I Tested 3 Substack Growth Strategies for One Week. Here Are the Results.

I used subscribe-for-subscribe, Notes, and original articles. The data surprised me.

I Tested 3 Growth Strategies on Substack

In my first week, I reached 150+ subscribers.

Substack dashboard after the first week: 150+ subscribers reached without paid ads.

I didn’t use paid ads.

I tested three things:

1. Subscribe-for-subscribe

2. Substack Notes

3. Original articles

The goal was simple:

Understand what actually creates growth.

---

The experiment

Period:
First week

Actions:

• 5 published articles

• 40+ Notes

• daily engagement with creators

• subscribe-for-subscribe interactions

---

Strategy 1: Subscribe-for-subscribe

This was the biggest acquisition driver.

Traffic sources during the experiment. Substack Notes and network effects were the main discovery channels.

It helped me escape zero quickly.

Why it works:

New creators already have a growth mindset.

They are actively looking for:

• new writers

• communities

• interesting publications

The limitation:

A subscription does not automatically mean a reader.

The next challenge is retention.

---

Strategy 2: Substack Notes

Notes became my discovery channel.

Notes created repeated visibility and conversations with other creators.

They helped me:

• start conversations

• share experiments

• bring people to my profile

• test ideas quickly

Short content created repeated visibility.

Notes bring people to your profile. What they see there decides the rest, so I later built a free Substack profile audit that scores it out of 100.

---

Strategy 3: Original articles

Articles were not the biggest acquisition source.

Articles played a different role: turning attention into trust.

But they played another role.

They answered:

“Why should I subscribe?”

A Note can get attention.

An article can build trust.

---

The surprising lesson

I initially thought:

“Better articles = more subscribers.”

The data showed something different.

Growth came from combining:

Distribution + Trust.

Reciprocal interactions created the first contact

Notes created repeated exposure.

Articles created context.

---

What I will test next

Now that I understand acquisition, the next experiment is retention.

I will measure:

• open rates

• returning readers

• replies

• unsubscribes

• article conversion

Because 150 subscribers is only the beginning.

The real question:

How many become active readers?

I’m documenting the numbers, mistakes and results as I go.

Subscribe to follow the next experiment — when I stop measuring how many people subscribe and start measuring how many actually stay.