I discovered what the Notes algorithm actually loves. (Hint: It’s not your writing quality.)
Most writers are optimizing their Notes for the wrong thing entirely. The algorithm doesn't care about your craft. It cares about one thing and one thing only.
I used to spend 45 minutes on a single Note.
Write a sentence. Delete it. Write it again. Research a stat. Edit the hook four times. Read it out loud. Edit it again.
Then I’d post it feeling good about the work I’d put in.
Maybe ten likes. Zero new subscribers.
Meanwhile I’d dash off a Note in a few minutes about something that frustrated me that morning, hit post without rereading it, and wake up to 40 new subscribers.
I genuinely didn’t understand what was happening.
I thought I was doing it wrong. Turns out I was finally doing it right.
The Note I edited for 30 minutes flopped. The one I wrote in 5 minutes brought 40 subscribers.
For the first few months I treated every Note like a mini essay. Polished. Structured. Researched.
I figured the algorithm worked like school. Better work gets rewarded? Put in the effort, get the grade.
The algorithm didn’t care.
When Substack’s NYC Notes Night happened last year, I wasn’t in the room. But I read everything that came out of it. And one quote from Mike Cohen, Substack’s head of machine learning, stuck with me:
“The goal is to get people to discover, subscribe, and ideally pay. That’s how we built the feed.”
Not likes. Not time spent reading. Not how carefully you crafted your sentences.
Subscriptions.
The algorithm has one job. It looks at your Note and asks a single question: will this make a stranger want to follow this writer?
If yes, it shows your Note to more people whose reading habits overlap with your existing subscribers. People already primed to care about what you write.
It’s not a writing contest. It’s a subscriber-matching engine.
Once I understood that, everything clicked. I’d been optimizing for the wrong thing entirely.
The question I ask before every Note now (it’s not “is this good?”)
About three to four months in, I finally found a system that worked.
I stopped starting from scratch. I started using templates from my swipe file. Not because I’m lazy. Because starting from scratch was eating all my time and none of it was making my Notes better.
I was spending 80% of my energy figuring out structure. The template handles structure. That freed me up to focus on the only thing the algorithm actually rewards: The story.
Now before I write a single word I ask myself one question: how can I turn this into more of a story?
Not “is this insight valuable?”
Not “will people find this useful?”
Not “is this hook strong enough?”
Just: how do I make this more relatable?
Then I write. I don’t edit heavily or research. I don’t agonize over the opening line.
I focus on the heart behind the Note, not the perfection of it.
My subscriber numbers went up.
After writing 1000+ Notes, here’s what the algorithm keeps rewarding
I’ve written over 1000+ Notes and grown to 16,000 subscribers. Most of that growth came directly from Notes.
Here’s what I’ve learned about what actually moves the needle:
(1.) Consistency beats brilliance every time. Showing up daily trains the algorithm and your audience.
A decent Note posted every day outperforms a great Note posted twice a week. The feed rewards writers who are reliably present, not writers who disappear for four days and come back with something polished.
(2.) Stories convert. Tips just get likes. When you share something that happened to you, readers feel something.
Feeling something makes them want to read more. Wanting to read more makes them hit follow. That’s the signal the algorithm is scanning for. Tips get saved. Stories get subscribers.
(3.) Writing for everyone means reaching no one. Substack doesn’t blast your Notes out randomly. It shows your content to readers whose tastes already overlap with your existing audience.
The more specifically you write for one person, the better the algorithm gets at finding more of them.
And the Notes you rush often outperform the ones you craft.
I’ve lived this dozens of times. The Note I was almost embarrassed to post because it felt too simple or too raw…The one I wrote in five minutes from a real frustration or a real moment…
Those consistently outperform the ones I labored over. Authenticity reads differently than crafted content. Readers feel it even when they can’t name it.
Let me show you my daily system that brings in 500-800+ subscribers every month
I write my Notes in under 20 minutes every day.
Not because I’m a fast writer. Because I built a system that makes it repeatable without burning me out.
Template. Story angle. Write. Post.
The writers I see growing fastest in my community aren’t the most talented. They’re the most consistent.
That’s the whole mindset shift.
If you want to build that same daily habit, my “10+ Subscribers a Day” Notes Growth Workshop is where I teach the full system.
The three Note types I rotate through every week.
The templates I use every morning to skip the blank page.
The 20-minute daily process that brought in 770 new subscribers last month alone.
Inside the Notes Workshop you’ll learn exactly which Notes convert strangers into subscribers, how to write them without it taking over your day, and how to build the kind of daily consistency that actually compounds over time.
It’s the exact same system that took me from zero to 16,000 subscribers and over $100K in yearly revenue.
100’s of writers have joined over the last year, and you can join below:
You don’t need to write better. You need to show up more consistently, lean harder into story, and stop letting perfectionism keep you from posting.
The Note you’re overthinking right now? Post it.
The hesitation - transforming an idea into a story (is there enough meat in the sandwich?). I like the idea of templating. That can be the bread if I continue this sandwich analogy 😂
I can see now that I've fallen into that trap of trying to write for everyone when my publication topic is not for everyone. I also fuss too much about making my Notes good rather than making them effective. 👍🏽