Zero to $6,000 in Substack revenue in 30 days (With 1,000 subscribers + over 100 paid subs - FULL METHOD)
I had a crazy first month with my Substack. Here's the 10 most powerful methods I used to go from zero to being a "Verified author", building an immediate audience, and making fast cash (FULL METHOD):
Here is a printout from my Stripe from my first month writing on substack, these payment making part of the over $6,000 I made in my first month on the platform:
The rest of the payments arrived on other platforms as extensions of my Founder package (I offer a years’ paid subscription, bonuses, and a 15-minute phonecall with me for $250, some people paid that through Cashapp, Paypal, or bank transfer, and some people wanted more i.e. paid me $1,000 to have more regular founder calls.
This is my first month writing on Substack (!)
In this article I will reveal everything I did to have such an explosive start (without a massive existing audience and most of it without spending any money at all)
If you’re new here I write “cheat code” articles like this every single day to help writers, entrepreneurs, and marketers get noticed and make money online.
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So let’s get into it!
There are ten parts to me getting from zero to over 1,000 subscribers and $6,000 in revenue.
The target was always 1,000 subscribers and $5,000 in revenue.
Here’s how we did it/steps you should follow:
Why does the Substack exist?
Pre-launch marketing strategy in 12 posts
Making money from day one
Killer first article
“Sicko mode” - Part 1 - One-to-one direct marketing at scale
“Sicko mode” - Part 2 - Social media
One article every day
Use early money on paid ads
Converting free to paid users
Keeping paid users subscribed
Bonus section!
My plan to get from 1,000 to 5,000 followers revealed:
1)
Linkedin - The crazy decision I made that I think will set me up for success
2)
Networking with other Substack writers
3)
“Cornerstone content” and regular new books
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So let’s get into it!
Now I know you want to know how I got 45,000 visitors - that’s coming :)
But what I did before I launched the Substack is critical to it’s success.
In a 12-day launch sequence, I had over 350 subscribers and made $600 in revenue before I’d dropped my first article, without paying one penny.
It is possible for you too BUT you can’t skip steps.
I used a tried and tested “product launch formula” which has made hundreds of millions of dollars for others who used the same process, and I made sure the first article was killer before I launched.
I will show you every part of what I did.
So, from the top:
Part one:
PRE-LAUNCH 1: Why does the Substack exist?
There are millions of blogs already.
Why should yours exist?
In my case:
I didn’t know of a single blog offering short, actionable daily strategies for people who wanted to make money online.
YouTube vloggers get paid for watch time so it’s in their interest to make the videos as long as possible.
Tiktokers get to the point but lack credibility and over-generalise.
There are a lot of people looking to make money online: Writers, coaches, consultants, marketers, agencies, startup founders, and people looking for side hustles.
This is who my Substack is for.
People tie themselves up in knots trying to be clever.
I simply post value, in as few words as possible, to help as many people as possible.
This may sound simple but if I hadn’t worked out this first step (what/who my Substack is for) all the marketing super-juice wouldn’t’ve saved it and the blog would’ve been dead, rather than being on track to be one of the fastest-growing in the history of the platform.
Ready for the marketing magic?
Let’s get it:
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PRE-LAUNCH 2: GETTING SUBSCRIBERS BEFORE THE FIRST ARTICLE DROPS
Too many writers & bloggers think they will post their first article and through “magic” it will get discovered and go “viral”, or Substack itself will promote you right away.
The simple truth is:
You have to get an initial audience yourself.
One by one.
Don’t worry about “going viral”
Don’t worry about getting retweeted by a massive influencer or getting republished on a massive magazine or newspaper, those are “lottery tickets”
Great if they happen, but this strategy leaves you with ZERO results if whichever gatekeepers you pitch ignore you.
Like investing, small, steady gains will pay off.
Once you bring people to the platform, Substack will reward you with bonus signups.
12% of our current signups come from Substack.
This absolutely would not have happened if I hadn’t hustled HARD to get as many people as possible on the platform.
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runs the #1 business publication on Substack. he mentioned when he started he was given 0% of his subscriptions from Substack. Now (at 300,000 subscribers, it's 90%)Substack is not editorial based, it’s largely algorithmic based- Like Spotify, YouTube or any other social network, the more traffic YOU bring it, the more traffic it will give you as a bonus.
