• Content pillars

• Note templates

• Engagement strategies

• Optimal posting frequency

You read them, felt that little spark of yes, this is the missing piece, and then... nothing changes.

Maybe you wonder if you’re the problem: maybe you’re not consistent enough, or your positioning isn’t tight enough, or you haven’t found your voice yet.

But that is not what is really happening. The people teaching you how to grow on Substack have no idea why they grew in the first place.

When you finish this article you’ll know what is the cognitive trap the gurus use against you, so you think that they know how to grow on this platform. And let me tell you it has nothing to do with how many notes you post or your hooks—well, maybe your hooks.

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What Is Survivorship Bias and Why Does It Explain So Much?

Survivorship bias is what happens when you take advice from winners, even when luck caused their win.

Imagine a coin flipping tournament. Everyone who flips tails is eliminated. You do this over and over until one person wins—in this case by flipping heads more than anyone else.

Now watch what happens: the rest of the participants floods toward that person asking how they did it. Someone pulls out a notebook. Another person asks them to please do a webinar. Within six months they’ve got a course called The Heads Method and a waitlist of eager students paying to learn their “process.”

Humans brains give more weight to the words of someone who has been successful, even if that success was actually the result of random chance. Flipping a coins.

We call this Survivorship bias: the tendency to look only at the “survivors” or exceptions in any given situation. We ignore what didn’t survive and this can lead to false conclusion.

The winners genuinely believe they have something figured out. we look backward at their success and reverse-engineered a story to make sense of what happened. Consistency. Mindset. Showing up every day...

What we don’t see is the hundred people who did all the same things and got eliminated anyway!

What Did the Substack Growth Accounts Actually Do Differently?

Do you want to know their secret? They started 1 to 3 years before you. That’s their competitive advantage, in full.

The platform was less crowded when they arrived. The recommendation engine was actually working. The algorithm rewarded early movers. Their subscriber list grew during a period when growing was genuinely easier. This has nothing to do with their content strategy or anything they trying to sell you.

And now? the algorithm favors accounts with larger subscribers and it shows the content to more people, while we mistake them with authorities because they have 5 figures in their subscriber count.

When I look at the writers who now position themselves as Substack growth experts, the variable that correlates most with their success isn’t their posting times or their hook structure. It’s only their start date.

But I don’t blame them because they can’t see it either. Their brains found a narrative that explained the outcome. So they teach that narrative with total sincerity. They’re as fooled by survivorship bias as their audience is.

How The Self-Fulfilling Growth Wheel Works?

The growth account builds an audience. Eventually they launch a course or a paid community. A hundred people sign up. Ninety-nine spin their wheels and see modest results. But one of the through some combination of effort, timing, and luck actually grows.

That one person becomes the case study.

Suddenly there’s a testimonial. A screenshot. A success story that gets turned into a post, then a sales page, then a pitch for the next cohort. The survivorship bias wheel spins again, this time with fresh students who saw the proof and thought: that could be me.

I’ve seen this exact playbook in trading. The forex guru with a course full of testimonials from the one student out of hundreds who actually made money. The rest are invisible. They don’t post about their losses. The system doesn’t need everyone to win. It just needs enough winners to keep the story credible and the next wave of students buying.

One survivor out of a hundred is enough to power the whole machine.

What Should You Actually Do Instead?

Keep writing, stay consistent, and build your own understanding of what works for you.

The real variables in newsletter growth are boring and unglamorous: clarity of audience, quality of writing, and showing up long enough for the compounding effect to kick in. None of those require a guru. All of them require you to develop genuine judgment about your own writing. Not borrowed tactics from someone who got lucky with timing.

Instead of learning to crack the platform’s algorithm learn to write words that move people. That skill is yours to keep, regardless of which platform you’re writing.

Focus on your writing. The rest is noise.

At first I thought it was because they are experienced writers, and while that might be true I realized that is because they write about something specific (sometimes very specific) and somehow that’s exactly what hooks you.

There reason for that is because magnetic writing comes from the intersection of who you are and what you know. That intersection is yours alone. Nobody else has lived your exact sequence of obsessions, failures, careers, and curiosities. When you write from that unique angle, you become uncopyable.

New writers strip their personality out trying to sound smart. They write the generic version. The professional version. The version that sounds like everyone else in their space.

And they wonder why nobody reads it.

You will see two famous cases where only them could have written it. They will inspire you to write more around your unique interests.

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What Can Michael Lewis Teach You About Writing From Your Weird Background?

The Big Short was written from the perspective of an art historian turned bond trader who knew the jargon from the inside and also knew exactly which parts to translate into plain English.

He studied art history at Princeton before he did a master’s in economics. And somehow he ended up with a front-row seat to the birth of mortgage-backed securities in the mid-1980s. The exact instruments that detonated the global economy in 2008.

Wall Street in the ’80s was packed with people who understood those instruments deeply but Lewis could also see them the way an outsider would. That double vision, insider knowledge filtered through a humanist’s eye, is what turned a balance-sheet disaster into a page-turner.

So what’s your art history degree on Wall Street? What do you know from one corner of your life that nobody in your current field is applying? The thing that makes you feel like an outsider is probably the most valuable thing you bring to the page.

Lewis looks for a technical world that insiders take for granted, find the misfits inside it who see reality more clearly than everyone else, and tell the story through them. He did it with baseball in Moneyball. He did it with Silicon Valley in The New New Thing. He kept returning to the same pattern because that’s how his mind works.

You probably have an instinct like that too; a way of seeing things that keeps showing up across everything you do, a thread that runs through your work whether you planned it or not.

Most people dismiss it. Lewis built a career on it.

How Did Andy Weir Turn a Niche Obsession Into a #1 Bestseller?

Andy showed his work in public and let it speak. From a free entry on his blog, to a kindle compilation of his best articles to a blockbuster movie.

Just a guy who loved hard science fiction since childhood (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein) and couldn’t stop writing it—even when nobody was reading.

He’d post chapters to his personal website. A small mailing list of a few thousand fans would read them. That was the whole operation.

Sounds familiar?

Then his readers asked him to put The Martian on Kindle so they could read it more easily. He shrugged and listed it at the minimum price Amazon allowed: 99 cents.

Within weeks it was rocketing up Amazon’s sci-fi charts.

Publishers came to him. A movie deal followed. Ridley Scott directed it and Matt Damon starred in it. Grossing over $630 million worldwide.

He grew up in California. His dad was a particle physicist and his mom an electrical engineer, so hard science was normal dinner‑table talk.

At 15, he was already writing software at Sandia National Laboratories. And spent the next 25 years as a working programmer in companies like AOL and Blizzard. All that while writing science fiction on the side, for a few thousand readers who genuinely loved his stuff.

All of it started with a guy who couldn’t stop writing at the intersection of everything he loved—orbital mechanics, survival puzzles, the kind of sci-fi he’d been devouring since childhood. He even wrote his own orbital mechanics software to make sure the trajectory calculations in The Martian were accurate to the minute. That’s not a writer doing research. That’s a programmer who happens to write fiction. A man writing from the absolute core of who he is.

Project Hail Mary came from the same place: a pile of abandoned ideas he’d been collecting for years, fragments that never fit anywhere, concepts he loved but couldn’t find a home for. One day they snapped together. He built the physics constraints first and modeled what was actually possible.

”I first models the science (orbits, energy budgets, biology assumptions) until the numbers work, and only then I write the scenes on top.” Weir said.

Pretty incredible if you ask me.

He didn’t find his niche. He’d been living inside it for decades. He just finally started writing from the dead center of it instead of the safe edges.

Are you writing from the center of your obsessions, or from the edges where it still feels safe and generic?

Before you write any more articles there’s a decision most creators never consciously make: what kind of newsletter am I actually building, and how does it make money?

There are two types of newsletters and five different ways to monetize them. The combination you choose will determine whether this thing supports your life or slowly drains it.

You don’t need a hundred thousand readers to build something that supports your, there are other paths and by the time you finish this article you’ll know which one is the right model that fits your goals, your time, and your actual life.

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Is Your Newsletter a “News” NEWsletter or a “Letter” NewsLETTER?

News-style newsletters aggregate information. Letter-style newsletters share your unique perspective.

That distinction sounds small. It isn’t. News-style newsletters—your industry briefings, your daily finance roundups, your marketing digests—are fundamentally an information logistics business. The value is in the curation, the speed, the reliability. Readers come back because you save them time scanning the internet.

• News-style newsletters are information logistics. Think daily finance briefings, marketing digests, AI updates. The value is speed and curation. Readers subscribe because you save them time scanning the internet. This model only works at scale. It’s built to grow to tens of thousands of subscribers before the ad revenue makes sense.

• Letter-style newsletter is a completely different animal. It’s your perspective: personal essays, opinions, frameworks, stories. Your take on a specific problem a specific kind of person has. Coaches, consultants, freelancers, and solo experts thrive here. Is relationship-driven, not volume-driven.

Each model has different characteristics, and the question for you is which game would you like to play? What are the reasons for starting your newsletter? Would you like to work on curating news? or would you rather be telling your own stories and experiences?

The answer will shape your editorial calendar, your monetization path, and how many hours a week this thing will cost you.

How Many Subscribers Do You Need to Make Money From a Newsletter?

Fewer than you think. It depends entirely on your business model, not your audience size.

Most creators grind for more subscribers before they’ve figured out how those subscribers will ever pay them. There are five newsletter business models, each with completely different math and timelines. You need to know which line you’re running before starting the race.

✉️ Model 1: Creator / Expert — “Letter” territory

Keep everything free. Write to build trust. Then sell what you know — consulting, coaching, courses, workshops, done-for-you work. The newsletter isn’t the product. It’s the engine that warms people up until they’re ready to buy.

The math works fast even at small audience sizes:

• 1k subs → 2–3 consulting clients/mo at $500 = $1,000–1,500/mo

• 5k subs → a $297 course selling 10 copies/mo = $2,970/mo

• 10k subs → multiple products + a group program = $8,000–15,000/mo

You don’t need scale for this model. You need trust.

💳 Model 2: Paid Subscription — “Letter” territory

The writing itself is the product. Free tier plus paid tier, or paid-only for professionals willing to pay for your specific insight. No advertisers. No products. Readers pay because what you write is worth money to them directly.

