Welcome To 'The Writing Long Game'
Articles, AI Tools, and Quarterly Programs to help you grow your Substack in 2025.
Hey! I’m Tom Kuegler. I’ve been writing online for 10 years, and garnered 750,000+ followers combined across 7 different platforms.
You can read my story right here if you want.
This publication teaches you how to grow slow, write better, and build a long-term creative business on Substack with AI tools, weekly emails, a Notes community, and quarterly programs.
Together these make up the Writing Long Game System, an ecosystem to help you grow your blog by writing what you love.
The 4 Main Things You’ll Get
🧠 Deep-dive articles on writing, blogging, and AI
🛠️ Monthly AI tools for writers
👩🏽💻 Quarterly writing programs for founding members
🔥 A supportive community of writers
Start With These
Become A Paid Subscriber To Get
Annual: $13 per month
50 Monthly Tokens to the Writing Long Game Lab - Access my exclusive AI tools called The NoteSmith to get feedback on 50 Notes per month. The NoteFinder finds 5 viral-worthy Notes hidden in any article you share with it. The TitleSmith gives you 15 viral-worthy headlines instantly. The Notes Strategist gives you a customized, 6-step Notes strategy to help you dominate Notes. I spent 100+ hours training these tools on Note principles that helped me get 80,000+ likes on Notes in total.
The Notes Underground Community - Join the fastest-growing Notes community on Substack. Over 100 members have already joined, sharing 1,500+ Notes and tracking 35,000+ likes in just two months. Inside, you can track your Notes performance, find other writers in your niche, get rewarded for meaningful engagement, discover what’s working on Notes this week — not last month.
Occasional 21-Day Notes Challenges - Every few months, we’ll run a 21-Day Note Writing challenge in the Notes Underground community for paid subs only.
1 new AI tool per month - For the rest of 2025, I’ll publish new AI tools to help you through the whole Writing Long Game. Tools to help you find your niche, get ideas, write better blog posts, and monetize are coming every month.
15+ hours of existing lessons - We have over 15+ hours of paid Notes trainings, Substack trainings, and blogging advice in our paid member vault. Get immediate access to all of them.
That’s a $3,000 yearly value. It can be yours for $160.
Become A Founding Member To Get
Access to ALL quarterly courses - Every quarter, we’ll release a $200+ course or cohort here at the Writing Long Game. Get access to all of them with a Founding Membership. $800 value.
Next Cohort Date: July 2025
Following Cohort Date: October 2025
Substack 1,000 course - Get my 23-lesson Substack 1,000 course. Learn how to grow your Substack newsletter to 1,000+ subscribers in 6 months. Normally $300.
All paid subscriber benefits
That’s a $4,000+ yearly value for $300.
Paid Subscriber Success
I’ve helped paid subscribers write 1,000+ like mega viral Notes in the last 12 months. I’ve also helped people grow their newsletters by thousands of subscribers in weeks.
Jennifer Granville used the NoteSmith to polish this 14,000 like Note.
“I really like the NoteSmith so much - I feel like it is working with a colleague. I don't slavishly do what he (I think it's a he) tells me, but tweak and polish and between us it is always better. I have one Note that has over 12.5 likes!
We wrote it together so I don't give him all the credit, but he surely helped. Also he is making me a better Note writer. He has less to do than he used to.”
- Jennifer Granville
Cali Bird wrote this viral 1,700+ like Note with the help of The NoteSmith
Here’s what she wrote me as it was going viral:
“By the way, the note that I said last night had hardly any traction – it now has 218 likes, a tonne of comments and I’ve had 13 new subscribers today.
Some very heartfelt stuff from complete strangers. Really lovely.
It was refined with the Notesmith.”
One NoteSmith User Is Getting 500+ Views Per Day Now
Here’s a message I got from a paid subscriber who had been using The NoteSmith to edit their Note drafts..
“Oh my! My notes are really fueling a growth swell right now, and I'm loving it. Plus an article-reading swell. Look at this! The earlier spikes are posts and in between, near-crickets. Now I'm getting traction on my articles all week long, even when I'm not publishing one.”
Jeanette Martin got 700 subscribers with help from my NoteFinder
"My likes (2.4k), comments(208), restacks (123) and new subscribers(700+) went through the roof with help editing a Note with Tom's Notefinder tool. I feel my audience has finally found me after a year posting regularly on Substack with one well edited Note, based on a post I'd written months before that didn't get much engagement."
Other Viral Paid Subscriber Notes
Here’s a few other viral Notes that students have written with my guidance.
Marie Vandoorne, a paid subscriber, grew her newsletter by 1,500 subscribers in May of 2024 alone.
Here’s a screenshot of her subscriber growth on Substack since she got started in January.
Paid subscriber grew her newsletter by over 450 subscribers in two weeks
She wrote them during our Substack Campfire November cohort.
“Oh my goodness-I just looked and I have 445 subscribers to my non-existent newsletter, and that literally happened in two weeks!”
Paid subscriber grew her subscribers by 200+ in just a week
“I joined Substack in late December 2023, importing 1385 of my own loyal subscribers who had stuck with me for over a decade. I spent 5 months posting into the void. No comments, no engagement, no growth (I actually lost some subscribers when I switched to Substack). Then I joined Tom’s Substack Campfire and YA'LL! I've grown 240 subscribers in the last week! I have no doubt it is as a result of the writing coaching I have gotten from Tom and my steady consistent approach.”
Paid subscriber grew her Substack by 500 subscribers in a matter of months
“After watching your training, I brainstormed and came up with ideas on how to use what I had learned in my own way, tailored to my Substack. This is how I came up with the "Artist Notes to Self." The notes gained much traction, and I created a visual language that I consistently use for them. Additionally, I compiled all the notes into one post, allowing readers to quickly scroll through them, like a live post.”
Subscribe to The Writing Long Game to start growing your Substack newsletter in 2025, while enjoying every step of the process.
I'm excited to see how Substack & I will work together. I'm world building & writing fiction, so different world, but I really like the people I've met here so far.
I just received your post "The Real Reason Nobody Cares About Your Blog Posts" in my weekly stack and it resonated so much with me! Loved reading this post and excited to join you on your writing journey!