And though there are ways to get gatekeepers to tweet or feature you, using gatekeepers is a risk.
Invest in something you can control: Your audience.
Everyone, EVERYONE has a pre-existing audience they can tap into when they start and ongoing, particularly if you run a personal brand or talk about your interests on social media.
What everyone DOESN’T DO…
Is make sure EVERY person connected to them knows about.
Most people do one post and hope everyone sees it.
Bad idea.
social networks generally only show your post to 2% of your audience.
So you better get creative releasing the same news/post in a number of different ways.
I used elements of Jeff Walker’s “product launch formula” in my launch, dropping the first post 12 DAYS before the Substack went live.
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Here are the exact 12 posts I used to get hundreds of followers and $600 in revenue before I posted my first article on Substack.
(12 days is enough time to build anticipation without being too long that people get bored):
DAY 1 OF 12: The “shot across the bow” announcement that something is coming, tease it:
DAY 2 OF 12: The “get the audience invested” second post…If you post organically on your personal Facebook you know that 60 comments on a free post is a lot of interest for a businessy post that isn’t a meme, so this showed DEMAND:
If you do it right, people will ask you for the link to signup:
DAY 3 OF 12: THE BIG HOOK! Now the audience has warmed up, you need to offer them a BIG reason to signup.
I gave away my first book+video course+bonuses, which has made nearly $250,000 since it launched on Kickstarter.
If you don’t have a proven product that might be even better!A lot of my audience had this book already.
Nevertheless, this drove a HUGE number of subscribers.Subscribe here to get this post in your email to read whenever you want:
Here was how I announced it: (Notice I talked about there being a paid plan from the very first post, which I’ll get into in a minute)
Also worth noting- Not many people engaged with this post, but many signed up on Substack.
Don’t chase likes.
Give value.
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4.LAUNCH DAY 4 OF 12: Story selling
You can’t be “all business” all the time, people will 🥱 scroll over you.
Yesterday I did the “get this book for your business” hook (i.e. the “what”), today I did the “why”, in a post that did even better than the launch post:
LAUNCH DAY 4 OF 12 (PART 2): The “proof there’s something here”
Never be afraid to share your wins.
This post showed fast growth and the community got to feel part of the win:
6. LAUNCH DAY 5 OF 12: THE “REMINDER” - Includes success story (To raise $500 for a blog that hasn’t even launched is wild, most people don’t make that in the first year!) and a reminder of what they get when they subscribe; I even made it a value post about the importance of recurring revenue:
7. LAUNCH DAY 5 OF 12: (PART 2): Final reminder
- This wasn’t an amazing post, so why was it included?
Firstly, +200 subscribers was a big achievement from a standing start (and remember, we haven’t paid any money to get these subscribers)
…AND I launched it at maybe the worst time ever (lol)
…OVER CHRISTMAS. 😂😂😂😂😂
Yes, go look at the dates on these posts.
This damn post went out on Christmas Eve!
So I imagine if you follow this formula during “normal” time it would work better.
I had to take a few days off from posting to not over-saturate my audience and let them enjoy Christmas haSubscribe here to get this post in your email to read whenever you want:
8. LAUNCH DAY 8: A meme.
A bit forced but memes can go viral like nothing else, so if the meme takes off your ad for your Substack will go viral with it:
9. LAUNCH DAY 9: Second “story selling” post. Be sincere not salesy here.
10. LAUNCH DAY 10: ANNOUNCING THE FIRST ARTICLE.
A little further down I’ll write about the BIG IMPORTANCE of having a killer first article
(It almost makes or breaks the Substack in my opinion) but for today’s post, you announce what the first post will be, which builds anticipation (also, hit 300 subscribers before launching, not bad at all!):
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11. LAUNCH DAY 11:
No post from me 😂 I flew from London to New York this day and forgot to write one (haha). If I had (lol) this is a good post to talk about:
> Any objections - either ask your audience directly why they haven’t signed up, or create a post that answers the objections you think they’ll have.
> Asking for a “favor” - If you’ve given a lot of value you can ask people to share your launch link or send it to a few people. I had people share one of the launch posts so I felt like I’d used that credit, but you never know until you ask> “Wild out” - Create a very weird or eye-catching post as a hail mary shot to make sure as many people as possible know it’s coming.