The key variable isn’t audience size — it’s engagement. A deeply engaged list converts at 8–15%. A cold, passive one barely hits two.

• 1k subs, 10% paid at $10/mo → $1,000/mo recurring

• 5k subs, 8% paid at $15/mo → $6,000/mo recurring

• 10k subs, 5% paid at $20/mo → $10,000/mo recurring

📰 Model 3: Media / Ad-Supported — “News” territory

Finance briefings. Marketing digests. Tech roundups. Advertisers pay for access to your audience — which means your audience size is what you’re actually selling to sponsors. This is a volume game, and the first two years feel like publishing into a void. That’s not failure. That’s the cost of admission.

• 1k subs → almost nothing. Too small for sponsors to care.

• 5k subs → $500–1,500/mo in a valuable niche

• 10k subs → $3,000–8,000/mo depending on niche and engagement

Go in knowing the timeline.

🔗 Model 4: Affiliate / Commerce — fits both “News” and “Letter”

You recommend products, tools, or services and earn a cut on each sale. This one layers naturally on top of any free newsletter — especially curation or review formats. The word that matters here is _relevant_. Affiliate revenue from a list that doesn’t trust you is basically zero.

• 1k subs → $200–500/mo if recommendations are genuinely on-topic

• 5k subs → $1,000–3,000/mo with strong niche alignment

• 10k subs → $3,000–8,000/mo with the right affiliate relationships

🔀 Model 5: Hybrid — where most profitable newsletters actually live

Subscriptions plus ads. Creator products plus affiliate deals. Free reach at the top, deeper paid offers at the bottom. Most newsletters generating serious money are mixing models.

The trap is treating it like a grab bag from day one. Pick one primary model. Let everything else layer in once the core is working. A “Letter” newsletter built on the creator model can add affiliate deals without confusing anyone. A “News” newsletter built on ads can add a paid tier for its most engaged readers. But start with one.

How Do You Pick a Newsletter Model That Actually Fits Your Life?

Are you a curator or a thinker?

Do you get excited scanning your industry every week, filtering the noise, and packaging what matters into something useful? You’re a “News” person. Or do you prefer writing from experience? teaching what you know, sharing lessons learned the hard way, sending something that feels more like a letter from a trusted friend than a briefing? You’re a “Letter” person.

If you are starting, the free newsletter with back-end sales is probably your fastest path to monetization. You don’t need to convince anyone to pay for a subscription upfront. You build trust through the writing, and when someone’s ready to go deeper, you have something to offer them. A consulting call. A course. A service. The newsletter does the warming up. You close when they’re ready.

If at some point you have enough readers that would pay for your articles you can start a small paid newsletter model but I wouldn’t start there.

And if you genuinely want to build something at scale and you have the time and consistency for it, go for the big ad-sponsored media model. Just know that is a multi-year build and probably not a side-hustle-like job.

Don’t overthink the monetization model. You can’t predict what would work for you anyway. Most newsletters making money are running some combination of the five models we just covered. You’ll start with one, learn what your readers actually respond to, and your model will reveal itself over time.

Start writing. The rest will fall into place later.

• Views are everyone who landed on your piece.

• Reads are the people who stuck around past 30 seconds (roughly 130 words.)

On most posts those two numbers are embarrassingly far apart. Hundreds of views. A handful of reads.

Here’s what that gap is telling you:

Those first 130 words are the most important words in your entire piece. Get someone past that threshold and the probability they finish jumps dramatically. Lose them before it, and every insight, story, and offer you worked so hard to write becomes irrelevant.

Most writers respond to this by obsessing over their headline. Better title, more clicks, bigger numbers. But the headline gets them to the page. What keeps them there is something most writers barely think about.

It’s called the lead. And once you understand what those words are actually supposed to do, you’ll never write an opening the same way again.

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What’s the Difference Between a Headline, Subject Line, a Lede, and a Lead?

A headline grabs attention. The lede is your first sentence. The lead is the opening section that earns the read.

People use “lede” and “lead” interchangeably, which creates confusion. Here’s the distinction worth keeping in your head.

The headline is 6–12 words. Its only job is to get the click or the open. Subject lines in emails do the same thing—under 50 characters, built to get opened. Nothing else. Get them from whatever they are doing to your actual words.

The lede is your first sentence. One sharp, direct line that hands the reader a reason to read the second sentence. Journalists invented the term, spelled “lede” deliberately, to avoid confusion with the lead metal used in old printing presses. It’s the most compressed, highest-stakes sentence in your piece. Get it wrong, and none of the rest matters.

The lead is the opening section—the first few hundred words—that does the heavy lifting before you get into your main argument.

Think of the three as a funnel. Each layer’s job is to get your readers into the next. The headline gets them to the page. The lede keeps them past the first sentence. The lead earns their full attention.

Miss any layer, and the whole thing leaks.

Why Does the Lead Matter So Much in a Sales Letter?

This is the story of two identical sales letters: same offer, same guarantee, same price. But with two different leads the sales letter can produce response rates two to three times apart.

Nothing else changes. Just the lead.

Copywriters discovered this through testing. The results shook people when they saw them. How could a few hundred words double or triple the response of the otherwise same letter? That’s not a small difference, it could be the difference between a successful campaign or one that doesn’t even cover the costs.

Why does it have that much power?

Direct response writing has one job: produce action. And to do that, you have to move the reader emotionally before you persuade them intellectually. Not the other way around. Logic doesn’t open people up. Feeling does. The lead is where that emotional connection either gets made or not.

Every reader scanning your words is quietly asking three questions:

• What is this?

• Is it for me?

• Is it worth my time?

They’re not asking them out loud but they’re deciding in seconds. Your lead should answers those questions fast enough to keep them reading.

Most leads bury the answer. They warm up slowly, explain context, build background. By the time they get to the point, the reader is already gone.

What Makes a Lede Actually Work?

A great lede tells readers something they didn’t know, want to know, or need to know—in one punchy sentence.

Robert Collier, one of the most successful copywriters of the last century, described it this way: you have to meet the reader where their thoughts already are. Your first sentence isn’t an introduction. It’s a point of contact with what they’re already thinking, feeling, or worrying about.

I used to open everything with context. Set the stage, explain the background, warm the reader up before getting to the point. Readers didn’t care.

Your lede doesn’t introduce your topic. It enters a conversation that’s already happening. It mirrors something the reader is already feeling. It names a frustration before they’ve had to articulate it. It surfaces a tension they’ve been carrying around without realizing it.

Done well, it feels like mind-reading. The reader hits your first sentence and thinks—wait, how did they know that? That trust will carry them through everything that follows.

Keep it short. Keep it direct. One sentence, maybe two. If you need more than that, you haven’t found the real point yet.

Write your lede last—after you know exactly what you’re trying to say and why it matters to them.

How Do You Write a Strong Lead for Any Format?

Open with the drama. State the stakes, the problem, or a surprising truth before you explain anything.

Doesn’t matter if you’re writing three sentences in a cold email or three thousand words on a sales page. The length changes. The principle stays the same. Get them emotionally engaged before you ask them to think.

Three entry points that work every time:

• Problem lead: start with their problem, named with uncomfortable precision. ”You’ve done everything right, and the clients still aren’t coming.” It creates instant recognition. They feel seen before you’ve asked a single thing of them.

• Curiosity lead: lead with something surprising or counterintuitive. Something that challenges what they think they know. The split-test story above is a perfect example. Same letter, wildly different results.

• Empathy lead: mirror their internal dialogue so accurately it feels like mind-reading. ”You’ve probably thought about this...” When readers encounter this they place you on their side, you are describing a situation that’s familiar to them and will listen to what you have to say. This is the one I used in this piece.

Pick the entry that fits. Then get them feeling something before you ask them to think about anything.

The Sentence That Changes Everything

Most writers obsess over their headline and forget the lead entirely. The headline is what gets you found and gets people to the page, the lead keeps them there.

You can have a brilliant idea, an irresistible offer, and flawless writing, and still lose your reader in the first 130 words because you made them wait for too long.

Fix your lead, meet your readers where they are in their mental conversation instead of where you want them to be.

Next time you write a piece. Read the first three sentences. Ask yourself: does this enter the conversation already in their heads or does it make them wait?

Write those sentences last. Make them the sharpest sentences in the piece.

The readers who keeps reading are the readers who buys.

You sit down, open a new tab, and type it into Google.

And there they are. Three people. Five. A dozen. Already doing exactly what you imagined—some of them for years.

The excitement drains out. You close the tab. Maybe you tell yourself you’ll think of something more original. Something no one has claimed yet. Some pristine, untouched idea that’s yours alone.

And just like that, before you wrote a single word or sent a single email, it’s over.

Here’s what I want to tell you: you’ve been asking the wrong question. “Is someone already doing this?” is the wrong thing to Google. It was never the right question. By the end of this post, you’ll know what to ask instead—and why the answer changes everything about how you build.

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Does Having Competition Mean Your Idea Is Dead?

Competition proves demand. The real question is whether you can serve that demand better.

Look at every business you admire.

• Sam Walton didn’t invent the department store: he made it cheaper and more accessible than anyone else had bothered to, and built Walmart into one of the largest companies in history.

• Ray Kroc didn’t invent the hamburger: he just executed the idea better than anyone else and turned McDonald’s into a global empire.

• Howard Schultz didn’t discover coffee: he made it fashionable, invented an ambiance around it, and built Starbucks from scratch.

The pattern repeats everywhere you look. Netflix didn’t create DVD rentals—they just noticed that late fees were making people miserable and built a better experience around that frustration. Facebook didn’t invent social networks—MySpace had millions of users before Zuckerberg wrote a line of code.

These companies exist because someone looked at an existing product and thought: we can execute this better.

Why Do Most People Abandon Good Ideas Too Early?

They assume “someone is doing it” means “it’s already solved.” It almost never is.

Among 8 billion people on the planet, the odds that something valuable hasn’t been thought of yet are essentially zero. And yet people shelve perfectly good ideas the moment they find a competitor.

Picture this. You want to build an online directory for local contractors. You’re fired up. You’ve been thinking about it for weeks. Then you search and find a dozen companies already doing it.

For a moment you think about closing the tab and abandone the idea. But what if you looked closer first?

