Growing My Substack to 1,000 Paid Subscribers/$8,000/Month: Month 2 Update [Diary of an Author]

money open rates all those things we're going to be covering in month two of my update of how I am growing my sub stack to over a thousand paid subscribers which is eight thousand dollars a month in Revenue welcome to month two I am here to share with you some really surprising things that I've learned in month one of my journey of growing my sub stack as well as a lot of answers to your comments that you left on my last YouTube video so thank you for uh leaving your questions thank you for subscribing to my sub stack and my channel I'm so excited to continue to make content for all y'all about how to grow your sub stack ways to make the content process easier how to customize your sub stack as well as other tips and tricks for growth and a holistic approach to writing the things that you care about and making money online as a writer so welcome we're gonna Dive Right In so the first thing that I want to brag just a little bit about is the fact that I am on a nine week streak I am in the top 23 of Publishers for for my category as a sub stack writer so welcome and that consistency has paid off even if it meant that I was sick in Athens Greece literally typing the same day that my newsletter had to come out and finishing the draft while my brain was like feverishly melting as I would lay a bed sick for a week I still got my newsletter out so that there are no excuses and so I'm going to share with you some of the insights that I got on the content side of things first before I jump into the numbers which I know you guys are curious about so when it comes to my content the things that I have noticed has worked really well is one people are really liking these article voiceovers which I'm going to do a separate YouTube video about the AI tool I use for that it's mind-blowing it literally reads posts like this in your own voice and you can train the AI to do that and so I'm gonna have a whole other YouTube video on that and I've actually talked about it in my newsletter before but the things that I've been seeing that have worked really well is that on my paid newsletters I'm still making sure that everything is super readable I'm still making sure I'm going in depth to topics that people care about such as monetizing their work and really thinking about what my subscribers want to hear from me I've also been doing polls and asking my readers what they wanted to read about and then writing those posts that they voted on and so I'm really trying to figure out how to engage with my audience seeing what they want from me and also writing about the things that I am passionate about because when it comes to growing a sub stack or anything else online you really do need to be passionate about the thing that you're writing about or hiring a Ghostwriter who is and so I have been keeping up with also all my free Sunday posts because remember on Sundays I have a free post that everybody on my newsletter list gets and then Wednesdays I have my in-depth newsletter and so I've been once again keeping everything um posting regularly and sharing a bunch of different tips and tricks and deep Dives another thing that I've been doing when it comes to my content is I am saving some of my Wednesday posts for a new book that I'm working on which my sub stack subscribers will hear about soon but I know you guys really want to know what the numbers between last month and this month so I'm going to go ahead and share them with you so I was really surprised by these numbers in a really great way first of all all growth is good growth I'm super excited thank you everyone who signed up and become a subscriber I have seen an increase of five paid subscribers in the last 30 days and I'm up to 12 paid subscribers and I just passed over a thousand dollars in gross annualized revenue and seen over 490 dollars of increased gross annualized revenue in the last 30 days alone so once again thank you for supporting the publication thank you for supporting my journey into trying to figure out all of the the growth hacks for substack and growing your newsletter and your writing I also this is a surprising part actually I saw a 25 in person increase in my subscribers for all subscribers but I despite that pretty small growth and pretty small jump up and total subscribers I saw a pretty huge jump in paid subscribers almost doubling my paid subscribers from the previous previous month which was awesome so I'm I'm seeing kind of like this validation that if you're writing what you care about if you show it passionately and consistently on the page people will support you for that and that's super cool to see and as a writer it is very heartening to know that another thing that I saw with my subscriber growth is that a lot of my subscribers actually came from the sub stack Network I got subscribers from YouTube from my Tick Tock from all my social media from my website but substack was a huge contributor to my total subscriber growth and so I think that that is one thing that sets substack apart from all other email platforms is that they have a great discovery system of showing people other newsletters that they might love I also saw a 232 person increase in my My Views in the last 30 days and I saw a slight drop in my open rate however I did get a comment actually today um from somebody who wanted to say I who told me that I noticed that you have a phenomenal open rate of 49.65 please what do you do to get such a high open rate so that is the thing that I'm going to start about start start this video about because it is actually a piece of feedback that I've gotten about my newsletter and my cold Outreach because I do cold emails for my business as a freelance writer my partner Kyle has helped me just like supercharge the cold email side of my business and I've seen huge growth in the open rate for my cold emails as well as my sub stack and for my newsletter and its history even when I was on convertkit with it I have almost always seen a 48 49 50 open rate um and that's because I do believe that content is King and so when we're looking at one of my newsletters you'll notice that in the jump I have an emoji in my subject line I have Emoji bullet points and I have one-liners to tell you why you should read this post and basically pitch you on reading this post from the Drone and then I have another emoji and then a headline of what you're about to read and then a very aesthetic image from the jump before you even scroll down on my newsletter Edition you are seeing pictures you are seeing emojis this is a very fun Feast for the eyes and it's something that I've seen works a lot I know a lot of top newsletters have emojis in their subject lines and that helps a lot when it comes to opening making sure that people want to open your edition of your newsletter and then they also can have recognition with the Emoji that you choose to use I originally thought that emojis were dumb and silly but in reality they've been a great way to kind of redirect my reader's eyes and help them read the things