Anyway, I missed all of this flying to America, going through customs, and checking in at my Airbnb in Manhattan so we’ll never know if I did an amazing post here :-)
LAUNCH DAY 12: (POST 11 of 12 BEFORE LAUNCH):
No need to go overboard here, you’ve probably reached a good chunk of your (organic) followers by now, so no need to remind them
- Talk as if they already know it’s coming out, keep the excitement going, report your stats. Simple.
Note: No post the day before launching because it was New Years Eve (lol)
Once again, terrible timing to launch something haha
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So I allowed myself two more pre-launch posts on New Years Day:
LAUNCH DAY POST 1: A teaser of the contents or a key quote to whet the audience appetite:
LAUNCH DAY POST 2:
More in-depth info on what they’ll get if they read the article;
remember IF YOU AREN’T EXCITED THEY WON’T BE EITHER.
STAND ON YOUR ARTICLE LIKE HELL YEAH SOMETHING GREAT IS COMING:
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OK NOW IT’S TIME TO LAUNCH THE THING!
LAUNCH POST 1: Get your CAPITAL LETTERS OUT, this is your moment!
Give them the main bullet points they’ll get if they read - you can not be explicit/obvious enough - spell it out for them.
LAUNCH POST 2: Repost the BEST part of the whole article.
When a celebrity or athlete writes an autobiography, they sell the rights to reprint the BEST part of the whole book to a newspaper.
You need to do the same here.
I knew the part of the article about Instagram would have the widest possible reach and interest, so that was what I reposted (I know this is a long screenshot, but don’t believe the hype:
People read longform text, and it’s a strong algorithmic signal to Facebook that they are engaged)
End the article with “to read the full article, go to my Substack”
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ONGOING LAUNCH POSTS:
Because my launch article was so big, I serialised almost 30 different articles as social media posts, effectively serialising the entire article.
Each article ended with “Go to my Substack to read the full article” of course.
In terms of pre-launch, the above was honestly at least 90% of what I did to have 350 free subscribers, 25 paid subscribers, and $600 in revenue before we’d even launched the Substack, without paying a penny to anyone.
The REAL marketing was to come.
But before we get there, let’s talk about how I made money ($600 by launch day, $6000 by the end of the Substack being live one month on January 31st)
Part 2: MAKING MONEY FROM DAY ONE
Charge from day one.
It’s simple.
Give people the chance to say no.
One of my favourite moments in my entire entrepreneurial career is someone (Thanks Heidi!) paying $60 for a yearly subscription before she knew what my Substack was, what she would be getting, or when it was launching.
I had just happened to put “$60 yearly” to test the feature worked before I announced I was “launching a Substack”
Getting that email that someone had seen my post, searched Substack, found my blog (wasn’t public yet) and purchased a yearly plan blew my mind.
I raised the price to $80 from then on :)
I’ve seen so many writers say “Don’t charge at first”
Nonsense.
Here’s how I priced to make $6,000 in my first 30 days:
4 tiers:
Free (obviously) - Give people a taste of what you do, offer outrageous value
$10 per month - Standard package
$80 per year - Yearly paid package
$250 “Founder call” - Everything in the yearly package plus a one-on-one call with me.
This elevates nicely - Readers know I have knowledge, and pay a premium for me to speak to them directly on the “founder” package.
Remember, don’t sell this in minutes, sell this as a product.
The “founder package” is them buying "6 months of growth marketing ideas/strategy"
By the end of that call they have months of ideas to execute.
(I’m in the “business” space- If you are too, you need to be able to solve your clients’ problems if you sell something like this)
I have each founder fill out a questionnaire in advance so I can start thinking about growth ideas for their company in advance.
It was a combination of all of the above that brought $6000 of revenue in the first month (Some people bought more than one founder call off me off-platform as mentioned earlier)
I like to over-explain everything so that it’s clear what I’m saying buuuuut that’s really all there is to say about pricing.
Price from day one, have three tiers, the top tier should offer more direct access to you.
(I’ll talk later in the article about what is in each segment)
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PLUS all the worksheets and checklists you can use to grow your Substack
AS WELL AS all my bonus content and my forthcoming book on how to make money from Chat-GPT3?