Those directories are buried on page four of Google. The websites feel like they were built in 2009 and never touched again. Half of them don’t even work on mobile. The need is there and the execution is just terrible.

So you build it anyway. You make it fast, clear, and easy to use. A decade later, every one of those competitors has vanished or become irrelevant.

The goal was never to be first. It was to be better.

What Actually Separates the People Who Build Something From the Ones Who Don’t?

Execution. The idea is just the starting point.

Garbage collection has existed since humans have walked the planet. That didn’t stop Wayne Huizinga from starting Waste Management with a single truck and a handful of customers—and building it into a Fortune 500 company. Daniel Ek didn’t invent music. He just looked at an industry drowning in piracy and built a cleaner, simpler way to listen. Today Spotify has 600 million users.

Nobody handed them an original idea. They just looked at something being done poorly and decided to do it better.

The people who never start are waiting for the perfect idea to arrive. The people who build something are too busy improving on what already exists to worry about who got there first.

Your Move

Pick one competitor in your space. Look at what they’re doing. Then ask yourself: where are they falling short?

Maybe their product is slow. Maybe their service is impersonal. Maybe they’re impossible to reach. Maybe they’ve been around so long they’ve stopped caring about the details.

That gap is your opening.

The market isn’t saturated. It’s just waiting for someone willing to do it better.

Go be that person.

You’re describing what you DO—the tasks, the deliverables, the stuff you produce. But your clients don’t wake up thinking ”I need to read more newsletters.” They wake up thinking about their business problems: revenue targets they’re missing. Leads that aren’t showing up. Customers who should exist but don’t. etc.

Don’t worry I got you covered. I’m going to show you a simple three-question framework that transforms ”I write newsletters” into something that makes clients ask you ”How much?”

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Why Does Your Service Description Fall Flat?

You’re selling your process instead of the business outcome your clients need.

Most freelancers and consultants make the same mistake. They describe their work at the tactical level—the actual stuff they deliver.

”I help founders with their Substack newsletters.”

Sounds professional, right? Clear service, clear platform, clear audience.

Except nobody cares.

When you lead with what you do, you’re asking prospects to connect the dots themselves. You’re making them figure out why they need you. And busy people with real problems don’t have time for that.

They’ll smile. They’ll nod. And they’ll never hire you.

Because you’re speaking in tasks while they’re thinking in outcomes.

Let me show you how to fix this.

How Do You Find What Clients Actually Pay For?

Ask ”why do they need this?” three times to reach the real business outcome.

This is stupidly simple, but it works every time. Take whatever service you offer and ask yourself: ”Why would someone hire me for this?”

Then ask why two more times.

Watch what happens.

Question 1: Why should they hire you?

Let’s say you’re offering a newsletter writing service on Substack.

Surface answer: ”To publish regular newsletters.”

Okay. That’s what you deliver. But that’s not why they’re paying you. Keep going.

Question 2: Why do they need regular newsletters?

Dig one layer deeper: ”To build an engaged audience and establish authority in their space.”

Now we’re getting warmer. This sounds more meaningful. Building audience, establishing authority—these matter to business owners.

But here’s the problem: this still isn’t the money reason. This is a means to an end, not the end itself.

Let’s go one more level down.

Question 3: Why do they need an engaged audience and authority?

And here’s where it clicks: ”To generate qualified leads and convert them into paying customers.”

Ding ding ding!!

There it is. The real reason someone opens their wallet.

They’re not paying you to write newsletters. They’re not even paying you to build an audience. They’re paying you to create a system that turns strangers into customers.

That’s the job. That’s what they actually need.

And once you see this? Everything changes about how you position yourself.

You’re not a newsletter writer anymore. You’re a lead generation system builder who happens to use newsletters as the mechanism.

See the difference?

One sounds like a commodity anyone can do. The other sounds like a strategic partner who understands business.

What Do You Actually Deliver Once You Know the Real ”Why”?

Package your service around the business outcome, not the deliverable format.

Now that you know the real job—turning readers into customers—you can design your offering around that outcome instead of around ”writing.”

Here’s what this looks like in practice.

Before, your service was: ”I’ll write you two newsletters per month.”

That’s a task. It’s forgettable. And worse, it forces clients to price you based on time and effort rather than value.

After running through the three whys, your service becomes:

Same skills. Same work. Completely different positioning.

You’re not selling words on a page anymore. You’re selling customer acquisition.

And customer acquisition? That has a clear value tied to revenue.

Think about it from the client’s perspective. If they know each new customer is worth $5,000 to their business, and your system generates even five new customers over three months, you just created $25,000 in value.

Suddenly charging $3,000 for your service doesn’t sound expensive. It sounds like a no-brainer investment.

This is why the third ”why” matters so much. It connects your work directly to the metrics your clients actually care about: the numbers that show up in their bank account.

The Before and After

Let me paint you the full picture of what changes.

Before:

• You: ”I write newsletters.”

• Prospect: ”Okay, so you’re a writer. Probably expensive. Do I even need a newsletter? I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

After:

• You: ”I build lead generation systems using newsletters that convert readers into qualified prospects ready to buy.”

• Prospect: ”Wait, so you help me get more customers? How much does this cost and when can we start?”

Notice what happened there?

You went from describing a task they’re not sure they need to describing an outcome they desperately want.

Your clients don’t care about newsletters. They care about revenue. Growth. Customers who show up ready to buy.

When you position yourself around that final ”why”—the business outcome that matters—everything gets easier. Your marketing makes sense. Your pricing feels justified. And clients understand exactly why they need you.

Your Turn

Here’s what I want you to do.

Take whatever service you’re currently offering and write down how you describe it. Just the simple version: ”I do X for Y people.”

1. Now ask yourself: ”Why do they need this?”

Write down the answer.

2. Then ask again: ”Okay, but why do they need THAT?”

Write it down.

3. One more time: ”And why does THAT matter to their business?”

That final answer? That’s what you’re really selling. That’s the transformation clients will pay for.

Rewrite your entire positioning around that third answer. Change your website, your pitch, your proposals, all of it. Stop talking about what you do and start talking about what you help clients achieve.

Because here’s the truth most freelancers and consultants never figure out: your clients don’t care about what you do.

They care about what you help them accomplish.

Start selling outcomes, not outputs. And watch what happens when you finally speak the language of business instead of the language of tasks.

Some business owners go to copywriters desperate for a magic formula. They’ve tried everything else and now they’re convinced that the right words will finally save their business.

Good copy can give that final push. But it doesn’t bring prospects to the edge of the cliff. Something else does.

Dan Kennedy’s direct marketing hierarchy reveals what successful businesses know:

Copy is the THIRD most important element in your marketing.

Until you fix the first two, Not even the most genius copywriting in the world will save you.

Let’s see what they are.

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What Actually Determines Marketing Success?

Traffic, offer, then copy—in that order—determine marketing success.

Dan Kennedy identified three keys to direct marketing success:

1. The List (your traffic/audience)

2. The Offer (your deal/value proposition)

3. The Copy (your message/words)

Notice what’s at the bottom?

A great offer can succeed with mediocre copy. But the world’s best copy will fail with a bad offer pitched to the wrong people.

Think about it: If someone comes to you and offered the latest iPhone for $299 would you buy it? probably. They wouldn’t have to say much to sell it to you. Well, maybe because seems dodgy but you get the point.

You can write like Ogilvy, but if you’re selling to the wrong people or offering a weak deal—you’re toast.

Get the hierarchy right, and copywriting becomes easy. Get it backwards, and you’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Why Your List Matters More Than Your Words?

The right audience will buy despite imperfect copy; the wrong one won’t buy at all.

Gary Halbert, the legendary direct-response copywriter, would ask a room of aspiring writers: “If you were opening a hamburger stand, what would you want most?”

They’d answer with things like “high-quality meat” or “prime location.”

Halbert would shake his head and reply:

“The only advantage I want is... A STARVING CROWD!”

That should be your list, a starving crowd: qualified prospects with a specific problem or desire that are actively looking for what you sell.

Most entrepreneurs chase everyone, which means they convince no one.

Your copy “isn’t working” because you’re selling vegan cookbooks at a steakhouse convention. No clever words will fix that.

The good news: Once you identify the right audience, you stop manipulating strangers and start articulating value to people who want to hear it.

Why Your Offer Trumps Even The Best Copy?

An irresistible offer sells itself; brilliant words can’t save a weak deal.

Your offer—the actual deal, the value proposition, what people get and why they’d be stupid NOT to buy—does the heavy lifting. Copy just presents it.

Kennedy’s principle: mediocre copy with a killer offer outperforms brilliant copy with a weak offer every single time.

Your offer isn’t just “buy my thing.”

• It’s the result they get

• The risk they avoid

• The price that feels like a steal (in their favor)

• Bonuses that overdeliver

• The urgency that compels action NOW

Most entrepreneurs have a product and a price. That’s not an offer—that’s a transaction.

The beautiful part? Creating an irresistible offer is completely under your control. Structure a deal so compelling that the copy almost writes itself.

If you want to learn more about how to craft irresistible offers, read this article next when you finish with this one. 👇

So When DOES Copy Actually Matter?

Copy matters when it connects the right people to the right offer.

You DO need copy. But its job isn’t to work miracles.

Copy is to prepare, persuade, and present.

Real example: A business sold a $97 ebook. Traffic arrived. People clicked “buy,” saw the price, and... was’t justified.

Why? No sales letter to warm them up.

A good sales letter prepares readers for the price and presents it as the bargain it is. It handles objections and builds value.

But copy only works AFTER you have people who want what you sell and an offer worth presenting.

Your next step:

• Weak traffic? Stop writing—actually, don’t stop writing but find the right people.

• Right audience, no sales? Fix your offer, make it more attractive with the key we saw before.

• Got both? NOW write the letter.

The Formula That Works

Stop agonizing over copywriting until you answer two questions:

1. Am I talking to the right people? (List)

2. Do I have something they actually want? (Offer)

Get those right first. Then use your words to present that offer to qualified prospects.

Fix your list. Build your offer. Then write the letter.

List + Offer + Copy = Success. In that order.

”Give away 90% of your value for free, charge for the 10% that‘s left.”

Do you think the person saying this wants you to make any money from your writing business?

Sounds like they want you making 10% of what you could be earning.

Imagine your business is a bucket. Every drop that goes in is revenue that your writing generates. Now punch holes in the bottom until only 10% of the surface remains.

