💡 I Went All-In On Substack Notes for 6 Months (Here’s What It Actually Did)
The results shocked me.
Hi Sutoscientists,
I need to tell you something that’s been on my mind and would’ve saved me a lot of time, money, and… emotional attachment to little orange “like” numbers.
For the last six months, I treated Substack Notes like it was the growth lever. (And if you don’t know what Substack Notes is, it’s the X/Threads/Bluesky/social media platform side of Substack all of us Substackers are spending too much time scrolling on.)
It’s an important side of Substack to grow on, because there’s a little “subscribe” button by every post that helps new readers discover you and your publication.
So, I posted constantly on Notes. I tracked everything. I tried to “crack the code.”
I even hired someone for three months whose entire job was basically: figure out how to grow on Substack Notes.
And here’s the weird part:
It worked.
Like… objectively, it worked.
But it didn’t work the way my brain wanted it to work.
Because in my head, there was this simple math:
“If we can get 1,000 likes, surely at least 10% of those people will subscribe.”
That’s what feels true when you’re staring at a post that’s popping off.
So I want to show you the exact Notes that did the best for us — the ones that would be a dream for most people — and what they actually produced in terms of subs, paid, and revenue.
And then I want to give you the real takeaway:
Notes can be amazing, but it’s very easy to spend a ton of time there… and accidentally optimize for the wrong outcome.
❗️So here are the types of posts we experimented with — and the format that actually did numbers when it came to paid subscribers:
Substack Note #1 (Meme Format): “The limit does not exist”
This one is the perfect example of what Notes does really well.
It got:
15.8K likes
290 replies
2.5K restacks
In other words: it moved.
This is the kind of post that makes you sit up straighter and go, “Ohhh okay, we found it. We found the thing.”
And here’s what it taught me:
Memes are incredible at getting you eyes.
Memes are also incredible at giving you a tiny hit of “yes, I’m doing it right.”
But memes are not designed to create the mental moment that leads to paid conversion, which is:
“This is for me. This solves my problem. I trust this person.”
A meme creates: “lol same.”
Paid conversion requires: “wait… I need that.”
That’s not a judgment. It’s just physics.
And now for my paid subscribers…
I’m going to show you the real stats behind this.
Not the public stuff like likes and shares.
I mean the numbers only I can see:
exactly how many subscribers this brought in (free + paid)
how much revenue it actually generated
and what the conversion looked like when the post was “going viral”
Because this is the part nobody talks about: sometimes a Note can look like a dream… and still be the wrong lever if you’re trying to grow paid.
And the portal to this world begins here: 👇
If you’re a paid subscriber, keep reading. If you’re not, this is your invite to upgrade.