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PART 3: KILLER FIRST ARTICLE
Look, all the marketing tricks in the world won’t save you if your content isn’t GREAT.
(Not good, GREAT)
In particular, the first article needs to be AMAZING
Like, the best thing you’ve ever written.
Trust me, if they don’t like that first article, they won’t subscribe, and if they had already subscribed you straight away have lost their trust and are “just another newsletter” 🥱
So
Your first article can be anything, but as a “Cornerstone” piece of content (i.e. a “hit” that people find your substack from, then go on to the “deeper” articles after)
A big piece should be at least one of these things:
Contrarian - Challenges popular belief about person/thing
Shocking - Revealing new information, not shock value
Well researched/journalistic - People can tell “someone’s opinion” VS. A well researched piece, ideally with citations. I included screenshots of the scammy practices I was talking about, and links to the website that sold them. “Breaking new information” like a journalist always works well in Substack articles.
Shareable - Think “Who will share this?” before you start writing. We knew marketers/founders who had used influencer agencies would share this, plus people who didn’t like influencers, plus people generally into “social media” Again, we spent $0 on this, and didn’t ask anyone to post the article, so seeing each share was nice proof that it resonated with people:
Getting back to my earlier point about not going for “lottery tickets” - If you have a article that resonates, it will be shared (without you asking/paying) by many micro influencers.
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If you’ve struck gold you’ll see tweets like this:
“Spiritandwood” - 7,794 followers:
“RAnsacks” - 6,433 followers
“Yutron” - 3,397 followers
So now we know you need a KILLER first piece, let’s get into how to get your article out there:
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PLUS all the worksheets and checklists you can use to grow your Substack
AS WELL AS all my bonus content and my forthcoming book on how to make money from Chat-GPT3?
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“Sicko mode” - Part 1 - One-to-one direct marketing at scale
A cornerstone piece of content needs to be worked like a song.
When a song is released, it is “worked” sometimes initially pushed to nightclubs, then to social media, then to radio Dj’s, until it becomes a “hit”
So you tweeting it once and hoping for the best doesn’t count 😂
I always imagine the most cynical person reading this article, and I can imagine you are not going to like what I’m about to suggest.
As a writer/creator, you are an artist.
and artists feel “icky” promoting their work.
But here’s the thing
It’s arrogant to presume your work is so great that the world will just “find it”
And it’s lazy to try and say “When I have a team/a manager/money to invest/investors” they can do it all for me.
You have to do the work if you are starting it.
To go back to the earlier example:
Substack have tens of thousands of writers on their platform.
There are two ways they can decide which of the thousands of writers to promote:
Based on what they “feel” (editorial decisions, has natural bias)
Based on what is *already* getting views on the platform (not only a more objective and fairer measure, but you are doing Substack a favour by promoting their platform as you promote your work, so naturally they will reward you for it)
So if you do the work, they will too.
Even if Substack brought you zero referrals (which they wouldn’t do) you are IN CONTROL OF YOUR DESTINY if you do the work to promote your Substack.
Every week I read the “Office writer hours” and it feels like a good chunk of writers have a resistance to promoting.
That’s part of the reason I wrote this, and will be sending it to those I think it can help-this is a step by step of not only HOW you can grow your Substack, but WHY you should, which I honestly think isn’t clear to some writers.
So here is the most effective method I used to get subscribers once I launched my Substack on New Years Day:
Personally messaging everyone I knew who might be interested in my Substack.
That’s it.
Not complex.
time-consuming, yes.
And of course, you will think “Is this spam?”
and the answer is:
It’s only spam if you’re not adding value.
If you’ve read the first part of this article (Have a reason for the blog to exist, and have a killer first article) then no, it is not spam.
This was the difference maker - when I wet a day aside to personally message people, my subscriptions went up.
And I’m not some big journalist or influencer - I have a few thousand connections - The reason I have grown faster in one month than many people with big audiences grow in three months is I made damn sure every person I’d ever spoken to knew about this article and that I was writing a Substack!
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PLUS all the worksheets and checklists you can use to grow your Substack
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So some platforms you should work your way though the inboxes of:
1) Your personal facebook profile
Open up your “friends” list on desktop, and hit “send message”, write something short and snappy and send them the link.