How much water would you need to pour in just to drink a glass?

You’d be thirsty most of the time. Yet this is the advice new creators hear all the time.

And giving away all your value for free isn’t even the worst thing that can happen. The content creation space has changed dramatically in recent years, and the advice floating around doesn’t work in this new competitive environment.

So pour yourself a glass of water. In the next 3 minutes, you’ll discover exactly how this advice is damaging your brand and the simple technique that’ll fill your bucket to the brim.

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Why Does Free Content Feel Good But Convert Poorly?

Free samples work. Free meals don’t.

In some supermarkets, they’ll offer you a small cube of cheese on a toothpick. You taste it. You like it. You buy a chunk. Simple. But what if they handed you the entire wheel? You’d eat until you were satisfied, say “thank you very much,” and walk away.

That’s exactly what you’re doing with your content.

Have you ever poured your heart into creating a complete guide where you share your best frameworks? The comments roll in: “This is amazing!” “So much value!” “You’re the best!” But when you check your bank account? Zero.

Here’s what happened: you were feeding people the entire meal. They left satisfied but never needed to buy. Why would they? They already got what they came for.

Your job isn’t to give your value. Your job is to sell your value. There’s a difference.

When Should You Actually Give Real Value?

Once a month maximum. Use it as an authority punch, not a habit.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying never share real value. I’m saying be strategic about it. High-value content works as an authority demonstration, not a sales strategy.

Here’s how I use it: Once a month, I send something genuinely meaty. A complete framework. A detailed lesson. Something that could easily be part of a paid product. People respond exactly how the gurus say they will: “Wow, if this is free, what’s the paid stuff like?”

That’s the authority punch. It shows you know your stuff, but you don’t have to give all your knowledge away for free every time you write.

Here’s where most creators mess up—they do this every single time to feel validated. The likes become addictive. People tell you that you’re amazing. You’re the best. So generous. And if you’re not careful with your ego, you’ll keep chasing that feeling.

As JK Molina says: “Likes ain’t cash.”

Standing ovations don’t pay your rent. Last year when we tracked my client’s data, we found that the more “valuable” the content, the lower the conversion rate. People loved it. But it wasn’t making any money. You have to decide what’s more important to you—likes or cash.

Give one authority punch per month to demonstrate expertise. The rest of the time? Entertain, engage, and sell.

Why Don’t People Act on Your Free Value?

Because they’re distracted, tired, and scroll past educational content.

Even when people genuinely appreciate your free lessons, they don’t implement them. The feed isn’t a classroom. People aren’t taking notes. They’re scrolling between meetings, waiting in line, or half-watching TV.

Your carefully crafted lesson gets the same attention as a cat video—maybe three seconds before the thumb keeps moving.

Free content isn’t valued. Even when someone comments “saving this!” they won’t. Even when they say “this changed my perspective,” they’ll forget it by tomorrow.

Can you recall a single note you read yesterday?

Free viewers just feel good temporarily. But the people who actually do the work—the ones with skin in the game—are your paying customers. They pay to access the right environment that creates the transformation they’re after. Save your valuable lessons for them.

Let me show you how this works in the real world.

What Happens When World-Class Value Goes Unrecognized?

Even genius goes unnoticed when the context is wrong—just like your free content.

In 2007, the Washington Post ran an experiment where they placed Joshua Bell—one of the greatest violinists in the world—in a DC Metro station during morning rush hour.

Three days earlier, Bell had played to a sold-out concert hall in Boston. Tickets were nearly $100 each. People dressed up, arrived early, and sat in reverent silence as he performed.

Now he stood in a train station with his $3.5 million violin, playing the same pieces from Bach that had earned him international acclaim.

2,000 people walked past during his 45-minute performance.

Six people stopped to listen briefly. Twenty tossed money but kept walking. When he finished, there was no applause. No crowds. No recognition.

Less than one percent of people stopped for more than a minute to hear one of the finest musicians on Earth play priceless music on a priceless instrument.

Think about that.

If Joshua Bell can’t capture attention in a train station, what makes you think your free guide will stop someone mid-scroll?

This is your content in the feed. The context is wrong. People are in commuter mode, not concert hall mode. They’re rushing somewhere else. They’re not there to appreciate genius—they’re there to be entertained.

Bell himself said it perfectly after the experiment: “It takes an appropriate setting to help people appreciate a performance.”

Your appropriate setting isn’t the feed. It’s not the inbox of someone who’s never paid you. The appropriate setting is the paid environment, where people arrive ready to pay attention. Where they’re not commuting. Where transformation actually happens.

You’re playing world-class violin in a train station and wondering why nobody’s listening.

Stop Playing in the Train Station

The path forward isn’t more generosity. It’s strategic positioning.

Save your best work for people who pay for it. Use the occasional authority punch to prove you know your stuff, and the rest of the time? Promote yourself.

People won’t value what you give away. They’ll value what they pay for. That’s just how human psychology works.

Want a quick test? Look at your last ten pieces of content. How many were teaching versus promoting? If more than one was pure teaching, you’re giving too much away.

Your expertise is worth paying for. Create the right context for it. Stop performing in train stations and start selling tickets to the concert hall.

That’s where people will actually listen.

• AI everything.

• Gambling apps.

• Crypto promises.

• Weight loss drugs.

They feel less like advertising and more like a mirror held up to everything broken in our society. And I’m not even pointing to the obvious commercials that proved this with files and dogs.

Let’s take a step back and not focus on the products they sell but on the idea that you can get everything you want, instantly, without putting in any effort on your side.

You don’t think so? Keep reading.

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What Do Super Bowl Ads Reveal About Modern Culture?

Super Bowl ads expose our collective obsession with instant results and minimal effort.

This year’s lineup made it crystal clear: we’ve built an entire economy around shortcuts.

• AI that will do your work

• Weight loss without discipline

• Betting platforms for quick wins

• Crypto brokers for instant wealth

Why wait and work when you can have everything now without any effort?

How Can You Take Advantage of this Instant Gratification Culture?

Things worth having cannot be bought. They must be earned.

Naval Ravikant nailed it when he said:

”A calm mind, a fit body, and a house full of love. These things cannot be bought—they must be earned.”

None of that fits in a 30-second spot. None can be gambled, medicated, or automated.

We live in a culture of instant everything:

• Shortcuts

• Cheap hits

• Quick wins

Everyone chases instant gratification, but here’s what they miss: the moments that truly matter in life are the ones that cost you some effort.

Learning a language costs time. Finishing your education costs dedication. Building a business costs patience and discipline. The hard-won achievements in life require work.

Almost nobody is looking there. They’re too distracted by the constant stream of easy dopamine.

This is your advantage. Committing to the hard, slow, meaningful work will separate yourself from 95% of people.

The things worth having always cost something. They’re worth having precisely because they’re inseparable from the process of becoming the kind of person who possesses them.

What Happens When You Think Long-Term Instead of Short-Term?

You start playing a completely different game. One where most competition can’t even see the field.

Think of it like this: Short-Term thinkers are like rabbits, nose in the grass, only seeing what’s directly in front of them. Long-Term thinkers are like eagles, circling high above, watching the entire valley unfold.

The rabbit sees threats everywhere because its view extends a few feet. You see the whole field. Your plans look nothing like theirs.

By adopting a different mentality, you’ll start to see wins and setbacks with a completely different perspective. Suddenly the goals that you haven’t hit yet are just bumps in the road when you’re building for a decade.

Master delayed gratification and you’ve unlocked something borderline unfair. While everyone else bets on instant wins and pops pills for quick fixes, you’re building something that compounds over time.

This is what Bill Gates meant when he said we overestimate what we can do in one year but underestimate what we can do in ten.

Your writing sharpens word by word. Your expertise grows project by project. Five years from now, you’ll be exactly where you planned.

Won’t make a flashy Super Bowl ad. But it’ll serve you well while everyone else is still wondering why nothing ever works.

Change Your Mentality and Win

Those Super Bowl ads aren’t reflecting you. They’re reflecting the majority.

Build for the long term. Develop the patience to earn what you want instead of gambling, medicating, or hacking your way there.

You’re playing a different game now. Time is your advantage. Delayed gratification is your weapon.

That’s how you win while everyone else chases the nearest shiny thing.

Dr. Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, spent a decade investigating whether luck is just cosmic chance or something you can actually cultivate.

In this article we’ll see if what he discovered can change how you think about those “lucky breaks” you’ve been waiting for.

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Why Study Luck in the First Place?

Wiseman wanted to answer a question that haunted him: why do some people consistently experience favorable outcomes while others face endless setbacks?

He wasn’t interested in mystical explanations or vague motivational nonsense. He wanted to know if there were measurable behaviors that separated the lucky from the unlucky.

The stakes were clear: if luck was just random chance, there’s nothing you could do about it. But if it was tied to specific habits and mindsets? That meant you could engineer your own good luck.

The Newspaper Experiment

Wiseman recruited hundreds of people who identified as either very lucky or very unlucky. Then he gave them a simple task: count the photographs in a newspaper.

Hidden on page two was a half-page message in huge letters:

The lucky people spotted it almost immediately. The unlucky ones? They missed it entirely, diligently counting every single photo.

Why? The unlucky participants were so focused on their assigned task that they completely overlooked an obvious shortcut. The lucky ones stayed relaxed and alert, scanning their environment for anything useful. Same newspaper. Completely different outcome based purely on how they approached the task.

Wiseman ran variations of this experiment across multiple scenarios—testing whether people noticed opportunities, engaged with strangers, or took alternate routes. The pattern held every time.

Results Revealed

People who called themselves lucky consistently noticed and acted on opportunities faster than those who identified as unlucky. This wasn’t about magic or fate but something else entirely.

The lucky participants approached situations with curiosity rather than rigid focus.

• They talked to strangers.

• They tried new things.

• They expected good outcomes, which made them more likely to pursue possibilities when they appeared.

• And when things went wrong? They reframed setbacks as temporary rather than permanent.

The unlucky participants did the opposite. They stuck to routines, avoided unfamiliar situations, and expected disappointment—which meant they rarely positioned themselves to catch a break even when one appeared.