that I want them to read so that is kind of the bonus of that and then even when you dive into the body text of any of my posts you'll notice that I have a ton of hyperlinks most of my paragraphs are two maybe three lines on this form in Mobile you might see them a little bit longer and then I always try to end one of my stories with either bullet points or three tips because people love lists and things like that and so that's what I think helps my open rate and then on my Sunday newsletters even when you get to the bottom of the story and the body of the email you have a very scrollable next few sections with headlines photos links and then this is something that I think helps a ton for when it comes to converting free subscribers to page subscribers which is giving them a next week on this newsletter uh kind of like short pitch about what they're going to get if they are signed up as a paid subscriber so with all that said I think the thing that helps my open rate and then also my conversion to from free to paid subscribers is that these these newsletters are just very readable they're very short they're very to the point even my longer posts for my subscribers on Wednesdays are also very readable very simple very like I'm not hitting you with a wall of text and even when I'm telling stories I'm using bullet points I'm using bold and I do think that this formatting is super important and then another thing that I think helps my open rate for my paid subscribers is this article voice over and I've already mentioned before I'm gonna make a whole video on this it is an amazing tool that I think is the only AI tool that I use on a regular basis um but once again short sentences emojis big headings photos and things like that I truly believe that readability is something that every writer should learn especially if you're writing on the Internet is a little bit different if you're writing books but I do think that writing to be read is a skill within itself separate from writing anything writing with the understanding of what your audience wants especially somebody who's reading your your newsletter on their phone will help you with open rates and things like that so I hope that helps with your question if you have more questions about open rates and things like that let me know but overall my theme and the thing that I always say is that content is King there are ways that you can structure the content there are ways and strategies and nuances that I will continue to go over when it comes to how to keep people's attention how to continue to grow your newsletter by having great newsletters um but I do think that readability is a big thing for open raids talking about readability Abby asked she wonders how to personalize the newsletter itself and she's seeing people with different fonts and formats so the thing about sub stack is it is one of those platforms that is just super readable and so when you are like well actually when I switch from convertkit to substack I had one of my subscribers reach out to me and say thank God she's like I love your newsletter but I just could not read your last theme sub stack is so much more readable thank you for switching and so that's the kind of feedback that I got when I switched to substack it just looks more professional more clean and the sub stack look is very much preferred by readers that I found because it just is so easy on the eyes so simple Big Font even when I'm like expanding and collapsing like my email client on superhuman to read newsletters just like that I get every day I notice that beehive doesn't really isn't very responsive to like the changing of a window size and it's harder to read versus Sub stack so I do think that some of the the limitations on design is part of the sub stack offering where they're really trying to push a reader-friendly experience which as a sub stack reader myself I much prefer reading newsletters that are hosted on sub stack than any other platform and I'm subscribed to like a lot of newsletters so here's how you can actually change elements of your of your sub stack and kind of alter some of the Design Within substance parameters so you're going to go to the settings page and then under settings you're going to go to website and then on website you're going to have an option for design and so when you go to that page you have an edit theme options and so under design and edit theme you can then go and decide what does my hero image have is it like different formats of feature newspaper magazine um am I showing the top posts here our posts in a list or a grid or a group what is a design what is the web color background what is the accent background and then it has very limited fonts that you can change here in the sub stack editor Beyond this you can also change the headers of each of your of each of your newsletters that get sent out as well as the Footers such as like your bio or information about you that is something that I just recently changed um and so there's a bunch of options when you go to your publication and click settings you can scroll through and change a lot of the settings you can even change things like your welcome email like your paid subscriber welcome email there's so many things that I'm still customizing and working on when it comes to that but yeah there aren't a ton of customizations other than being able to add images into your sub stack and then being able to change certain things like your web background and your accent and things like that so while you can't have things like themes like like templates like you would see on the maybe beehive or convertkit the constraint and design is definitely built into sub stack um and there might be some other hacks that I I haven't found any that seemed legitimate for some how to like further kind of alter the design but these are kind of the ones that sub stack has for you to go and change things across your theme so hopefully that helps if you have more questions or if you've seen other sub Stacks that you want to know how they do it feel free to send me a link to the sub stack that you're looking at and I'll go and do a deep dive into how they got their sub stack to look that way but as far as I know this is about how much you can change with substack and that's part of the reason why like substack has kind of positioned themselves as being reader friendly as they want everything to be as simple as possible and to make it as accessible on your phone on your tablet on your laptop which uh as somebody like me who's built an entire custom website is actually very hard to make the design translate across different screens for everything and so it is a pain even different browsers sometimes load different sites differently so I do think that sub Stacks Simplicity is something to lean into um and your readers will probably thank you for it so the other question that I have is somebody who wants to know how to grow your sub stack from zero if you've watched my channel before then you probably have seen that I have basically attributed a lot of My Success to my personal website and blog I have