How to grow your Substack newsletter by 120+ subscribers in 30 days

7 years ago, I had a Medium "rolodex."

I wrote down ALL the names of people who commented on my articles in a Google Document. Then, weekly, I'd click into their profile and see if they wrote any new blog posts.

If they did, I'd read it and leave a comment.

A nice one. Not "GREAT POST!" 😆

This "strategy" worked unbelievably well.

They ALWAYS appreciated seeing me leave a comment, and it nearly ALWAYS sparked them to leave a comment underneath my latest blog post.

In his book, Superfans, Pat Flynn writes "No one is a superfan of something that doesn't make them feel special."

I was trying to make people feel special, too.

It worked.

A lot of the folks I connected with were people who bought my very first online course, and have been reading me for the last 7 years.

When I started getting more popular (and busy), I stopped doing this weekly ritual. It practically became legend to me, like when the siblings from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe forgot they were once kids who lived in England. 😆

A lot of people want to grow a following, make an impact, and make money from blogging.

My advice to you..... If you want to grow a following.... is go out there and get it!!!

That's exactly what I did, in secret, last week on Substack.

My Substack newsletter,

Letters With My Father

, grew at a snail's pace for much of February.

I mean, look at that. It looks like dunes in the desert. I want my subscriber page to look like a MOUNTAIN range.

In 7 days, I managed to get 33 new organic subscribers, and make my subscriber page look like this:

If I keep this up, I'll grow by 120 subscribers in 30 days.

The secret, ladies and gentlemen, is a tactic that ANYONE READING RIGHT NOW can employ... something easy...

• Comment on 10 posts per day

Let me show you what this did for me..

One comment here....

Led to a new subscriber...

Led to restacks, replies, and likes..

Led to people sharing my articles...

Which led to these long, beautiful comments underneath my newsletter's latest post:

This is the kind of IMPACT that was only possible in my dreams before last week. I mean these are beautiful comments that made me and my Dad feel like we were actually making a difference in people's lives!

I want to pause here and say I LOVE THESE PEOPLE, TOO! I'm enjoying reading their work. I love them. I plan to build great relationships with all of them, support them, and become one of their TRUE FANS.

You see, I screwed up recently...

I thought that blogging "success" is only possible with thousands of readers.

In reality, blogging success happens with 100 or so readers who ABSOLUTELY LOVE YOU.

That's how I built my full-time blogging business in 2017.

I forgot that.

This is especially true on Substack, where recommendations can lead to heaps of subscribers coming your way..

On this newsletter, Mind of a Writer, I've gotten 1,000 subscribers from 65 recommendations.

This is how to grow on Substack. By making connections.

My experiment resulted in two new publications recommending us, too.

If I keep this up, by the end of 2024 I'll have...

• 1,419 new subscribers

• 86 new recommendations

• 85 paid subscribers

Substack says 6% of your following should convert to paid subscribers, which is 85 subscribers in this case.

If that's so, then I'd have built a $4,250 yearly business on Substack, assuming a $5 per month paid subscriber price.

And what's crazy? I HAVEN'T EVEN ACCOUNTED FOR THE SUBSCRIBERS I'D GET FROM RECOMMENDATIONS. This is purely the subscribers I can expect to get from commenting on 10 posts per day.

Absolutely WILD.

The reason I'm telling you this is because I want to do a 7-day Substack challenge with you.

I'm calling it the 50 in 7 challenge.

The goal? Get 50 new subscribers in 7 days.

By commenting on 10 posts per day for 7 days.

The best part? To join, you just need to become a paid subscriber to Mind of a Writer for $7 a month.

That's $1 per day.

We start on March 11 (next Monday) and go until March 17.

Here's what's included:

• 2 lessons on how to start your Substack newsletter from scratch

• 1 lesson on how to find great Substack newsletters to comment on

  • It's actually difficult to find Substack newsletters to comment on. I discovered a few methods to find them quickly so you can save some time.

• 2 lessons on how to turn these new subscribers into your biggest fans

• A free group call before the challenge teaching you the basics of Substack

  • Feel like Substack is a maze? I’ll host a group call before the program starts teaching you the absolute BASICS of the platform. There will be a Q/A, too.

• A community Discord channel that can help you:

  • Stay in the commenting habit

  • Connect with other great Substackers

  • Get 5-15 new subscribers to your newsletter immediately

  • Swap advice, get answers to questions, and build your own community

But wait.. I didn't even mention the best part..

FOLLOWERS.

Above is a screenshot of my gmail inbox, showing you notifications I received for garnering new followers.

I count 29 new followers.

These followers came to me purely from my daily commenting habit.

Followers are super important on Substack. They can see new Notes you write on their homepage, and it's VERY likely they will support them.

The above Note is one I posted on my second Substack profile, Thomas Kuegler, which I made specifically for my 7-day challenge. I wanted to see if I could seriously get new likes on my Notes starting from absolute scratch.

Spoiler alert, I did. I got 11 likes on it.

All the names you see on the right hand side are people I connected with during my 7-day test.

People don't know this yet... but Notes are kind of overpowered on Substack.

I had a couple Notes go viral on my other Substack account, Tom Kuegler, and one viral note led to me getting 50 new subscribers in a single day.

Here's what my subscriber growth looks like on this Substack newsletter.

The tail end of my growth curve has happened, in part, because I'm posting daily Notes on the platform.

So.. what are you getting with this program?

You're getting a heck of a great start on Substack, that's what.

I haven't even mentioned the OTHER craziest part...

These results are only after one week of doing this...

What happens when I keep this up?

I have 33 new subscribers... I think about 10-15 of them are people I seriously vibe with and who I think will ACTUALLY become one of my 100 true fans.

I need to do this for about 7-10 more weeks to get my 100 true fans, then.

Then what?

Well, my friends, at that point success is pretty much guaranteed.

Anyway.. before you sign up, I want you to understand the time commitment.

You need 1.5 hours daily to do this challenge correctly.

That was my average. If you're down for that, go ahead and become a paid subscriber to my Substack, Mind of a Writer.

Upon signing up, you'll get links to our private Discord channel and lessons sent to your inbox.

I wanted to give you a few days to hop in early and get your Substack newsletter setup if you hadn't done that yet.

One last thing..

I got 33 new subscribers. Substack says 6% of subscribers typically go paid. In that case, statistically, I got 2 new paid subscribers. At $5 per month for an entire year, that's $120 in revenue I created.

$120 in revenue for $7.

That's the deal I'm offering you today.

Come join us. I guarantee you'll see results.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Tom Kuegler

P.S. To join, just sign up as a free subscriber, then become a paid subscriber on the screen that follows. If you're already a current subscriber, click on the purple button in the top right of my pub's homepage that asks you to "upgrade to paid"