The good news? when Wiseman taught ”unlucky” people to adopt lucky behaviors, their outcomes improved measurably. The feedback loop worked both ways. Act lucky, and you create more opportunities. Create more opportunities, and you feel luckier. Feel luckier, and you keep acting in ways that generate favorable outcomes.

How to Actually Use This?

Want to test Wiseman’s findings yourself? Start with these:

• Take a different route occasionally. Literally. Walk a new path to work, try an unfamiliar coffee shop, sit in a different spot. You can’t stumble into opportunities if you never vary your routine.

• Keep a ”luck diary.” Write down one positive or unexpected thing that happened each day. This primes your brain to notice favorable events instead of filtering them out as background noise.

• Talk to people you don’t know. Lucky people in Wiseman’s studies were significantly more social and open to chance encounters. That person in line could be your next collaborator—but only if you say hello.

• Reframe setbacks fast. When something goes wrong, ask ”what’s useful about this?” instead of dwelling on the failure. Lucky people bounce back because they don’t let one bad outcome define their entire trajectory.

• Subscribe to this free newsletter 👇

  Subscribe to receive this newsletter and increase you likelihood of getting lucky.

Your Turn

Wiseman’s research strips away the mystery around luck and reveals something more useful: a toolkit of habits anyone can adopt. You’re not waiting for the universe to favor you. You’re expanding your surface area for opportunity to find you by changing how you move through the world.

Try one of these habits for a week and see what shows up. You might be surprised by what you’ve been missing.

They’re usually the ones with better distribution.

Take Microsoft Teams. Far from the best communication platform, but everywhere because it bundles with Office suite.

Solopreneurs face the same reality. The most successful aren’t the ones with the best products or ideas. But the ones who don’t stop talking about what they build and what they offer.

it’s a 50/50 game. 50% creating, 50% promoting.

I see you rolling your eyes about now.

You are thinking that you haven’t signed up for this. But hey, every writer knows that writing the book is only half the job. The other half is promoting it.

Promoting yourself doesn’t need to be Salesy or Pushy. You can promote yourself using other channels that suit better your personality.

This is what we‘re going to explore in this article: Why I choose specifically writing for my business? Why the written word persuade the deepest? Why it attracts premium buyers? How one skill can do both, building and selling? and the reason words have endured millennials while other mediums remain unknown.

Let’s find out.

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Why is writing the most powerful medium for communicating and persuading?

Writing lets your prospect’s imagination do the heavy lifting.

When you write, you’re handing your reader a paintbrush and letting them color in the details with their own experiences, desires, and dreams.

Ever notice how a book feels more vivid than the movie?

Here’s what Robert Collier said in his book:

“The mind thinks in pictures. One good illustration is worth a thousand words. One clear picture built up in the reader’s mind by your words is worth a thousand drawings, for the reader colors that picture with his own imagination, which is more potent than all the brushes of the world’s artists.”

When you write “a hot summer day,” your reader feels the sun on their neck, tastes the sweat on their lip, remembers that specific afternoon when they were eight years old and the sprinkler was running in the backyard.

You didn’t give them that memory. They gave it to themselves.

And that’s why writing is the most powerful medium for persuasion.

Let me show you what I mean. Imagine I want you to understand why someone’s attractive. I could show you a photo. You’d see my interpretation of attractive.

But if I write: “She walked into the room and every conversation stopped. She moved like she knew something the rest of us hadn’t figured out yet”—now your brain is doing the work. You’re filling in her face, her walk, her energy. You’re making her real using your own experiences with charisma and confidence.

That’s infinitely more powerful than any photo.

Why are readers your smartest, most qualified prospects?

Readers are more educated, wealthier, and actively engage in solutions.

One of my best friends is a travel blogger. For years, he promoted budget hostels through affiliate links. One day he realized that the people reading his blog weren’t backpackers pinching pennies but instead wealthy individuals, he started offering luxury resorts and boutique hotels. His commissions tripled overnight. Same traffic but a different understanding of who actually reads.

Let me show you something that will change how you think about your audience. People earning $75,000 or more are twice as likely to read than those earning under $30,0001—meaning when someone’s reading your work, they’re already pre-qualified by income alone.

With the same token people with higher education are more likely to read than those less educated. They process information differently and therefore make decisions differently.

Think about what this means for your business. When someone lands on your carefully written sales page or blog post, they’re already demonstrating that have patience and literacy to engage with written content.

By choosing writing for marketing you’re attracting a specific type of person: engaged, educated, solution-oriented and with cash disposal. They’re not your average consumer.

Compare that to someone passively watching TikTok videos while their brain is in entertainment mode. Your reader chose to READ. That decision alone filters for people that mean business.

Isn’t that what you want?

The person who reads your entire landing page is infinitely more valuable than a thousand people who watched three seconds of your video.

How can writing alone build both your solution and your audience?

Writing can create products while attracting prospects.

You write a blog post teaching people how to solve a problem they’re struggling with. Someone finds it through Google. Reads every word. Subscribes to your newsletter for more. Three weeks later, they buy your paid guide on the same topic.

One skill just did four jobs: created the product, attracted the buyer, built trust, and closed the sale.

As you know, a business is no more than finding a solution for a problem that a group of people have.

For that you need two things. A solution to sell and someone to sell it to. Usually, that requires completely different skill sets. You build the product with one set of skills, then market it with another entirely different set.

Writing short-circuits this entire problem.

You write to create the product. You write to attract buyers. You write to build trust. You write to close sales. Same skill running your entire business. This approach puts you closer to revenue than anything else you could do.

That’s the power of writing.

And the best part?

Is sustainable long-term, unlike high-energy media that burns you out quick.

That’s what we’re going to see next.

Why does writing last while other media fades?

Writing has survived millennia while video remains unproven and platform-dependent.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, written around the 8th century BC, are foundational works of ancient literature that people still read today. That’s 2,800 years. Twenty-eight centuries of people opening those pages and getting pulled in.

Plato’s dialogues? Still studied in universities right now. The Bible? Still the most widely read book on Earth. Marcus Aurelius scribbling in his journal 2,000 years ago? His Meditations sits on nightstands right now.

Nassim Taleb called this the Lindy Effect. If a book has been in print for forty years, you can expect it to be in print for another forty.

Written words age in reverse. The longer they survive, the longer they’ll keep surviving.

Now look at video. YouTube launched in 2005. TikTok in 2016. We have zero evidence these formats will matter in 50 years.

Writing has passed the test of time. it’s distillable and medium-independent. Rehearse your ideas, refine them through writing, publish them eternally. Then you can move it anywhere. Stone tablets, paper, screens, whatever comes next.

That’s independence through strategic writing that outlasts every trend.

Conclusion

Writing persuades through imagination. It builds your solution and finds your audience. It sustainable and proven to work for thousands of years.

For you, writing is how you articulate what you’ve built and generate business independently.

Your next step? Write a post linking how you help someone solve a problem with your skills.

You’ve got something valuable. Now make sure the right people can find it.

If you don’t know how to start? check out my other post about crafting offers people buy.

One of your notes has gone viral. After trying for months finally a note took off! It’s been printed thousands times, another thousand people like it and other hundreds commented on it.

But hold on!

What happened? Your follower count didn’t go up?

How come? They clearly liked your Note, no?

Ahhh I see, they didn’t take your profile seriously. They thought that was only a normal user that doesn’t take this stuff seriously and they took that note as what it was. Only a Note. Not a small piece of a bigger plan.

Don’t worry, your note hasn’t gone viral yet and we still have time to fix your profile before it happens.

In this post I am going to explain what takes someone to follow or subscribe to your account and what mistakes we should avoid to optimize every profile visit.

Because sometimes the first impression is the last impression.

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What it takes for someone new to follow you?

Lets start by describing what’s the process for someone new to follow you.

The first step is that they are going to read one of your notes or post and liked what you wrote.

This is when a note or post can go viral without them even seeing your profile.

What would it take for them to look at your profile?

Apart from your writing they’re intrigued by your name or profile picture and they want to know more, so they click (or hover the mouse over your name.)

Once they are here you have 3 seconds to make a good first impression. Your Bio has to confirm that the type of content you create is what they want to follow.

so we come out with this formula

notes/posts impressions x %people that visit your profile x %people that find your kind of content interesting to follow.

see how I said there people that find ”your kind of content.” Notice that I didn’t said people that find YOU interesting to follow. This is not about you. Is about what you provide to them. Will touch on that later. But first let’s touch on the first thing you should focus before optimizing your profile.

And that is...

1. Your Writing Has To Be Top Notch

If you review the formula, the most important step for anyone to follow you is that they need to like your writing. Focus your efforts on getting your writing the best it can be and after that everything will be much easier.

Because strong writing with a crappy profile is still better than crappy writing with a strong profile.

Let’s say that you are working on that already what would be the next thing to consider?

2. Profile Picture

Here are 2 ways to go about it.

You are having a faceless brand, or you are having a personal brand.

Both work, choose accordingly depending on what you want your Substack account to be.

For a faceless account focus on picking a picture that communicates what your account is about. The quicker it can transmit this, the better.

What I would recommend for Substack is to have your profile as your personal brand, and your publication as your editorial brand—they built the platform with this intention, take advantage.

The important thing is what are other users looking at first when they see your notes swimming down their stream.

The first thing they want to know is WHO wrote this?

So, they look immediately to your profile picture. Not the name, your profile picture.

Why? because during our life we have hundreds of conversations with people we don’t know their names, but we know their faces. So we are wired to weight more the faces than the names.

You follow?

When someone sees your profile picture they should feel like they’re walking into a five-star hotel. A picture that makes them instantly relax. With a big smile that spread a welcome feeling that they’re about to have an extraordinary experience.

Studies prove that big smiles increase sales, open doors, and create instant connection.

Now, imagine your face radiating that same energy.

The other important thing to consider is that it needs to be professional.

There are no excuses anymore, thanks to Google Gemini and Nano Banana your profile picture can—and should—look like a professional headshot. Spend some time looking at some tutorials on how to do this and invest some time on it. It will be worth it.

This will send a powerful message: ”I care about how I show up. I’m serious about what I do. I’m someone you can count on.”

This combination of warmth and professionalism could what makes you hang the fully-booked sign.

Things to avoid

3. Your Display Name

If you’re chasing personal brand there is not much you can do here. You already have your own name.

But if you are thinking about picking a pen name. Look for a names that conveys the content you aim to produce.

