How Often Should You Publish Notes to Grow Your Paid Subscribers?

How a small change in Notes posting creates a 10X difference

Since the introduction of Substack Notes in February 2023, its usage has expanded dramatically. Substackers have figured out how effectively Notes drives traffic and engagement to their newsletters.

I love working with data and building tools.

So, I built a data pipeline, collected a dataset from 1,360,173 Notes published by 13,534 newsletter authors, and conducted a deep dive analysis.

My Notes dataset statistics (by the author)

Since many Substackers are interested in growing their newsletters and getting paid subscribers, I focused on how newsletter authors in different bestseller tiers have started using the Notes feature.

Engagement growth by bestseller tier

The data shows that Substack Notes are a great tool to drive engagement with your target audience.

After the initial 12-month experimentation period, the average reactions for all bestseller tiers increased from February 2024 onwards.

I use a logarithmic y-axis to show the monthly engagement trendline in each bestseller tier below.

Average reactions by bestseller tiers by month (by the author)

We can see similar engagement growth in restacks on the graph below. Once again, I’m using a logarithmic y-axis to show each bestseller tier's average restacks below.

Average restacks by bestseller tiers by month (by the author)

That is great, but let’s investigate the following question - how frequently should I post Notes to grow my audience and subscribers?

Frequency of notes by bestseller tier

I created a video clip demonstrating the average monthly note count by bestseller tier. In it, we see how authors experimented with Notes during the first year. Each bestseller tier (0,100,1000 and 10,000) is represented as a column, and the average monthly note count is shown on the vertical axis.

From February 2024 onwards, we can see how bestseller tier 10,000 (red bar) increased the average monthly Note Count to 30 and over. The peak month was October 2024, when we saw 52 Notes, on average, from that bestseller tier.

Another interesting observation is that each bestseller tier increased its average monthly Notes over that period.

How do you get a 10X difference with a small change?

Let’s look at these average monthly numbers. While each bestseller tier has increased its average monthly Notes during this period, we can see a consistent pattern that higher bestseller tiers post, on average, more Notes per month.

These numbers suggest posting only a few more monthly Notes will help you grow your engagement and paid subscribers by 10X over time.

Average monthly Notes by bestseller tier by month (by the author)

You may wonder if it is really that simple. Other factors must drive growth, like content quality, better headlines, consistency, etc. This is what everybody is selling, right?

Well, how can we test these ideas?

Let’s do an experiment

I decided to test this idea with a small experiment.

However, I have a demanding 9-5 job, so I cannot post Notes all day. That’s why I built the Substack Schedules Notes Chrome Extension tool to facilitate more frequent note posting. I create multiple notes in batches and then schedule them to be sent during the day.

On November 21st, I got the first working version, 0.1, ready and started scheduling frequent Notes on my progress.

My newsletter total traffic didn’t just increase—it exploded. In just 30 days, I experienced an incredible 30x boost in views.

Here’s a snapshot of my traffic over the past 90 days to show the dramatic difference.

Scheduled Notes impact on my newsletter traffic (by the author)

Below is a view of my subscriber growth. You can see the initial slow growth from my articles in September. After I started using Scheduled Notes daily on November 21st, my subscriber growth accelerated dramatically, reaching 325 subscribers a few days ago.

My newsletter subscriber growth (by the author)

I've included the monthly Posts and Notes numbers of my Finn’sights newsletter below.

With my new tool, I could schedule many more Notes daily, even while working on a demanding 9-5 job that took my attention during the day.

Monthly Notes and Posts for Finn’sights newsletter (by the author)

As you can see, I created just one more post in December than August, but 50 more Notes. Also, I recycled some of the posts from my old Medium articles in December.

Final thoughts

Many people are telling you all kinds of numbers and justifications. In her article,

Yana G.Y.

is touching on these claims:

Common advice I heard: it’s best to write once a week or twice per week but not more. Why? Because you don’t want to spam. — Yana G.Y.

Following her example, I don’t always listen to what others say; I look at what they do. With the data, it is easy to check the facts.

The data from the 1.3 million Notes I collected tell a compelling story. Based on my experience, you should write more Notes to gain traffic and subscribers.

Over time, it will result in 10X growth.

In my small experiment, in just 30 days, I saw a dramatic growth in subscribers (41%) and traffic (30X).

So, what are you waiting for? Start writing that next Note.