What I Learned from 30 Days of Trying to Grow This Newsletter
The newsletter didn't double, but I don't regret a thing.
Thirty days ago, I recruited ChatGPT as my growth coach and set an ambitious goal: double my subscriber count in a month. I offered up $100 budget and all the summer hours I could spare. It never touched the money, but it did churn out a daily list of things for me to try.
So, how did it go? We didn’t come close.
We did add more than 400 new subscribers during that time, and I learned a lot along the way. Here’s a quick look at what worked, what didn’t, and what I’m doing next.
✅ What Worked
Looking back, I’m really happy with a few of the things it asked me to do. There wasn’t ever anything really flashy, but I think a few of the items will pay off long term.
One of the earliest challenges was to ask long-time readers why they subscribed. The responses were thoughtful, candid, and surprisingly useful. They gave me clearer language to describe the newsletter to others and helped confirm what was already working well for people.
Early on, I also made a few quiet updates to the website. I changed up the layouts, menu, and welcome pages to make it easier for new visitors to understand what the newsletter is about and decide whether to subscribe. I tightened up the welcome emails and added more intentional calls to action to popular posts. This probably should have been done months ago, but better late than never!
And finally: collaborations. I have a written a few posts in the past with my friends, , , and . But this time, I was challenged to reach out to other Substack writers instead. The first collaboration with dropped earlier this week, and a few more are in the works. This has probably been my favorite challenge because it will introduce this newsletter to new audiences.
A lot was going on in the first couple of weeks, and it led to use being one of the rising bestsellers in the Education category on Substack.
👎 What Didn’t Work
But not everything landed. Some of the recommendations that I thought would generate long-term benefits fizzled out quickly, and others never even took off. After about 20 days, it felt like we hit a wall. I started to wonder if there were even 30 unique ways to grow a newsletter like mine.
One thing I noticed early on was that some challenges felt repetitive. For example, one of the first challenges was to create a “starter pack” that highlighted the most user-friendly posts as an introduction for new subscribers. A few weeks later, I was challenged to email readers and ask for their favorite posts in ordert to create a page highlighting those. Sure, it’s technically different than the early challenge. But is it really going to meaningfully change anything?
Then there’s the audience itself. A lot of the challenges directed me to post more on social media about the newsletter, hoping to create something viral. I’ve been writing this newsletter for four years, so my social media followers have likely already made up their minds about whether they’re going to subscribe. If they’ve seen the posts, clicked around, and still haven’t subscribed… they probably aren’t going to because I suddenly started posting more.
And, of course, life happened. I missed a few days near the end of the challenge when my personal life needed to come first. And that’s okay with me.
💡 What Comes Next
The challenge is over, but I do think there are a few things that I want to keep building on. For starters, I’m going to stop treating Monday as the only day that I talk about my newsletter. I’ll keep reposting previous articles when they’re relevant and sharing behind-the-scenes insights with you from time to time. My goal is to keep the conversation going throughout the week.
Second, this experiment taught me that I need to be more engaged with the broader community and not just broadcast my thoughts into it. That means engaging more consistently with other writers by commenting on posts I enjoy, highlighting other writers doing great work, and joining conversations outside my feed.
And finally, more collaboration. I loved this week’s article with Hanna, and I’m so excited for what’s coming out in the coming weeks. I want to do more of these, so please reach out if you’re writing on Substack. It’s made the writing better, and frankly, it makes it more fun.
📈 The Result
In case you’re curious, here’s what the last three months of subscriptions looked like, including the very obvious bump from this challenge. While I don’t have a good synthetic control to test whether my treatment caused the recent growth, I think even would agree that the intervention looks causal.
Whether you’ve been reading since the very first 30 days back in 2021 or you joined sometime in the past 30 days, thank you! Every comment and every share helps shape this newsletter into something worth sticking around for.
More to come. See you Monday!
One thing you have omitted is your own "why". Why try to double your subscribership? Is that significant? Why does community engagement matter, more than just putting your thoughts out in the aether for the sake of writing? This project clearly takes a lot of (very appreciated!) work; why is it important to you? What's YOUR motivation?
I have enjoyed your effort and really appreciated the increased engagement with me (and my newsletter). An indirect measure of your effort is the impact it has had on other writers. I needed reenergizing push and you provided that. Also, I think there is more that we can do as a community if economic writers to work together and support each others work. Let’s talk when we meet in St. Louis, I think we are under utilizing our combined power.