Examples:

• Jack Wealth

• Queen Chess

• Marc .dev

• Muscle George

• Corina Type

You get the point.

A word of caution: You want to avoid numbers, special characters, or anything confusing or hard to remember.

If you are going to use your name there is no harm to add some extra text explaining in 2-3 words what kind of content they can expect from your account.

In my case is my publication’s name. Which explains exactly what my account does.

Dave | Written Marketing

If you can’t explain what your account does in 3 words that is a topic for another post but you should start there.

Other examples:

• John Manson | Wealth Management

• Srinika Chopra - AI for busy founders

• Nick Eat Clean

• Kamila Sokolov · 50+ yoga

• Mila Brown / Vegan Mom

Your Bio

Let’s imagine that all things are going for this note you wrote, it was great thoughtful writing, they liked, and they found your picture and name intriguing enough to click or hover over your name.

We came down to the make or break moment. If they don’t read what they want to read here they’ll leave never to return.

You have 3 seconds to convince them to subscribe. How are you going to do that?

Easy, by answering: Why should they follow your account?

If they’re interested they will follow.

Doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.

Even though is called bio, use it to appeal to your potential readers. Don’t talk about yourself, your readers are selfish. All they care about is themselves. What they want to know is what can you do for them?

Is what you talk about interesting enough to receive more of it?

We would have to answer this question in 150 characters.

There are many ways of writing this and there is not a right answer, but I want to give you some high-performing bio formats you can work around:

The “I Talk About” Bio

Framework: [Verb] about/on [Topic]

• Writing about building SaaS products.

• Sharing thoughts on personal finance.

• Lessons on launching digital products.

The “I Help” Bio

Framework: I help [Who] [Outcome]

• I help founders get their first paying customers.

• I help creators turn attention into income.

• I help families get control of your money.

The “Helping You” Bio

Framework: Helping [You / Who] [Outcome]

• Helping you build a profitable SaaS.

• Helping creators get paid for your work.

• Helping you stop overthinking and take action.

The “Learn How To” Bio

Framework: Learn how to [Action / Outcome]

• Learn how to grow an audience from zero.

• Learn how to build habits that stick.

• Learn how to turn ideas into products.

The “Get” Bio

Framework: Get [Outcome] (without [Pain])

• Get clients without cold outreach.

• Get fit without extreme routines.

• Get clarity on what to work on next.

The “Challenge/Build in Public” Bio

Framework: Building [Thing] to [Goal], documenting the process

• Building a SaaS to $100K MRR, documenting the process.

• Growing a newsletter to 50K readers, in public.

• Building a product from idea to revenue, out loud.

The “Learn by Watching” Bio

Framework: Learn how to [Outcome] by following the journey

• Learn how to build a SaaS by watching one grow.

• Learn how to grow online by following the journey.

• Learn how to launch products by seeing it done live.

The “From Zero to Hero” Bio

Framework: From [Starting Point] to [Outcome], (in public)

• From zero to $100K MRR, in public.

• From idea to profitable product, in public.

• From no audience to full-time creator.

The “For You If” Bio

Framework: For [Who] who want to [Outcome]

• For people who want to learn video editing.

• For founders building their first product.

• For creators tired of posting without results.

The “Promise” Bio

Framework: Follow for [Clear Benefit]

• Follow for simple ways to get your first customers.

• Follow for practical money systems that work in real life.

• Follow for clear breakdowns of how products actually grow.

These are ten tested formats that you can use to get inspired. You could also mix and match different styles to come up with a unique format.

Once the reader knows what’s in for them you can add what authority or credibility do you have to talk about this topic. If you don’t have any you can just use your personal story that explains why you talk about it.

For example.

• I help solo founders ship faster after wasting months overthinking.

• I help freelancers raise your rates after undercharging for years.

• I help beginners start investing after learning the hard way.

Best practices

• Use action verbs like Help, Learn, Get.

• Make the reader the hero: use you and your.

• Call out your target audience clearly (founders, creators, families, beginners).

• One clear promise beats three vague ones.

• Focus on outcomes, what they’ll get if they follow. How would they improve their life?

• Be specific. If your promise could apply to anyone, it convinces no one.

• Keep it simple enough to understand in 3 seconds and under 150 characters.

Things to avoid

• Talking about yourself instead of the reader.

• Long backstories or credentials.

• Generic words like passionate, builder, visionary, thinker.

• Listing roles instead of benefits.

• Trying to sound clever instead of clear.

• Explaining how you do it instead of what they get.

• Using “I” everywhere (except for “I help”).

Your banner

At this point most of the job has already been done by all the thing we’ve spoke about. Your readers have a good idea about who you are and how you help them.

The banner is an after thought—that’s why it doesn’t show when you hover over someone’s name.

Use it to seal the deal. Show a little bit of your personality, or have a last message for them.

Simplicity. Aim for one clear takeaway. Don’t try to pack this with information.

Most people read it on the phones, and there’s not much space there anyway. Keep it concise.

For example:

• Something that adds to your personality or philosophy. a quote, a graphic or a lifestyle pictures.

• Something that gives more information about your mission. Add a slogan or a tagline that didn’t make the cut to appear on your bio.

• Something that sells your offer. If you are offering a book, product, or a lead magnet. Put it there. But be mindful with the space and how it looks on phones.

Now is your turn

What is one thing of your profile that can be improved?

Think about this: If someone that doesn’t know you at all, lands in your profile. would they be able to tell what your content is about in 3 seconds? if not, do some changes.

Nailing this takes time so don’t be frustrated if your message is not clear at first. Every conversation, every new post will give you more clarity about what your account is about. Have these frameworks in mind and try to piece them together to form the full picture.

Being clear in your profile is the best confirmation you can give to someone that is deciding if you’re worth following.

Go to your profile and make these changes before your next Notes goes viral.

I’ve been there, believe me. At some point one of my existing clients asked me:

”but what is your value proposition?”
”You tell me, you’re the one who hired me.”

So, I know exactly how it feels to be rejected because your value wasn’t clear.

The question is: How do you craft value propositions that turn your skills into irresistible offers?

If you’re a talented but ”invisible” entrepreneur, this is your missing link.

Without a clear value proposition, you’re stuck in a loop of vague pitches perpetual imposter syndrome and zero revenue. But once you nail this, you stop ”selling” and start solving.

In this article you’ll discover a repeatable system to articulate your value and promote yourself sustainably without turning yourself into a walking pitch deck.

Sound good? Let’s go.

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What are the core elements of an irresistible value proposition for solopreneurs?

A winning value prop combines pain relief, unique skills, and a clear outcome.

We are going to take the ”mission statements” templates of big corporations and we are going to distill it for solopreneurs. For you, ”irresistible” means showing a specific person exactly how their life improves because of your expertise.

An irresistible offer is built on three pillars:

• First, you identify the customer pain (like a creator who can’t explain what they do)

• Second, you inject your unique skills (like your ability to distill complex ideas)

• Third, you promise a tangible outcome (offers that actually sell)

I see this all the time with SaaS companies who try to list ”features” instead of benefits. You want to focus on articulating how your skills make a difference. When you do this, you aren’t just a service provider; you’re the solution they’ve been praying for.

Make sense?

Once you know these elements, the next step is pinpointing exactly which of your many skills are the real money-makers.

How do you identify your unique skills that solve real customer pains?

Audit your past wins by listing the pains you solved in three client successes.

You probably think everyone can do what you do. I’m here to tell you: they can’t. This is where most invisible entrepreneurs stumble, they undervalue their edge and end up blending into a crowded market. But when you look closely at your ”wins,” the patterns reveal themselves.

Take a moment and think about your last three successful projects. What was the ”job-to-be-done”? Maybe you helped a newsletter writer double their growth. The pain was invisibility. The skill you used was a personality-driven framework. The proof was the result.

Don’t fall into the trap of assuming your skills are ”common sense.” Your specific combination of experiences—say, your background in psychology paired with your love for copywriting—is uncopyable. This approach reveals the gaps in your current marketing and shows you exactly where your value lies.

Now, with those skills identified, how do you actually package them?

Let’s see it.

What simple framework transforms those skills into a compelling offer?

Use the Pain-Skills-Outcome framework: End [pain] with [skills] to get [outcome].

Most people try to sell the process, but your clients are only interested in the destination. If you focus on the tools you use, you’re a commodity. If you focus on the outcome you create, you’re a necessity.

This framework is your bridge from being ”just another freelancer” to becoming a high-value partner.

One place you can see this in action is in the freelancer platform Fiverr. Where freelancers need to create their own gigs for other users to hire them.

A graphic designer. For years sold “logo packages” for $300. She was drowning in revisions and competing with everyone else that cranked out logos. Asking to some of her clients she realized they weren’t looking for art; they were looking for respect. They were tired of being treated like the “cheap option” because their branding looked amateur.

She stopped selling logos and started selling this: 

“End the ‘budget-provider’ stigma with High-Authority Visual Branding that lets you double your rates immediately.”

Pain: ‘budget-provider’ stigma
Skill: High-Authority Visual Branding
Outcome: Double your rates immediately

Note: Notice how she presented her skills in a way that’s relevant to the client’s pain and the outcome that provide.

She didn’t learn a single new design skill. She just used the Pain-Skills-Outcome framework to articulate the value she already had. Suddenly, that $300 logo became a $3,000 brand transformation.

See the difference? You aren’t changing what you do; you’re changing what they get. When you lead with the pain you’re erasing, you stop being a cost and start being an investment.

How that sounds?

But wait—before you go live, you need to make sure it actually resonates. Let’s see how to do that.

How do you validate and refine your value proposition without hype?

You might be thinking, “But Dave, what if it flops?” That’s a fair question.

Share your draft with some ideal clients and iterate based on their feedback.

Listen for where they lean in and where they glaze over. If they don’t feel the ”pain” you’ve described, sharpen it. If the outcome doesn’t excite them, amp it up. One value proposition statement that works makes it x10 times easier to convince the right people to hire you.

This is how you create true independence.

From Invisible to Irresistible

So, how do you craft value propositions that turn skills into irresistible offers?

You do it by mastering the core elements:

1. Identifying your unique edge.

2. Using the Pain-Skills-Outcome framework.

3. Validating your results.

When you put these together, you create articulated value that attracts clients without any manipulation or “hype.” It’s about being real, being clear, and being the expert you already are.

