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A Solid Conversion Strategy is Vital on Substack, Here’s the Proof

Since June of 2024, I’ve been publishing Backstage Pass on Substack. I’ve been having an absolute blast doing so. Today I wanted to share one of the most impactful lessons I’ve learned: The value of a good conversion strategy.

The Value of a Solid Conversion Strategy

In August of 2025, I focused on tightening my content strategy for my Substack publication, Backstage Pass. The improvement I saw in views, readership and engagement was almost immediate.

Around this time, I wrote two posts that did very well for me.  The first came in August, a post for my Paid subscribers on the conversion strategy that Spotify uses to convert a staggering 40% of its free users to Premium. To this day, this post remains my most viewed and profitable Substack post written.

A couple of weeks later, I wrote a post for all my subscribers (free and Paid) on 4 psychological triggers that content creators can use to get more engagement. This post had a lot of engagement (thank goodness, given the topic), and a lot of views.

But it didn’t convert any free subscribers to Paid. So I asked ChatGPT to analyze this post and tell me why it didn’t convert.

GPT said the post didn’t covert because first, I didn’t include a paywall.  Second, I gave away all the information for free.

In short, there was no reason for a free subscriber to convert to Paid, as I had given them all the information for free, and I wasn’t asking them to convert.

This post had no conversion strategy. In fact, my entire Substack had no real conversion strategy. I had no formal strategy for converting a free reader into a paying subscriber.

This was in September. Prior to that, my conversion rate on Substack was 0.5%.  For reference, most Substacks have a conversion rate in the 1-3% range. The best-performing Substacks hit 5%, and as you get above 5%, you get into more rarified air, with fewer and fewer publications hitting this mark.

I suspect there are few, if any, substacks that are matching or surpassing a 10% conversion rate at scale.

When I started building a conversion strategy for Backstage Pass, it’s conversion rate at that time was 0.5%.

However…the conversion rate for Backstage Pass since September 1st is 14.5%.

Think about that for a minute: Before creating and implementing a conversion strategy, I converted 0.5% of my free subscribers to Paid. Since implementing a solid conversion strategy, I am converting 11.3% of my free subscribers to Paid.

An increased conversion rate from 0.5% to 14.5%.

Here’s what has happened to revenue in that timeframe:

revenue increase on Substack due to solid conversion strategy

The first challenge was creating a solid content strategy. I did that.

The second challenge was creating a solid conversion strategy that would leverage the content strategy to realize a 10% conversion rate.  I am doing that now.

The final challenge will be maintaining a double-digit conversion rate as I scale.

I am documenting this entire process on Backstage Pass. Paid subscribers get access to teardowns of what has worked for me, so they apply these methods to their own publication and see similar results.

Subscribe today, so you can turn your Substack from a hopeful side-hustle to a profitable business in 2026:

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Understanding Substack’s Three Growth Stages

Growth on Substack is easier to track than you think. In May of 2024, I started investigating Substack. I had heard from peers that Substack was growing and that I should build a presence there.

For those that aren’t familiar with Substack, it’s a newsletter site that has a social component built on top of it.  From a functionality perspective, it’s sort of a mish-mash of a newsletter provider like MailChimp, plus a social media platform like X.

Which intrigued me.  For years I had written a newsletter, but I rarely received feedback from subscribers. This was very frustrating and honestly the lack of feedback on the content I created made it very difficult to stay committed to the newsletter. So when I learned that Substack had a social element built on top of it, I was very interested in learning more.

Is it Possible to Actually Make Money on Substack?

This is what I really wanted to know. If I was going to commit to Substack, I wanted to know that I could eventually make enough money to justify my time there.

I started studying successful writers on Substack to see what their experiences were. Surprisingly, I found that almost every successful writer on Substack followed a very similar pattern of growth.  In fact, the typical successful writer on Substack followed three stages of growth.

The first stage of growth typically lasts 6-12 months.  The writer will average 0-3 new subscribers a day. Typically, writers in the first stage of growth will have 0-5 paid subscribers.

The second stage of growth typically lasts 3-6 months, or half as long as the first stage. The writer will average 4-10 new subscribers a day in the second stage. Writers in the second stage typically have 0-10 paid subscribers.

The third stage of growth is called the ‘hockey stick’. This is where growth accelerates rapidly. The number of free subscribers spikes dramatically. In addition, the number of paid subscribers takes off. In fact, most writers typically have few, if any, paid subscribers until hitting the third stage.

Here’s a graph from one writer that shows a very typical growth trajectory for a successful writer on Substack:

You can see on the graph, around May 19th, Anna moves into the second stage.  Then around July 1st is when she moves into the third stage of growth.

Social Media Growth is Not Linear

One of the biggest problems with building a presence on a social media site is attempting to predict future growth. Growth on most social media sites is not linear, in fact it’s usually anything but. Often, growth will be slow if non-existent, then one day, inexplicably, growth will begin and will typically increase over time. But there are usually few if any ‘warning signs’ before the growth kicks in. As a result, users will often quit using a site because they can’t gain any traction after a few months.

While growth on Substack isn’t linear, it is a bit easier to anticipate. The end point of the first stage of growth is the key. The amount of time spent in the second stage of growth is typically half the amount of time spent in the first stage of growth.

For instance, if it takes a writer 14 months to move from the first to second stage of growth, it should take that same writer around seven additional months to move to the third stage of growth.

