Picture a writer with a newsletter people love.

The open rate sits around 50%, and replies keep coming.

Then the writer launches a $19 template pack and sells four copies.

Price is rarely the first cause of a gap like that. Often the reading numbers were softer than they looked.

The product may repeat what the free issues already taught. Or the offer sat in one line at the bottom of the post, where nobody looked.

If you haven’t published your first post yet or are looking to improve your strategy, this is the cheap time to learn it.

Every fix below costs less to build in now than after 1,000 people have signed up.

Your “reads every issue” number is softer than it looks

Most writers judge loyalty by open rate, and that number has been shaky for years.

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection loads email images in the background for people who switch it on, so an email can count as opened when no human saw it.

In July 2024, Substack told writers that a sudden drop in reported opens came from an iCloud Private Relay outage. When Apple’s layer broke, the automatic opens went away.

Gmail has a newer problem for senders.

It began rolling out AI-generated email summaries in January 2026.

Omeda looked at about 2 billion emails. Total opens climbed to 45.6% while unique click-through fell from 4.35% to 3.93%.

For newsletters, click rates dropped from 4.01% to 3.43%.

Gemini summaries could be the reason. That is a suspicion, and I haven’t seen proof.

A sale starts with a click. If a reader gets the gist from a summary, they may feel informed and never click.

Your open rate can look healthy in the same weeks your clicks shrink.

So stop trusting “they read every issue” until you’ve checked it with better signals.

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The Substack numbers that mean something

Substack gives you more than an open rate, and a few of its numbers are harder to fake.

Each post has its own stats page.

You can reach a detailed summary from the three-dot menu, where you’ll find traffic sources and link clicks.

Those clicks are the closest thing to proof that someone looked at your offer.

Links in a Substack email go through a redirect on Substack’s own site, which is how the clicks get counted.

Treat click counts as estimates.

A commenter on Pub Stack Success reported that a link showed 30 clicks while the destination post had only 20 views.

That is a single report, so I can’t say how common it is. Compare your clicks with the visit count on your checkout page.

The same stats page has a Growth tab with new free and paid subscribers from that post.

Then there are the stars.

Each person on your subscriber list has an activity rating from zero to five stars.

It’s a measure of how active someone was in the last month, including email opens and web views.

Amanda from the newsletter The Publishing Spectrum asked Substack’s head of data about what goes into the rating.

The answer was post opens or views plus Notes activity such as comments, likes, and restacks.

Zero stars can also mean the person uses Apple Mail’s privacy setting.

You can filter your list by subscription type and activity, then export it as a CSV file. Do this monthly. The CSV doubles as a backup if you ever leave the platform.

The best signal costs nothing.

Count replies by hand.

A reader who writes back “I tried your method and got stuck on step two” is worth more to you than 500 opens.

Why a reader can love the writing and still skip the product

Reading costs a few minutes and no money.
Buying costs money and a small bet that the thing will work.

A newsletter trains the first decision and leaves the second untouched.

Those people signed up to read good writing. That says nothing about whether they’ll buy.

Your product page is a side door for most of them.

The free issues may already do the whole job.

If your newsletter teaches a method step by step, a product that teaches the same method is a repeat.

People pay for time saved, a finished file, a decision made for them, or feedback on their own work.

An issue on how to write hooks is a free lesson. A sorted swipe file of hooks, ready to copy, is a product.

Readers also can’t picture what they’d get. A title and a price tell them very little.

Screenshots, a sample page, or a free piece of the product inside an issue answer “will this work for me” before they have to ask.

My view, and I can’t back it with a study, is that a reader who has known you for three weeks will take a $9 to $29 bet far faster than a $97 one.

A small first product also shows you who buys, and those buyers are the people you can sell to later at a higher price.

Frequency matters too.

One line at the bottom of a post is easy to miss, and a launch mentioned once reads like a footnote.

Spread the offer over several days, and make each email useful on its own.

Your list may not be your market

A big list guarantees nothing, and the buyers may not be on it at all.

One Substack publisher who sells on Gumroad matched the two customer lists and found that 736 of 919 customers, about 80 percent, had never subscribed to the newsletter.

They came from post links, Google, or referrals and bought without subscribing.

That is one creator’s data, so yours may look different.

It does show that readers and buyers can be two different crowds.

You can check your own overlap in an hour.

Export your subscribers from Substack and your buyers from your checkout tool. Paste both email columns into one spreadsheet and count the matches.

Expect an undercount, since people often buy with a different email than the one they subscribed with.

If most of your buyers turn out to be outsiders, your sales page needs its own traffic and its own search-friendly page.

The newsletter becomes one source among several.

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Decisions to make before you publish post one

Beginners get a real advantage here.

You can set things up so the questions above are easy to answer from day one.

1. Pick one buyer and one problem.

And write them in a single sentence, like “freelance writers who want their first $500 month.”

If you can’t write the sentence, you can’t write an offer.

Decide what the free issues will teach and what the product will deliver, and draw that line early.

Free issues give the idea and the reasoning. The product gives the finished thing.

If you can’t name the problem yet, I put together 30 Digital Product Ideas with demand proof, pricing, and a first-customer plan for each.

2. Edit the welcome email.

Substack sends one to every new subscriber, and you can change it in your settings.

Use it to ask a single question, such as “What’s the one thing you’re stuck on right now?”

Replies to that email are the cheapest market research you’ll get.

3. Use tags and segments.

Tags are private labels for subscribers, and segments are saved filters that update on their own.

You can send a post’s email to one segment while the post stays public.

Justin Welsh assigns tags to new subscribers and uses them to send posts to subgroups.

Useful tags are “replied,” “asked about templates,” and “bought.”

4. Keep a link log in one spreadsheet, with a row per post: date, where the product link sat, clicks, sales.

Give every post its own discount code, since most checkout tools let you make one, and sales will trace back to the post that earned them.

Choose a checkout tool that records the buyer’s email and shows where visitors came from.

You need that email for the overlap check later.

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A 30-day test

Run this on a list as small as 200 people.

Start with your own data.

Week 1: Filter your subscribers to 4 and 5 stars and count them.

Check which posts got the most clicks on any link. Run the overlap check between subscribers and buyers.

Write the numbers down and hold your judgment.

In week two, ask.

Pick 10 of your most active free readers.

Substack lets you email a filtered group from the subscriber dashboard, and these are direct emails that don’t create a post on your site.

Send one short question, such as “What did you try on this topic last month, and what stopped you?”

Leave your product out of it.

You want the words they use, and you’ll borrow them for the sales page.

Week three is the rewrite.

Use what you heard.

Change the headline to match their words, add a preview of the product, and set a small entry price.

Then send a short sequence to the segment that cares: the story in the first email, an answer to the biggest doubt in the second, and a plain last call in the third.

Schedule these by hand unless your dashboard shows otherwise.

Skip fake countdown timers. If the price really goes up on a date, say so.

Week four, count.

Compare each step: readers who got the email, clicks on the product link, visits to the sales page, purchases.

The step where the numbers fall off tells you what to fix.

Writing the offer so it survives the AI inbox

Read more

Anyone can read Dracula for free. The novel came out in 1897, and it sits in the public domain.

In 2021, a web designer named Matt Kirkland started emailing it anyway.

Each letter and diary entry went out on the date written inside the story, so readers got the book in real time.

The first year brought about 1,600 subscribers. By 2022, he told Slate, the count had passed 200,000.

The words, the author, and the price (zero) stayed the same.

Kirkland changed the day each piece arrives, and that change was the whole product.

An angle is the reason someone picks your newsletter over the others in their search results.

Dracula Daily’s reason fits in one sentence. Yours needs to fit in one too.

If you’re about to start on Substack and your topic already has hundreds of writers, this method works for fiction and non-fiction alike.

You can finish it in about ten days.

Most of the work is reading other people’s newsletters, which beats most homework.

Why a crowded topic is a good sign

Substack says it has 5 million paid subscriptions and counting.

Nearly 100,000 publications were earning money on the platform in April 2026, up from 50,000 in May 2025.

That second figure comes from a third-party roundup, so treat it as an estimate.

Whatever the exact count, many writers already get paid by readers in topics that look full.

A packed shelf is a good sign, the way a restaurant with a line out the door is a good sign.

An empty shelf usually means nobody asked for the thing.

Readers pick people.

A topic gets them to the search box, and a person gets the subscribe click.

They also arrive with plenty of other subscriptions, since Substack’s totals count several subscriptions from one reader separately.

The fight is for a place in an inbox that’s already busy.

A reader who meets your name in a Note or a recommendation asks themselves whether they want another email from this person.

Substack has built tools around that question.

When it launched recommendations, it said it had expanded search so niche subjects are easier to find, and that readers who sign up through its homepage are matched with publications that fit their interests.

Clear wording about who you write for gives those tools something to work with. Fuzzy wording gets skipped.

A beginner with no subscribers can’t beat the top ten writers on a broad topic like personal finance or writing advice.

A reader can’t tell you apart from them.

The angle’s job is to make the choice easy.

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Five parts you can change

Newsletters on the same topic are built from the same five parts.

Change one or two, and you have a different product.

1. Start with the reader.

“People who want to save money” is a crowd.
“Freelancers whose income jumps around from month to month” is someone you can picture.

2. Next comes the goal, the change in their life after reading.

Paying off a credit card in a year is a different promise from learning to talk about money with a partner without a fight.

3. Method is how you reach your answers.

You might test products for a month, interview people, take apart real documents, or keep a public log of your own attempts.

4. Voice is who’s talking and what they can see that others can’t.

A school bus driver, a hospice nurse, and a tax preparer would each write about money with details a general writer has to guess at.

5. Delivery is length, rhythm, and form.

A 300-word note every morning, a long essay once a month, a serial, an audio walk. Dracula Daily changed only this part.

One change is easy to copy.

Two or three are hard, because the next writer would need your reader, your method, or your access too.

At four or five, the pool of possible readers gets very small.

Aim for two or three.

Every part you lock down shrinks the group who might read you and raises the share of that group who say yes.

Substack’s growth tools run on people telling other people, and I’d bet on a small group that cares over a large group that shrugs.

Take a beginner who loves personal finance.

Left alone, she’d name the newsletter Money Tips and write for everyone.

Now she picks a reader (freelance illustrators), a method (one real client invoice taken apart each month, with the client’s permission), and her own voice.

A stranger can tell in five seconds whether it’s for them.

She still writes about money. The way in is different.

Spend two evenings reading the shelf

Open Substack’s search and type your topic.

Open ten publications from the results, and skip any that haven’t posted in two months.

For each one, write down:

• Who the About page says it’s for, in its own words

• How often it posts, and how long the posts run

• Whether it’s free, paid, or mixed, and the monthly price

• The posts with the most likes and comments

• Which publications it recommends, since recommended writers show up on a publication’s homepage and tell you who its neighbors are

Then read the comments under those popular posts. Readers say a lot there.

A comment asking for a version of the post for people who rent has just handed you an angle.

You’re hunting for one of three gaps.

In a level gap, everything is written for experts or for total beginners, and nothing sits in between.

In a person gap, every post assumes an office worker while shift workers keep asking questions in the comments.

In a delivery gap, ten writers send long essays, and nobody sends a quick daily note, or the other way around.

Count a gap as real only when readers ask for it.

Comments, Note replies, and repeated questions count. A hunch does not.

A gap nobody asks about may mean nobody wants the answer.

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Look for what only you have

Your access is the one part nobody can copy.

It includes the work you do, the place you live, the people you talk to all day, and the skill you’ve spent ten years getting decent at.

Plain jobs make strong material.

A school bus driver who writes down what happens on a route has details a general writer would have to invent.

Make a list of ten things you know from direct contact that a stranger would have to look up.

Cross out the ones you can’t share publicly.

If your employer has rules about what you can write, check them before you pick this angle.

What’s left is your raw material.

If the list comes up thin, document what you’re learning and say so.

“Six weeks into selling on Etsy, publishing everything” is honest, and readers can follow along.

The cost is that you can’t promise results yet, so promise the log and keep it specific.

Run five tests before you commit

Write one sentence in this shape:

I write [delivery] for [reader] who want [goal], using [method or access].

For example: I write a monthly invoice teardown for freelance illustrators who want steadier income, using real invoices from working illustrators.

Fiction writers can use this shape instead: Readers who like [two books or shows] will like this because [what’s different].

Test one is out loud.

Say the sentence to someone in your target group. If they can’t repeat it back, rewrite it.

Test two is the swap.

Put another newsletter’s name in front of your sentence. If it still fits, the sentence is too general.

Test three is twenty titles.

List twenty post titles that fit the sentence.

If you stall at eight, the angle may be too narrow, or you may not be curious enough about it yet.

If all twenty could run in anyone’s newsletter, the angle is too wide.

Test four happens in Notes.

Substack Notes lets you try the angle in public with no commitment.

Over one week, post three short versions of your sentence as plain thoughts, not announcements.

Notes stats show likes, comments, restacks, and new subscribers. Expect small numbers.

Your followers and subscribers see the Notes you reply to and like, and the followers of people who engage with your Notes may see them too.

Replying to other writers in your topic matters as much as posting.

A reply from a stranger who shares their own story tells you more than thirty likes from other writers.

Test five is conversation.

Ask five people in your target group what they last searched for on the topic and what the answer left out.

Keep your own pitch out of it until they’ve answered, or they’ll tell you what you want to hear.

Leave a comment

Set up the page so the angle shows

Pick a name a stranger can understand.

“Quiet Ledger” sounds nice, but with no description, a visitor learns nothing.

Put topic words in the name or in the one-line description under it, since a reader scanning search results sees only those two things.

Make that line your angle sentence, trimmed.

A short About page works well.

Say who it’s for, what they’ll get, how often, and add a line or two of proof that you know the subject.

Proof is a job title, a number of years, a thing you built. Skip the life story.

Each new subscriber gets a welcome email, and you can edit it in your settings. Use it to say what’s coming and link two or three posts that show the angle best.

Choose a schedule you can hold for six months, then add slack.

Weekly works for most people. Fewer, better posts beat a daily pace that collapses in week five.

Substack keeps 10% of each paid subscription payment, and Stripe adds 2.9% plus 30 cents per US card payment, plus a recurring-billing fee.

At 100 readers paying $8 a month, you collect $800 and keep roughly $660.

How many readers will pay is unsettled.

Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie told writer Vicki Boykis that about 10% of a newsletter’s subscribers usually convert to paid, and her own rate was around 8.5%.

One 2026 roundup puts the platform average nearer 3%. Plan around the low number.

Launch free and turn on paid once you know which posts readers forward. Waiting costs you early income.

Charging from day one puts a wall in front of a writer nobody knows.

I’d pay the first cost.

Mistakes that cost beginners months

Read more

Medium won’t send you a cent until your earnings reach $10.

Gumroad keeps 10% plus a flat 50 cents from every direct sale.

If a reader joins your Substack through the iOS app, a January signup can reach your Stripe account as late as mid-March.

Small facts like these get skipped in the “make money writing” threads. They decide more than any hot take does.

A stream that pays slowly will break a writer who needs rent money next month. A stream that pays fast but eats every evening will wear out someone who has five spare hours a week.

Write down five numbers first

Get these on paper before you pick anything. Nobody is grading, so be honest.

1. Hours per week you can protect. Count only the hours that survive a bad week at work.

2. Dollars you can afford to lose. Zero is a fine answer.

3. Days until you need your first dollar.

4. People who would answer a message from you: email contacts, LinkedIn connections, Substack readers, a group chat or two. Count real names. Follower totals include a lot of strangers.

5. Something you know that other people pay to learn or get done. A day job counts. So does a hobby you took too seriously.

Then two gut checks.

Can you message a stranger without feeling sick?
Can you finish a draft when nobody is waiting for it?

Your answers to those matter more than any ranking of the best income streams.

Numbers 1 to 3 pick your lane. Number 4 tells you how risky selling will be. Number 5 sets your price.

Three lanes, and the wait in each

1. The service lane means someone pays you for your hours.

Freelance articles, ghostwriting, and editing all sit here.

Money can show up within two to six weeks if you message enough people.

2. The product lane means you build something once and sell it again and again.

Templates and guides live here.

You need people to sell to, so it works best when number 4 is a few hundred or more.

3. The audience lane is paid newsletters, Medium’s reading pay, books, and sponsorships.

The wait runs in months, sometimes more than a year.

Most small writers want the third lane and need the first.

What each stream pays in 2026

1. Freelance writing.

A 2026 roundup of surveys says 46.6% of freelancers charge between $0.05 and $0.10 per word. The same roundup says 48.6% earn under $2,000 a month from writing, and 19.4% earn over $5,000.

At $0.08 per word, a 1,000-word post pays $80.

Specialists get paid differently.

Rates for B2B software, finance, and healthcare writing are $0.20 to $0.75 per word, and the bottom of the market has collapsed.

The same 1,000 words at $0.40 pays $400.

The gap comes from what you know about the topic.

2. Ghostwriting and editing.

I took on ghostwriting clients for LinkedIn and newsletters, so this part comes from my own work. I couldn’t find a survey I trust for it.

Monthly deals beat per-post prices.

Say a founder wants eight LinkedIn posts a month and you quote $800. That’s $100 a post.

If each post takes 90 minutes with the call included, you earn about ~$65 an hour.

Editing someone else’s newsletter or drafts works the same way and asks less of your own voice.

(If you’d rather have someone handle the writing, content strategy, or newsletter/LinkedIn growth for you, these are exactly the kinds of things I help clients with. Fill out this form OR Drop Me A Mail)

3. Medium.

The Partner Program pays from the time paying members spend reading your paywalled stories.

You need a paid Medium membership and a Stripe account, and the $10 minimum rolls over from month to month until you hit it.

Medium also announced that from February 17 it would reward stories that bring in new members.

Most beginners earn $0 to $100 in their first three to six months. I couldn’t verify that, but the $10 minimum makes it believable.

Your first payout may land around the time you forget you have a Medium account.