Only this time, you know how to promote your value so others can see it.

Your first step is simple: Audit one win from your past today. Draft your new proposition using the framework we discussed and put it right on your bio or LinkedIn profile. It’s time to transform that invisibility into revenue.

You’ve got the skills—now let the world know why they need them!

I know you’re good, actually good. You’ve put in the years, mastered the craft, or built something that solves real problems. But there’s a glaring, painful problem.

Nobody knows you exist.

I’ve seen it a hundred times, and it breaks my heart every single one of them.

Because talent alone doesn’t create opportunities.

You could be the best at what you do. But if you can’t express that clearly—if you can’t market yourself—you stay invisible. No matter how good you are.

What if the skill you’re missing isn’t another certification or course? but the ability to articulate your value clearly?

That’s what this newsletter is about. If you ever wondered what’s the missing piece that will link your expertise with your predictable business, bear with me here.

But first we need to address something.

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The Marketing Bad Rep

Here’s what I see all the time: You’ve built something. You’ve skills that could help people or products that solve a specific problem.

But you’re stuck waiting for opportunities to find you.

Referrals trickle in when they feel like it. Revenue swings wildly from month to month. You can’t predict where the next client is coming from because you’re not actively creating opportunities.

Instead you’re hoping they’ll arrive. But as you know, this is not how you get to a thriving business.

You already know what you should be doing. Post on LinkedIn. Send cold emails. Write content. Build a funnel.

But it feels heavy—like running on a hill with a bag of bricks.

It feels overwhelming—like marketing has to take over your life only to be visible.

Or worse? it feels manipulative. Sleazy. Like you have to become someone you’re not.

I get it. I hated marketing for years, I thought it was loud and manipulative—all those ads screaming at you to buy stuff you don’t need.

But here’s what I discovered that changed my view: Marketing is just a tool.

A hammer can build a house or break a window. Same with marketing. It can push garbage nobody wants, or it can help people discover something that actually changes their life.

Without marketing? Your talent stays locked in a box. You can’t share what you’ve built. You can’t create opportunities when you need them. You can’t control your future.

You’re always depending on someone else to discover you.

Unless?

Unless You Know How To Articulate Your Value Clearly

In this life, you don’t get what you deserve; you get what you can negotiate. And negotiation happens through words.

You could be the most talented person in the world. But if you can’t explain to others what you do? You stay invisible.

And you don’t need to record yourself if you don’t like to appear on cameras. Or post in social media all day if you don’t want to.

You can get the same results with the power of the written word alone.

(In the right places,) like:

• Emails that build trust instead of getting deleted.

• Landing pages that make people read till the end.

• Posts that brings your ideal clients knocking at the door.

• Outreach that starts conversations instead of rejections.

And here’s the beautiful part: You write it once and works for months. Sometimes years. Is a systems that works even when you’re living your life. Even when you’re busy fulfilling client work or when you are just tired of ”hustling.”

Think about what this means for you.

You’re not sitting around waiting for opportunities to show up. You’re paving the way for opportunities to find you.

That’s real freedom.

Sound good? I show you more.

What Changes When You Get This Right

Here’s what happens if you get this right:

People stop scrolling. They hit your words like a brick wall. Read every sentence like it’s a message meant only for them. And they can’t help themselves—they want to work with you, buy from you and support you. Because finally, you know how to make them feel it.

Your cold outreach get responses. Real ones. Not crickets. Not ”thanks but no thanks.” Actual conversations that turn into actual business. Like opening doors that were locked before.

Your Substack becomes a client-generating machine. Search engines find you. AI recommends you. Your ideal clients discover you while you sleep—like setting snares that catch the right kind of animal at night.

You have time for your actual life. No more content treadmill running you ragged. No more burnout because you’re doing too much. You build systems that generate business while you’re doing literally anything else. Part-time effort. Full-time returns.

You go from waiting and hoping to actually having control.

What You’ll Learn Here

Every post on this blog gives you frameworks you can use today.

Want landing pages that convert? Cold emails that get replies? Content that captivates?

That’s what we cover here. Systems that work part-time. No burning yourself out posting seven times a day on platforms that don’t give a damn about you.

Look, I’m not some marketing guru with all the secrets.

I’m just a guy who figured out how to use writing to build a business. And now I teach other people how to do the same thing.

Every client, every project, every dollar came from writing.

And here’s my promise to you: No tricks. No loud tactics. No need to become a second-hand car salesman shouting from a parking lot.

Just honest words, on a screen, that do the heavy lifting for you.

If you’re ready to stop being invisible and start creating opportunities through writing? You’re in the right place.

Your Next Step

Pick a post that sounds useful right now. Try one thing from it. See if it works for you.

That’s how this works. Small steps. Real practice. Actual results.

Your talent deserves to be seen.

Let’s make sure it is.

That’s how long it took me to figure out my niche. September through December, changing names, rewriting descriptions, watching the wrong people show up.

And the whole time, I thought I was having an identity crisis.

Like, why can’t I figure this out? Everyone else seems to nail their niche on the first try. What’s wrong with me?

Nothing was wrong with me. And if you’re stuck right now, nothing’s wrong with you either.

I tried two completely different niches before I found one that worked. The first one attracted retirees when I wanted ambitious entrepreneurs. The second one sounded smart but confused everyone—including Google.

Each failure taught me something crucial. And once I understood the pattern? Everything clicked.

I’m going to show you exactly what those mistakes were and the framework I used to fix them.

Let’s address this now.

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Why Broad Problems Make Bad Niches

My first attempt was called ”Early Retired Club.”

The idea? Help people start newsletter businesses before they hit retirement age. AI eliminating jobs, mass layoffs left and right, people living longer but retirement funds not keeping up, and the demographic pyramid is flipping upside down—the pension crisis is a threat. I wanted to help people build something of their own while they still had time.

I loved the concept. The problem is real.

But here’s what happened: retirees started subscribing. Actual retired people. Not the ambitious 30-somethings I was writing for.

Why? Because I was solving a macro problem, but individuals don’t Google ”pension crisis solutions.” They Google ”make money online” or ”start a side business.”

Like you should know. People don’t buy preventatives. They only act when they already have pain.

I was positioning around ”avoid this bad future”—but the people searching for that content were already living it. The middle-age who’re fine right now? They’re not looking for retirement solutions.

Your niche can’t be about what people should care about. It has to be about what they’re actively trying to solve right now.

Big mistake. But it taught me something crucial.

When Clarity Beats Philosophy

So I tried again. This time: ”Via Libera.”

It’s Latin for ”the free path.” The philosophy was solid—own your work, control your means of production, build real independence. I believed in it. Still do.

But nobody could tell what I wrote about just from the name.

Worse? My publication name didn’t match my URL. The image looked weird in search results. And when people tried to refer me? They couldn’t explain what I did.

I was using Substack like a blog but naming it like a philosophy journal.

Clever doesn’t equal clear. Especially not for search engines.

I thought I was being sophisticated. What I was actually doing? Making it impossible for people to find me.

Google can’t rank philosophy. Potential clients can’t refer you if they can’t explain what you do in one sentence.

I loved Via Libera. But love doesn’t generate traffic.

That was failure number two. And it taught me something even more important.

The Question That Changed Everything

I was burned out from the confusion.

And I asked myself a different question: ”What’s the common thread in all my paid work?”

I run an AI agency. I consult on marketing for an ecom brand. I work with digital creators. Soon adding another project I’m excited about.

What connects all of them? What am I actually getting paid to do?

Written marketing.

I help people use writing to generate business: Email sequences. Landing pages. Content strategies. Sales copy. All of it—marketing through writing.

That’s it. That’s what I do. That’s what people pay me for.

I literally ran to Namecheap. Typed in ”writtenmarketing.com.”

Available. $10 a year.

Credit card out. Done.

Here’s what I learned: your niche is already there. It’s hiding in the work clients keep asking you to do again and again.

Stop inventing. Start looking at what you’re already getting paid for.

That’s your proof. That’s your niche.

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

The 3 Tests That Told Me This Was Right

But I didn’t just pick the name and move on.

I needed to know it would actually work. So I ran it through three tests.

Test 1: The 5-Word Explanation Test

Here I want to mention who keeps posting Notes asking: ”If you had to describe your business in 5 words or less, what would you say?”

That question bugged me for months. Because I couldn’t answer it. And when you can’t answer it? That’s a symptom something’s broken.

Early Retired Club? ”Uh... retirement stuff? For young people?”

Via Libera? ”Freedom? Independence? Something philosophical?”

Written Marketing? ”Marketing through writing.”

Clear. Immediate. No confusion.

Test 2: The Search Intent Test

Would someone searching for your topic actually find you?

Early Retired Club and Via Libera had zero keywords. Abstract concepts don’t rank.

Written Marketing? Exactly what people search for. ”How to use writing for marketing.” ”Written marketing strategies.” ”Marketing copywriting.”

Google can work with that.

Test 3: The Professional Coherence Test

Does everything align? Name, URL, expertise, content, actual client work?

Via Libera was a mess. Mismatched name and URL. Philosophy that didn’t match what I actually did.

Written Marketing? My domain. My expertise. My client work. My content.

Everything points the same direction.

Three tests. All green lights.

That’s when I knew I had it.

Now here’s what you need to do.

What’s the Step-by-Step Framework to Find Your Niche?

If you’re stuck finding your niche, here’s your framework:

• Step 1: Look at your paid work. What do clients actually pay you for? Not what you wish they paid you for—what shows up on your invoices. That’s your proof of value.

• Step 2: Run the 5-word test. If a stranger can’t explain what you do after seeing your name, it’s too clever. Make it simpler.

• Step 3: Check search visibility. Does your name have keywords people actually search for? If not, you’re invisible to Google and invisible to new clients.

• Step 4: Audit the alignment. Does your name match your URL match your expertise match your content? If any piece is off, fix it.

The timeline reality? Four months of circling isn’t failure. It’s normal. Most people need 2-3 attempts to get it right.

Each iteration teaches you what doesn’t work. And once you find that intersection between what you actually do and what people actually need?

Everything gets easier.

Final Thoughts

Four months felt like forever when I was in it.

But here’s what I know now: those failures weren’t wasted time. They were the price of finding something that actually works.

