I Published a Daily Article on Substack For 30 Days. Here's What Happened to My Subscriber Count

Can you grow on Substack my merely writing long-form?

On April 1st, I committed to writing and publishing a daily article on Substack.

For 3 reasons:

• I wanted to inspire you

• I wanted to challenge myself

• I hate Notes (and was curious to see if you could grow on Substack by merely publishing long-form posts.)

So I sat down every day for 1 hour and even live-streamed my writing sessions on YouTube.

I never missed a day. (Thank you for the pats on the back. Appreciated.)

Was it worth it?

Let's see…

NOTE: Today's going to be a cold data breakdown. (Tomorrow I’ll share the lessons that I personally learned from this and walk you behind the scenes.)

Day 1-8

These are going to be the easiest days.

Motivation is sky-high. You have the feeling that " THIS COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!!!" and all the other motivational bull crap.

On day 1, I got an avalanche of ideas and ideated half of the month in just five minutes (no joke.)

Here are the growth numbers:

• March 31: 5,195

• April 1: 5,221 (+26)

• April 2: 5,249 (+28)

• April 3: 5,254 (+5)

• April 4: 5,265 (+11)

• April 5: 5,276 (+11)

• April 6: 5,287 (+11)

• April 7: 5,295 (+8)

• April 8: 5,294 (-1)

That's ~9 subscribers per day. Nothing mind-blowing. That's even less than my regular growth. (Keep in mind that I almost STOPPED posting Notes & interacting during this challenge!)

So my suggestion to you in this phase is to ideate as much as possible and ride your motivational wave. If you can write two articles per day, do it.

This will give you a safety cushion in case things go south.

Day 9-13

Seth Godin calls it The Dip.

It's the tough, boring, painful phase that comes after the initial excitement. It’s when progress stalls. Motivation fades.

Most people quit here.

But if you want to reap the rewards, you need to get over The Dip.

On April 7th, I posted this message on my Telegram channel: "I know The Dip is coming."

But I thought it would only hit around day 15 or so.

Boy, was I wrong. The Dip showed up on day 9.

Bad sleep. Zero motivation left in my tank. I also started to livestream my writing sessions starting from day 5 – and I had almost nobody showing up.

I had the feeling that even the enthusiasm started to slightly fade away from my audience itself.

It got worse:

When I logged into my Substack dashboard, I got slapped in the face with shitty metrics.

When you see that an article brings in two or three subscribers, there's a voice whispering: Is it really worth it to spend 1 hour of your life writing something that only brings in two or three subscribers?"

I shut it up and just kept showing up…

• April 9: 5,299 (+5)

• April 10: 5,315 (+16)

• April 11: 5,327 (+12)

• April 12: 5,357 (+30)

• April 13: 5,360 (+3)

The Dip will make you find all the excuses in the world to quit. Don't do it. (Even when you have the feeling that nobody's watching.)

Day 14-30

My average post gets about 4 shares.

But an article that I published on day 14 got 22. That’s 5x more than usual.

When people share your stuff, it's three words of mouth. So logically, I also started to gain more subscribers.

Five days later, I got another hit with this article called "What to do when your Substack isn't growing (at all)."

That post got 164 likes, 77 comments, and 26 shares:

2 days later, I got another article that performed well and brought in (at least) 21 direct subscribers:

On April 25, I also released this article about the Substack algorithm. 18 shares so far.

Some might argue that that's the kind of meta-content that is working on Substack right now. I argue that I simply found what works in my context.

There are a bunch of people writing about Substack, but they don't get much traction.

So at the end of the day, you need to test and see what works for you, in your context.

Here are the growth numbers:

• April 14: 5,394 (+34)

• April 15: 5,429 (+35)

• April 16: 5,455 (+26)

• April 17: 5,485 (+30)

• April 18: 5,514 (+29)

• April 19: 5,553 (+39)

• April 20: 5,601 (+48)

• April 21: 5,675 (+74)

• April 22: 5,751 (+76)

• April 23: 5,813 (+62)

• April 24: 5,861 (+48)

• April 25: 5,909 (+48)

• April 26: 5,955 (+46)

• April 27: 6,007 (+52)

• April 28: 6,093 (+86)

• April 29: 6,174 (+81)

• April 30: 6,265 (+91)

I know people are growing by 100 subscribers per day on Notes.

But I haven't seen anyone publicly talking about the fact that you could have the same kind of growth with long-form content.

(Sorry, I just had to write this to please my overinflated ego.)

So here are the final numbers: By writing a long-form article per day, I gained 1,070 new subscribers.

This might not be the biggest number you’ll see on Substack. But these are my numbers. It's still too early to say whether or not these are quality subscribers who are going to buy my products and services. (I’m not competing on subscriber count.)

But it demonstrates one thing: Substack is a great way to grow an audience right now.

Should you go on a daily writing challenge?

Daily content is the best way to grow an audience.

It allows you to:

• Become better at your craft

• test more things

• iterate faster

But truth be told…

When you're just getting started on Substack and have 0 subscribers, writing daily newsletters is probably not something that's going to work for you.

Why?

Because the platform is designed in such a way that you cannot really discover newsletters to which you are not subscribed. (I hate to say this.)

So if you're simply going to sit down and write, then nothing is going to happen if you have NO subscriber base.

You could complain about it, or you could just behave like a grown-up adult with hair under your arms.

Wherever you're publishing online, you need to take into consideration how the platform works.

And right now, how the platform works is that you get started with Notes.

Notes allow you to:
1– Interact with other creators (and grow relationships for swaps, recommendations, etc.)
2– Get discovered on the newsfeed

So if you're just getting started, there is no way around Notes.

That's what I recommend to everyone—not only to post Notes, but also to interact with Notes.

When you are at a point where you have a decent amount of free subscribers already, who can then help you with word of mouth by sharing your articles…

Then, yes, you might want to consider writing daily long-form posts.

Else, stick to Notes first. Publish a long-form post once a week.

I hope this breakdown was helpful.

If it was…

Would you mind sharing this by smashing the orange button below?

In my next article (tomorrow), I'll share the personal lessons that I've learned from this challenge…

And how I improved my content creation system to actually make this streak happen.

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PS: To celebrate the streak, I’m running a FLASH SALE on my Substack System course for 24 hours. You can grab it at half the price on this link.