My take is that Medium is a place to practice in front of strangers. It won’t pay your rent. (this is coming from someone who has 18K+ followers on Medium and still doesn’t write there anymore…Yeah, that’s me. 😭)

4. Substack paid subscriptions.

Substack is free to start.

Once you turn on paid, Substack keeps 10%, and Stripe takes 2.9% plus 30 cents plus a 0.7% billing fee.

On an $8 monthly plan, Substack takes 80 cents, and Stripe takes 58.8 cents.
You keep about $6.61.

Substack said in 2025 that it passed 5 million paid subscriptions. More than half of new subscribers come from inside its own network.

On my own newsletter, Substack Notes brought in more than 65%+ of the new subscribers.

That network is why I pick Substack over a blank website.

The catch is the paid share.

The average paid conversion is 3%.

With 1,000 free readers, 3% is 30 paid subscribers. At $8 each, you keep about $198 a month.

Reaching 100 paid subscribers takes about 3,300 free readers.

5. Digital products.

Gumroad charges 10% plus 50 cents on direct sales, and a flat 30% on sales that come through its Discover marketplace.

Since January 2025, it also collects and pays sales tax for you.

A $15 template costs you $2.00 in Gumroad’s cut, which is 13%. A $5 one costs $1.00, which is 20%. The flat 50 cents hurts small prices the most.

Link to your product from your own posts, because sales through your own link stay at the 10% rate.

6. Books on KDP.

Amazon doesn’t ban AI-generated books but wants them disclosed.

KDP recently confirmed a cap of two new titles per week.

As far as I know, ebook royalties are 70% for books priced from $2.99 to $9.99 in many countries, and 35% outside that band.

Payment comes roughly two months after the month of sale.

A book is the slowest stream here. It fits best when your topic is something readers already search for.

Six situations and the stream I would pick

Find the closest match.

1. If you need money within a month, have 5 to 10 hours a week, no cash, and a small audience, take the service lane.

Pick a field from number 5 on your list.

A nurse can write for health startups, a bookkeeper for small-business newsletters.

Post two sample pieces for that field for free on your Substack. Then message 20 founders or small agency owners who buy that kind of writing.

Aim for two real conversations in two weeks.

If 20 messages bring zero replies, change the message first, then the field.

Stay in the lane.

2. With steady pay from a job, 3 to 5 hours a week and no rush, build an audience.

Run a free Substack, post a Note a day and publish once a week on one narrow topic.

Skip the paid tier for now.

My guess is about a year before it earns anything worth mentioning.

4. Once you have 300 or more readers who open your emails, plus a few spare hours, take the product lane and sell it by hand first.

Send a short offer to ten readers, take payment through a link, and hand over a rough version.

Three buyers is a good sign.

Zero buyers means you ask readers what they would pay for.

5. If you know a professional field well and your readers work in it, a paid newsletter can work with fewer readers because the price can be higher.

Say you charge $20 a month.

Substack and Stripe fees come to about $3.02, so you keep $16.98.

A hundred paid subscribers is about $1,698 a month.

Whether you can reach 100 depends on how many of your free readers are professionals in that field.

Put a poll in a post and test the price first.

6. With 20 or more hours a week and no cash, maybe between jobs, run two lanes.

Put about 70% of your hours into services for rent money and 30% into the audience lane.

That split is my own rule of thumb.

The 30% is the part that disappears.

When I took on ghostwriting clients, my own posting went inconsistent.

Client work has a deadline, and your own account doesn’t, so the deadline wins.

Book the audience hours first and keep the block small.

Twenty minutes of Notes every day beats a four-hour Sunday plan.

7. If you hate pitching, skip the service lane until people start messaging you.

Posts and Notes can bring those messages in.

Meanwhile, run a free Substack and build one small product for the readers you already have.

Run the numbers before you pick a price

Say you spend 20 hours building a template and sell 40 copies at $15 over three months.

That’s $600 gross.

Gumroad’s cut is $2.00 a sale, or $80, which leaves $520 before card costs.

Over 20 hours, that’s $26 an hour.

Now take a freelance post at $0.08 per word: 1,000 words, three hours, $80.

That’s about $27 an hour.

The hourly pay is the same.

The template can sell again next month and the article can’t.

Add the hours you spend telling people about the template and its number drops.

A 30-day test

Read more

Open your bookmarks folder and count the links about making money online.

Now count how many of those ideas you ran for more than a month.

If the second number is way smaller, you’re in good company.

Most writers who want to earn online end up with a pile of half-built things: a newsletter with 11 posts, a Gumroad page with one product, an affiliate link inside a post nobody read, a Fiverr gig from last spring with zero orders.

Each one made sense on the day you started it. Together they add up to $0.

Fixing that takes a method for picking one path, a 10-day test to see if anyone will pay, and written rules for when to keep going and when to switch.

You can start all of it this week.

Why more options keep you broke

In 2000, two researchers named Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up a jam table at a grocery store in Menlo Park, California.

One day it had 24 jams. Another day it had 6.

The big table got more people to stop and taste. But only about 3 percent of them bought a jar.

At the small table, around 30 percent did.

Later research was mixed.

A 2010 review led by Benjamin Scheibehenne looked at dozens of experiments and found the average effect of too many choices was close to zero.

The effect showed up mostly when people had no clear goal, and the options were hard to compare.

That second part sounds like your situation.

“Newsletter or digital product or affiliate or freelancing?” is a hard comparison, and most of us start it with no goal beyond “make some money.”

The jam table is only half the story, though.

The higher cost shows up after you choose, when you switch.

Say you have 8 free hours a week. Spread over five hustles, each one gets about 90 minutes.

That’s one short post, or a product page you tweak and never finish.

Nobody gets to know you in 90 minutes a week.

Money tends to show up after strangers have seen you a handful of times and decided you know your stuff.

Every switch resets that clock.

You also pay a setup tax each time: a new platform, new settings, new rules to learn, a new logo you’ll redo twice.

What 2026 changed for small writers

Making things got cheap.

Anyone can put together a 40-page planner, a prompt pack, or a Notion template in an afternoon now, and plenty of people did.

Search Gumroad or Etsy for a generic habit tracker and count the near-twins.

When shelves are that crowded, a generic product sells for close to nothing, and buyers have learned to scroll past it.

AI tools are a big reason the shelves filled up.

A draft that sounds like the other 40 gives readers no reason to pick yours.

What’s still scarce is a reason to trust you.

Substack says its network has passed 5 million paid subscriptions. Those people picked specific writers.

Readers pay $8 a month for one person whose take they want in their inbox, and a “finance newsletter” with no face behind it rarely gets that.

The game in 2026 is being specific, with one clear reader and one clear problem. That’s hard across five hustles and doable in one.

Substack keeps 10 percent of paid subscription revenue, and Stripe takes its usual processing fee on top, 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per charge in the US.

The math later in this piece uses both.

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Pick one lane using four questions

I use the word “lane” for one reader, one problem, one thing you sell, and one place you show up.

A sample:
“Freelance writers who want their first retainer client. I sell a $29 pitch template and a $150 pitch review, and I show up on Substack Notes.”

To choose yours, spend 15 minutes writing every idea you’ve collected on a single page.

Every one, including the affiliate thing, the planner idea, and the KDP book you keep meaning to start.

Then score each idea from 1 to 5 on four questions:

• Money nearby: are people already paying for something close to this?

• My edge: do I have a job, result, or experience that gives people a reason to believe me?

• Speed: how soon can I ask a stranger for money? Days is a 5. Six months is a 1.

• Staying power: will I still show up in month four when numbers are tiny?

Add the four scores.

For a writer with an accounting day job, it might look like this:

• Freelance writing for accounting software blogs: 5 + 4 + 5 + 3 = 17

• A $19 tax-season checklist for freelancers: 4 + 5 + 4 + 4 = 17

• Substack newsletter on small-business tax basics: 4 + 5 + 2 + 4 = 15

• Affiliate links for bookkeeping tools: 3 + 2 + 3 + 2 = 10

• A KDP book on taxes for freelancers: 3 + 4 + 2 + 2 = 11

Two ideas tied, so the speed score breaks the tie.

Freelancing wins, because a client can pay within a couple of weeks.

The newsletter stays in this setup as the place where the freelance work gets seen.

One lane can have a channel, and for a writer that channel is often Substack.

My opinion: if rent matters, lean toward the fastest score.

Services pay first, and audiences pay later. If you have a stable job and can wait, give staying power more weight.

Everything else goes in the parking lot, which comes up again below.

Ten days to find out if anyone will pay

You don’t need to build anything yet.

You need to learn whether money moves in this lane.

On days 1 and 2, look for money that’s already moving.

On Substack, browse the leaderboards for your category and look for publications with a Bestseller badge.

Check what they charge.

Most paid tiers you’ll see sit between $5 and $10 a month.

On Amazon, find the top books in your topic and read the 3-star reviews.

Skip the 5-star ones, since those say “great book!” and nothing else.

The 3-star reviews say things like “too basic” or “no examples for freelancers.”

Those complaints are your gap.

On days 3 to 6, talk to 10 people.

Find them in your niche’s Substack comment sections and Notes replies. Anyone leaving a long comment about a problem has that problem.

Skip the pitch.

Ask about the past, since people can’t predict their future behavior.

Ask “When did you last try to fix this? What did you try? What did it cost you?”

A person who spent $200 on a course last year is a better lead than a person who says “yeah, I’d totally buy that.”

Copy their exact words into a note.

Those phrases become your headlines.

On days 7 to 10, ask for money.

Make a one-page offer.

For a product or a service, a Stripe Payment Link takes about ten minutes to set up.

On Substack, you can put a post behind the paywall or open a founding member tier.

Keep prices small and real: a template at $15 to $29, a workshop at $49, a service review at $150.

Send it to the people you talked to and to 20 or so others who fit.

Before you send anything, write down your bar. Mine would be 3 buyers out of 30 asks.

I made that number up, and no study backs it.

A number picked before the test still beats a feeling picked after.

Words are cheap and time is worth a little, but a yes means money.

“Sounds great, send it over” is still a maybe until a payment lands.

If you get 0 out of 30, the lane may still be fine. The dials below come first.

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Run the lane for 90 days

Pick a weekly routine small enough to survive a bad week.

This one fits around a job:

• 2 posts a week

• A few Notes a day, short ones, mostly replies to other people

• 5 direct asks to people who fit your reader

Yes, direct asks feel awkward.

The awkwardness wears off around the fifth one.

Keep a scoreboard on paper with four columns: pieces published, asks made, replies received, dollars earned.

Fill it in every week, in the same 10 minutes.

On Substack, the stats page shows where new subscribers came from, such as Notes, recommendations, or search.

Look at it once a week. Daily checking turns into a hobby, and a bad one.

When to stay and when to switch

Write these rules before you start.

When numbers get slow, your mood will argue with you, and you’ll want something on paper to argue back.

You stay when:

• Strangers respond, meaning people who aren’t friends or family

• Any number on the scoreboard has gone up for three weeks in a row, even slowly

• People ask follow-up questions, share your work or request more of it

• One buyer comes back for a second purchase

You switch lanes only when all of these are true:

• You posted on schedule for 12 weeks

• You made at least 30 direct offers to people who fit your reader

• Strangers bought nothing, and nobody asked a follow-up

• You already tried the three dials below

If you skipped half your weeks, the test hasn’t happened yet.

Run it first, then judge it.

The three dials are who you sell to, what you sell, and where you show up. Turn one dial at a time for 3 to 4 weeks.

Change all three, and you’ll never know which one worked.

Your scoreboard tells you which dial to try:

• People see it but don’t click: wrong audience or a weak headline. Turn the “who” dial, or rewrite the headline using your interview phrases.

• People click but don’t buy: the offer or the price is off. Turn the “what” dial.

• People buy once, then go quiet or ask for refunds: the product doesn’t solve the problem. Go back to your interview notes.

• People subscribe but never open your emails: what you promised on the sign-up page differs from what you send. Fix the promise.

• Good results in one place and nothing in another: move your effort. Turn the “where” dial.

Only after you’ve tried the dials does a full switch make sense.

Where the shiny ideas go

New ideas will arrive, usually right when a post flops.

Affiliate marketing looks great from whatever lane you’re not in.

Make a note called “Parking lot.”

When an idea shows up, write one line and today’s date. Skip the research, and skip the course. Open the note again when the 90 days end.

I’d bet most of those ideas will look a lot less shiny by then.

The few that still look good have survived a real filter, which beats anything a late-night YouTube video can give you.

Mute the hustle accounts for 90 days too, including the ones posting “Day 7 of my $10K challenge.”

They fill the same bookmarks folder you started this article with.

A realistic look at the numbers

A Substack with 1,000 free subscribers, where 4 percent pay $8 a month, brings in $320 a month before fees.

After Substack’s 10 percent and Stripe’s cut, about $265 reaches you.

The 4 percent is a reasonable example, and the numbers floating around the internet vary a lot, so check your own.

That $265 is real money, and it won’t cover rent.

Getting to 1,000 free subscribers also takes a good while for most writers.

Compare it with a $19 checklist sold to 2 percent of the same 1,000 readers, which brings in $380 once.

One freelance project at $300 beats both for month one.

So the fast-paying thing goes first, and the slow asset builds next to it.

The freelance client pays this month, and the newsletter you write for them to find you pays in a year.

One lane can hold both, as long as you know which job each one does.

What to do before you close this tab

1. Write every idea you’ve collected on one page. Set a timer for 15 minutes.

2. Score each one on the four questions. Circle the winner and move the rest to the parking lot.

3. Write your lane in one sentence: the reader, the problem, what you sell, and where you show up.

4. Message 10 people who fit your reader today, and ask them about the last time they tried to solve this.

5. Write down your yes bar and your switch rules, and put today’s date on the page.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP OR Drop Me A Mail

PREFER TO DO IT YOURSELF?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

WANT TO PARTNER WITH THP?

Have a product, tool, or service that would genuinely help people building something online?

The Human Project works with relevant brands and creators through newsletter sponsorships, sponsored articles, and custom collaborations.

If your brand aligns with our audience, let’s explore how we could work together.

→ Sponsor THP OR Drop Me A Mail

Someone just subscribed to a newsletter that recommends yours.

A small card shows up on their screen with your logo, your name, and one short line about what you write.

They tap subscribe, or they scroll on.

They read that line in about three seconds, and they have 40 other things going on.

It’s easy to spend weeks on a post and four minutes on that line.

Everything below uses Substack for examples, since that’s where most of us read and write.

Some Substack numbers floating around the internet come from sites that don’t show their sources, so I stick to what Substack itself has said where I can, and I flag it when I’m unsure.

Where your positioning gets read

You have more places than you think, and each one gets a different amount of space.

• The recommendation card, shown to new subscribers right after they sign up somewhere else

• Your Notes profile, which people tap when you reply to them or restack something

• The About page

• The welcome email

• The link preview when someone shares a post

Do the thinking once, then cut it to fit each space. If the thinking is fuzzy, all five come out fuzzy.

Substack’s own team backs this up.

In a post about how the feed works, they said notes that share who you are, what you do, and why someone should care can help the right readers find you.

They pointed to a writer named Julie Fratantoni, who posts exactly that kind of note, and said one of hers brought in close to 4,000 new subscribers.

That’s one writer, picked by Substack, so treat it as an example and not a promise.

Subscribe now

Pick one person and give them a search box

“Writers and creators” is a crowd, not a reader.

Think of one specific person at the moment they’d need you.

Make one up if you have to.

Say she’s a 34-year-old accountant in Nigeria with a full-time job. She wants to earn $300 a month from writing by next summer. She’s read three threads about Substack and still doesn’t know what to post first.

Now write down five things she’d type into a search box or say to a friend:

• how to start a newsletter with a full-time job

• is Substack worth it for beginners

• how much do small newsletters really earn

• what to write in my first five posts

• how long until someone pays me

Those are her words, so borrow them.

Your bio, your About page, and your post titles should use them word for word, or close to it.

If you don’t know what your reader would type, go read.

Check the comments under big Substack growth posts, Reddit threads where beginners ask questions, and replies to your own Notes.

Copy the phrases people use when they’re confused.

Finding a niche in a crowded room

Writing, side income, and making money online is a packed lane.

Substack says it has passed 5 million paid subscriptions, so people do pay for newsletters.

My bet is that they pay for a specific thing from someone who clearly knows it.

So shrink your topic, one piece at a time:

1. Topic: writing a newsletter

2. Reader: writing a newsletter as a night-shift nurse

3. Method: one post a week, written in 30 minutes after a shift

4. Result: first 100 subscribers

That reader gets far less advice than the general “writer” does, and the advice they do get fits their life badly.

A nurse who finds you will tell other nurses.

You can widen the door once people trust you. Going the other way is much harder.

A newsletter that starts as “ideas about work and life” can’t shrink later, because nobody ever knew what it was.

One more test for choosing: what do you have access to that’s hard to Google?

Your job, your city, your real numbers, an odd hobby, a failed experiment you can describe in detail.

Other writers can copy your topic. They can’t copy your access.

Write the promise in one sentence

A promise says who gets what, how, and how often.

Plug yours in:

[Reader] gets [specific result] through [your method], every [rhythm].

Weak version: “Insights on productivity, mindset and growth.”

That sentence fits any newsletter, which means it promises nothing a reader could check.

Stronger version: “One 20-minute writing exercise every Thursday for new writers with day jobs.”

After the first email, a reader knows if you kept your word.

A promise people can check builds trust faster than a big one.

The paid tier needs its own promise. If free readers already get everything, nobody has a reason to pay.

One split that works for many writers: free posts hold the thinking, paid posts hold the working files, the full numbers, the templates, or a chat. Say which.

“Bonus content” has never made anyone reach for a card.

Pricing and promise go together, so here’s the math.

Substack takes 10% of paid subscriptions, and Stripe takes about 2.9% plus 30 cents.

On an $8 monthly subscription, Substack keeps $0.80, Stripe keeps around $0.53, and you get about $6.67.

