The 3 Substack Notes Mistakes Keeping You Stuck at 100 Subscribers
I posted on Notes for 90 days and barely grew. Then I fixed these three mistakes and started getting 10+ subscribers daily. Here’s what changed.
I remember being stuck at 200 subscribers for what felt like forever.
I was posting Notes every single day. Spending 30-40 minutes trying to write the perfect post. Getting a few likes here and there, maybe a comment or two. But barely any new subscribers.
Everyone kept saying Notes was the growth engine on Substack.
But it wasn’t working for me. I started wondering if it was all hype, if I was just wasting my time, if maybe I was the problem and Notes just didn’t work for writers like me.
Then I figured out what I was doing wrong. Three specific mistakes that were killing my growth. Once I fixed them, everything changed. I went from gaining maybe 2-3 new subscribers a week to 10+ subscribers daily.
Same amount of time. Same platform. Completely different results.
Here’s what I was doing wrong, and what most writers are still doing right now.
Mistake #1: You’re posting tips instead of stories (and nobody subscribes to tips)
This was my biggest mistake. I was writing helpful tips, sharing strategies, giving advice. Practical stuff that seemed valuable. And getting zero subscribers from it.
I learned the hard way that people scroll past tips but stop for stories.
A Note that says “3 ways to grow your newsletter” gets ignored. But a Note that tells the story of your breakthrough moment when your first Note went semi-viral? That gets subscribers.
People don’t subscribe to tips. They subscribe to people. And stories show them who you are.
What to do instead: Share your actual experience.
Tell the story of what happened, what you learned, what changed for you. Make it personal, specific, vulnerable.
That’s what converts browsers into subscribers. They’re not looking for another checklist, they’re looking for someone whose journey they want to follow.
Mistake #2: You’re not giving the algorithm time to learn your voice (and quitting right before it clicks)
Most writers post Notes for 2-3 weeks, don’t see dramatic results, and quit.
I was making the same mistake. I expected results in week one. When I didn’t see immediate growth, I started doubting whether Notes even worked.
But the algorithm needs time to figure out who you are and who should see your work.
It’s not magic, it’s machine learning. And machine learning needs data.
The Substack team has been clear about this. The algorithm is designed to show your Notes to people who will actually subscribe based on overlapping interests and reading patterns.
But it can’t do that effectively if you only give it 10 posts to work with.
What to do instead: Commit to 90 days minimum.
Post 2-3 Notes daily. Give the algorithm enough data to learn your voice and connect you with the right readers.
The consistency is what builds the momentum. I know it feels like you’re shouting into the void at first. That’s normal. Keep going anyway.
Mistake #3: You’re writing walls of text that nobody reads (formatting matters more than you think)
My early Notes looked like paragraphs. Dense blocks of text. No line breaks, no white space, no visual breathing room.
And people scrolled right past them.
People are scrolling fast on Notes. If your Note looks hard to read at a glance, they keep scrolling. It doesn’t matter how good your content is if nobody stops long enough to actually read it.
The formatting matters as much as the content. Short sentences with line breaks create visual rhythm.
White space gives the eye somewhere to rest. It makes people want to stop scrolling and actually engage with what you wrote.
I tested this directly. I posted the same exact content twice, once as a paragraph and once with intentional formatting and line breaks.
The formatted version got three times the engagement and brought actual subscribers. Same words, different presentation.
What to do instead: Write in short punchy sentences.
Add line breaks between thoughts, use white space strategically, and make it visually easy to consume in 10 seconds or less.
Think about how your Note looks when someone’s scrolling quickly through their feed. Does it invite them to stop, or does it look like work?
My own results when I fixed these three mistakes
Once I stopped making these mistakes, Notes became my primary growth engine.
I went from stuck at 200 subscribers to 10,000+ in a year. Seventy percent of that growth came from Notes. Today, I’m consistently getting 10+ new subscribers every single day from just 20-30 minutes of posting.
Because I wasn’t posting tips nobody cared about. I wasn’t quitting before the algorithm learned my voice. And I wasn’t making people work too hard to read my Notes.
These three shifts are what helped me breakthrough my wall.
Let me show you exactly what works with Notes (and give you the templates that brought me 10,000+ subscribers)
Understanding these mistakes is one thing. Knowing exactly what to post instead is another.
That’s what I teach inside my “10+ Subscribers a Day” Notes Growth Workshop.
The specific types of Notes that convert…How to write them in 5 minutes so it doesn’t take over your life…How to format them so people actually stop and read…
And when you join this weekend, you get my “Top 10 Notes Swipe File” as a bonus.
These are my actual highest-performing Notes that brought hundreds of subscribers.
You can join 500+ writers below who have learned to write Notes inside the Workshop:
You can spend the next three months making these same mistakes, posting Notes that don’t convert, wondering why everyone else seems to be growing except you.
Or you can fix them this weekend and start seeing real growth next week.
Keep writing, Wes
Question: Which of these mistakes are you making right now? Be honest, no judgment. Let me know in the comments.
Quite possibly the best advice I've read so far about notes, a confession from a Substack newbie.
You've captured something subtle but crucial. I've tried several approaches here with mixed results, and your 3 ways approach gives me a clear path forward. Excited to put this into practice! What's odd for me is I subscribe to tips. Stories to me are a distraction. Words that get in the way of facts. I'll keep working on it, but man does it suck trying to figure this out.