In almost every instance, I’ve noticed that writers here go through three stages of growth:

Launch stage: This is the first stage of growth. Very slow and steady growth, most writers spend 6-12 months in this stage. I suspect growth is slow mainly due to the fact that the writer is new to Substack and learning the ropes. They haven’t yet cultivated a network here to draw on and draw substantial growth. So almost all of the progress made at this stage comes from their own doing, which is why it takes a bit longer and goes a bit slower.

Growth stage: This is where the substack begins to see noticeable growth. The length of this stage is typically half the first stage, and growth is usually 2-3 times what it was in the first stage. Growth accelerates I suspect in large part because it’s now being driven as much by the writer’s immediate connections as it is the writer themselves.

Hockey stick stage: This is where growth skyrockets for the substack. It seems to happen quickly, with little warning. I suspect this is where almost all of the growth is being pushed by the Substack community at large. The writer themselves and even their close network aren’t responsible for much of the growth, the writer’s work has been exposed to a much wider group on Substack, which is now doing the heavy lifting.

What does growth look like at each stage? It seems to vary widely among the writers I’ve looked at. Here’s some guesstimates:

First stage : 0 - 25 subs a month, 6-12 months total time spent in this stage.

Growth stage: 25-100 subs a month, 9-15 months total.

Hockey stick stage: 200+ subs a month, 15+ months.

Basically, growth in the second stage is 2-3 times the first stage, and growth in the third stage is 10 times the first stage. Keep in mind, growth isn’t a linear progression. Just because someone is in the Launch stage today doesn’t mean they will ever hit the Growth or Hockey Stick stage. For instance I saw one writer who was clearly in the Growth stage, you could see from their sub increases where they jumped from Launch to Growth. But their current time spent in the Growth stage was almost as long as they had been in the Launch stage. I guess the point is, you still have to put in the work and keep pushing to continue to progress.

For reference, I gained 13 subscribers in June, and 51 in July (My net total gain in subs was 22 for the month, I purged some of my imported signups that were no longer engaging and had a few unsub on their own). I still think I am in the beginning part of the first stage of growth, but I feel like if I can exceed those subscriber numbers in August and again in September, I could be ready to move into the 2nd stage of growth in October or so. If so, I’d be very happy with only spending 4 months in the Launch stage. We’ll see how it plays out.

Thank you thank you thank you

So many of you have been wonderful about supporting Backstage Pass, and I thank you all. I’m having so much fun getting to know each of you, reading your Notes, and your Substacks. Looking forward to meeting more of you in the coming weeks!

As I did last month, I wanted to highlight a few friends who went above and beyond to help me over the last few weeks, and those whose writings I am enjoying.

Mladena: Because of Mladena, I now appreciate the power of recommendations! Over half my subs in July came from Mladena’s recommendations. But beyond that, Mladena has been wonderful about supporting me and has been a good friend as well, always helpful whenever I need advice or to chat. Please check out her substack Peak Performance Wisdom.

Jack Westerheide: Really enjoying Jack’s substack The Field Review (check it out), and loving his take on business and life topics, as well as outdoor brands.

Neela: And then there is Neela. Whatever excitement and joy I get from being on Substack, Neela is its heartbeat. And she also happens to be a fandamntastic writer, WorkmanShit is a must-read for me, and it will be for you as well, check it out!

So that wraps up what I learned from my second month writing on Substack. And a special shoutout to Amy and Vic for being my first paid subscriber! Thank you both, my good friends! I’m now up to 5 paid subscribers, want to join them?