Naming the thing

Big Substack newsletters show three common name patterns.

Your own name plus a topic is the first.

Lenny’s Newsletter is Lenny Rachitsky writing about product and growth.

Trust comes fast because a real person stands behind it. The downside is that it’s harder to sell later or hand to someone else.

Reader plus rhythm is the second.

Justin Welsh’s The Saturday Solopreneur tells you who it’s for and when it shows up.

A mood or attitude is the third.

Not Boring, from Packy McCormick, has a wink in it.

Names like this are memorable, but they need a strong subtitle, because the name alone says nothing about the topic.

Whichever you pick, run it through these tests:

1. Say it out loud to someone on a bad phone line. Can they spell it?

2. Search it. If three bigger things already own the name, you’ll be hard to find.

3. Check that the Substack web address is free and reads well as a link.

4. Imagine your topic shifts in two years. Does the name still fit?

5. Type it as a handle. Check what it spells when the words run together.

If you already have a vague name and a few hundred readers, fix the subtitle and the bio before renaming anything.

Those cost nothing and do most of the work.

The bio, the subtitle and the About page

A bio is a tiny ad aimed at a reader, so write it for the reader.

Writers often list their own credentials first, and nobody scrolling a recommendation card cares yet.

A formula for the short line:

For [specific reader]: [result] in [time or effort].

Here’s a before and after for an invented newsletter, so nobody gets hurt.

Before: “Helping creators unlock their potential through authentic storytelling.”

After: “For nurses with night shifts who want to write on the side. One 30-minute exercise a week.”

The second one has a reader, an amount of effort, and a rhythm.

Someone in that job reads it and thinks, that’s me.

The About page has more room, and most writers waste it. Five short paragraphs do the job:

• Who this is for, in their words, using the phrases from your search-box list

• What they’ll get and how often

• Proof you’ve earned the right to say it: your numbers, your results, your real history

• One thing about you that makes you a person and not a logo

• Who this will bore. It sounds odd to say, but the right people stay, and the wrong ones leave quickly, and both outcomes are good.

Put your three best posts right under it.

A new reader should understand within a minute what a month of your newsletter feels like.

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Planning what you publish

Editorial architecture is a fancy phrase for a plain question: what goes out, and when, so you don’t invent it from scratch every week?

Start with two or three pillars.

Each one is a type of post tied to your promise.

For the nurse example, that could be a weekly writing exercise, a short story about how another night-shift writer found time, and a monthly look at real numbers from your own newsletter.

Give each pillar a name and a format.

A named, recurring post is easier to write, easier to promote in Notes, and easier for readers to remember.

“Thursday Exercise” beats “this week’s post.”

Keep the rhythm small enough to survive a bad month.

Weekly is a good start. Three posts a week sounds fine until week five.

Substack lets you split a publication into Sections, and readers can choose what they get.

It looks organized, so it’s tempting.

I’d start with none or one.

Each section splits your audience, and your attention, and a new newsletter has little of either.

That’s my opinion, and writers with big lists may disagree.

The welcome email is the first thing a new subscriber gets from you. Keep it short.

Say what’s coming and when, link your three front-door posts, and ask one question, like what they’re stuck on right now.

The replies tell you who joined, and your next post title is probably sitting in there.

Testing it in public

Notes gives you a free test lab.

Take your one-line promise and write it three ways.

Post one a day for three days, each as a plain note that says who you are and who it’s for.

After each one, check your stats to see how many people subscribed, then keep the version that worked.

Don’t judge by likes.

One writer who tracked every note on their newsletter reported that the notes that went viral brought few subscribers, while quieter ones brought 15 to 20 each.

That’s one writer’s own data, so hold it loosely.

A seven-day plan

Day 1: Write the reader. One person, one situation, five search phrases.

Day 2: Shrink your niche with the four steps: topic, reader, method, result.

Day 3: Write the promise sentence, plus the paid promise if you have a paid tier.

Day 4: Run the name tests. Change the name only if it fails two or more. Otherwise fix the subtitle.

Day 5: Rewrite the bio and the About page. Add the proof line and the three front-door posts.

Day 6: Update the welcome email and add one question to it.

Day 7: Post three versions of your one-liner in Notes over the next three days, check your stats, and keep the winner.

Before Day 1, read your current bio the way a stranger would.

If you can’t tell who it’s for in three seconds, start there.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP OR Drop Me A Mail

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 16,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

Picture a Substack with 3,000 free subscribers and a paywall set at $5 a month.

Say 1.5% of those readers upgrade.

That’s 45 people, and after fees it comes to about $182 a month.

If you spend ten hours a week on the paid posts, you’re earning roughly $4 an hour.

Most Substack advice says to try harder.

Fix the paywall, fix the welcome email, test a new price.

Sometimes that helps.

But I think a lot of writers keep pushing on the hardest way to get paid here, while easier ways sit right next to it.

What a $5 paywall really pays

Start with fees.

Substack takes 10% of your subscription revenue, and Stripe charges its usual 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction.

On a $5 monthly plan, you keep about $4.05.
On a $50 yearly plan, you keep about $43.25.

How many readers pay?

Substack’s own guidance has long said 5-10%, and you’ll see that number everywhere.

But beehiiv’s 2026 report on paid newsletters puts the median at 0.62%, with the top quarter landing between 2% and 5%.

The same summary says the 5-10% range describes top performers and suggests planning your revenue at 1-2%.

Those are beehiiv numbers.

Substack doesn’t publish a matching conversion figure of its own, so treat all of this as a rough guide.

Then there’s the platform itself.

Chris Best said more than 100,000 publishers make money on Substack through subscriptions.

Substack announced 5 million paid subscriptions in March 2025.

Do the division yourself.

5 million paid subscriptions across 100,000 publications is 50 each on average.

The big names pull that average up, so a typical writer probably sits below it.

And one reader paying for three newsletters counts as three paid subscriptions.

Subscribe now

Why strangers say no to monthly charges

Substack keeps making free signups easier.

A Substack analysis from Really Good Business Ideas argues that the easier signups get, the lower the average reader’s intent to pay.

Someone who taps subscribe from a recommendation is casually curious.

That’s fine, but curious people don’t pull out a card.

Yana G.Y. broke her own numbers down by source.

Subscribers from recommendations and the wider Substack network paid at about 4.4%, while people she imported from social media paid at about 1.2%.

Same writing and same paywall, with a different door in.

So the followers you bring over from other platforms are the least likely to sign up for a monthly charge.

They might still buy a $19 checklist.

That part is my own guess, but a one-time purchase asks for less than a promise every month. Nobody has ever felt guilty about a checklist they forgot to cancel.

The sponsor door opens at 100 paid subscribers

In June 2026, Substack launched the next phase of its native sponsorship program.

Launch partners include Yahoo Scout, Whatnot, Granola, Balenciaga, T-Mobile, Polymarket and Uber.

Chris Best wrote that the first group of partners is putting millions of dollars into creators on the platform.

Writers get in through a Creator Kit, which is a media kit built inside your dashboard.

It’s open to Bestsellers, meaning publications with at least 100 paid subscribers, and those writers see a Sponsorships tab.

You pick from ten sponsorship formats, set a minimum budget, and write a private list of brands you’d turn down.

Kits aren’t public.

If a brand looks like a fit, the Substack team may email you.

The catch is the threshold.

At a 1.5% rate, you’d need about 6,700 free subscribers to reach 100 paid ones.

A newsletter with 8,000 subscribers and 50 paid would never show up.

Substack calls the rule current, so it could change.

Outside the program, writers also find sponsors through marketplaces like Paved or by reaching out to brands directly.

My take: if you’re heading toward 100 paid subscribers anyway, this is a real reason to switch a small paid tier on.

Below that, sponsors are a later problem.

Don’t build your plan around them yet.

Sell one small thing first

The cheapest way to learn whether your readers will pay is to sell them something small, once.

A template.
A checklist.
A 20-page guide.

Whatever you’d otherwise explain in the same email for the fifth time.

For checkout, you can use Gumroad, Payhip, Stan Store, or a plain Stripe payment link.

Price it somewhere between $9 and $39 to begin with.

On a $29 product, you’d keep roughly $25 after fees.

Substack can’t see what happens on a checkout page it doesn’t run, so you’ll count sales inside your checkout tool.

Substack’s post stats do show link clicks, which lets you compare clicks to sales and see how many people looked and walked away.

Get paid for the work behind the writing

Write • Build • Scale says it has more than 46,000 subscribers and 1,600 paid members.

It also says it brings in more than $50,000 a month as a business, and less than 10% of that comes from paid subscriptions, with the rest from courses, coaching, and digital products.

That’s their own report, so it’s one example.

Their newsletter introduces people to the business, and most of the money comes from other products.

You can try a tiny version of this.

Sell a 30-minute call, or feedback on someone’s About page, for something like $49. Three buyers will teach you more than any poll.

Promote it without wrecking your Notes

A lot of writers trip on this step.

They finish the product, write a Note with a link on the first line, and watch it sink.

WriteStack, which makes a Notes scheduling tool, looked at 655,056 Notes from July 2026.

Notes without a link had a median of 4 likes, and Notes with a link had a median of 2.

Where the link sits matters too.

Link Notes that opened with the URL averaged 3.1 likes, while those with 120 to 299 characters of setup before the link averaged 14.7.

Naming your work without linking it did better.

Notes that mentioned the writer’s own post in words, with no URL, averaged 12.52 likes, against 3.75 for Notes with a Substack link.

Links to outside sites did poorly, and 92.4% of Notes with an external link produced no subscribers at all.

WriteStack says its data shows correlation only, with no controlled test behind it.

It’s still enough to act on.

Name the product in words inside your Note, and put the link in your posts, welcome email, and About page.

Let Notes bring people to your publication, then let your publication send them to the product.

A 30-day plan

Week 1: Post one question as a Note.

Something like “What’s the one thing you keep getting stuck on with [your topic]?”

One clear question per Note works better than several.

Copy every reply into a document. Your product’s title will probably be sitting in there, in your readers’ own words.

Week 2: Build the smallest version that solves one problem.

One page is fine. Finish it in a weekend, before you start doubting it.

Week 3: Set up checkout and the sales page.

Buy it yourself once with a real card, check the file arrives, then refund it. A

dd the link to your welcome email, About page, and the bottom of your next post.

Week 4: Launch.

Write three posts that each touch the problem, and mention the product at the end.

Post Notes that describe it without a link. Send one email to your whole list.

Then open your post stats for clicks and your checkout tool for sales.

If strangers bought (friends and family don’t count), make a second product or raise the price.

If nobody did, the product probably answered a question nobody asked.

Go back to the replies from Week 1.

Help Keep The Human Project Free

I started THP because I wanted to create the kind of publication I wished existed: practical ideas without the usual hype, recycled advice, or “get rich quick” nonsense.

I want THP to remain free and independent.

No paywall. No mandatory subscription. No holding the best ideas hostage behind a premium tier.

If this issue gave you an idea worth trying, saved you time, or simply made you think differently, you can help keep THP going.

Help Keep THP Free

The money side by side

Take that same 3,000-subscriber list.

• Paid tier at 1.5%: 45 people at $5 comes to about $182 a month after fees, or roughly $2,190 a year if nobody cancels.

• One product: if 2% buy a $29 guide, that’s 60 sales and about $1,500 after fees, in your launch month. The 2% is my assumption. I don’t know of a public benchmark I’d trust for this.

Over a full year, the two land in the same neighborhood.

What differs is speed and workload.

The product pays right away and doesn’t need weekly paywalled posts.
The subscription keeps paying each month, but only while you keep delivering, and some people will cancel along the way.

They also stack, so you can run both.

When a paywall is the right call

Subscriptions do better in some niches.

beehiiv’s top-decile publications in categories like investing and economy reach 18 to 30% conversion, though most niches sit closer to that sub-1% median.

If you publish research or analysis that readers act on and can’t get free elsewhere, a paywall makes sense.

Turning it on later is also easy.

Substack costs nothing until you charge, so you can wait until product buyers and repeat readers show you who your paying people are.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP OR Drop Me A Mail

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

Substack says its app brought in more than 32 million free subscriptions and nearly half a million paid ones in the three months before October 2025.

Meanwhile, your count hasn’t moved in weeks.

Both things are true at once, and the gap between them is smaller than it looks. Often the cause is one or two leaks you can find in about an hour.

I know this from the inside.

I started this newsletter in October 2024 and posted four Notes a day into early 2025, mostly to watch how the feed behaved.

Then ghostwriting clients filled my week, and my posting got patchy.

When I came back in early 2026 and started studying what ~300 viral Notes of 2026 I scraped had in common, growth picked up.

Notes ended up bringing most of my subscribers.

So this guide comes from someone who stalled and came back.

It uses what Substack has said in public, plus a tool that only launched last month.

Why the easy growth ended

Substack was unusually generous for a while.

Sarah Fay, who coaches Substack writers, dates a growth bubble to around November 2024, when Notes took off, and says single viral Notes in February 2025 brought some writers hundreds or even thousands of new subscribers.

By mid-2025, she was seeing some writers lose 70 to 90 percent of their monthly new subscribers.

She’s describing her own clients and a chat of bestselling writers, so it isn’t a study. Take it as a strong hint.

If your best month was early 2025, you’re measuring yourself against a stretch that was easier than normal.

Worth knowing before you decide your writing got worse.

Subscribe now

Find where readers get lost

Growth stalls in one of three places: readers never find you, they find you and leave, or they subscribe and never open an email.

Each one needs a different fix, so check before you change anything. Otherwise, you redesign your header image when the real issue is that nobody has seen the newsletter.

Open your stats and look at three spots:

• The “Unique Visitors” tab, which shows the top sources from where your readers came.

• The “New Subscribers” page, which charts subscribers by source over time and marks the days you published.

• The posts table in Stats, which lists the free subscriptions each post brought in. Click the column header to sort it.

Now read what you see.

If visits are very low, you have a visibility problem. Go to the Notes, replies, and recommendations sections below.

If visits look fine but hardly anyone subscribes, your front door is the problem. That’s the next section.

If people subscribe but your open rate sags, the promise on your homepage and the emails you send don’t line up.

I couldn’t find a trustworthy public number for a good free-subscribe rate on Substack, so I won’t make one up.

Compare your posts with each other instead.

The post that turned the most visitors into subscribers shows you what your best reader wants.

How the Notes feed decides who sees you

Mike Cohen, Substack’s head of machine learning, described the goal of the feed in one line: “The goal is to get people to discover, subscribe, and ideally pay.”

He also said the feed has no built-in favorite format.

Long essays, short Notes, and video all compete on the same footing, and each reader sees more of whatever they respond to.

So you can stop hunting for a secret format, because the feed doesn’t have one.

He explained why replies and restacks help, too.

They happen on Substack, so the platform can see which publications share readers and start showing each audience the other’s work.

Links to your own posts seem to be fine here.

The feed wants readers to reach your posts, so a link doesn’t cost you the way it does on ad-driven apps.

Substack hasn’t published how much each signal counts, so I’d treat that as a strong hint and test it yourself.

Post the note that says who you are

Substack keeps pointing at one type of note.

Julie Fratantoni posted a note explaining who she is and why she’s on Substack, and it brought in 32,535 new subscribers and a $4,546 revenue increase.

Anna Lena Feunekes used illustrations and a short explanation of what her newsletter delivers, and picked up nearly 4,000 subscribers from that one note.

Those are Substack’s best examples, chosen to make a point, so yours will be smaller.

The pattern still holds.

A stranger should understand in one glance who the newsletter is for and what they get.

Use this template:

I write [name], a [how often] letter for [specific person] who [specific problem]. Each issue has [one concrete thing]. Start with [title of your best post by subscribers gained].

Say you write for first-time landlords.

It becomes: I write a weekly letter for people who just bought their first rental and have no idea what to do when the water heater dies. Each issue breaks down one real situation and what it cost. Start with the post about the flooded basement.

Post it, then post it again every few weeks in fresh words.

Each time, a different set of strangers sees it.

Track subscribers and keep posting

Open the stats on any note.

Substack shows the revenue it generated, new paid and free subscribers, and shares.

Keep a tiny sheet with three columns: date, first line of the note, subscribers gained.

After 20 notes, sort it.

A note with 4 likes and 9 new subscribers beats one with 90 likes and none.

Likes feel good, and they’ll trick you into writing for the wrong crowd.

A simple weekly mix looks like this.

Post one Note that says who you write for and what you send.
Post one that quotes a line from your latest post.
Restack other writers a few times with a sentence of your own.
Fill the rest with plain observations from your week.

Casual Notes count.

Substack looked at fashion writer Viv Chen, who gets roughly 30% of her subscribers from Notes.

Its team found that steady posting helped her more than the occasional hit, and that many of her best Notes are low-key and observational.

Pick a pace you can hold through a bad week.

I posted four a day once, and client work ended it. One a day for a year beats four a day for a month.

After a few weeks, open the stats on individual Notes.

Substack shows how many subscribers each one brought in. Sort your winners by that number and ignore the likes.

Fratantoni’s Note worked because it told strangers what to expect, and a joke with lots of likes might bring you zero.

Reply like you mean it

Replies that add something now count for more than likes.

I’d use this routine.

Pick 10 writers with 500 to 5,000 subscribers whose readers you’d like to meet.

Leave five replies a day under their notes or posts.

Each reply adds a fact, an example, or a real question. “Great post!” adds nothing.

Why small writers instead of giants?

Under a huge account, your reply lands in a pile of hundreds.

Under a mid-size writer, the author reads it, and so do their followers.

That’s my reasoning, and nobody has measured it.

Borrow other people’s readers

When someone subscribes to a publication on Substack, they are shown that publication’s recommendations right after.

When you recommend a writer, they get prompted to recommend you back.

That’s Substack’s own description of how it works.

It’s slow, quiet growth.

Jari Roomer’s Write Build Scale newsletter says recommendations brought it more than 8,000 new subscribers with very little effort.