In talking to successful Substack writers, they all gave me the same advice: Stick with it. They all agreed that the first stage of growth was a ‘slog’, and if you can make it through the first stage, you will be fine.

Which is exactly what I needed to hear. Otherwise, I would have stopped writing at Substack after about 3 months. I am now entering my seventh month writing on Subtack, and it just now feels like I am starting to get some traction.

So if you want to build a presence on Substack, here’s some advice:

  • Commit to writing for at least 6 months.  A full year is better. From my research and personal experience, most writers take 6-12 months on Substack before they begin to see noticeable growth.
  • Spend at least half your time engaging with other Substack users. If you are serious about building a presence on Substack, you must engage with other users. Comment on their Notes, Like their issues when they share them. You have to engage with others if you want them to return the favor.
  • Expect to invest 12-18 months before you realize any significant income from subscriptions. From my research, most Substack writers in the third stage of growth make $500-$1,500 a month from subscriptions. If you can supplement that income with 2-3 other streams, Substack can definitely be worth your time.

And if you are curious, you can subscribe to Backstage Pass and follow along with my progress. I give an update in the first issue of every month on my growth on Substack.

 

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Blogging Isn’t Dead, it’s Morphed Into Substack

I started blogging officially in September of 2005. I launched my own blog for the first time in March of 2006.  This blog launched in June of 2009.

One of the things that blogging for that long affords me is the ability to know what blogging was like before Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

It was a different world. And in many ways, it was a better online world.

In 2024, if you want to catch up with your favorite content creator, you can likely find them on Facebook, X, Instagram, maybe even LinkedIn or YouTube. The point is, you have multiple options for engaging with them.

If you wanted to catch up with your favorite content creator in 2006, you had one option: Their blog.

Whereas social media is centralized today on massive platforms, it was decentralized then on blogs. Most people had a blog, and most people only created and published content on their blogs.

It meant we all blogged, and we all read blogs. That created a scenario where it was very easy to build community around your blog’s readers, and most of us did that.  We have a community of people that read our blogs, and we also participated in the communities on other blogs. Everyone engaged with each other via comments and it would even spill over to emails.

But the rise of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter changed all that. Conversations moved off our blogs, and onto social media.

Case in point: In 2011, this blog received 3008 comments.  That’s almost 10 comments every day.

Last year?  40 comments.  For the entire year.

As we all moved to social media sites, we moved off our blogs.

For the last few years I’ve heard that blogging is dead.  The precipitous drop in traffic and engagement on most blogs makes it easy to see why people say this.

What is Substack?

But a few months ago, I decided to join Substack. Substack is interesting, it’s kinda like a mishmash of newsletters and social media.

At its core, Substack is a place for you to write a newsletter. But where it differs is that Substack has a robust social layer over its publishing function. You can publish a newsletter on Substack but Substack members can then engage with your newsletter, even if they aren’t subscribed to it.  Substack writers can then promote their newsletter to Substack users, which drives even more engagement.

Recently, Substack even added a Notes functionality, which allows you to post short (or long) messages independently of your newsletter. Similar to a Facebook update or a tweet.

I’ve started calling Substack ‘social blogging’. It’s not just a newsletter, and it’s more than just social media.

And for now, at least, the community on Substack is absolutely amazing. You don’t see the endless self-promotion on Substack that you do on other social media sites.  You see people sharing what they are learning honestly, you see people openly talking about their failures. You see people supporting each other.

You see a real sense of community.  It very much reminds me of the early days of blogging, before we all left our blogs and went to social media. It’s why I titled these post that blogging isn’t dead, it’s morphed into Substack.

Please check out Substack if you haven’t already. I really do love it there, and that’s where you can find me these days. I’ve all but abandoned Facebook and Twitter, and only spend a bit of time on LinkedIn.  At least 90% of my time on social media is spent on Substack.

Come see why.  Follow me by clicking here.

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The Backstage Pass is Moving to Substack

A bit of housekeeping: I am moving The Backstage Pass newsletter from Mailchimp to Substack.  Effective next week. If you haven’t yet subbed to The Backstage Pass, please do so over on Substack.

Why the change?  Substack has two key advantages over Mailchimp for me:

1 – I can add more social elements. I’ve growth and nurtured The Backstage Pass for over 10 years now. One of the nagging problems I’ve had with the newsletter is the lack of interaction I can have with subscribers. Unless a subscriber reaches out to me directly or vice versa, I have no clue if the content I am creating is resonating with them. Other than looking at Clicks or Open Rates and guessing.

But with Substack, I can add social elements. We can have chats for each newsletter issue, discussions about each topic. It’s so much easier to connect directly with subscribers. Now, they do need to be on Substack in order to connect with me on Substack, but the signup process is as pain-free as it is on any other social channel. Please follow me here if you join Substack.

2 – Substack has monetization options built right in. As a result, I will soon be offering a premium version of The Backstage Pass, which will have more ‘premium’ content. This will also allow me to devote even more time to the newsletter, which is something that I’ve always wanted to do. But prior, it was hard to justify spending more time on a stream that isn’t producing revenue. Substack will help me solve that problem.

 

So if you haven’t already subbed, please do so.  As for Substack itself, I have to say, I am really enjoying the experience there. There’s a strong community vibe, it feels like early days excitement there before all the ‘influencers’, marketers and gurus find it.  I’m sure that’s coming, but for now it feels super cozy. In fact, it really feels like what I think a lot of us wanted to see blogging become: A way for us to connect and support our favorite writers and content creators.