Don’t overthink it, just send it. I tweaked my message a few times based on feedback, this was the final message that converted the best:
That’s:
Hey (name) > “People’s favorite sound is the sound of their own name”
Personal bit (Cabo) > Friendly, not “all business”
ONE SENTENCE pitch: What’s in it for them (posts) and why they should care (a controversial issue in my case, but whatever your main value is)
Then the link to your Substack.K.I.S.S. - KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID
2) Any Facebook pages you have
Once again, you can copy and paste that message to anyone who has ever messaged you/your business
As for limits on how many you can send?
If you do more than 100 or so in an hour, Messenger will give you the “red dot” stopping you from posting for a few minutes.
This is how you know you’re hustling hard!
After an hour or so you can go back and do more.
I actually never got the red dot on my Facebook pages, so maybe they are unlimited.
3) Any other platforms that have an inbox
Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram - Anything that has an inbox, get copying and pasting!
It’s braindead simple but 99% of new writers don’t do this.
Believe in what you’re doing, get the word out - You will be at 1,000+ subscribers in a flash.
Want this post in an ebook/PDF format?
PLUS all the worksheets and checklists you can use to grow your Substack
AS WELL AS all my bonus content and my forthcoming book on how to make money from Chat-GPT3?
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4) Anyone you’ve ever emailed
Same deal here, email everyone who has ever shown interest in your business.
Message them and let them know what you’re working on!
This is basically FREE marketing.
It is insane if you DON’T do it.
(And don’t worry about “I’ll invite them once the blog is running” - People like to be there from the start and come along with the ride, ESPECIALLY early adopters (like the micro-influencers who tweeted my article above)
p.s. don’t forget SMS and Whatsapp too!
As mentioned, on 29th December, I flew from London to New York.
There was a MASSIVE queue to drop bags (Baggage packers strike?!)
Looked like it would take 20-30 minutes.
The easy thing to do? Scroll Facebook/Instagram/Twitter.
What I did instead?
Found my copy/paste message and quickly sent it to everyone I’d ever messaged o Whatsapp and text…as ever, I’m always surprised by how happy people are to hear from me…
I get the same fear I’m “spamming” than anyone else gets, but everytime I push through that fear I get nice responses:
I also made a Whatsapp message for once the blog was live with the link to the first article:
Something to consider: How much marketing you do before the blog is live VS after.
No right or wrong answer, I ended up veering slightly towards doing more DM’s *after* it came out - easier to get that click & indtantly jump into an article than “something is coming”
”Something is coming” works better for general blasts on social media.
But, up to you!
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PLUS all the worksheets and checklists you can use to grow your Substack
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“Sicko mode” - Part 2 - Social media posts
Same deal here - posting your blog or article once will not do.
As mentioned above, the main content was me cutting the main article down into 30 mini articles and posting two excerpts a day for the first 15 days.
You should also include one more “lead magnet” - another free bonus if they sign up.
I gave away my second book, with the added incentive that I would not be giving it to anyone once I hit 500 (which is true, I have retired it permanently)
This drove another bump in signups, getting me closer to the magic 500 subs number:
Also:
Post EVERYWHERE regularly - even if you don’t have many followers.
The reason?
All social networks are looking for “viral” content.
Meaning - Every public post has the potential to go viral.
Until Tiktok, the more followers you had, the more likely you were to go viral.
Tiktok got rid of this model - Each post by every user is shown to new people - If they like it it is shown to more, and so on.
This is why Tiktok became known as the platform “everyone blows up on” as tiny creators had hit videos - which was much rarer on Facebook, Instagram etc.
After seeing that, every other platform copied that formula - now Tweets go viral easier, and posts (particularly reels) have high viral potential on Facebook and Instagram.
What this means for you?
Post regularily, even on your small social channels.
The results will surprise you.
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For example
As mentioned, my Substack has a “founder” package (click here for more info), where entrepreneurs can speak directly to me and I give them strategy plans (It’s the main reason I made thousands of dollars, people saw the content and wanted more from me).
Someone who took my advice after our founder call is John Vishnesky.
I told him:
“Build a Facebook page.
Post good content.
I promise you you will get good results”
With one of his first pieces for content this happened:
That was two weeks ago.