spent so much time and so much money building this personal website that has my portfolio that has all my links that has my blogs and things like that and this website has brought me so has brought me so many leads so many amazing clients and has kind of been responsible for a lot of My Success as a freelance writer as a creative writer and it has connected me with some really amazing people so this website has helped me a lot and as the reason why I was able to grow from zero to my current subscriber account and so starting your own personal website is really important I have a whole video on my Channel about how to start a blog how to start a website what that looks like and I highly recommend checking it out and to understand the value of having a Blog on the website but one thing that is really important and this is something that I'm still trying to figure out is like how to make sure that your sign up link is everywhere and this page is kind of under construction I need this to be centered I have to change the background of this but I try to put my subscribe button everywhere I have it on this page I have it on my home page I have it on the signature of my email I also have it at my Lincoln bio so if anybody goes to my Twitter page or X page you know who knows what this thing is called these days and they go to my bio site they're able to do a number of different things and this is also I think on my YouTube um they're able to go and check out all of my things as well as sign up for my newsletter and I try to make sure that that is front and center because on social media you do not own your audience you only own your audience when they sign up for your newsletter and you have their email address if your platform gets taken away from you on Twitter or any of these other platforms then those you know subscribers are gone you're you're done you can't contact them anymore and so the only way to own your audience is to have a newsletter list and to be able to speak to your subscribers directly and so if you are not subscribed for Diary of an author I highly recommend it if for some reason I was to disappear from YouTube and you still want to stay connected with me feel free to sign up for the free edition of the Sunday newsletter or if you want to get all of the things that I'm writing about here on Diary of an author you can become the paid subscriber for eight dollars a month and support the channel and my newsletter Shameless plug so what I've learned basically in the last month when it comes to everything and finding kind of success and seeing my metrics increase is that consistency of posting is really key because I do feel like I'm getting a boost from sub stack and they're sending more traffic my way because they see that I'm consistent and I'm just seeing more people find me because every single time I post a new sub stack sub stack new sub stack Edition for my newsletter sub stack automatically generates a social post like this that I post on Instagram Twitter and Linkedin and this almost always gets me a few new subscribers and I just take the little teas from my newsletter so I don't have to write new copy and I just post that as well as with the image and so that kind of consistent every single time subsack sends me an email with this social post I just go and I immediately put it up with this tease and the link or direct people to the link in BIO and that has been a really easy way to grow grow my sub stack is just posting that occasionally pulling quotes and other things like that and posting that as well and um and then also making these YouTube videos which is part of my growth strategy is sharing with you how I'm building in public this up stack this newsletter how I'm trying to pave the way for other writers who want to grow their own following who want to share their own work and are really excited and passionate about the things that they're writing about and want to be supported by a community that also cares about the things that they write about and wants to support them as well so I'm going to continue with consistency because that is working really well for me continue with these videos continue with the social posts and then the other thing that I'm going to dive deeper into is keyword research because these posts are also going to be available on Google and for Google search engine rankings and I have done so much SEO and keyword optimization for my main blog I'm going to do a little bit for that as well and for this website um and then I'm going to continue to find other ways to promote my news letter and I don't have a ton in mind because I'm also preparing for an upcoming trip to Costa Rica and Peru and so I've got a lot of things kind of in my plate so my main focus actually is going to be in writing a month's worth of posts that I can post at any time for my Wednesday and my Sunday post and then editing them before they go out rather than writing same day which is a bad habit that I got into recently because like I said I got sick when I was traveling to Athens Greece for a month and then I went to New York for a week to do some client meetings for some books that I'm working on so suffice to say I need to get ahead and I think every writer of every sub stack or for you anything online you have to have a backlog of content that you can easily pull from and post if life gets in the way if there's other things so that you're not like me feverish in Athens Greece literally typing as your brain is melting trying to get a high quality newsletter out so having things prepared and is super important to be successful that is something that I've learned and I'm currently working on and yeah and then on future posts I'm in Future YouTube videos I'm also going to talk about my content system how I'm repurposing these things like how I'm using this these sub stacks for other projects like book projects like social media posts and then eventually other forms of YouTube videos so suffice to say I've got a lot of exciting things that I have planned for you I hope that you follow along on this journey by subscribing to me on subscribing to me here on YouTube here on substag and if you like this post if you have any questions if there's anything that I didn't cover or that you're curious about feel free to drop a comment and then be sure to like this video so that I know that you are getting value out of this and so I hope you guys have a great rest of your day and yeah I'm excited to keep on writing and making things for you

Channel: From the Desk of Amy Suto

Views: 6,329

Keywords: freelancing, freelance writing, digital nomad, writer, writerslife, writing, upwork, make money online, side hustle, gig, gig economy, how to make money online, how to get high paying clients, high paying freelance jobs, how to find freelance clients, highest paying freelance jobs, side hustle ideas, work from home, how to become a freelancer, high paying remote jobs, high paying work from home jobs, higest paying freelance jobs, remote work

Id: DPgmkfNGi7M

Length: 20min 6sec (1206 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2023