Start like this:

1. Add four to six publications you read. Go to Recommendations in your dashboard and write one honest sentence about why for each.

2. Open Stats, then Audience. It shows which other publications your readers also read. Those writers are your most natural partners.

3. Pick partners whose readers overlap with yours. Size matters less. A small newsletter with your audience can send subscribers who open your emails, and a huge unrelated one can send subscribers who never do.

4. Send a short note to a writer you’ve been replying to. Something like: “Hi [name], I’ve read [newsletter] since [specific post]. I just added you to my recommendations because [one honest reason]. If it ever feels like a fit, I’d love a spot on yours.”

Then check the Network tab in Stats each month to see what the Substack network is sending you.

Watch your open rate as well. Subscribers from recommendations can raise your count without raising the number of people who read.

Fix the page strangers land on

When someone taps your name from a note, they land on your bio and your homepage.

Your bio should hold the same sentence as your who-I-am note.

Pin or link a “start here” post, and make it the post that gained the most subscribers, whatever you think of it.

Then look at your welcome email, because every new subscriber gets it.

Ask one question in it, like “What are you stuck on right now?” Answer the first 50 replies.

You’ll learn the exact words readers use for their problem, and those words make good notes.

You can now tag subscribers, segment your list, and send automated emails, which people pay hundreds of dollars a month for on Mailchimp and Kit.

A simple use: tag everyone who replies to your welcome email, and write to them first when you have a new idea.

People prune their subscriptions, and they’re most likely to do it right after you send a newsletter.

A small dip after each send is normal.

Help Keep The Human Project Free

I started THP because I wanted to create the kind of publication I wished existed: practical ideas without the usual hype, recycled advice, or “get rich quick” nonsense.

I want THP to remain free and independent.

No paywall. No mandatory subscription. No holding the best ideas hostage behind a premium tier.

If this issue gave you an idea worth trying, saved you time, or simply made you think differently, you can help keep THP going.

Help Keep THP Free

Readers can now check for AI

In July 2026, Substack added an AI check built with a company called Pangram.

Readers can scan any post published after July 21, and writers get a scan button in the publish flow.

Chris Best, Substack’s CEO, said the goal is context for readers.

Substack also added an optional “How I make this” note where you can explain your process.

A Substack spokesperson told 404 Media the tools do not affect discovery, and writers can switch detection off or report a scan they think is wrong.

Writers are split.

Alice Lemee, a ghostwriter and writing coach, says detectors are wrong too often and a single false accusation can damage a writer’s reputation. Pangram’s CEO, Max Spero, estimates its false positive rate at roughly one in 10,000.

I can’t tell you who’s right.

My advice is to write the draft yourself, start to finish.

If you use any tool afterward, keep it to cleanup, and be ready to say so.

Add a two-sentence “How I make this” note to your publication.

Then fill posts with details nobody could guess, like your own numbers and the name of the person who said the thing.

In an AI world, the more of your life and voice you put in, the likelier readers are to stay.

A four-week plan

Thirty minutes a day is enough: ten to write one note, fifteen to reply, five to log the results.

1. Week one: run the Growth check, write down your numbers, and rewrite your bio and welcome email.

2. Week two: post the who-I-am note. Start the daily routine of posting notes, replies, and one log entry.

3. Week three: message relevant writers. Recommend all of them first. Do one guest swap if anyone says yes.

4. Week four: open the Growth page again. Sort your note log by subscribers. Keep the note types that worked and drop the rest.

Give the plan the full 30 days. That’s dozens of Notes, about 100 replies and three or four posts. Anything less is too small a sample to judge.

If nothing moves after that, change the sentence first. Then narrow the reader: “first-time freelance designers” beats “creatives.” Change the topic last, since that’s the most expensive fix.

Go open your Traffic tab. It takes two minutes.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP OR Drop Me A Mail

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

I started this newsletter in October 2024, and for a long stretch I did what everyone tells you to do.

I posted on a schedule.
I picked a niche.
I studied “what works.” (the same three things: Post consistently. Engage with your niche. Be authentic. Cool, thanks, very useful, I'll go do that right after I finish being told the sky is blue.)

None of it moved the needle the way I wanted…

Substack quietly rewired how it decides who sees what, and most writers are still running a strategy built for a version of the app that doesn’t exist anymore.

If you’ve felt like your growth stalled for no reason, this is probably why.

I started tracking viral Notes early this year, pulling apart what got picked up and what didn’t.

Some of what I found lines up with what Substack itself has said publicly. Some of it contradicts what half the “gurus” are still teaching.

Let’s get into the parts that matter.

The feed doesn’t work the way you think it does anymore

For most of Substack’s history, your Notes went mainly to people who already followed you.

Makes sense. That’s how most social feeds worked for years.

Late in 2025, that changed.

Substack’s head of data, Mike Cohen, said the platform moved to what’s called sequential modelling, and started weighting on-platform behavior like restacks, comments, and Notes activity much more heavily than follower relationships.

In plain language: your existing followers stopped being guaranteed viewers, and strangers who’ve never heard of you became your biggest opportunity.

This is why a writer with 40 subscribers can post a Note that gets seen by thousands of people who don’t follow them, while a writer with 5,000 subscribers can post something that barely moves.

It’s not about who you already have.

It’s about what the algorithm decides is worth pushing to people who don’t know you yet.

If you’re still writing Notes assuming your subscriber base is your audience for that post, you’re aiming at a crowd that’s mostly not looking.

Restacking isn’t a favor; it’s a growth channel

Restacking is Substack’s version of sharing someone else’s post to your own audience, with or without your own comment attached.

Most writers treat it like a courtesy.

Treat it like a channel instead.

When you restack someone’s Note with a genuine two or three-sentence take, two things happen.

1. Your own followers see your thinking on their post.

2. And the writer you restacked often notices, because Substack shows creators who restacked them.

That’s how relationships start on this platform now.

Not through cold DMs. Through public, visible engagement that happens to double as networking.

I’d rather restack five posts a week with a real reaction attached than post ten Notes into the void hoping one catches.

The math works out better, and it feels less exhausting too.

Write about your own path, not generic tips

Readers can tell the difference between advice you pulled from a template and advice you lived through.

If your Notes and posts read like they could have been written by anyone in your niche, they blend into everything else in the feed.

Say what actually happened to you.

Not “many creators struggle with consistency,” but the specific week your output dropped because you took on client work and your Substack sat untouched for eleven days.

Not “engagement is key,” but the exact post that got fifteen replies because you admitted a number was smaller than you expected it to be.

Vague advice is forgettable.

A specific, slightly embarrassing detail is what makes someone hit subscribe.

What actually gets a Note picked up right now

A few patterns kept showing up when I went through hundreds of high-performing Notes.

Notes with a photo or short video clip are outperforming plain text posts by a wide margin.

A screenshot of a message someone sent you, a quick phone video of you talking for fifteen seconds, a photo of your notebook, anything visual gets more traction than a paragraph of text sitting on a blank background.

Short and specific beats long and vague.

A Note that says “here’s the exact email subject line that got me a 61% open rate” does better than “some thoughts on email marketing.”

Specificity signals you actually did the thing.

Timing still matters, but not the way people think.

It’s less about hitting some magic hour and more about posting when you can actually reply to comments within the first hour or two.

Early replies seem to tell the algorithm the post is generating real conversation, not just views.

None of this requires a course or a $200 swipe file.

It requires you actually opening the Notes tab and paying attention to what’s happening there instead of only using it to broadcast.

Should you bother with video?

Substack has been pushing hard into video.

Mobile uploads up to 20 gigabytes launched last year, and this January the company shipped TV apps for Apple TV and Google TV, so subscribers can now watch a creator’s video content on their actual television.

Honestly, I’m not fully sold that every writer needs to be on video.

If your strength is the written word, forcing yourself into weekly talking-head videos because a platform wants you there can water down the thing that made people subscribe in the first place.

Substack itself tends to give early visibility boosts to writers experimenting with new features while those features are fresh, so there’s a real incentive to at least try it.

My honest read: test one short video Note a week for a month.

If it does nothing for you and feels forced, drop it.
If it gets traction, lean in.

Don’t overhaul your whole identity around a feature that’s six months old.

Leave a comment

Use the recommendations feature like it’s your storefront, because it is

When someone subscribes to your newsletter, Substack shows them a list of other newsletters to check out next.

Getting on other writers’ recommendation lists puts your newsletter in front of people at the exact moment they’re already in a subscribing mood.

That’s a much warmer audience than a cold Note.

Getting on those lists is simpler than people make it sound.

1. Find five to ten newsletters at a similar size to yours, in an adjacent topic rather than a direct competitor.

2. Read their work first.

3. Comment on a few posts.

4. Then send a plain, direct message asking if they’d want to trade recommendations.

No pitch deck, no elaborate ask, just two writers agreeing to point their readers at each other.

The newsletters most willing to trade recommendations with you usually aren’t the huge ones.

They’re the ones roughly your size, because a recommendation swap between equals feels fair to both sides. (guys, seriously…let’s just help each other out and grow together)

Help Keep The Human Project Free

I started THP because I wanted to create the kind of publication I wished existed: practical ideas without the usual hype, recycled advice, or “get rich quick” nonsense.

I want THP to remain free and independent.

No paywall. No mandatory subscription. No holding the best ideas hostage behind a premium tier.

If this issue gave you an idea worth trying, saved you time, or simply made you think differently, you can help keep THP going.

Help Keep THP Free

Where AI actually fits into this, and where it doesn’t

I’ll be direct about this because Substack readers have strong feelings on it, and they’re right to.

Readers on this platform are here partly because they’re tired of content that feels manufactured.

If your writing reads like it came out of a chatbot, people notice, and they leave.

AI tools can help you organize a messy outline or catch a typo before you hit publish. That’s a reasonable use.

Having a tool write your actual sentences, your actual opinions, and your actual stories is a different thing entirely, and it’s usually the reason a piece feels hollow even when the reader can’t name why.

The writers doing well right now are the ones whose voice you’d recognize with the byline covered.

That’s not a small thing to protect.

It’s arguably the only thing on this platform that can’t be copied.

The unglamorous system that actually works

None of this requires a course or a masterclass.

It requires a weekly rhythm you actually keep.

1. Post Notes most days, even short ones, and reply to your own Notes when someone engages instead of leaving them hanging. (Post one specific, visual Note a day rather than five vague ones a week. Quality of specificity beats frequency of noise.)

2. Restack two or three posts a week with a real comment attached.

3. Spend twenty minutes reaching out to one similarly sized newsletter about a recommendation trade.

4. Publish one solid long-form piece a week that says something you’d stand behind if a stranger challenged you on it.

That’s the whole system.

None of this is a secret.

It's just the part most people skip because building relationships with other writers takes longer than posting a Note and hoping.

It’s also the version of “growing on Substack” that survives the next algorithm change, because none of it depends on gaming a feed.

It depends on being a person other people want to keep hearing from.

I still catch myself hunting for a shortcut some mornings.

There isn’t one.

There’s just showing up in the places on this platform where showing up actually gets seen, and doing it consistently enough that it stops feeling like a strategy and starts feeling like how you write.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP OR Drop Me A Mail

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

I did not plan on losing an entire Saturday to this.

I opened Substack to write my usual post, saw three strangers’ essays outperforming mine by ten times, and got curious in an unhealthy way.

Four hours later I had forty tabs open, a spreadsheet nobody asked for, and a strong suspicion that most of what gets taught about “going viral” is recycled from decades ago (yeah…sorry, that was far-fetched).

So I threw out the recycled stuff.

What follows is what actually holds up right now, on this platform, with this algorithm, in this year.

Why the old advice stopped working

Substack quietly rebuilt how Notes gets shown to people.

For a long time, your Notes mostly reached your own followers.

That changed in late 2025.

Now the feed leans heavily on strangers who have never followed you, matched by what they already read, not who they already know.

That is good news for a small writer.

It also means the old habit of posting once and going quiet does almost nothing for you anymore.

The platform now rewards actual back and forth: restacking someone else’s post, leaving a reply that adds something, showing up in threads that are not your own.

A heart click barely registers. A real reply does.

Substack has also started rolling out new features to every creator, not just their biggest names, along with live video and a TV app.

None of that changes how to write a good sentence.

But it does mean the writers pulling ahead right now are doing more than typing and hitting publish.

They are treating the whole account like a small radio station, not just a diary.

Subscribe now

The part everyone has heard somewhere but keeps forgetting

There is a psychologist named Gloria Mark who has studied attention for years, and her research puts the average attention span at around 47 seconds, not the “goldfish” number people love to repeat, which was never real to begin with.

Forty-seven seconds sounds like plenty.

It is not, once you remember that a reader is deciding in the first line whether those seconds are worth spending on you at all.

Here is the mistake I found in almost every low-performing post I read this week: the first sentence describes the topic instead of starting inside it.

“In this article I want to talk about why some writers succeed online” is a topic description. Nobody’s brain leans forward for that.

Compare it to “I lost 100 subscribers in one week and could not figure out why.”

Same general subject. Completely different pull.

You do not need a trick for this.

You need to open in the middle of something that already happened, with a detail specific enough that it could not have happened to anyone else.

Not “I struggled with consistency.”
Instead: “I missed four Sundays in a row and told myself I was resting.”

Headlines that work without lying

A good headline promises one clear thing and does not oversell it.

The formula I keep coming back to, because it is boring and it works, has three pieces: a specific result, a specific timeframe, and one honest detail that makes it feel lived rather than invented.

“How I grew my newsletter” is nothing.
“I sent 30 Notes in 30 days, and only four did anything” is something, because the number is oddly precise and the outcome is not a fairy tale.

Readers trust a headline more when it admits a partial failure.

Perfect success stories read like ads.
A story with one honest flop in it reads like a person.

Avoid round, suspiciously large numbers unless you can actually back them up.

Half the “I made $50,000 in a month writing online” posts floating around are either cherry-picked or made up outright, and readers online in 2026 are far more skeptical of that than they were even two years ago.

A smaller, weirder, truer number beats a big fake one every time.

Structure: give the reader small reasons to keep scrolling

This is the piece most guides never explain properly (maybe they do…but I like far-fetched sentences, ngl).

1. Virality is not really about one big hook. It is about never giving the reader a clean exit point.

Practically, that means: Short paragraphs, on purpose.

Not because it looks nice, but because a wall of text gives your eyes permission to skim, and a skimming reader is a reader about to leave.

One idea per paragraph.

If a paragraph is doing two jobs, split it.

Leave something slightly unresolved every few hundred words.

Not a cliffhanger in the dramatic sense, just an unanswered question sitting in the back of the reader’s mind.

I mentioned losing 100 subscribers earlier and did not explain why yet. That gap is doing work right now, pulling you forward without you noticing it.

2. Change your rhythm.

A long, detailed sentence followed by a short one.
Then two short ones.
Then something longer again.

Writing that moves in a steady, even beat reads like it was generated rather than felt, and readers can sense that even when they cannot name it.

By the way, the subscriber drop I mentioned earlier was dumb and simple.

I changed my send time, and half my list’s inboxes buried me under work emails.

Fixed it by testing three send windows over three weeks and watching open rates instead of guessing.

Small problem, small fix, no drama. That is usually how it actually goes.

Where AI actually helps, and where it quietly ruins things

I will say this plainly because I think most articles dance around it.

Using AI to write your first draft, start to finish, produces writing that reads flat no matter how good the tool is.

Readers on this platform have gotten sharp at spotting it, and once they suspect it, they stop trusting the rest of the post too, even the parts you wrote yourself.

Where it genuinely helps is later in the process.

Feeding it a finished draft and asking where the pacing drags.
Asking it to poke holes in an argument before you publish.
Using it to catch a sentence you have read so many times you can no longer see it clearly.

That is editing help, the same kind a sharp friend would give you, and it is very different from asking it to write the thing for you.

The writers whose work still feels alive right now are the ones who did the thinking and the first draft themselves, then used every tool available to sharpen it.

The ones whose work feels hollow skipped straight to the tool.

Readers can tell the difference even when they cannot explain how.

The math nobody likes hearing

Most posts will not go viral.

Not yours, not mine, not the accounts you admire.

Most of what a writer publishes lands quietly, gets read by the people already paying attention, and disappears within a week.

That is normal, and it does not mean anything is wrong with you or the post.

What changes the odds is volume paired with attention to what actually worked.

Write consistently, then go back every month and genuinely study your three best-performing pieces.

Not vaguely remember them; actually reread them.

What was the first line doing?
Where did the pacing pick up?
What did you leave slightly open?

Then do more of that specific thing, not “more content” in general.

What I would actually do this week if I were starting over

Pick one post from your archive that underperformed and rewrite only the first two lines.

Nothing else.

See if it changes anything when you repost it as a Note.

Reply to five other people’s posts today with something that took actual thought, not a compliment.

Do this before you publish your own next piece, not after.

Track your send time experiment for three weeks minimum before drawing any conclusion.

One week of data tells you nothing.

Read your own draft out loud before hitting publish.

If you stumble over a sentence speaking it, a reader stumbles over it reading it.

None of this is glamorous.

I wish I had a cleaner ending for you, some secret formula I found in tab thirty-seven that changes everything overnight.

I did not find one, because it does not exist.

What I found instead was a pile of small, unsexy habits that stack up over months. That is a less exciting article to write.

It is probably a more useful one to read.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

I used to post a Note, refresh the page four times, and feel nothing happen.

Zero likes. One reply from a bot account selling crypto signals.

My subscriber count sat there like it was mocking me.

That was late 2024.

I’d just started this newsletter and figured Notes was just Twitter with a different font. Post something punchy, wait for the algorithm gods to bless you, repeat.

It doesn’t work like that.

Not anymore, and honestly, I’m not sure it ever fully did.

So in early 2026 I did something a little obsessive.

I pulled around 300 Notes that had gone properly viral in the writing and creator space.

Not the “50 likes and my mom commented” kind of viral. The kind where a Note gets 2,000+ likes and pulls in hundreds of new follows for someone who was a nobody the week before.