Today that post has been watched millions of times:
And if you’re super cynical and say “so what, it got some views”
Let me explain:
The point of a Facebook page is to build followers to run ads to to make money.
When you do paid traffic you have to worry much less about the algorithm.
This post (and the others he posted) have given him an audience of over 2600 people (for FREE) his ideal customers (You would not follow unless you were into fly fishing)
So take the hint, POST! LOTS! DON’T BE DISHEARTENED IF YOU DON’T HAVE FOLLOWERS!
Even with no followers, ANYTHING can go viral.
This point may not be a revolutionary idea, but most don’t do it.
Reminds me of this:
“You already know you need to post lots, you’re just not doing it”
I posted my article(s) over and over, and the results speak for themselves:
Over 45,000 visits in January.
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Post one article every day
Everything else on this article I think is for EVERYONE.
This one is for SOME people.
MOST successful Substacks do not post every day.
They take their time and write less posts, but all are killer (like my first article, “Cornerstone content”
So one article per day is…optional.
But let me make the case for it anyway, and why it’s helped me make that $6,000 and 1,000+ subscribers:
Reasons posting every day works for me:
I knew I had a small, engaged audience: By posting lots I engage as many of them. as possible, and move as many as possible to “paid” to fund my Substacks’ growth
People can (and do) unsubscribe as of how many emails I send. But there’s an olf internet marketing quote: “You WANT people to unsubscribe or to unfollow you if you post too much. They probably weren’t going to buy from you anyway. The people who are left LOVE that you give them lots of content and are now MORE likely to buy from you”
More posts = more email opens, shares, website visits, social shares, engagements - all positive signals to the substack algorithm that this is a “buzzy” blog and worth sending subscribers to (As mentioned before, 12% of my signups are from Substack themselves)
I had a lot of articles written from the past that were evergreen/timeless that I could just update and repost.
Hot tip 1: You probably have a lot of old content that can be updated - Go find it and you will have more posts to put on your substack!
Hot tip 2: Formatting each post is time-consuming. You need a consistent formatting style - once you have it, an intern can format your articles.
I have an enormous word document of all my articles ready for Substack.
I have shared that with an intern and we have a seperate “Staging” Substack.
He formats the articles then I copy and paste the article into this Substack.
Saves me 20 minutes per article.
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PLUS all the worksheets and checklists you can use to grow your Substack
AS WELL AS all my bonus content and my forthcoming book on how to make money from Chat-GPT3?
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Use paid ads as your Substack “invisible growth engine”
If you’re sitting there reading this feel like
“All this manual stuff is too much work.
You want me to be messaging people to get random signups every day?
I can’t do that every day”
The bad news is, until you have 1,000 subscribers, that’s exactly what I’m asking you to do :)
The good news is…
Once you have that initial 500 or so subscribers and first few paid subscribers, you are going to be able to scale your Substack using Facebook ads, almost automatically.
Since I turned ads on, every single day I get leads on autopilot from running Facebook ads (and I spend very little, $1200 in total in January, from the $6,000+ I made)
As for the other questions you might have?
“Which ad type to run?”
“How many variations of title and creative running at once”
…and all those other questions that tie you up in knots…
…There are many ways to do ads…
…but we like to keep things simple.
We made just ONE post, and ran that as an ad.
We pushed that ad to different audiences, and the “social proof” (likes, comments, and shares) meant it got a lot of “free” reach.
Because of how popular this article became in terms of engagements, it costs on average just 5 american cents to get a click from this post to our website!
Here is the post:
1500 likes.
160 comments.
165 shares.
That’s what has driven the 5 cents per click to the article on Substack.
I’m gonna keep saying “MAKE SURE YOUR FIRST ARTICLE IS GREAT” as this is what is possible when it is.
Comments like this made all my hard work worth it:
Long, detailed comments indicate deep interest and are a good signal to the Facebook algorithm that people CARE about this article:
People tagging their friends is another very strong signal:
There are many ways to run great Facebook ads, so again this isn’t the only way.
But one BIG article with lots of social proof/engagement has always worked well with me in content-based businesses.
Want this post in an ebook/PDF format?
PLUS all the worksheets and checklists you can use to grow your Substack
AS WELL AS all my bonus content and my forthcoming book on how to make money from Chat-GPT3?
