From 3 likes to 300+: How Notes Underground is changing the game
Join my Notes community of 100+ people.
When I first thought of the Notes Underground in March of 2025, I was in WAY over my head.
After watching Substackers dog-pile into 800-comment Note share threads, screaming for attention, I knew something had to change.
The problems were clear:
The Notes algorithm wasn’t helping people get seen.
The solutions writing coaches had for this sucked (threads).
No disrespect to writing coaches. It’s not like we can all, you know, build our own no-code app from scratch or anything.
Who would be crazy enough to do that?
*Nervous laughing*
So Yeah.. I Built The Notes Underground
Me being me, I did just that.
I built my own freaking app that:
Tracks your Notes statistics
Surfaces community Notes you’re interested in
Displays your Notes for 100+ members to easily find
Want to see The Notes Underground for yourself? You can try it free for 7 days right here.
Instead of disorganized 800-comment Note share threads where your Note gets buried the second you share it, Notes are now organized by topic, author, and time submitted.
Here’s some screenshots of the app (they don’t do my baby justice, though).
‘My Stats’ Page
This dashboard tracks your likes, your top Notes, and how many Notes you’ve posted in total the last 60 days, among other things!
Members Page
Find writers in your niche, organized by topic.
Note Tags
Looking for Notes in a specific topic? Surf Notes by topic with these buttons.
Latest Notes
Find all latest Notes here. (An AI-generated summary of your Note text gets created automatically when you submit it).
Engagement Tracker
See who the most engaged members of the community are (you get +3 points for commenting, +1 point for posting).
Other Fun Pages
There’s a couple other fun pages, like:
Community Stats - Tracks community likes + best-performing tags.
Most Prolific Writers - Who’s posted the most Notes in the last 60 days.
Top Notes This Month - Showcases viral Notes from the last 30 days.
2-Minute Tour Of The Notes Underground
If you want to get a tour of the Notes Underground, check out this two minute video I recorded.
Over 100 People Have Joined So Far
We have 100 members in the Notes Underground community so far, and over 1,800 Notes have been shared in the first 2 months of it going live.
Additionally:
36,159 likes have been generated.
Members have left 4,526 comments on each other’s work.
Y’all, that’s freaking insane. This community alone has generated 4,526 comments out of thin air.
The glowing testimonials started flowing in…
"Join us at the Notes Underground. The tool Tom built, brilliant. The community, super supportive and engaging. I'm in awe with the quality and the vast life experiences of writers in this community." - Kat Nieh
"Tom has exceeded all my expectations by a mile. Notes Underground is an amazing tool for sharpening your pen and writing notes that connect." - Kristin van Tilburg
Student Success
Since launch in April, the Notes Underground has started to change people’s writing lives — and honestly, it’s happened even faster than I expected.
Here’s just a tiny slice of what we’re seeing already.
Since joining the Notes Underground...
Fleur 🌸 Hull increased her average likes per Note by 300% (and went viral with 360+ likes)
Sandra (SheLeads360) boosted her average likes by 376% (that's not a typo)
Roland Gruen saw a 250% jump in average likes
Elle Light 🌱’s average likes surged by 171%
Here's the proof from my Airtable stats tracker!
We also had a few members reach the Substack leaderboards!
Alex Katsulis wrote a 278-like Note and reached #96 on the Rising chart in Health & Wellness
Marni Battista hit #65 Rising in Travel
This isn't just about vanity metrics though.
Fleur turned her viral Note (300+ likes) into 20 new subscribers in just 48 hours. Here's what she said:
"So I went a little bit viral in the past 48 hours with a note. 244 likes, 40 comments, 11 restacks, and about 20 free subscriptions. Thanks everyone for your support."
Sam gained 7 new subscribers from a single Note she crafted using our Note Finder tool.
"This note is getting traction and I'm proud of it.. turns out I got 7 new free subscribers!"
A Few Viral Notes We've Tracked
It's still early (we launched April 9, 2025), but here's a few viral Notes we've tracked in the community so far:
This 365 like Note from Fleur Hall
This 200+ like Note from Sam Messersmith
I'm not saying the Notes Underground 100% generated these viral Notes, but it likely helped!
Become a paid subscriber to get immediate access to the Notes Underground.
But the Real Magic? The Community
We've had over 90 people join our Slack community since launch, and it is buzzing in there!
Writers are sharing wins, finding accountability buddies, discussing AI, and giving each other advice on how to get better.
In our new AI Tips channel, we're having full-blown debates about AI, and sharing tools with each other.
In the General channel, we're celebrating new mind-blowing features that just got added!
It's an absolute trip to feel the energy in this Slack channel every day!
There's energy because people are actually seeing results.
We Added 27 Features To The Notes Underground Since Launch
Since launch, we’ve added a ridiculous 27 new features to the Notes Underground.
Our biggest changes include..
Likes, Comments, and Restacks AUTO-UPDATE -
Nick Simard
helped me with this one. You no longer have to manually update Likes, Comments, or Restacks. The system automatically scrapes this information for you and updates it every 3 days.
Daily Note recommendations - Instead of scrolling through the Latest Notes, tell the system what categories/authors you like, and we’ll give you 5 Notes to comment on every day.
Week-To-Week Statistics: You can now track how your Notes are performing this week compared to last week.
Month-To-Month Statistics: Same thing☝️, except month-to-month.
'My Drafts’ Page - Log Note ideas/drafts directly in the Underground.
This is just a taste of the changes we made.
This Is The Best Notes Community Online
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the best Notes Community on the internet by a mile.
It’s easy to share a thread and tell people to comment Notes underneath it.
It’s really hard to build a whole damn app from scratch just so to help people escape the void, get traction, and find legitimate community.
I did that because I wanted to give you something new, different, and useful.
Become A Paid Subscriber To Join Us
If you want to join the fastest-growing Notes Community on Substack, become a paid subscriber below.
If you’re already a paid subscriber, your links to join us are right below this paywall.