How I Grew My Newsletter By 10,000 Subscribers In 6 Months
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Hello everyone! I’m Tom Kuegler.
Welcome to my Substack.
tldr about me: I’ve been writing on the internet since 2016 and published 1,000+ articles in that time. I like dishing on travel, life lessons, business tips, and creativity.
Last July, I arrived on Substack for the first time.
I wrote on Medium successfully for 7 years, but my views there had tumbled into oblivion since 2020.
To prove it, here’s my Medium views in September 2020:
Here’s my Medium views in July 2023.
Yeah, big difference!
Over the years, Medium became increasingly gate-keepy, echo-chambery, and clickbaity. In 2021 they stopped curating my articles because I wrote a piece telling everyone how much my views fell of a cliff there.
They didn’t like me.
I didn’t like them.
And I needed a change.
Thank goodness a place like Substack existed for me to migrate to. After getting some initial recommendations in July, I started growing by 200 subscribers per month.
I was ecstatic! In November I began interviewing badass Substack writers, like bestsellers Nicole Antoinette and Kelton Wright for my short-lived blogging podcast.
Then, in January, I discovered Notes.
I saw a student of mine write a Substack Note that got 30 likes, and I thought to myself ‘Hmm, that’s a pretty decent amount of likes. Maybe I need to write Notes?’
So I did.
The first few did well. You know, 20 likes or so here, 30 likes there..
But the ninth Note I ever posted somehow went viral and garnered 400 likes in a few days.
I was shocked to see that I got 50 subscribers in a single day while that Note went viral, which was crazy because I was used to getting just 200 subscribers PER MONTH!
I continued posting daily Notes in February, but nothing really went mega viral.
Then March hit. For some reason, my Notes started doing very well in March.
This Note got 1,000 likes.
Then this Note got 4,000 likes:
My newsletter started growing like wildfire.
I grew by 1,500 subscribers alone in March, another 2,000 in April, 2,500 in May, and we’ve maintained a steady climb ever since.
Here’s a few viral Notes I wrote, which really helped skyrocket my growth:
In an effort to write viral Notes that weren’t about writing, I started a second profile,
, where I managed to write a lot of well-performing posts, too.Notes are my thing. I love how much they helped me grow my newsletter. I love them so much that I decided to start offering Notes Trainings and programs to paid subscribers of Mind of a Writer.
Here’s a few programs I run for paid subscribers:
Monthly 90-Minute Notes Trainings
Here’s a 40-Minute Notes Training I published in April:
My students loved this! Here’s a few comments I received:
wrote “Thank you for taking the time to put this together. You're making me a better writer day by day, giving me the confidence I never knew I could have.” wrote “Yo! Tom. Once again, great stuff. Thank you for breaking this down. I feel like my notes thread is filled with "how to write notes" these days, but this video was beyond helpful. Thank you.”Because it did well, I decided to write a few Notes trainings and lock them behind the paywall in May and June.
I recently lead a free 90-Minute Notes Training at the Substack Campfire 🪵🔥 ⛺. Here’s the recording in case you missed it:
For 90 minutes I:
Showed students how to write a viral Note step-by-step
Got students to write a Note together LIVE
Asked students to share those Notes with each other in chat
It was awesome. We got a lot of great feedback:
“I was there for both the Notes Masterclass and Interview with Linda Lebrun. You and Michael’s class was the best training for writers I have ever had the privilege of being part of. It was extremely useful, clearly and compassionately presented and totally on point! You are both outstanding teachers who obviously love the craft and profession of writing!”
— Chinmayan“This meta-view of Tom's writing process was fascinating - and Michael asked insightful questions to get us to dive deeper into Tom's brain.”
—
Over 40 people posted Notes by the end of the session.
Due to the success of that event, I’ve decided to offer one live 90-minute Note Writing training every month as part of your paid subscription to the Substack Campfire.
Here’s our first one from July.
And here’s a schedule of our future Notes Trainings:
Friday, October 18
Friday, November 15
My Notes trainings, for whatever reason, really help people.
For example paid subscriber
grew her newsletter, , to over 3,000 subscribers with the power of Notes.I won’t take credit for all her success, but she told me one of my trainings helped her write a viral Note.
This viral Note, to be exact.
Marie does this great series where she takes us behind the scenes of her newsletter growth. Here’s a screenshot of her subscriber growth on Substack since she got started in January.
She went from 346 subscribers to 2,046 in May alone!
It’s cool to see paid subscribers of mine seeing success on Notes in part because of my trainings.
Here are all my Notes Trainings in one spot.
Notes Trainings Library
Monthly 7-Day Note Writing Sprint
To help you get consistent on Substack Notes, I created a monthly 7-day Note writing sprint for paid subscribers.
The dates for future programs are as follows:
September 23 - 30
October 21 - 28
November 18 -25
It takes place in my private Discord, where we share our Notes every day in the #sharenotes channel. Here’s more info on my private Discord:
Private Discord Community
Come join a bustling Discord community that stays active in between sprints. I mean, take a look! As of right now, we have 120+ members!
Here’s a few of our most important channels and what they do:
#directory - Hosts a growing directory of other paid members of our community
#introductions - Introduce yourself here.
#shareposts - Share links to your latest articles
#sharenotes - Share links to your latest Notes
#headlines - Get headline help if you’re stuck on what to name your next article
#feedback - Get feedback on Notes, articles, or general newsletter strategy here
Access to this year long community alone is worth $200. Become an annual subscriber to Mind of a Writer for $100.
50 In 7 Challenge
I have a challenge where I teach people how to get 50 subscribers in 7 days using a detailed commenting strategy. It comes with 5 lessons and over 40 minutes of video lessons.
You can find out more about that using the link above.
Here’s what paid subscriber
had to say about the challenge.
Testimonials
Here’s a few testimonials from other paid subscribers in our group.
And here is my favorite testimonial I’ve ever received from
Here is everything you get when you become a paid subscriber to Mind of a Writer:
7-Day Note Sprint every month ($200 yearly value)
Active Discord with 100+ fellow Substackers ($200 yearly value)
Group calls every month ($200 yearly value)
‘50 In 7’ Challenge ($100 value)
Monthly 90-Minute Note Writing Masterclass ($500 value)
That’s over $1,200 in value. But it’s only $100 to become an annual paid subscriber to my Mind of a Writer community. Or $10 per month.
I hope you consider joining us!
NOTE: I also write Letters with my Father with my Dad and Finding Tom, which is a newsletter for my more personal writing, if you wanted to check that out.
I've been lurking on Substack for a few months, trying to figure out if it's the space I want to start in. And I have got to say this is the most encouraging place I have seen for writers in the realm of the Internet. Your straightforward mission statement in this welcoming post is just one more example of that. Looking forward to reading more from you as I figure things out here!
This post got me to subscribe and I look forward to going on this journey.