Substack’s “Your Note Made You $” Notification Is the Best New Feature
Now you can see how much money a post on Substack Notes made
If you’d ask my friends
or about their growth tip number one they’d say (and you heard it all before 😆)“Be on Notes!”
“Use Notes to grow!”
“Find your tribe and build a community via Notes!”
It’s true.
The opportunities for writers are stupid crazy.
You shouldn’t snooze on Notes. Better capitalize on it.
⭐Here are three WOW-worthy examples 💫:
With Notes you can grow like crazy and see your subscriber numbers going up and up and up.
⭐Veronica Llorca Smith
Here’s Veronica who recently crossed 4,000 subscribers and also the milestone of 100 paid subs which makes her a bestseller with a white badge (congrats, Veronica! 💃🏻):
See that so-called hockeystick effect?
It’s a sharp rise of data points after a long flat period.
Veronica had multiple viral Notes. Is engaging and writing short form on Notes every day.
⭐David Mcllroy
Then we have David who went from a nobody to a somebody and “Mister Notes” as I call my friend:
He recently crossed 10,000 subscribers and is now ranking on the #Education leaderboard #37:
The fact that he is ranked shows that he writes consistently and also has a good number of paid subscribers (100+).
⭐ Kristi Keller
The amazing and hyper-funny Kristi got 480 subscribers in one month via viral Notes without using any other social media:
She has now more than 4,000 subscribers.
I bet she'd love to know how much she's made from all her viral notes.
⭐Alberto Cabas
And tribe member
made a daily Notes experiment (plus guest posting and publishing 2x per week).Here are his results:
“I published my first article on May, 4th. I never expected similar growth. Not even in my wildest dreams.”
Super, Alberto!
✍🏻Kristina’s Notes Journey
I knew about Notes and wrote an article about it in Better Marketing, one of Medium’s Top 10 publication but didn’t really capitalize on it (because I was pregnant, gave birth, you name it 😁), except re-stacking (sharing) my own work or the work of others.
Then in January 2024, I started using Notes when my baby was 5 months old and I could also offer a paid membership with awesome perks for my subscribers.
Since it’s my side hustle I started with one post per day.
Now I’m posting 3-5 times per day.
Original posts in the moment, very short, no time for long form.
Plus sharing the work of others and my tribe members.
I can also show you this hockey stick effect.
In January, I had less than 4,000 subs. Now I have more than 7,000 without any viral Notes.
I also launched the “Notes Club” in April and opened it in May 2024 so my members could learn to dance there, get on Notes and capitalize on the early days of the social media platform:
It all started on my membership platform and now I’m happy that most of the conversations happen on Notes on Substack!
Notes make money!
Followers can be a vanity metric.
Subscribers can be a vanitiy metric too.
A teeny engaged email list can make more money than a 15,000 subscriber list - depending on the topic you’re writing about.
So often writers wondered if they could really earn any money via Notes.
Of course they could see that they were getting subscribers via Notes in their inbox…
….via the Substack subscriber stats page or when they got a new paid subscriber, but they wouldn’t know if a post would really be the reason they earned some money.
And converted a casual Notes user or follower into a paid subscriber.
Now we can actually see that and how much money our posts on Notes make.
Substack shipped a cool new feature.
I opened my Substack app one morning and in my notifications I saw this:
Here’s another one:
Notes is where you can be you
For me as a side hustler with two kids in the house it’s incredibly motivating seeing this and getting paid to be myself.
Today I said to my hubby:
“Notes is (the place) where you can be you.”
On Notes I share personal anecdotes, pictures of my family life, thoughts and ideas. I celebrate the wins of others and ask inspiring voices for an interview.
I love this writerly place that seems safe and brings a touch of your life and personality to your writing that you might not share in your newsletter.
My followers know I love gardening, spending time with my family, live by the ocean, batch bake (Don’t laugh. That’s a thing! 🥯🧁) when my kids celebrate birthday, I love to talk with strangers, keep it real and share how I struggle as a part-time creator, mom and writer.
It’s all about connections, building relationships and community.
Substack’s product team knows how to surprise
I also received a DM from Zach, product manager at Substack, which I really liked:
Thanks Zach for doing this. As a product manager myself, I think this approach is super smart.
So it’s really a thing and a new feature called:
“Your Note Made Your $”-notification.
So maybe if no one’s engaging with your post on Notes, there yould be someone out there who’s reading your posts on Notes and at some point becomes a paid subscriber.
Remember on social media only 1-3% engage. Most consume. They don’t have or take the time to leave a comment. But they are there. In the dark. Silently reading your stories.
And one day becoming a paid subscriber.
Veronica would say that, like growing a lemon tree, we often don't see results until we can see the first green sprout.
😍Thanks Substack for shipping another awesome feature! 🥰
I bet you’ll also see it soon.
I’m a bestseller and part of the Product Lab, so this might be a reason why I already see it.
I hope this news inspires you to share your ideas, thoughts and stories in Notes.
Tell me! Have you seen the notification already? Would you like to see it?
🚨🚨 REMINDER: 2 Spots left in this year’s Medium Kickstarter Bootcamp 2024 with Walter Rhein 🚨🚨
We’ll also cover the Substack/Medium flywheel:
You can also join via Substack by selecting KICKSTARTER BOOTCAMP
Talking about Notes - THANKS SO MUCH to Veronica and David! 😍😍
Yesterday was my baby’s firts birthday.
I told them on Thursday I had to get everything ready for the mermaid themed party and asked if they could share the news about my bootcamp with their tribe because I didn't have much time to announce it.
They did and I’m suuuper thankful.
Goodnight from Germany 💤😴
P.S. Would be lovely if you could share this awesome news with your Substack friends 💖
P.P.S. Here it’s 1:30 am but I didn’t want to break my streak (again), share this news with you and that’s how I’m keeping my side hustle hula hoop going.
In my first days on Substack I have only written notes—no newsletter, zero posts. But today I already got my first subscriber 😯
Love it Kristina how you bring practical examples to the community!
🏒 As I'm based in Canada, I can really relate to "hockey stick" analogy