I read every single one.

Then I read them again, this time tracking what happened in the first line, the last line, the comment section, even the posting time.

A pattern showed up.

It wasn’t dramatic. It was almost annoyingly simple.

Most Notes that blow up follow one of four shapes

Not ten shapes. Not some 47-point framework you’d need a spreadsheet to remember.

Four.

1. The confession. Something the writer admits they got wrong, or something embarrassing they’d normally hide.

2. The receipt. A specific number, screenshot, or result, shown without fluff.

3. The contrarian jab. A gentle push against something everyone in the niche repeats without thinking.

4. The tiny tutorial. One useful thing, explained in under 200 characters, that a reader can use in the next five minutes.

That’s it.

Every viral Note I studied fit into one of these, sometimes two at once.

Why theory-heavy advice keeps failing people

Most Notes advice out there tells you to “provide value” or “be authentic.”

Fine words. Useless instructions.

Nobody wakes up thinking, today I will provide value.

You need something you can actually type at 7 am with coffee in one hand.

So let’s get practical.

Here’s what I actually do, in order, most days.

Step one: I write the Note before I check anything else

Before email. Before Slack. Before Substack tells me somebody unsubscribed and ruins my morning.

Why first thing?

Because your brain hasn’t started performing yet.

The Notes that flop, in my experience, are the ones I overthink at 3 pm after reading five other people’s Notes and unconsciously trying to sound like them.

The raw, slightly unpolished version from 7 am usually beats the “perfected” 3 pm version.

I’ve A/B tested this on myself more times than I’d like to admit.

Step two: I pick one shape from the four above, not a topic

This sounds backwards, but stick with me.

Most people start with “what should I write about” and end up staring at nothing for twenty minutes.

Instead, I pick the shape first.

Today I’ll do a confession. That instantly narrows things down to: what did I actually get wrong recently?

Last month it was admitting I ignored my open rates for three straight weeks while chasing subscriber count, and my actual revenue dropped almost X percent in that window.

That Note pulled in 13 new subscribers in a single day.

Not because it was clever. Because it was true and specific.

Step three: the first seven words carry the whole Note

Substack shows a preview before someone taps to expand.

If those first words are boring, nobody taps.

Compare these two openers:

“I’ve been thinking about newsletter growth lately and wanted to share some thoughts.”

“I deleted 200 subscribers on purpose.”

One of these gets scrolled past in half a second. The other one, people stop for.

You don’t need to be shocking.

You need to be specific and slightly unexpected.

That’s a skill you build by writing bad first lines for a while and noticing which ones you’d personally stop scrolling for.

Step four: I end with something that invites a reply, not a like

Likes feel nice. They don’t grow your list.

Replies do two things.

They tell Substack’s algorithm this Note is worth showing to more people, and they put your name in front of someone else’s followers when that person’s friends see the reply thread.

I stopped ending Notes with generic questions like “what do you think?” Nobody answers that.

Instead, I ask something with an actual fork in the road.

“Would you rather have 500 loyal readers or 5,000 who barely open your emails?” People pick a side. Picking a side means typing a reply.

Timing matters less than consistency

I get asked constantly what the “best time” to post Notes is.

Honestly, I’ve tested mornings, evenings, weekends. The differences were small enough that I stopped chasing it.

What actually moved the needle was posting daily, even on days I didn’t feel like it.

There’s a stretch in March where I posted a genuinely mediocre Note every single day for eleven days straight, mostly out of stubbornness.

Day twelve, one of them hit.

Would that one have hit without the eleven boring ones building up some baseline visibility first?

I honestly don’t know. But I doubt it happens in isolation.

Where AI actually fits into this, and where it doesn’t

I use AI for exactly one part of this process: catching my own repetitive patterns.

I’ll paste a week’s worth of Notes into a chat and ask what phrases I keep reusing without noticing.

Turns out I say “here’s the thing” way too often.

Once I saw it laid out, I could actually stop doing it.

What I don’t do is let AI write the actual Note for me. Readers can smell it, even when they can’t articulate why.

There’s a flatness to AI-generated Notes, a sameness in rhythm, that trained readers pick up on within a sentence or two.

And Substack’s audience skews toward people who read a lot. They notice.

So use AI as an editor sitting over your shoulder, not as the person holding the pen.

A mistake I made for almost four months

I used to reply to every single comment on my Notes with something short like “thanks so much!” or “appreciate that!”

Turns out that’s close to useless. Generic replies don’t build anything.

Now I try to reply with something that continues the actual conversation, even if it’s just one more sentence of substance.

Someone commented on my confession Note saying they’d made the same mistake with their podcast.

I replied asking what made them realize it.

That single exchange turned into them subscribing, then buying OPENED a few weeks later, then referring one other friend.

One thoughtful reply did more than fifty “thanks!” replies combined.

What 10+ subscribers a day actually looks like in practice

I want to be honest about the numbers, because a lot of creators inflate this stuff.

Some days I get 25 new subscribers off a single Note.

Other days I get two.

The 10+ average holds up over weeks, not single days, and it only started holding steady once I’d been doing this consistently for a couple of months.

Before that, my daily average was closer to 3 or 4.

If you’re expecting every Note to be a home run, you’ll quit in a week.

This is closer to farming than hunting. You plant a lot of ordinary seeds, so a few of them turn into something bigger.

The one habit that changed everything for me

I started keeping a running note (the app kind, not the Substack kind) of every line, every hook, every opener that got a strong reaction anywhere I saw it, not just my own posts.

Other people’s viral tweets, other newsletters’ subject lines, even a coworker’s funny text message once.

That swipe file is now over 400 entries deep.

When I sit down to write a Note and feel blank, I scroll through it, not to copy anything word for word, but to jog whatever part of my brain generates hooks.

This is the unglamorous engine behind most of what looks like natural talent for going viral.

It’s mostly just a well-stocked library and the discipline to keep adding to it.

Where to go from here

If you want the raw research, the full breakdown of all 300 Notes I studied, sorted by category with the actual hook structures pulled out, that’s the Notes OS.

It’s the same document I still reference myself when I’m stuck on a Note.

I built it for me first, honestly, and only turned it into a product after a few readers asked what my process actually was.

If you’d rather build your own version from scratch the way I did, everything above will get you moving.

Pick a shape, write it first thing in the morning, keep the opening line sharp, and give people a reason to reply instead of just tapping the heart.

I still have days where a Note flops completely.

Last Tuesday, actually, one I thought was clever got eleven likes and a whole lot of silence.

That’s fine.

The system was never about every single Note working.

It’s about enough of them working, often enough, that the average keeps climbing.

That’s genuinely all this is.

No secret algorithm hack, no growth loophole that’s about to get patched.

Just picking a shape, writing it honestly, and showing up again the next day even when yesterday’s Note landed flat.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

I almost didn’t write this one.

Because every “Substack tips” article out there says the same five things.

Write consistently. Engage with your niche. Use Notes. Blah blah blah.

You’ve read it. I’ve read it. We’re all tired.

So here’s what actually changed on this platform in the last year, and what you should do about it. No recycled advice. Just what’s real right now.

Rule 1: Your followers might not even see your Notes anymore

This one caught a lot of people off guard, myself included.

Substack quietly flipped how the Notes feed works.

It used to show you stuff from people you followed. Made sense, right? You follow someone, you see their posts.

Not anymore.

In late 2025, Substack changed the algorithm so the feed no longer prioritizes content from people you follow.

Now most of what shows up comes from creators you’ve never even heard of.

Here’s the weird part. This is actually good news if you’re small.

Your Notes can now reach completely new audiences without you doing anything extra, because the algorithm is spreading discovery around instead of just serving your existing bubble.

But if you built your whole strategy around “my loyal followers will always see me,” that’s gone. Your old subscribers might not catch your Notes anymore.

Which means you can’t lean on loyalty alone. You have to keep earning attention every single time you post.

What to actually do: stop writing Notes like private messages to your regulars. Write them like you’re talking to a stranger scrolling past for the first time.

Because that’s who’s mostly seeing them now.

Rule 2: A picture or a clip beats plain text, whether you like it or not

I’m a writer. Words are my thing.

I resisted the visual push for a long time too.

But the numbers don’t care about my feelings. One in three Notes now includes a photo or video, and that share keeps growing.

Substack even redesigned their media tab into a scrollable feed built for this exact kind of content.

You don’t need a camera crew.

A screenshot of a quote, a photo of your notebook, a 20-second phone video of you talking through an idea. That’s enough.

The point is you’re breaking up the wall of text that the algorithm now treats as less scroll-stoppy.

Rule 3: Restacks are the new currency, not likes

Likes feel nice. They don’t do much.

A restack is different.

When someone restacks your post, it lands in front of their entire audience with their name attached, like a personal recommendation. That kind of endorsement travels.

One good restack from someone with a decent following can genuinely double your reach in a day.

So here’s a practical move most people skip: at the end of a piece, don’t just ask people to “like and subscribe.” Ask them, plainly, to restack it if it helped them.

Say it in normal words.

“If this saved you some time, a restack helps more than you’d think.”

People respond to specific, honest asks a lot more than generic ones.

Rule 4: Substack wants to be a TV channel now, and that changes distribution

This part genuinely surprised me.

In January 2026, Substack launched Substack TV, an app for Apple TV and Google TV, so people can watch creator videos and livestreams on their actual television.

They’re not stopping there either.

There’s a Recording Studio for producing video and audio content, and livestream tools that keep getting upgraded.

Substack even uses AI to automatically pull short highlight clips out of longer video recordings, so creators can repost them to Notes or to YouTube Shorts.

You don’t have to become a video creator overnight. I’m not one either, and I still write words for a living.

But you should know the platform is pouring resources into video and live content, and that usually means the discovery feed starts favoring it.

Even one short video introduction of yourself, sitting in front of your camera for two minutes, tends to build more trust than another wall of text ever will.

Rule 5: Free-to-paid conversion is way lower than the gurus tell you

This is the one nobody wants to say out loud.

Free-to-paid conversion on Substack usually sits around 2 to 3 percent.

That means if you’ve got 1,000 free subscribers, you might get 20 to 30 of them to actually pay you.

I’ve seen creators quietly quit because they expected 10 or 15 percent conversion, based on some screenshot they saw on Twitter. That screenshot was probably one outlier account on a good month, not the norm.

Knowing the real number changes how you plan.

If you want $500 a month from paid subs at $8/month, you need roughly 60-65 paying subscribers. At a 2.5% conversion rate, that means you need somewhere around 2,500 free subscribers first.

That’s not a discouraging number. It’s just the real one, so you can actually plan your growth instead of guessing.

Rule 6: Don’t put all your eggs in the subscription basket

The creators doing well right now aren’t relying on paid subscriptions alone.

They’re running courses, coaching calls, digital products, affiliate deals, and sponsorships alongside their newsletter.

Think of Substack less like your store and more like your storefront window. It’s where people discover you and decide to trust you.

What you actually sell them doesn’t have to live inside Substack at all.

A simple starting point: pick one thing you already know how to do that other writers on your topic struggle with.

Package it as a small paid resource, $15 to $40 range, something specific and useful. Not a giant course. A focused fix for one problem.

That’s usually the first real income most creators see, long before subscriptions catch up.

Rule 7: Bigger players are moving in, so niche down harder

Something’s shifting quietly in the background.

Media companies, think tanks, academic institutions, and B2B organizations are starting to launch their own Substack publications as owned-media channels, using the subscription model to build direct revenue outside of advertising.

That means the “general newsletter about life and business” lane is getting crowded fast, by people with actual budgets and existing audiences.

Your move isn’t to compete on scale. It’s to go narrower than feels comfortable.

Not “personal finance,” but “personal finance for people who quit their corporate job at 30.”

The tighter your angle, the harder it is for a big institutional account to out-write you on it, because they’re built for broad appeal and you’re not.

Rule 8: Readers can smell AI writing from a mile away now, and they’re annoyed by it

This one’s personal for me.

I write with AI tools most of the time, for research or a first pass. Most serious creators do now.

But there’s a specific flatness readers have gotten really good at spotting.

Same rhythm every paragraph. Same fake-humble “here’s the truth nobody tells you” opener. Same three-item lists with a summary sentence tacked on.

Your comments section will tell you if readers noticed. Mine has, more than once, and it stings a little every time.

The fix isn’t avoiding AI tools entirely.

It’s putting a real, specific, slightly messy detail into every piece that only you could know.

A number that’s oddly precise. A mistake you made last Tuesday. A joke that only makes sense if you actually did the thing.

That’s the part no model fills in for you, because it didn’t live your week.

What I’d actually do this week

Skip trying to fix everything at once. Pick two things from this list.

If I were starting today, I’d start asking for restacks directly instead of hoping people do it on their own.

Everything else can wait a month.

Substack changes fast enough that whatever’s “new” today will be normal by the time you’ve mastered it anyway. Just don’t fall for the idea that you need every feature.

You need the two or three that actually match how you already write and who you’re writing for.

That’s the part nobody tells you.

Not because it’s a secret. Just because “do less, but do it on purpose” doesn’t make for a very exciting headline.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

A year ago, a guy in my Substack comments asked me something that stuck with me for months.

“Everyone says ghostwriting is dead because of AI. Is it?”

I sat on that question for a while.

Then I looked at my own client list.

Four of my ghostwriting clients pay me more today than they did in 2025. One of them literally told me, “I tried ChatGPT for a month. Fired it. Hired you back.”

So no. Ghostwriting isn’t dead.

It just got harder for lazy writers and easier for good ones. That gap is where your opportunity sits.

This article isn’t going to tell you to “find your niche” and “build a portfolio” like every other post from 2019 that’s still floating around Google.

You already know that stuff exists.

What you don’t know is how to actually get a paying client by Monday morning, using what’s working right now, not what worked three years ago.

Grab a coffee. This one’s long, but every part earns its place.

Why Most Ghostwriting Advice Is Stuck In The Past

Here’s the thing nobody says out loud.

Most “how to start ghostwriting” articles were written by people who started ghostwriting in 2020, got their first client, wrote one article about it, and never updated their advice again.

Meanwhile, the game changed under their feet.

Clients today aren’t paying you to type words. Anyone can generate words.

They’re paying you to sound like them, think for them, and save them from the humiliation of posting something that reads like a robot wrote it.

That’s a different skill. And it’s the one we’re building this weekend.

Step 1: Stop Calling Yourself A “Ghostwriter” On Day One

I know this sounds backwards. Bear with me.

When you’re brand new, nobody trusts a stranger who says “I’m a ghostwriter, hire me.”

There’s zero proof behind that claim. It’s just a label.

What actually works is calling yourself something specific to the outcome you deliver.

Instead of “ghostwriter,” try:

• “I write LinkedIn posts for founders who hate writing LinkedIn posts”

• “I turn your voice notes into newsletter emails”

• “I write your weekly Twitter thread, so you don’t have to think about it Sunday night”

Notice something.

Each one names a problem and a person. That’s the whole trick.

I tested this myself last year on three separate faceless pages I run.

The generic bio got maybe one reply a week.
The specific one, describing an exact painful problem, got three to four replies a week from the same audience size. Same content.

Different framing. Wild difference.

Pick your one sentence this weekend. Write it down. You’ll use it everywhere.

Step 2: Find Clients Where They’re Already Complaining (Not Where You Wish They Were)

Forget cold emailing 200 strangers.

That was 2021 advice, and it barely worked then.

In 2026, the fastest path to your first client is finding people who are already publicly annoyed about writing.

Here’s exactly where to look:

LinkedIn comments under founder posts.
Search “I hate writing” or “I don’t have time to write” in the search bar.
People type this stuff constantly.
Reply with something helpful, not salesy. Just be useful first.

Twitter/X replies under solo entrepreneurs.
Same idea.
Look for “my newsletter is a mess” or “I need to post more but.”

Reddit, specifically r/Entrepreneur and r/smallbusiness.
Search “hire a writer.”
You’ll find posts from real business owners with real budgets, sometimes posted that same day.

Substack Notes.
Newsletter owners here talk openly about burnout from writing weekly. That’s basically a job posting in disguise; they just don’t know it yet.

One thing I’ve learned the hard way.

Don’t pitch in your first message. Just comment something genuinely useful on their post.

Then DM them a few days later, referencing what they said.

It feels less like a sales pitch and more like a conversation that was already happening. Because it was.

Step 3: Price Like You Actually Understand The Market (Not Like A Guru Told You To)

I need to be honest with you here, because this is where most beginner advice does real damage.

A lot of people tell new ghostwriters to charge $2,000 to $5,000 a month right out of the gate.

That number gets thrown around a lot online.

In reality, for a brand new ghostwriter with zero proof of results, that’s not realistic. And clients can smell an inflated rate from a mile away.

Here’s what actually happens in the market right now, based on real conversations I’ve had and seen other writers share.

LinkedIn ghostwriting for founders: New writers typically start around $300 to $800 a month for 3 to 4 posts weekly. Once you’ve got 2 to 3 months of proof, that climbs to $800 to $1,500.

Newsletter ghostwriting: Often priced per issue instead of monthly. New writers commonly charge $75 to $200 per newsletter issue depending on length and research needed.

Twitter/X thread writing: Usually the lowest entry point. $10 to $50 per thread for beginners.

None of these numbers are going to make you rich this month.

That’s not the point.

The point is landing your first paying client, proving you can deliver, then raising your rate every 60 to 90 days as your results speak for themselves.

I raised my own rates four times in my first year doing client writing work.

Each raise happened right after I delivered something that made the client visibly happy, not because I felt like charging more.

Step 4: Use AI As Your Research Assistant, Never As Your Voice

This is the part where the whole industry is confused, so let’s clear it up properly.

Clients aren’t scared of you using AI tools.

They’re scared of getting content that sounds like AI wrote it. There’s a real difference.

Here’s the actual workflow that works in 2026, and it’s the opposite of what a lot of people assume.

