1.5 Subscribers a Day on Substack

and even a handful of paid subscriptions

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

I’ve been writing on Substack for a while now and I regularly update my progress on the site with posts here at Medium.

I’m closing in on 2000 subscribers on my education policy Substack.

I also write one on consumer finance.

That one is smaller and grows more slowly, but covers an issue I’m passionate about.

For the purpose of this post, I plan to talk about growth on The Education Report.

The bottom line:

I added 46 subscribers in March and 5 new paid subscribers.

That’s about 1.5 new subs a day — and a 10% rate of new total subscribers become paid.

My Substack is offered completely free — so, anyone subscribing is more like a sponsor than anything else. I appreciate those sponsorhips — the funds allow me to dedicate time and energy to researching and writing articles.

I’d also note that if I could reach a norm of 10% paid subscribers, I’d be pretty happy.

I publish 2–3 times a week — as education news happens in Tennessee and around the country.

For me, writing a solid Substack is about providing value — I want readers to get news they aren’t likely to get anywhere else and/or to get a deeper level of analysis than they’d get from traditional news outlets.

I think the fact that people visit and sign up on a regular basis suggests I’m providing that value.

How do you grow your newsletter?