Sign up for a free trial to my paid plan to get all of this & more!
So here are the steps:
Setup a custom domain (www.dailycheatcodes.co.uk is what I use, instead of dailycheatcodes.substack.com) - this will help you track ad conversions
Make sure the Facebook/Instagram (Meta) pixel is inserted correctly
(It’s easy to do)
Work HARD to get as many people as possible to your Substack (i.e. everything in this article) - This builds the pixel.
Even if people don’t sign up right away but visit your Substack, you can show them ads on Facebook/Instagram to get them to sign up- you can even show ads to your “free” subscribers to convert them to paid. It’s a magic machine!
To be honest, I’ve stopped “hustling” so hard on getting new subscribers in the past couple weeks - I even went on holiday for two weeks on the last day of the month to rewad myself for how hard I worked!
Ads are the reason I can “take my foot off the gas pedal” for a few weeks - They are an invisible selling machine that doesn’t take my time - So I can work on writing better articles.
I’ve been working on getting money through my agency to spend it on ads - I have proved my substack works, the content is connecting, the main thing I need now is get more money to run more ads, as of the gap in time between someone finding the Substack, signing up to free, then moving to paid.
Rough numbers:
Average cost per click: $0.05 for USA premium audience (!!!)
Average cost per conversion: $4
We are predicting each subscriber will subscribe for at least 10 months,
so $40 is the average precited life-time value (LTV) of a signup
We tested this in isolation by me not hustling free traffic for two weeks, and purely ran ads, and measured how many visits and signups there were from Facebook and “Direct” (which includes a lot of Facebook signups)
At least one in eight signups from free becomes a paid user, so right now, we’re spending $32 to make $40.
We expect this conversion rate to get a lot better over time as there are more articles, more reasons to subscribe, and more people joining our funnel.
Want this post in an ebook/PDF format?
PLUS all the worksheets and checklists you can use to grow your Substack
AS WELL AS all my bonus content and my forthcoming book on how to make money from Chat-GPT3?
Sign up for a free trial to my paid plan to get all of this & more!
Converting free to paid users
If you have an initial seed audience like I did, you will get X paid signups as they already know/like/trust you.
This was one of the big reasons I made $600 before my Substack had launched.
BUT
Eventually, you run out of existing audience who will pay, and in the long term turning your Substack into a full time audience relies on one thing:
How many of your free subscribers can you turn into paid subscribers?
There are Substacks with thousands of free subscribers who struggle to get paid subscribers.
There are Substacks with a tiny amount of free subscribers but a high % of paid subscribers within that is more than enough for them to live on.
So how to turn free to paid subscribers?
In all honesty I started pushing this a little late into the month, but here’s a snapshot of my current subscribers:
That pink segment is one of the most important segments to watch:
How many subscribers are on free trials?
Free trials are the tried-and-tested way to prove to your writers that you are worth subscribing to without the risk of paying right away.
So here’s how I get people from free to the paid plan - $10 per month or $80 per year
The main and obvious one is more articles.
Every Saturday there is an article that is only for paid subscribers (Free subscribers get a preview, and have to sign up to read the whole article)
Building a community is key.
has the biggest business substack, and one of his key value adds is his thriving Slack community.
I may do slack, but for the time being I have created an accountability group in slack for all paid and founder members, led by my own accountability coach Ravi Sandhu. Every day paid members announce what they’re going to get done, and then check in as and when they complete it.
It also has secret access to me (anyone in the paid plan can ask me business questions in there) and is starting to gain a lot of momentum and bring people together.Thirdly, anyone in my paid plan can repost or bundle up and sell *anything* I write on this Substack for as long as they are in my paid membership. Most entrepreneurs struggle to keep up with posting fresh content, so this solves that problem. I already have 52 posts they can repost or bundle up and sell, and every day I add a new post!
I send secret bonuses every few weeks :)
Want this post in an ebook/PDF format?
PLUS all the worksheets and checklists you can use to grow your Substack
AS WELL AS all my bonus content and my forthcoming book on how to make money from Chat-GPT3?
Sign up for a free trial to my paid plan to get all of this & more!