Use AI to:

• Summarize a long podcast transcript your client sent you

• Pull talking points from an article on their industry

• Organize a messy voice note into a rough outline

• Check your grammar after you’ve already written the draft in their voice

Never use AI to:

• Write the first draft in the client’s actual voice

• Generate the hook or opening line

• Come up with the personal story or opinion that has to come from the client’s real brain

The client’s paying good money right now are specifically paying for the human judgment part. The part where you take their messy 3 am voice memo and turn it into something that sounds exactly like them on their best day.

AI genuinely cannot do that part well yet, and honestly, that’s your entire competitive advantage for the next few years.

One trick that’s worked well for me.

Before writing anything for a new client, I ask them to send three examples of posts or emails they personally loved reading, from anyone, not necessarily their own writing.

It tells me more about their taste and rhythm than a two-hour onboarding call ever could.

Step 5: Get Your First Client This Weekend With The “Free Sample” Move

This is the step most people skip because it feels scary.

Do it anyway.

Pick one person from your Step 2 list. Someone who’s already complained about writing being a struggle for them.

Don’t ask for a call.
Don’t ask for a contract.
Don’t ask for payment yet.

Instead, write them one free post or one free newsletter opener based on something they already said publicly.

Keep it short. Send it as a DM with a simple message like:

“Saw your post about hating LinkedIn writing. Wrote this version based on what you said, thought you might like it. No pressure either way.”

That’s it. No pitch. No price. Just proof.

I’ve watched this exact move turn into paying clients dozens of times, both in my own experience and from other writers I’ve talked to.

It works because it removes every bit of risk from the other person’s side.

They’re not buying a promise. They’re looking at actual proof sitting right in front of them.

Do this three times this weekend. Three free samples to three different people.

Even if only one replies with interest, that’s your first client conversation started.

A Small Reality Check Before You Go

I’m not going to pretend this is going to make you rich by next Friday. It won’t.

Nobody’s first month in ghostwriting looks like the screenshots people post online.

What I can tell you honestly is this.

The people who actually make this work aren’t the most talented writers.

They’re the ones who sent that first free sample even though it felt awkward. They’re the ones who asked for $300 instead of waiting until they felt “ready” to ask for $3,000.

I made every mistake in this article before I figured out what actually worked.

Undercharged for way too long.
Sent cold pitches into the void for months with zero replies.
Wrote drafts I was embarrassed of because I didn’t ask the client enough questions upfront.

None of that stopped me from eventually building something that pays real bills.

It just took longer than it needed to, because I was following advice written by people who’d never actually lived through the version of this business that exists today.

You don’t have to make those same mistakes.

Pick one person today. Write them something free. See what happens.

That’s genuinely how this starts.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

You already know something’s wrong. That’s probably why you’re here.

Maybe you noticed the drop-off graph. Most readers gone by the second paragraph. Ouch.

Or maybe a reader left a comment that stung more than it should have. “Skipped to the end, TL;DR?”

Either way, let’s actually fix this.

Not with fluffy advice about “finding your voice” or “writing from the heart.” Real, practical stuff you can use today.

I run a newsletter myself.

I’ve made every mistake listed below. Some of them more than once, because apparently I’m slow to learn.

The Five-Second Test

Open your last three published pieces. Read only the first sentence of each.

Would you keep reading if a stranger wrote these?

Be honest. Most writers can’t be, which is exactly the problem.

Here’s a sentence I actually wrote in 2024: “In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, content creation has become more important than ever.”

I want to travel back in time and slap myself with a rolled-up newspaper.

That sentence says nothing. It’s the writing equivalent of elevator music. Nobody hums it later.

Sign #1: Your First Line Is A Runway, Not A Doorway

Boring writers treat the opening like a warm-up lap. Throat-clearing before the “real” content starts.

Wrong move.

Your first sentence is the doorway. People decide in about three seconds whether to walk through it or turn around.

The fix that actually works:

Start mid-scene, mid-thought, or mid-argument. Skip the setup entirely.

Bad: “Writing consistently is something many creators struggle with, and in this article, we’ll explore some tips.”

Better: “I once went 47 days without writing a single word, then blamed my ‘creative process.’”

See the difference? One is a lecture. The other is a person talking.

Go look at your last five openers right now.

If any of them mention “in this article” or “in today’s world,” delete that sentence completely. The article almost always works better without it anyway.

Sign #2: You’re Writing Paragraphs Like It’s Still 2015

Nobody reads walls of text anymore.

Not because attention spans got shorter (that’s a myth, by the way, backed by shaky science) but because reading on a phone screen while half-distracted is just harder.

Five-line paragraphs on desktop become fifteen-line paragraphs on mobile.

That’s a wall. Walls make people leave.

What to do instead:

One idea per paragraph. Sometimes one sentence per paragraph.

Like this.

It looks weird in a Word doc. It reads beautifully on a phone.

I started doing this around month eight of my Substack, purely by accident, because I was writing on my phone during a flight and couldn’t be bothered to type long paragraphs.

My open-to-read-through rate jumped noticeably within a few weeks. Small habit, real result.

Sign #3: You Haven’t Told A Story In Three Articles

Check your recent work.

Count how many times you’ve written “studies show” or “research indicates” without naming an actual human being who lived through the thing you’re describing.

Data doesn’t stick in people’s brains. Stories do.

There’s a reason you remember the plot of a mediocre movie from ten years ago but can’t recall a single stat from an article you read last Tuesday.

The practical swap:

Instead of: “Many writers struggle with consistency due to lack of systems.”

Try: “My friend Rj tried to write daily for six months. He had a Notion database, three productivity apps, and a color-coded calendar. He quit on day 19 because none of that told him what to actually write about that day.”

One sentence with a name and a specific number (19 days, not “eventually”) beats a paragraph of vague theory every time.

Don’t have a personal story? Borrow one, with permission, from a reader, a friend, or your own past mistakes.

You have more material than you think. You just haven’t been mining it.

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Sign #4: Your Writing Sounds Like Everyone Else’s Writing (Including AI’s)

This one’s tricky in 2026 because AI tools write competent sentences now. Competent, grammatically correct, and utterly forgettable.

If your writing could have been generated by a prompt, readers will feel it even if they can’t name why.

The tell is usually rhythm.

AI-flavored writing tends to fall into predictable patterns: “It’s not just about X, it’s about Y.” Or triads of three adjectives in a row. Or every paragraph ending on a neat little bow of a sentence.

Human writing is messier.

It has a stray thought here. A short, blunt sentence there. Sometimes a sentence that just trails off.

How to fix it:

Read your draft out loud. Actual out loud, not in your head.

Wherever you stumble, or wherever it sounds like a corporate memo, rewrite that line the way you’d say it to a friend over coffee.

I do this with every single article now.

Takes maybe ten extra minutes. Catches almost every robotic sentence I write on the first pass, because apparently my first draft always sounds like it’s applying for a government job.

Sign #5: You’re Explaining Instead Of Showing

Boring writers over-explain.

They say the thing, then explain the thing, then give an example of the thing, then summarize the thing they just explained.

By the third mention, the reader’s eyes have glazed over.

Cut ruthlessly. Trust your reader more.

If your example makes the point clearly, you don’t need three sentences after it restating the point. The example did the work.

I used to add a little “in other words” recap after nearly every point I made in my early Substack days, back in late 2024.

Looking back, those recaps added zero value and about 20 percent more length to every article.

Cutting them didn’t just tighten the writing; it sped up how fast people got through the piece, which the numbers backed up.

Sign #6: There’s No Tension Anywhere

Good writing has a little friction in it.

A disagreement.
A mistake admitted.
A number that surprises people.

Flat writing agrees with itself the whole way through.

It’s pleasant.
It’s also instantly forgettable.

Add tension on purpose:

State an unpopular opinion early. Admit you were wrong about something. Point out a contradiction in common advice.

Example: “Everyone tells you to post daily. I did that for four months and grew slower than the two months I posted twice a week and actually edited my work.”

That single sentence does more to hook a reader than an entire “why consistency matters” section.

Sign #7: Your Endings Just... Stop

A lot of articles trail off with a generic “hope this helps” or a bullet-point recap nobody asked for.

Endings matter almost as much as openings, because it’s the last thing people remember before they decide whether to subscribe, share, or come back next week.

Better approach:

End on a specific image, a small confession, or a direct question to the reader.

Not a summary. A moment.

Something like: “I still catch myself writing that same boring opening line sometimes, out of habit. The difference now is I notice it before I hit publish.”

That’s more memorable than “In conclusion, boring writing can be fixed with these seven tips.”

A Quick Gut-Check Before You Publish Anything

Before your next post goes out, run through this fast:

• Does the first line make someone want the second line?

• Is there a real person or story somewhere in the piece, not just claims?

• Are there any paragraphs longer than four lines on a phone screen?

• Did you read it out loud, and did any sentence make you cringe a little?

• Is there one moment of honest tension or disagreement in there?

• Does the ending land on something specific, not a recap?

If you can answer yes to five of these six, you’re already ahead of most writers publishing today, AI-assisted or not.

One Last Honest Thing

I’m not writing this from some ivory tower where every article I publish goes viral.

Plenty of mine still fall flat.
Some weeks the open rate dips and I have no idea why.

But the difference between my writing now and my writing two years back isn’t talent.

It’s that I stopped trying to sound impressive and started trying to sound like a person talking to another person.

That’s really the whole trick. Everything above is just different ways of getting there.

Write like you’d explain it to a friend at a kitchen table, not like you’re presenting to a boardroom.

The boring stuff usually fixes itself once you do that.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

I used to believe writers needed six hours of “deep work” every single day to make real money online.

Turns out that was garbage advice I picked up from someone who probably wasn’t making much money either.

Two hours. That’s it.

That’s what it actually takes once you stop doing busywork and start doing the stuff that pays.

I’m not going to sell you a dream here.

I still remember my first month of serious online writing; I made $47.

Forty-seven dollars, for what felt like a part-time job.

So if you’re expecting overnight riches, close this tab now and go watch cat videos instead; you’ll have more fun.

But if you want the actual system, the one built for how the internet works in 2026 (not 2019, not some pre-AI fantasy land), stick around.

Why Most Writing Advice From 2023 Is Basically Useless Now

Here’s something nobody wants to admit out loud.

The playbook that worked three years ago is half dead now.

Back then, you could post generic “5 tips to be productive” content and people would eat it up.

Now readers scroll past that stuff faster than a Tinder swipe.

Why? Two reasons.

First, AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude can write that generic content in nine seconds flat.

So generic content isn’t worth anything anymore. It’s the writing equivalent of a participation trophy.

Second, readers got smarter.

They can smell AI slop from three towns away.

The overused words, the fake enthusiasm, the “in today’s fast-paced world” openers; people are tired of it.

So the writers making real money in 2026 aren’t competing on volume anymore.

They’re competing on something AI genuinely struggles to fake: lived experience, specific numbers, and opinions that could actually annoy someone.

That’s the whole game now.

Let me show you how to play it in two hours a day.

Hour One: The 45-Minute Writing Block That Actually Matters

Most people waste their best writing hour scrolling for “inspiration.”

Don’t do that.

It’s a trap, and I fell into it for months.

Here’s what actually works.

Step 1: Write from a list, not from thin air (10 minutes)

Every Sunday, I sit down and write out 15 to 20 article ideas based on stuff that actually happened to me that week.

Not hypothetical ideas. Real ones.

Did a client ghost you on payment? That’s an article.
Did you try a new tool and it flopped? That’s an article too.

Real friction makes real content.

I keep this list in a plain Notion page. Nothing fancy.

When Monday morning hits, I don’t stare at a blank page wondering what to write.

I just pick one.

Step 2: Write the ugly first draft fast (30 minutes)

This is where most people slow down and kill their own momentum.

They try to write a perfect sentence, then the next perfect sentence, and two hours later they’ve written 200 words and hate themselves.

Set a timer. Thirty minutes.

Write badly on purpose. Typos, weird sentences, whatever.

Nobody sees this draft but you.

I write my roughest drafts with my phone’s autocorrect turned off, honestly, just so I stop obsessing over small stuff and keep moving.

Step 3: Read it out loud once (5 minutes)

This single habit fixed more of my writing than any course I ever bought.

If a sentence sounds weird coming out of your mouth, it’ll read weird too.

Fix it on the spot and move on.

Hour Two: The Part Everyone Skips (And Why It’s the Actual Money Maker)

Here’s the uncomfortable truth nobody tells beginner writers.

Writing the article is maybe 30% of the job now.

The other 70% is what happens after you hit publish.

Skip this part, and you’re just talking to yourself in an empty room.

The first 20 minutes: Distribution, not writing

I take my finished piece and break it into 3 to 4 shorter posts for whatever platform fits: X threads, LinkedIn posts, Substack Notes, whatever your audience actually reads.

I’m not writing brand new content here. I’m repurposing what already exists.

One article can feed a whole week of smaller posts.

This one habit alone brought more traffic to my newsletter than any single “viral” article I’ve written.

Slow and steady actually does win here, turtle and hare style.

The next 20 minutes: Reply to every single comment and reply

I know this sounds small. It isn’t.

When somebody comments on your post, and you reply back, personally, not with a copy-paste line, something happens.

They follow you. They remember you. They tell a friend.

I once got a $340 freelance gig just from replying to a random comment on a post that only got 40 likes total.

Forty likes.

That’s not viral by any stretch, but one genuine reply turned into real money.

The last 20 minutes: One outreach message

Every day, I send exactly one direct message to someone: a potential client, a fellow writer, an editor, anyone worth connecting with.

Not a sales pitch. Just a real conversation starter.

“Hey, read your piece on X, the part about Y stuck with me because...”

One message a day is 365 a year.

Even if only 2% turn into something, that’s 7 real opportunities from doing almost nothing extra.

The Money Part (Because Let’s Be Honest, That’s Why You’re Here)

I’ll give you real numbers, not the fantasy ones you see in screenshots with the ad revenue conveniently cropped out.

My first six months writing online, I made under $600 total.

Rough months. I almost quit twice.

Around month eight, freelance writing gigs from cold outreach started bringing in $500 to $1,000 a month.

Not life-changing, but rent money.

By month fourteen, between freelance work, a small digital product, and newsletter sponsorships, I was clearing somewhere around $2,000 to $4,000 a month.

That’s when I quietly handed in my notice at my day job.

It wasn’t instant. It wasn’t glamorous.

There were months I made less than a part-time barista.

I say this because too many articles skip the boring, broke middle part and jump straight to the win.

Where AI Actually Fits Into This (Used Right, Not as a Crutch)

I’m not anti-AI.

That’d be silly, and a bit hypocritical given the tools I use daily.

But here’s the mistake I see constantly.

People use AI to write the entire article, then wonder why nobody reads it.

Readers aren’t stupid. They can tell.

Here’s how I actually use it.

I use AI to organize my rough notes into a clean outline.
I use it to catch typos I missed.
I use it to check if a paragraph sounds confusing to someone outside my head.

What I never let it do is write my opinions for me, or fake my experiences.

If I never actually tried something, I’m not writing as I did. That’s the line.

Readers in 2026 aren’t paying for information anymore. Information is everywhere, free, instant.

They’re paying for a person.

Your weird takes, your specific failures, your actual voice.

AI can’t replicate that part, at least not convincingly, not yet.

The Mistakes That Cost Me Almost a Year

I’d feel bad not sharing these, since they cost me real time.

Mistake one: Writing about everything.

I used to write about productivity one day, side hustles the next, then random life advice.

Nobody knew what I actually did.

Pick one lane. Narrow it down more than feels comfortable.

Mistake two: Waiting for the “right time” to charge money.

I gave away free advice for nearly a year before I nervously priced my first small product at $19.

It sold.

I could’ve done that eight months earlier and just didn’t, out of fear mostly.

Mistake three: Ignoring the boring platforms.

Everyone chases whatever platform is trendy that month.

I built most of my actual income on plain old email, the least exciting platform there is.

It still converts better than anything flashy.

What Two Hours a Day Looks Like, Realistically

Some days this system runs smooth.

Other days I get 25 minutes in, and my kid needs something, or the internet cuts out, or I just stare at the screen feeling like a fraud.

That’s normal.

This isn’t a machine; it’s a habit built by an actual human with actual bad days.

What matters isn’t perfect execution.

It’s showing up most days, doing the writing block and the distribution block, even when it feels pointless.

Especially when it feels pointless, honestly, because that’s usually right before something clicks.

One Last Thing Before You Go

I didn’t quit my 9-to-5 because I found some secret formula nobody else knew about.

I quit because I stopped treating writing like a hobby and started treating the two hours I gave it like they actually mattered.

Some weeks that meant writing a mediocre article because mediocre and published beats brilliant and sitting in my drafts folder forever.

If you take one thing from this whole piece, let it be that.

Done, sent, published, beats perfect, every single time.

Start with one hour tomorrow if two feels like too much right now.

Nobody’s timing you.

Just don’t quit in month three when it’s still not working, because that’s usually right when it starts to.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

Last week I pulled up my subscriber source report for The Human Project, mostly out of boredom, and just sat there staring at one number.

65.41%.

That’s the exact share of my till-June subscribers, 11,301 of them, that Substack itself is responsible for.

And when I clicked into that number, 8,400 of those subscribers came from one single tab: Notes.

Not paid ads. Not a viral Twitter thread. Not some lucky feature.

Just Notes, posted with wildly inconsistent effort over about 20 months.

I want to be upfront about something.

This isn’t going to be one of those “post consistently and be authentic” articles.

You’ve read fifty of those already, and none of them showed you an actual graph with actual ups and downs and actual reasons behind them.

This one’s different.

I’m going to walk you through my real subscriber chart, month by month, including the part where I basically abandoned the whole thing for a year.

Because that gap tells you more than any success story could.

The Graph Nobody Shows You

I started The Human Project in October 2024.

First few weeks, nothing much happened, which is normal and nobody talks about that either.

Then I made a decision.

I told myself if I wanted to actually understand how the Notes algorithm worked, I needed enough data points to see a pattern, not just a few lucky posts.

