The Substack 100/1% Growth Framework
Focus on three goals to grow your followers and free & paid subscribers.
I have been writing on Substack for a couple months and have been observing publications that have started around the same time as me.
I have noticed some successful patterns and noticed my own mistakes.
I wanted to share what I’m seeing is a successful framework.
What This Framework Is Not
I am not here to tell you specific actions you must follow.
Other Substack publications focus on telling you specific actions you need to take to be successful.
I am sharing a way to think about your growth while giving you the freedom to take actions that work best for you.
I saw a publication the other day that had one post and over 100 followers.
Yet, I had posted multiple times a week for about a month before I reached 100.
In contrast another publication posted about the same amount as I did and reached 1000 subscribers in two months.
What made their subscriptions more successful?
That is what I will share with you.
They both took different actions but I noticed three similar patterns in those two publications and many others.
Two Magic Numbers: 100 and 1%
I keep seeing these two numbers work on Substack.
For some reason, reaching 100 is the hardest goal.
But once you pass it, growth becomes easier.
After you hit your 100 goal, the 1% goal seems to work the best.
If you aim for a daily 1% growth, you will grow at a steady pace for a while.
But after you reach the next 100 (that is 200) you start seeing exponential growth.
If you compound 1% every day for 365 days, then you will have a 37x growth.
That’s because the 1% growth is based on the previous day’s metric.
If you had 100 yesterday, today’s goal is to grow by 1.
If you had 1000 yesterday, today’s goal is to grow by 10.
Of course, your actual rate will vary but having these two goals seem to work the best on Substack.
Let’s explore three 100/1% goals to help you achieve success.
Growth Goal 1: 100 Followers and 1% Daily Growth
I found successful publications focus on growing followers first.
I made the mistake on focusing on posts.
Substack is a newsletter platform so not focusing on posts seems counter intuitive.
The reason you want to focus on followers is because that allows Substackers to get your content without having to commit to your publication.
How do you gain followers?
You write a lot of notes.
Your first goal as a publication is to gain 100 subscribers.
Write different types of notes that will attract the attention of the types of readers you want.
Write a lot or little.
Use AI or write from the heart.
Comment on other notes.
Restack posts with comments.
Do what works best for you.
Just focus on attracting your ideal readers with notes to get to 100 followers.
After you reach 100, aim for 1% growth every day.
Keep writing notes every day to maintain 1% growth.
Growth Goal 2: 100 Free Subscribers and 1% Daily Growth
You will continue with notes but now you want to focus more on posts.
You now have over 100 followers that are open to your posts.
They like your notes and expect to learn from your posts too.
Write free posts that will resonate with your ideal reader.
Write your best content.
Your goal is to get 100 free subscribers.
Don’t focus on paid posts.
We will focus on paid subscribers after you reach 100.
Try to fill your publications site so the page is full with posts.
Write short posts or long posts.
Publish every day or once a week.
Share amazing insight or just be vulnerable.
Write on your own publication or do guest posts on another.
Recommend other publications or ask for recommendations.
Do what best works for you.
Just focus on gaining those first 100 free subscribers.
After you reach that goal, continue writing to get 1% daily growth.
You can continue doing free posts or you can introduce paywalled content.
Paywalled posts tell most of the story for free but requires a paid subscription right before you reveal the secret sauce.
Or you can give 50% of the secret sauce for free and the rest to paid subscribers.
Do what works best and you can expirement with different strategies.
You can still get free subscribers even with paywalled content.
Growth Goal 3: 1% Paid Subscribers
I have observed multiple publications with paid subscribers.
It seems like 1 paid subscriber for every 100 subscribers is a good rule of thumb.
I got my first free trial of a paid subscription at around 115 subscribers.
I have seen some publications that reached the 1k subscribers and they had around 10 subscribers.
(They probably have more by now since I last checked.)
Your goal is to continue growing followers and subscribers while writing paid content that brings more value than the free content.
If you have valuable paid content, some free subscribers will want to pay to get it.
Write so you can get those 1% of subscribers to upgrade.
This goal does not have 1% daily growth because it builds on the 1% daily follower and subscriber growth.
Let’s say you have 1 subscriber for every 10 followers and 1 paid subscriber for every 100 subscribers.
If you grow to 1k followers, you will be at 100 subscribers soon and your first paid subscriber will be here soon.
Now if you have 10k followers, you will be close to having 10 paid subscribers.
Summary
Your growth rate will vary, but the objective of this framework is to help you focus on three growth goals.
First focus on getting your first 100 followers by writing notes and growing 1% daily after that.
Then focus on getting your first 100 subscribers by writing free posts and growing 1% after that.
Then focus on writing valuable paid content so you can get 1% of your subscribers to upgrade to a paid subscription.
By the time to achieve all three growth goals, you will have a routine that helps you achieve the 1% daily growth and 1% paid subscriber growth.
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