5 Proven Substack Notes That Earn Me Daily Subscribers

If you don’t use Substack Notes, you’re missing out.

It’s still early, and competition is low. That creates a great opportunity for new writers to start publishing on Substack and grow their newsletters.

I’ve been writing one Substack note each day for almost four months and have gotten 427 new subscribers to my newsletter without much effort. I wish I had started posting short-form content sooner.

Here are the types of notes that performed best, according to my analytics:

The achievement note

One of the most popular notes I ever published on Substack is only two sentences and a screenshot.

I had been creating content on the platform for about one month and got one paid subscriber to my paid newsletter. Without thinking too much, I posted a short note about that achievement.

This two-sentence note got 143 likes and brought 33 new free subscribers to my newsletter.

Here are some ideas you can try for similar notes:

• Reaching a particular milestone (subscribers, followers, earnings)

• Achieving your goals (small or big)

• Reader or customer feedback

• Overcoming a challenge

Sometimes, you don’t have to write a masterpiece. Something simple and meaningful works much better.

The platitude

Another simple Substack note that worked great for me is the platitude.

These two sentences generated 114 likes and eight new free subscribers.

To write these, you need inspiration from other platitudes. They usually follow a similar pattern. You know, the “Sometimes bad things lead to good things” or “Sacrifice today for a better tomorrow” type of content.

Someone in the comments left another similar platitude to mine: “Slow action might just be fine as long as we don’t do no action.” So, you can tweak an idea in many ways.

The problem with these is that sometimes you can sound quite cringe. Give it some time before you post it. Go for a walk or wait a day or two, then reread it and see if it sounds bad.

The question

Asking questions can feel weird sometimes. It means you don’t know all the answers.

But you don’t have to be scared. Asking questions helps you build a community.

Make a list of things you're curious about and start asking your audience.

I’ve asked about:

• Whether people like their own posts or not

• What’s their response when someone asks, “What do you do for a living?”

• When can you call yourself a writer

Open-ended questions are better, but I’ve made it work without them.

When done right, it can spark a debate, making the algorithm love you.

The tutorial

Teaching people how to solve their problems is always a good note idea.

You don’t have to go into detail since this is short-form content, but I’ve seen much longer pieces work great, too.

It’s important to make it easy to understand and actionable:

• Start with a clear first sentence that describes the problem

• Add bullet points for action items

• End with a clear takeaway

The crazy part is this note was a subhead from one of my older articles that I repurposed into a note. And it generated eight new free subscribers.

The reminder

People need reminders. I know I do.

If you can show them what’s truly important again, they’ll thank you with some likes and subs. These kinds of notes can also act as motivation boosters sometimes.

Final thoughts

I used to write long-form content on Medium to get newsletter subscribers. That was a lot of effort for a few subscribers here and there. Substack notes feel so much easier to write and much more rewarding.