So starting late October 2024, I posted 4 Notes a day, every day, without fail.

By January 2025, that turned into the biggest spike on my entire chart, close to 3,000 new subscribers in a single month.

If you saw the graph, that’s the tall mountain right around the Feb 1, 2025 marker.

Then it fell off a cliff.

Not because Notes stopped working.

Because I got busy.

Around January 2025, I picked up several ghostwriting clients for LinkedIn and newsletters, and my own newsletter became the thing I worked on last, if at all.

Some days zero Notes. Some days one, maybe two, whenever I found ten free minutes.

That inconsistency shows up brutally clear on the chart.

From February 2025 all the way to December 2025, the line is basically flat. A small bump here and there, nothing close to that January peak.

I’m telling you this because most articles about growth only show you the peak. Nobody shows you the eleven flat months in between, and that flat stretch is honestly the more useful part of the story.

What Changed in January 2026

At the start of this year, I made a resolution.

Not the usual gym-membership kind.

I decided to cut down my ghostwriting client load and give Substack another real shot.

So in January 2026, I started posting Notes again, mostly just whatever felt interesting that day.

No format, no research, just posting.

That month brought in 202 new subscribers. February, 194. March, 196.

Basically flat again.

Same as the previous year’s dead months, just at a smaller scale since my base was different by then.

Somewhere in March 2026, I got frustrated enough to do something different.

I went back through every single one of my own Notes that had performed well, going all the way back to that January 2025 spike, and pulled every single one into a doc.

Then I did the same thing with other writers’ viral Notes, people way bigger than me, just to see if the patterns held across different accounts too.

I laid all of it out side by side.

Around 300 Notes total between mine and others’. And patterns that I’d been vaguely sensing for over a year suddenly became obvious once they were all in one place.

I started posting in that exact format from late March onward. Here’s what happened next, straight off my own dashboard.

April 2026: 276 new subscribers. May: 515. June: 990.

That’s not a fluke month.

That’s four months in a row of the number roughly doubling, right after I switched to a format built entirely from studying what already worked instead of guessing.

Why Most Of Your Notes Are Probably Dying Quietly

Here’s the mistake I made for over a year before I actually looked at my own data properly.

I assumed every Note had roughly equal odds of doing something.

It doesn’t, not even close.

Once I laid out my own history, a small number of Notes were doing almost all the heavy lifting, and the rest were basically invisible.

That’s true whether you’re posting 4 times a day as I did in that first stretch, or once a day like most people manage.

Most Notes fail because they read like a headline instead of something a real person would actually say out loud.

Go check your last 10 Notes right now.

I’d bet at least 7 of them sound like you’re trying to sound impressive instead of trying to say something true.

From what I saw across those viral Notes of mine, the algorithm rewards early engagement in the first 20 to 40 minutes more than almost anything else.

If your opening line doesn’t stop a scroll in half a second, the Note is basically done before the hour’s up, no matter how good the rest of it is.

This is exactly why “just be consistent” advice failed me for a full year.

I was consistent, technically. Consistently posting things that weren’t built on anything.

Once I understood that, I stopped guessing every morning and turned what I’d found into a proper system for myself, since rebuilding that research from scratch every time I wanted to post felt exhausting.

A few other writers asked if they could see how I did it, so I eventually cleaned it up into something usable.

That became Substack Notes OS, built directly from those 300 viral Notes and my own 20 months of data, including the flat months. (+ the 300 raw viral notes, just in case you want to get your hands dirty as well)

If mornings spent staring at a blank Notes box sound familiar, this is basically the shortcut through the year I spent figuring it out slowly.

Okay, back to the actual mechanics, since the templates only make sense once you understand what they’re built on.

The Patterns That Actually Repeated

Going back through my own good months and the other viral Notes I studied, three types of openers kept showing up, over and over, regardless of whose account it was.

1. The uncomfortable admission

Something slightly embarrassing to say out loud.

Not shocking, just honestly not the polished version most people post.

One of my better performing Notes from this year started with something close to: “I ghostwrote for other people’s newsletters for a year and completely neglected my own.”

That’s not a clever hook.

It’s just true, and apparently a lot of writers relate to neglecting their own thing while helping everyone else with theirs.

2. The specific number

Vague claims get scrolled past.

Specific, slightly odd numbers make people pause because it reads like you actually checked something real.

“I posted 4 Notes a day for 3 months straight, here’s what I learned” performs completely differently than “here’s what I learned about posting Notes.”

3. The mild disagreement

Not controversy for its own sake.

Just a gentle “actually, I think this common advice is wrong” angle.

This one needs care though, more on that below.

What My Actual Daily Process Looks Like Now

Here’s the unglamorous version of what changed after March 2026.

Every morning, before checking email or client work, I write three Notes, not one.

The first is usually stiff.
The second is decent.
The third is where the honest, unguarded sentence shows up.

I only post the strongest of the three.

I write these in a separate doc first, never directly into the Notes box.

Typing straight into the posting box makes you self-conscious, and self-conscious writing is exactly the safe, forgettable kind that goes nowhere.

Then, every few days, I check what actually landed against what didn’t and write down why in a simple tracker, the same habit that helped me spot my own patterns back in March.

Over time, that tracker became more valuable than any single Note, because it’s built on my audience’s actual behavior, not somebody else’s generic advice from a different niche entirely.

I know that tracking system sounds simple, almost too simple.

But this exact loop is the difference between the flat 11 months on my chart and the four months where subscribers nearly doubled each time.

I ended up building this tracking and templating process properly inside Notion, with the full dataset of those 300 viral Notes, a Content Calendar, and a Remix Vault that resurfaces my own best-performing Notes when I’m out of ideas.

That’s the core of Substack Notes OS.

If the “write three, post the best one” habit sounds useful, but rebuilding the tracker and research from scratch feels like a lot, that’s exactly the gap it fills.

The Mistake That Cost Me Growth During The Flat Months

I need to mention this because it’s rarely talked about.

During 2025, on the few days I did post, I leaned hard into the “mild disagreement” style because it had worked well in January.

I criticized a popular newsletter growth tactic once; it did fine, so I kept doing versions of it.

Then I posted one on a more sensitive topic, worded a bit carelessly, and it didn’t just flop. A handful of people unsubscribed off the back of it.

The lesson: your growth engine and your reputation live on the same platform, and my flat months weren’t only about low volume; some of it was low trust too.

A Note that gets engagement but damages trust is a net loss, even if the surface numbers look okay.

Now anything remotely touchy gets a quick gut check before it goes up: would I be fine with my most respected reader seeing this?

If there’s hesitation, it stays in the doc.

What The Numbers Actually Say About Consistency

People assume the growth from April to June happened because I suddenly posted way more often.

That’s not really true.

My posting frequency in those months wasn’t wildly different from January or February.

What changed was the format, built from actually studying what worked instead of guessing.

202, 194, 196: From Jan to Mar
then 276, 515, 990, from Apr to Jun

Same effort roughly, completely different output, because the input finally had research behind it instead of just habit.

That’s the part I wish someone had told me back in October 2024, before I burned through 4 Notes a day for months without knowing why some worked, and most didn’t.

Where This Leaves You

If you’re starting from wherever you are on Notes right now, here’s what I’d actually do.

Write three Notes tomorrow morning before checking anything else.

Post the one that feels most honestly you, even if it feels slightly too plain.

Track what happens for two weeks before judging anything, and be honest with yourself about which ones actually landed versus which ones you just liked writing.

That’s genuinely it.

Not a 90-day content calendar.

Just that loop, done with actual attention to your own results, the way I eventually did after wasting most of 2025 not doing it.

I didn’t figure any of this out from a course or someone else’s masterclass.

I figured it out from a graph that embarrassed me a little when I finally looked at it properly, 11 flat months sitting right there in black and white.

Your chart won’t look exactly like mine.

But the process of finding your own pattern in it works the same for everyone.

I almost didn’t write this article.

Every “how I grew my newsletter” post online feels copy-pasted.

Same advice.
Same screenshots.
Same “just be consistent and provide value” nonsense that tells you nothing.

So I sat down with my actual numbers, my actual mistakes, and the actual steps that took me from 200 subscribers to 13,900 in about ten months.

No theory. Just what worked.

Let’s get into it.

Step 1: I Stopped Trying To Get Subscribers And Started Trying To Get One Reader

This sounds backwards. It isn’t.

For months, I wrote for “my audience.”

A vague blob of strangers.

The writing was flat because I wasn’t talking to anyone real.

Then I picked one actual person.

A guy from a writing group who always replied to my emails with long, honest thoughts.

I started writing every newsletter like I was answering him directly.

Open rates jumped almost immediately.

Not because the topics changed. Because the voice did.

Try this: pick one real subscriber.

Write your next issue like it’s just for them.

You’ll feel the difference before your readers even tell you.

Step 2: I Killed My “Newsletter Voice” And Used My Texting Voice Instead

I used to write newsletters like a press release.

Proper sentences. No personality. Boring as a tax form.

Then I tried something dumb.

I wrote an issue exactly how I’d text a friend about the same topic.

Typos and all (well, mostly fixed typos, but you get the idea).

That issue got my highest reply rate ever.

People aren’t subscribing to a brand.

They’re subscribing to a person who happens to have a newsletter.

Here’s Where Most People Quietly Fail (And Nobody Talks About It)

Growing subscribers is one battle.

Getting them to actually open your emails is a completely different one.

You can have 10,000 subscribers and a 12% open rate, which honestly means you have maybe 1,200 people who even see your work.

I learned this the hard way around subscriber 3,000.

My list kept growing, but my opens were embarrassing. I was basically shouting into a list that wasn’t listening.

This is the part nobody warns you about.

Subject lines aren’t a side thought. They’re the entire gate.

If nobody opens it, nothing else you wrote matters at all.

I went down a rabbit hole studying why certain subject lines pulled people in, and others got ignored completely.

Eventually, I put everything I found into a system called Opened; it’s a simple Notion tool with subject line frameworks, the psychology behind each one, and a diagnostic to figure out exactly why your emails aren’t getting clicked.

It’s costs less than the coffee I’m drinking while writing this.

If your open rates feel stuck, it’s worth a look here: Opened.

Okay, back to the steps.

Step 3: I Used “Curiosity Gaps” Without Sounding Like A Clickbait Headline

There’s a thin line between curious and cringey.

What worked for me: hinting at a specific, slightly weird detail instead of a vague tease.

Bad: “You won’t believe what happened next!”
Better: “The email got 4 replies in nine minutes. One of them was from someone I’d ghosted in 2019.”

Specific beats vague every single time.

Vague feels like marketing. Specific feels like a real story.

Step 4: I Sent Emails On Days Everyone Told Me Not To

Every guide says Tuesday and Thursday mornings are “the best.”

So is everyone else sending on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

I tested Saturday afternoons.
Sunday evenings.
Even a random Wednesday at 4pm.

Sunday evening, around 7pm, became my best performing slot.

Inbox competition was lower. People had more time to actually read.

Your audience isn’t “everyone.”

Test odd times.

You might find your own quiet corner of the inbox.

Step 5: I Made My Welcome Email Do The Heavy Lifting

New subscribers decide whether they trust you within the first email, not the tenth.

My old welcome email was generic.

“Thanks for joining! Here’s what to expect.”

Nobody cared.

I rewrote it as a short, honest story about why I started writing in the first place, including a failure.

Reply rates on that single email went from almost nothing to around 18%.

People don’t subscribe to topics. They subscribe to honesty.

A small admitted failure builds more trust than a polished bio ever will.

Step 6: I Stopped Hiding Behind “Value” And Started Sharing Actual Numbers

Vague value statements bore people.

Real numbers grab attention.

Instead of “I grew my list significantly,” I wrote, “I went from 412 subscribers to 1,003 in six weeks, and here’s the exact email that did it.”

Specificity isn’t bragging. It’s proof.

Readers trust numbers more than adjectives.

The Part Where AI Actually Helped (And Where It Quietly Hurt Me)

I’ll be honest about this because most articles dodge it.

AI tools helped me draft faster.

They helped me brainstorm subject lines I wouldn’t have thought of myself.

That part’s real and useful.

But here’s where it bit me: for about three weeks, my emails started sounding the same as every other AI-assisted newsletter out there.

Same rhythm.
Same “it’s not just X, it’s Y” pattern.

Readers noticed before I did.

One subscriber literally replied, “did a robot write this?”

That stung, but it was a fair hit.

I went back to writing first drafts myself, using AI only to tighten things up afterward, never to generate the core thought.

Open rates and reply rates both recovered within two sends.

The lesson: use AI as a tool, not a ghostwriter.

Readers can smell the difference, even if they can’t always explain why.

Step 7: I Picked One Distribution Channel And Went Deep Instead Of Wide

I used to spread myself across five platforms, posting a little bit everywhere.

Results were thin everywhere, too.

I picked one place where my actual readers hung out, went deeper there, and let the other channels go quiet for a while.

Growth sped up almost instantly because I wasn’t splitting my energy into five weak efforts.

Pick one channel. Go deep before you go wide.

What I’d Do Differently If I Started Today

If I were starting from zero in 2026, here’s what I’d skip entirely: chasing follower counts on social media as a vanity metric, obsessing over “viral” growth hacks, and writing five newsletters a week out of fear of being forgotten.

Here’s what I’d focus on instead: one genuinely useful email a week, written like a real letter to a real person, with a subject line that earns the open honestly.

Consistency without quality just trains people to ignore you faster.

The Honest Truth About 13,900 Subscribers

It wasn’t one big breakthrough.

It was seven small, boring, repeatable habits stacked over ten months.

Nobody wants to hear that.

Everyone wants the secret hack, the one weird trick, the overnight miracle.

There isn’t one.

There’s just showing up, writing honestly, testing your subject lines, and not giving up after the first hundred subscribers when growth feels painfully slow.

I almost quit around subscriber 600. I’m genuinely glad I didn’t.

If you’re sitting at 50 subscribers right now, wondering if any of this works for small lists too, it does.

Every single tactic above worked just as well at 50 as it did at 5,000.

The math doesn’t change. Only the patience required does.

Write the next email like it’s for one real person.

That’s where all of this actually starts.

You hit publish. You wait.

You refresh the page like it’s going to suddenly say 10,000 views.

Nothing happens.

A few days pass.

Maybe your mom likes it. Maybe one stranger comments “great post!” and you never see them again.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you: it’s rarely your writing skill.

I’ve read plenty of badly written posts that got thousands of reads, and beautifully crafted essays that got three views (one of them was me, refreshing).

So let’s skip the fluff.

No “find your voice” nonsense. No “just be authentic” garbage.

Here’s what’s actually killing your readership in 2026, and what to do about each one.

1. You’re Writing For Search Engines That Don’t Care About You Anymore

AI search is eating clicks.

People ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI overview a question, get an answer, and never visit a single website.

This isn’t a maybe.

Search traffic to publishers has genuinely dropped this year because AI answers questions directly inside the search results.

So if your whole strategy was “write SEO content, rank on Google, get traffic,” that pipeline is leaking badly.

What actually works now: write for humans who’ll share your stuff directly, not for an algorithm hoping to rank you.

Build on platforms where people follow you specifically, not where they stumble on you through search.

2. Your First Two Lines Are Doing Nothing

I’ll be blunt.

Most writers waste their opening line on a throat-clear.

Something like “In today’s fast paced world...” or “Have you ever wondered...”

Readers decide in about three seconds whether to keep going.

Three seconds.

That’s barely enough time to read one sentence.

Your first line needs to either shock, promise something specific, or make a claim that feels slightly wrong until they read more.

Quick fix: write your article first. Then go back and delete your first paragraph entirely.

Nine times out of ten, your real hook is buried in paragraph two or three.

3. You Haven’t Picked A Fight With Anything

Nice, balanced, agreeable writing is invisible.

Nobody shares “I think there are pros and cons to both sides.”

People share writing that makes them feel something.

Anger, validation, surprise.

If you genuinely believe most productivity advice is garbage, say that.
If you think a popular guru is wrong, explain why with specifics.

You don’t need to be cruel.

You just need an actual opinion instead of a survey of everyone else’s.

4. Your Paragraphs Look Like A Brick Wall

Open your article right now.

Does it look like one giant block of gray text?

That’s a reader killer. Phones especially.

A paragraph that looks fine on your laptop becomes an intimidating wall of text on a five-inch screen.

Break it up.

One idea per paragraph. Sometimes one sentence per paragraph.

White space isn’t lazy writing; it’s mercy for your reader’s eyes.

5. You Never Tell Them Why They Should Care

Readers are silently asking “so what?” the entire time they’re reading.

If you don’t answer that question early, they leave.

Don’t just explain a concept.

Explain what changes for the reader once they understand it.
What problem goes away.
What gets easier.

6. Your Titles Promise Nothing Specific

“Some Thoughts On Writing” tells me nothing.

“5 Mistakes That Cost Me 200 Subscribers Last Month” tells me exactly what I’m getting.

Specific numbers, specific outcomes, specific timeframes.

Vague titles get vague results.

7. You’re Not Showing Up Where Readers Already Are

Writing into the void on your own blog with zero existing audience is brutally slow.

It can take years to build organic traffic that way, if it ever happens.

Instead, post pieces of your writing directly on platforms where attention already lives.

Threads on social platforms, snippets in newsletters, comments on bigger creators’ posts where your perspective adds something real.

Earn trust there, then pull people back to your full work.

8. Your Email List, If You Have One, Isn’t Even Getting Opened

This one stings because writers pour hours into an email, and maybe twenty percent of people even open it.

The other eighty percent never see the work at all.

Most of the time, it’s not your writing that’s the problem here; it’s your subject line.

People decide whether to open an email based on six or seven words.

That’s it.

This was genuinely the thing that frustrated me most for months.

I’d write something I was proud of, hit send, and watch the open rate sit there at a sad fifteen percent.

Turns out subject lines are basically their own skill, separate from writing the actual piece.

Once I started treating them that way and built out an actual system for it, instead of guessing each time, opens climbed noticeably.

