I wrote 240 Substack Notes in 30 days, here’s what I learned

Spoiler: I gained 1367 subscribers in 30 days

Stijn Noorman

Dec 05, 2025

I’m a full-time digital writer but I’m new to Substack.

So I decided to run an experiment:

Posting 240 Substack Notes in 30 days.

So 8 Notes per day.

The goal was to:

Gain email subscribers
Figure out what works here
See if my high-performing tweets do well here too

For full transparency:

I’ve only been here for about 6 weeks, but I have been on social media for years.

I imported about 6500 subs (that I gained via Twitter and other social platforms).

I’ve also written thousands of tweets and hundreds of YouTube scripts.

I know how to grow an audience and how to write content and I didn’t start from zero here so I had those advantages.

That being said, here are the results I got:

In 30 days, I gained 1367 Substack subscribers.

I also wrote 7 newsletters in these 30 days:

My open rates haven’t been great yet but I’ve been told this is normal in the first month(s) when writing on Substack (if it doesn’t improve I’ll have to clean my list).

But as you can see, I barely gained subscribers from these newsletters.

So almost all of the growth came from the notes.

I analyzed my 240 notes to see what works best and there are 4 patterns that I spotted so far.

Here are the 4 best-performing notes/patterns I found:

1. Listicles

Listicles do well on every platform.

It stands out
It’s easy to read
It grabs attention

Simply start with a short hook that grabs attention.

Then give a list (3 or 5 points usually work best).

And then end with a short lesson.

Example:

You may also notice that I use the ‘stairway effect’ here (start with the shortest sentence and make every sentence a little bit longer).

This is one of the many Aesthetic Writing strategies you can use to optimize your writing formatting to maximize views, engagement and growth.

2. Posts about Substack

On Instagram, posts about Instagram do well.

On YouTube, posts about YouTube do well.

On LinkedIn, posts about LinkedIn do well.

On Twitter, posts about Twitter do well.

Substack is no different.

People on Substack like reading and learning about Substack.

If you know interesting facts of insights, share them.

Example:

Side note: someone copied this note word for word and got 4X the views.

This kinda sucks but it does prove that the post itself works well regardless of the amount of followers you have (the guy who copied it had 500 followers).

Taking inspiration from others is great. But copying word for word is not.

Don’t copy like a fool. Steal like an artist. Then create like an alchemist.

3. Building in public

People follow people.

They care about your ideas and want to follow your journey.

So that’s why building in public works well.

You give them a look behind the scenes.

This boosts your credibility and it shows them what’s possible.

It might feel weird to do at the start, but it can be both educating and inspiring for your readers so I can recommend it.

Example:

4. Connecting with others

The vibe on Substack is very welcoming.

I’m used to other platforms:

YouTube: you’re on your own and some comments are very toxic
LinkedIn: people try to act professional and it’s very fake and cringe imo
Instagram: people try to show off their lifestyle and physique, not their real life
Twitter: I like it a lot because there are great writers but some people can be toxic

Most people on Substack seem to be more sincere in my experience.

Except the people who copy notes & constantly post “If you’re new to Substack, I want to read some of your work and support you” to boost their engagement.

Most people here value depth over making as much money as possible.

And while I think there’s a healthy middle ground, I like that sentiment.

Example:

Overall, the experiment was a success.

Most notes didn’t do that well, but that was to be expected.

Every ‘failed’ post taught me something.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
– Thomas Edison

I had a few outliers so I will double down on those and I’ll try new formats to figure out what works best.

I’m planning on experimenting with 12 notes per day.

There are usually diminishing returns when you go higher, but I want to test it.

I have thousands of validated content ideas from my other platforms so I’m able to keep the quality consistent without spending too much time on it.

Comment below if you want me to write a post about those results as well.

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