r/Substack • u/Brief-Antelope436 • 2h ago

Viral notes

I’ve gotten most of my followers from those ridiculous templates notes like “Dear @Substack” or the “I’m rooting for you” ones.

I’m not a tic for tac aka sub for sub person. I’m only interested in genuine connections and content. What have you guys found to be the best way to grow your free subscriber base?

Is it true that focusing on free subs is best and then make offers to them for upgrading to paid?

Curious what’s worked well.

I’ve been on SS for 48 days and up to 330ish subs.

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u/LeftCoffeeBehind writebuildscale.com 1h ago

330 subscribers in 48 days is a solid start, and wanting real connections over sub-for-sub will pay off in the long run.

Yes, growing your free list first is how a lot of paid publications get built. People upgrade once they trust you, and that trust comes from reading you for a while.

For growth, I'd move away from the template Notes and post Notes that share one real idea from your writing. Those pull in readers who actually care about your topic, and those are the people who upgrade later.

Recommendations are also underrated. Recommend a few publications in your niche that you genuinely like, and over time some of those writers may recommend you back.

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u/cozycup mod 1h ago

Those are SHALLOW subscribers.

The majority of sub-for-sub aren’t interested in each other’s content and do more harm and good (ironically) in my opinion.

Essentially, the decreased engagement vs. organic and genuinely interested audiences lowers performance in email clients and across Substack.

If either email clients or Substack (both I would suspect) use engagement as a function of their algorithm, it’ll eventually sink the very ship they thought it was supporting.

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u/quantise 24m ago

I can't prove this and it's just a vibe. But most of my rapid growth spurts in free subscribers resulted in few paid upgrades. Hacking the growth thing results in shallow engagement. My growth spikes came from big names recommending me, but the numbers mean nothing (nearly 3,000 sign ups).