I put what I learned into a tool called Opened.

It’s not a course you sit through.

It’s a tactical breakdown of what actually makes people click open, over a hundred and fifty subject line frameworks with the reasoning behind each, plus a diagnostic to figure out exactly why your current emails aren’t landing.

It’s cheaper than your coffee, and most writers notice a real shift within their first few sends after using it.

If your list exists but nobody’s reading it, that’s the gap worth closing first.

9. You Stopped Too Early

This sounds obvious, but it’s the most common reason of all.

Most writers quit publishing right around the point where momentum was about to build.

Growth on any platform tends to be slow, flat, slow, flat, then suddenly fast.

Most people quit during the flat part because it feels like nothing’s working.

It usually is working. It just doesn’t look like it yet.

The Honest Bottom Line

None of this is magic.

There’s no secret algorithm hack that fixes everything overnight.

But small, specific changes compound.

Better opening lines.
Shorter paragraphs.
Actual opinions instead of fence-sitting.
Subject lines that earn the open.
Showing up where people already are instead of waiting for them to find you.

I wish someone had handed me this list two years ago instead of the same recycled “write consistently and be authentic” advice I kept running into.

Would’ve saved me a lot of wasted essays nobody read.

Start with one thing on this list.

Fix that.

Then move to the next.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?

I can help you build and grow your online business.

1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.

2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.

3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.

Want to work together? → Work With THP

Prefer to do it yourself?

I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:

1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.

2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.

3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.

Most writers think building an audience means posting more.

More articles. More tweets. More “value bombs.” More everything.

I used to believe that too.

I burned out chasing volume for almost a year before I noticed something weird.

The writers actually growing weren’t posting more than me.

Some posted less. A lot less.

So what were they doing differently?

I spent the last few months digging into this, partly out of jealousy, partly out of genuine curiosity.

And what I found doesn’t match the advice you usually see on Twitter threads.

The Real Problem Isn’t Visibility

Here’s the thing nobody tells you.

In 2026, getting seen is easier than ever.

AI tools can help you write faster, repurpose content across platforms, and post on a schedule that would’ve taken a team five years ago.

So if visibility was the bottleneck, everyone with a content calendar would have a big audience by now.

They don’t.

Because visibility was never the real bottleneck. Memorability is.

You can show up in someone’s feed a hundred times and still be forgettable.

I’ve followed accounts for months without remembering a single thing they said. Have you?

That’s the quiet crisis happening right now.

AI has made content cheap to produce, which means there’s more of it than ever, which means readers have gotten really good at scrolling past things that feel generic.

Why “Just Be Consistent” Is Half-True (At Best)

Consistency matters. I won’t pretend it doesn’t.

But consistency without a clear angle just means you’re predictably forgettable instead of randomly forgettable.

I had a friend who posted daily for eight months. Every single day, no exceptions. His following barely moved.

Meanwhile, another writer I know posts maybe twice a week. Her audience tripled in the same period.

The difference wasn’t effort.

It was that she had a recognizable point of view, and he was writing whatever felt safe and broadly appealing that day.

Safe content doesn’t get remembered. It doesn’t get shared. Nobody screenshots a take everyone already agrees with.

The Idea Problem Most Writers Never Solve

Here’s something I notice constantly.

Writers spend hours polishing sentences and almost zero time validating whether the underlying idea is worth writing about.

You can write a beautifully crafted article about something nobody cares about, and it will sink without a trace.

I’ve done this. More than once.

The fix isn’t writing skill. It’s testing your ideas before you commit hours to them.

This is honestly where most people get stuck the worst, especially if you’re trying to turn your writing into something bigger than a hobby, like a digital product or a small business around your audience.

You sit there wondering, “is this idea even good?” and you have no real way to check besides just publishing and hoping.

I built a small resource for exactly this problem because I kept running into it myself.

It’s a free starter edition with five digital product ideas that already have proof behind them, meaning real demand signals, not guesses.

If you’ve ever felt stuck on what to actually build for your audience, it’s worth a look before you spend another weekend writing something that might flop.

What Actually Builds Memorability

I’ll break this into pieces because cramming it all into one paragraph would be a crime against readability.

1. A specific enemy.

Not a person.

An idea, a habit, a piece of bad advice you’re pushing against.

“Generic productivity tips” was my enemy for a while.

Pick something to push against, and your writing instantly gets sharper.

2. A recurring phrase or structure.

Readers latch onto patterns they recognize.

Not gimmicky catchphrases, just a consistent way you frame things.

It becomes a tiny signature.

3. Specificity over polish.

A messy story with real numbers beats a polished story with vague ones.

If you made $340 last month from freelance writing, say $340.

Not “a nice chunk of change.”

4. Showing your reasoning, not just your conclusions.

This is the big one AI content struggles with, honestly.

Most AI-assisted writing jumps straight to neat conclusions.

Readers in 2026 have gotten sharp at noticing that.

They want to see the messy middle. The wrong turns. The thing that didn’t work first.

The AI Elephant in the Room

Let’s talk about it directly instead of dancing around it.

Yes, AI tools can help you write faster.
Yes, a huge percentage of content online now has some AI involvement, whether that’s brainstorming, drafting, or editing.

This isn’t going away, and honestly, pretending otherwise is a waste of energy.

But here’s what’s actually happening to audiences because of it.

Readers are developing a kind of immune response to generic phrasing.

The overly smooth sentences.
The “it’s not just X, it’s Y” structure.
The em-dash-heavy lists.

People are noticing these patterns even if they can’t name them.

So the writers winning right now aren’t avoiding AI tools entirely.

They’re using them for speed while keeping the actual voice, the opinions, the weird specific details, distinctly human and distinctly theirs.

If your writing could’ve been written by literally anyone, including a chatbot, that’s the actual threat to your audience growth.

Not AI itself.

The Part Nobody Wants to Hear

Building an audience is slow, and it’s not really about hacks.

I wish I had a cleaner answer than that.

But every writer I’ve watched build something real did it through a long stretch of writing things that didn’t take off, learning what specifically resonated with their particular readers, and adjusting.

The writers chasing the newest trick every month tend to plateau.

The ones who develop an actual point of view, who aren’t afraid to disagree with the popular opinion sometimes, who show their real numbers and real mistakes, those are the ones people come back for.

That’s genuinely the whole secret, if there is one.

Not a content calendar. Not a posting frequency.

A perspective worth remembering.

One Last Thing

I made a lot of mistakes getting here.

Wrote things nobody read.
Obsessed over follower counts that meant nothing.
Copied formats that worked for other people and wondered why they flopped for me.

What changed things wasn’t some big revelation.

It was slowly getting more honest in what I wrote, and caring less about sounding impressive.

If you take one thing from this, let it be that.

Write like yourself, even the unpolished parts.

That’s the thing nobody can copy, AI or otherwise.

Most “how to make money writing” articles are stuck in 2021.

They talk about Medium partner programs that barely pay anymore, content mills that pay $0.02 a word, or Upwork gigs where you compete with 50 people from countries with way lower living costs.

That world is gone. AI changed everything.

But here’s the part nobody tells you: this is actually good news for writers who know how to use it right.

Let me break down what’s actually working in 2026, with zero fluff.

The Old Rules Are Dead, And That’s Fine

Five years ago, “good writing” meant grammatically correct, well-structured sentences. That was the bar.

Now? AI writes grammatically perfect sentences all day long. For free. Instantly.

So if your only skill is “I write clean sentences,” you’re competing with a tool that does it faster and cheaper. That’s just the truth.

What AI can’t do well (yet) is write with a real point of view.

It can’t share a story only you have lived. It can’t make a reader feel like they’re talking to an actual person who gets it.

That’s your edge now. Not your grammar. Your voice.

What’s Actually Paying Writers Right Now

Forget the vague “start a blog” advice. Here’s what’s working, with real numbers.

1. Ghostwriting for newsletters and LinkedIn

Founders and small business owners are drowning.

They know they need to show up online but don’t have time to write.

Realistic pay: $300 to $900 per month for 2-3 newsletter issues, or $500 to $1,500 for managing someone’s LinkedIn content for a month.

This isn’t six figures. But it’s steady, and clients stick around for months if you’re good.

2. Writing for AI-narrated YouTube channels

This is newer, and a lot of people don’t know about it yet.

Channels using AI voiceovers (no face, no camera) need scripts constantly. Faceless finance, true crime, history, and self-improvement channels are everywhere now.

Realistic pay: $50 to $100 per script for newer channels, $200+ for established ones with a proven format.

The catch? The script needs a hook in the first 15 seconds, or the viewer leaves. Channels that figure this out keep their writers around for a long time.

3. Selling your own digital products

This is where writing skills turn into actual ownership instead of trading hours for dollars.

A simple guide, template, or swipe file that solves one specific problem can sell for $9 to $47, and you only have to make it once.

The hard part isn’t writing it. It’s picking the right idea. Most people spend weeks overthinking this step and never launch anything.

If that’s where you’re stuck, there’s a free resource with 5 validated digital product ideas you can actually build and launch this week, no guesswork needed.

It’s built for exactly this moment, when you know you can write something, but you’re not sure what will actually sell.

The Skill Nobody’s Talking About: Editing AI Output

Here’s something most articles miss completely.

A lot of paying work right now isn’t “write this from scratch.” It’s “here’s what AI gave me, make it sound human and fix the parts that are wrong.”

Companies are realizing AI content sounds the same. Same phrases. Same structure. Readers can smell it now, even if they can’t explain why.

Writers who can take a rough AI draft and inject real voice, fix factual errors, and restructure it so it doesn’t sound like a robot wrote it are getting paid well for this. Often better than writing from scratch, because it’s faster work for the writer.

This is a genuinely new skill category. Nobody was teaching this two years ago because it didn’t exist.

How to Actually Get Your First Paying Gig (No BS Version)

Skip the “build a portfolio for 6 months” advice. Here’s what actually works fast:

Step 1: Pick ONE type of writing from above. Don’t try to do everything.

Step 2: Write 2-3 samples in that exact format. If it’s newsletters, write 2 fake newsletter issues for a fictional brand. If it’s YouTube scripts, write 2-3 full scripts for a few topics in a niche you’d want to work in.

Step 3: Find 10 small businesses or creators who already do this but do it badly. Look for boring newsletters, channels with scripts that drag on forever.

Step 4: Send a short, specific message. Not “I’m a writer looking for work.” Instead: “I noticed your last newsletter could use a stronger subject line; here’s one I wrote as an example for your next issue.”

That last step is the difference. You’re showing value before asking for anything.

The Email Open Rate Problem (And Why It Matters For You)

If you’re writing newsletters for clients, here’s a number that’ll wake you up: most newsletters get opened by less than 20% of subscribers.

That means 8 out of 10 people aren’t even seeing the work you wrote.

For a writer, this is actually huge leverage.

If you can show a client “hey, your open rates went from 18% to 31% after I rewrote your subject lines,” that’s not a vague promise. That’s a number they can see in their own dashboard.

Most writers never check this. They write the email and move on.

But understanding what’s working and what isn’t with subject lines is honestly one of the fastest ways to prove your value to a client, or even just yourself if you’re writing your own newsletter.

There’s a free tool called Opened that helps you actually see this stuff, how your subject lines are performing, what’s getting ignored.

If you’re serious about newsletter writing as income, knowing your numbers isn’t optional anymore. It’s part of the job now.

A Quick Story From My Own Mess-Ups

I spent almost four months early on writing “samples” that nobody asked for, for niches I picked because they “seemed profitable.” Finance, productivity, the usual.

I hated every single one. They read flat. Because I didn’t care about the topic, and it showed.

The thing that actually got me my first paying client was a newsletter I wrote about a hobby of mine (vintage cameras, random I know) that I shared in a Facebook group, just for fun. Someone in that group ran a small photography business and asked if I’d write for them.

Point being: the “pick a profitable niche” advice skips the part where you have to actually write the thing, repeatedly, and not hate your life. Pick something you can tolerate writing about for months.

Where This Is Heading

AI tools are going to keep getting better. That’s not changing.

But here’s the thing people get wrong: the demand for human writing isn’t disappearing; it’s shifting.

Brands and creators need someone who can take AI’s raw output and someone who has actual taste, actual opinions, and an actual voice.

The writers who’ll struggle in 2026 are the ones who only know how to write “correct” content.

The writers who’ll do fine are the ones who can add something AI can’t: a real perspective, a story, a reason for someone to keep reading past the first line.

That’s been true forever, honestly. AI just made it impossible to fake anymore.

Everyone talks about “starting a newsletter” like it’s one thing. Write some emails, get subscribers, profit. Done.

But that’s not how it actually works in 2026.

The newsletter world has split into a bunch of small, weird, profitable lanes that most advice articles never mention.

Not because they’re secret. Just because nobody bothers writing about them honestly.

Let’s go through the real ones. The ones actual people are running right now, with actual numbers, not fantasy numbers.

1. The “Boring Niche” Newsletter

Here’s something nobody admits: the newsletters making steady money aren’t the exciting ones.

They’re about things like commercial real estate leases, dental practice management, HVAC supply chains, or freight logistics.

Boring topics have less competition. The audience is smaller, but they have money, and they’re starved for good information.

A newsletter with 800 subscribers in a boring B2B niche can charge $15-30/month for a paid tier and make more than a “lifestyle” newsletter with 20,000 free subscribers.

You don’t need to be an expert already. You learn the niche by writing about it. Readers don’t expect a PhD; they expect someone who reads more than they do and summarizes it well.

If you’re stuck on what your “thing” could be, this is where having a few starting points helps.

There’s a free resource called 5 Validated Digital Product Ideas You Can Launch This Week that’s worth a look if you’re trying to figure out which direction makes sense for you.

It’s not about newsletters specifically, but a few of those ideas pair really well with a newsletter as the delivery format.

2. The Curation Newsletter (But Done Right)

Curation newsletters got a bad reputation because most of them are just “here are 5 links, bye.”

But the ones working in 2026 do something different: they add a strong personal take on each link.

Readers don’t open these for the links. They open them for the person’s opinion on the links.

This matters more now because AI can summarize anything. What AI can’t do is have a genuine opinion shaped by years of paying attention to one specific corner of the internet.

So if you’ve been reading about, say, indie game development, or vintage watch auctions, or AI tooling for accountants, for years already, that’s your edge. Not the topic. Your years of context.

3. The “Translation” Newsletter

This one’s underused.

Pick a topic that’s genuinely complex (tax law changes, new AI regulations, healthcare billing codes, whatever) and just... explain it simply.

That’s the whole business model. Translation.

Complex topic + plain English = people will pay.

Lawyers do this for clients. Accountants do this for clients. You can do this for an audience and charge a subscription instead of an hourly rate.

4. The Local Newsletter

Local newsletters are quietly having a moment again.

Think city-specific or even neighborhood-specific. Restaurant openings, local events, small business spotlights.

The money here isn’t subscriptions usually; it’s local business sponsorships. A bakery paying $50-100 to be featured in a newsletter that goes to 2,000 people in their area is a much easier sell than convincing a national brand to sponsor you.

You don’t need huge numbers. You need the right numbers, local people who actually live there and spend money there.

Now, here’s the part that actually matters most

All of these models above? They fail for one boring reason.

Not because the niche is wrong. Not because the writing is bad.

They fail because nobody opens the email.

You can write the best newsletter on earth about commercial freight logistics, and if your subject line gets ignored, none of it matters.

The whole business sits on one tiny moment: someone glancing at their inbox and deciding, in about two seconds, whether to tap your email or scroll past it.

Most writers obsess over the content and treat the subject line like an afterthought. Backwards.

This is genuinely the bottleneck for almost every small newsletter I’ve seen.

Good writing, decent niche, terrible open rates, and the writer has no idea why, because most email tools don’t really explain why a subject line worked or didn’t.

If this sounds familiar, you write something you’re proud of, send it, and the open rate is sitting there at 22% with no explanation; there’s a free tool called Opened that’s built around exactly this problem.

It looks at your subject lines and gives you a clearer picture of what’s actually driving opens versus what’s quietly killing them.

Worth checking if you’ve ever stared at your open rate number and just felt confused by it.

5. The “Behind the Scenes of My Income” Newsletter

This one works because of a weird quirk of human psychology: people trust numbers more than advice.

“Here’s how I made $1,200 last month freelancing” is more compelling than “Here are 10 tips for freelancing success.”

You don’t need to be making huge money for this to work.

Even a newsletter documenting someone going from $0 to $500/month, written honestly, with the failures included, builds an audience because it’s real.

The AI angle here actually helps you.

AI-written content all sounds the same: polished, generic, slightly hollow. A newsletter that’s clearly written by one specific human, with specific numbers and specific mistakes, stands out more now than it did three years ago, not less.

6. The “AI Tools, But For One Specific Job” Newsletter

General “AI news” newsletters are saturated. Completely.

But “AI tools for wedding photographers” or “AI tools for substitute teachers” or “AI tools for small landlords”, that’s wide open.

You’re not competing with the big AI newsletters because you’re not writing for the same audience. You’re writing for people in one specific job who don’t have time to follow general AI news but desperately want to know what applies to them.

This works especially well combined with the local or boring-niche ideas above. A newsletter for property managers in one state, covering AI tools plus local regulation changes, is a real business.

Not a huge one. But real, and not crowded.

The honest truth about starting any of these

None of these are passive income.

I know that’s not what people want to hear, but every working newsletter I know of takes consistent weekly effort for at least 6-12 months before it earns anything meaningful.

The difference between the ones that work and the ones that don’t usually comes down to two things: picking something specific enough that you’re not competing with everyone, and actually paying attention to whether people open and read what you send.

Most people get the first part eventually. It’s the second part- the open rates, the subject lines, understanding why some emails land and others don’t- that quietly kills most newsletters before they get a chance to grow.

Start small. Pick one of these angles. Write for a few months before judging it. And actually look at your numbers instead of guessing.

That’s really it. No secret formula, just fewer people doing the boring, specific, consistent version of this than you’d think.