As mentioned, the founder package ($250) includes a year subscription to the paid plan, and a personal one-to-one phone call with me. (You can get it here)
As previously mentioned, if you deliver amazing value here, people will be happy to share that with their audience:
Like posting every day, your paid parts don’t have to be the same as mine, especially pending which niche you write in, but these have worked for me.
SO
10 parts to Substack success (checklist):
Have a strong reason for the Substack to exist
Get your existing audience to signup, even if a small number
12-day launch sequence of posts to warmup your audience, including giving them a gift if they signup
Have a paid plan from day one - Have strong reasons for them to pay
Explosive first article
Dm first article to everyone you know
Split your first article up into many parts which can become social media posts
Post every day (optional, but more posts are better than less in my opinion)
Setup subdomain & Facebook pixel and start running ads as soon as you can
Read my posts - They are generally about audience building, which you should be VERY focused on ;)
Want this post in an ebook/PDF format?
PLUS all the worksheets and checklists you can use to grow your Substack
AS WELL AS all my bonus content and my forthcoming book on how to make money from Chat-GPT3?
Sign up for a free trial to my paid plan to get all of this & more!
Bonus! My plan to get from 1,000 to 5,000 subscribers:
1) Linkedin - doing the unthinkable
- Big opportunity for my niche (Entrepreneur/marketing/growth hacking) as my audience is on this platform.
I’m about to get a strategy together for growing and getting more clicks from here.
I did something unthinkable this week:
Deleted around 2,000 of my Linkedin connections.
The reason?
I have been posting my Substack articles and related entrepreneur posts, and my current connections haven’t liked them.
A lot of my current connections were in the music industry (I did a lot of consulting with the music industry and sometimes still do)
- They do not care for entrepreneur stuff so much- most are employees at big record labels or booking agencies, etc.
So
I deleted everyone who was irrelevant to me growing this Substack.
Went from about 3,300 connections down to around 1,000!
Now about to rebuild the audience.
I know I mention him a lot (but he’s the best to ever do it for business Substack) but as soon as I found out
gets a lot of traffic from Linkedin, I knew that it was to be a priority for the future!2) Networking with other Substack writers
I wanted to grow my own subscribers before I started looking to collaborate with and share audiences.
Now I’ve passed 50,000 visitors, have a lot of free and paying subscribers, I want to collaborate! If you have a relevant business/marketing/entrepreneurship/productivity etc. Substack let’s chat! Here’s my email and Facebook Messenger, or comment below!
3) Regular “Cornerstone content” and regular new books:
Cornerstone content
As mentioned, “Cornerstone content” are your “hit” pieces.
They take more time.
They probably take more research.
And once published, they are worth investing time/money into promoting.
This article is my second piece of cornerstone content :)
Regular new books
I will not be selling books any more.
I will be releasing them as gifts to my paid audience.
I am aiming for a book every six weeks, and a “cornerstone” article every other week, once I finish the book below.
So if you’ve made it this far, you should join my paid audience :)
My new book launches soon! Get it free with a two week free trial!
My first book is *still* the best-ever selling growth hacking book on Kickstarter, eventually doing a little under $250,000 in sales.
My second book made $10,000 in it’s first hour.
My third book (and all future books) will not be for sale.
It will only be available to paid subscribers.
It will be a short, actionable guide on how to make money from Chat-GPT.
Sign up to a two week free trial of my paid Substack and you will receive the book for FREE before your trial ends:
When the “50 ways Chat-GPT can make you $10k+ in 2023” book is ready you will be sent it if you click the above button!
As a reminder, we are building the BEST paid business group on the web.
As a paid subscriber:
You’ll be giving back & supporting me in making more and better posts, and helping me help 1 million entrepreneurs to improve their lives
You’ll get a bonus post every Saturday (and more bonus posts to come)
Access to 11 ebooks (with more added every month)
Access to a Whatsapp accountability group (and future Slack group once I hit 5,000 subscribers)
Huge bonus (never been done before) to be announced
Thank you for reading!
If you want me to write another one of these at 5,000 subscribers, please:
Haha...i didn't even know until I read this article that i was your FIRST paid upfront for a year subscriber. Honestly, I took the time to fid your Substack before it even launched cuz I thought I was late to the party!
Crazy good stuff. I've got a lot to ponder, and I just signed up for Jeff Walker's PLF a while back, so I have some serious learning to do.
I'll circle back after I dive in.