Written Marketing checks all three boxes.

• It’s useful: people need this skill.

• It’s clear: you know exactly what you’re getting.

• It’s practical: directly tied to what I do and what generates income.

If you’re in month two or three of your own confusion right now? Keep going. Run the three tests. Look at your invoices. Find the patterns.

Your niche is closer than you think.

Start by asking: what are people already paying me to do?

The answer is right there.

Who else is committing to Substack in 2026?

Forget Notes and the endless chase for viral hits. What if the real path to building a business on Substack is quieter, deeper, and far more enjoyable?

Here’s a system that works by ignoring the hype. You commit to publishing one Substack post per week. The rule? Each post must answer one key question your ideal reader is wrestling with.

After a year of writing 52 posts (at ~1000 words each). You’ve built a 50,000-word library of answers—an entire book disguised as a newsletter archive. You’ve built a library that positions you as the authority they trust. New readers not only find on of your posts; they find a universe of solutions. They binge, they subscribe, and they start seeing you as the one person who truly gets their struggle.

This is how you grow Substack by serving readers on a fundamental level. It’s how you build Substack authority without begging for likes or playing algorithm games.

This Substack consistency plan flips the script: Forget your ego. Focus on their struggles. It forces you to get out of your own head and into theirs. It’s sustainable because it’s fueled by genuine curiosity about their problems, not the exhausting pursuit of your own validation.

Step 1: Map Your Reader’s 50 Questions (Ignore Your Ego)

If you start writing thinking: ”What do I feel like writing today?.” It’s a question driven by ego, not service. And it’s why so many newsletters never make it to the sixth month.

The fundamental shift is to stop talking *at* people and start answering their questions. Your first task is to get out of your own head and into theirs. Brainstorm a raw list of 50 pains, aspirations, and nagging questions your ideal reader has. Don’t filter. Just list.

To make this practical, think in categories. For example, if your ideal reader is an Indie Solopreneur, their 50 questions might break down into these five pillars:

• Getting Started (10 Questions): e.g., “What’s the first product I should build to hit $1k MRR?”

• Marketing & Funnels (10 Questions): e.g., “What’s the proven funnel to get my first 100 customers?”

• Productivity & Mindset (10 Questions): e.g., “How do I stay motivated when I’m not seeing results?”

• Scaling (10 Questions): e.g., “When should I hire my first VA?”

• Financials (10 Questions): e.g., “How do I price my SaaS product effectively?”

Why does this work? Because you’re not just publishing random articles; you’re building an answer library. When a new reader finds one post that solves a genuine problem, they don’t just leave. They start digging. They binge your archive because they finally see a guide who gets it. This is how authority is built—not by declaring it, but by demonstrating it, one answered question at a time. It’s no surprise the fastest-growing creators are the ones delivering relentless, targeted value. They’re just systematically useful.

Your 2026 Blueprint: One Question, One Post, One Week

Let’s scrap the complicated content calendar for 2026. Most are just a frantic scramble to feed the algorithm, leaving you with a collection of disconnected ideas.

Here’s a simpler, more powerful blueprint: One Question, One Post, One Week.

The mechanics are simple. Each week, you take one real question your ideal customer is asking and answer it completely in about 1000 words. This could be a step-by-step guide, a bank of resources, or practical framework they can use. etc.

By the end of the year You’ll have built a comprehensive library of answers that establishes quiet authority. Business starts flowing to you naturally because you’ve become the most trusted resource in your niche.

While your competitors are chasing algorithm hacks and churning out shallow, engagement-bait content, you’re building an evergreen asset that actually serves people. This is the reader-first edge everyone talks about but few actually build. It’s a fundamental shift from being a content creator to becoming the definitive answer.

The Foundation: Borrow, Improve, Publish

Most of the time ideas are not born from thin air. They’re synthesized from existing concepts, remixed and refined. As Wilson Mizner famously said: ”If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.”

This is the foundation of strategic content gap creation. Your 2026 content plan isn’t about reinventing the wheel. It’s about finding what already works and making it better.

The Content Gap Framework:

1. Find a piece of writing you admire that already solves one of your reader’s questions.

2. Identify weaknesses in the piece: Outdated information, shallow analysis, or missing practical examples.

3. Find these gaps and improve them by adding your unique perspective, a better story, a clearer explanation. etc.

4. Publish it. This piece becomes your new baseline.

You are not copying. You are contributing to the collective knowledge by improving a piece that already existed. You’re starting from what already works and making it better for the reader. It takes all the pressure off your ego and puts the focus back where it belongs:

Delivering relentless value.

The 1% Improvement Challenge: Every Post Serves Better

Now, the real challenge begins: Each piece has to be better than the last one.

Not better in some vague, unmeasurable way. Better in a way that’s actually more helpful for the readers.

Let me help you with some examples you can improve:

• One less unnecessary sentence.

• Visuals that makes the idea easier to grab.

• Sharper insight into their specific pain point.

• Easier language so everyone can understand.

• Cleaner format that helps readers skim through the article.

• One more concrete example that makes them think “oh, that’s exactly my situation.”

If you improve 1% each time and you keep showing up, you’re a 100% success. The chances of you not wining are 0. Not because James Clear said it. Is because your work is compounding. Because you’re competing against yesterday’s version of yourself and not anyone else.

Most creators benchmark against other creators. That’s exhausting and pointless. You don’t know their business, their audience, their context. You only know yours.

Focus on improving yourself and helping your readers, then the question becomes: Did this post serve my reader better than the last one? Did I understand their problem more clearly? Did I explain the solution more directly?

If yes, publish it. If no, figure out why and fix it.

Sustained improvement beats sporadic brilliance every single time.

In 52 weeks, you are not 52% better. You are 68% better.

Who’s Joining? Commit to Their 50 Questions

So who’s actually doing this in 2026?

If you’re in, start simple. List your first 5 audience questions. Don’t overthink it, just write down what your ideal reader is genuinely struggling with right now. By the end of 2026, those 5 questions will have multiplied into 50 answered posts. You’ll have built a library that positions you as the guide they’ve been looking for.

The system works. The only question is whether you’ll stick with it long enough to see the compounding effect.

➤ Next week: You don’t need as much as you think to live the life you want. An overlooked mental shift that will help you achieve your goals this year. Read next week’s issue.

➤ If you liked this article, help me restacking it 🔄

Limited time: Get the Top 10 Substack Take-off Secrets free (paid members only after December 31st)

The ten foundational steps to turn your writing into a sustainable business. Stop guessing what to write, who to write for, and how to make money. These ten steps give you the complete business foundation successful creators built before they “made it.”

I read 57 books this year.

That’s not a brag. I’m not naturally some voracious reader who tears through books like they’re made of candy—or at least I wasn’t. I just decided in January to read more, built a habit around it, and stuck with it. Four or five books a month, mostly on Kindle few on physical form.

Some were page-turners that kept me up at night. Some were dense academic texts I had to abandon. A few gave me a different perspective on a topic. But only one fundamentally changed how I work.

Not just what I think about. How I actually capture, organize, and use ideas. How I write. How I build knowledge over time instead of letting it evaporate the moment I close the book.

That book was How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens.

Before we get into that, let me share with you the other books I enjoyed most this year. These are genuinely excellent books that deserve your attention.

The 2025 Runners-Up

Deep Work by Cal Newport

’Deep work’ is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. This is becoming both rare and valuable. The world is designed to fracture your attention. Email. Slack. Social media. Meetings. Your competitive advantage is going deep when everyone else is staying shallow.

Cal gives you practical systems to actually do this. Time-blocking. Shutdown rituals. The four disciplines of execution. After reading the book I started applying some of the techniques; for instance I schedule 90-minute deep work blocks where I don’t check the phone or other distractions. My output doubled. Not because I worked more but because I worked deeper.

Key takeaway: Shallow work feels productive but rarely moves the needle. Deep work is where the real value is created.

On Writing Well by William Zinsser

The best book about the writing craft I’ve ever read. Zinsser strips away the clutter and shows you how to write with clarity, simplicity, and humanity. Every sentence matters. Every word should earn its place.

What makes it great is that Zinsser doesn’t just tell you what good writing looks like. He shows you with his own good writing and examples. He takes mediocre passages and transforms them right in front of you. You see the before and after. You understand why one version works and the other doesn’t.

Key takeaway: “Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.” Strip your writing down. Say what you mean.

Forbidden Keys to Persuasion by Blair Warren

The best book on dark human psychology I’ve ever read.

Warren starts with a question: How do some people convince others to willingly act against their own self-interest, while most of us struggle to get people to do things that would clearly help them?

He studied con artists and cult leaders to find the answer. The patterns they use. The psychological principles that make people comply. Warren doesn’t show you how to exploit these traits directly but outlines how they work. Once you see them, you can’t unsee them.

Key takeaway: Logic doesn’t persuade. Emotion does. If you understand what someone fears, dreams, or secretly craves, you can speak directly to that. I have these principles in mind every time I write now.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

I’m going to be honest. I didn’t want to include this book in the list at all. But after reading it, it earned its place at number three.

The narrative of Viktor surviving WWII concentration camps is a masterpiece on its own. The way he transmits what they lived through. But what really won me over is the last part where he outlines the principles of his Logotherapy school. He explains the essential questions we all have. What is love. Why keep living. What is the meaning of life. This part alone is worth every human being reading this book at least once in their life.

But the combination of his WWII memoir and the philosophy is what makes it stand out. This book shows you empathy and optimism for living while explaining the horror of the camps. That contrast—the brutality and the hope—is what makes it unforgettable.

Key takeaway: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

A sweeping history of humankind from the Stone Age to now. Harari’s big idea: humans came to dominate the planet not through physical strength but through our ability to create and believe in shared fictions—religions, nations, money, corporations.

It reframes everything you think you know about human progress. Why did agriculture make us less happy? How did imagined orders shape civilizations? Harari connects dots across millennia to show you how we got here. The patterns. The events. How things came to be the way they are. And somehow, he makes it fun.

Key takeaway: The stories we tell ourselves—about nations, gods, money—are fictions, but they’re the most powerful force in human history.

The Life-Changer: How to Take Smart Notes

Now here’s why How to Take Smart Notes changed my life.

The book is about a note-taking system called the Zettelkasten method, developed by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann published 70 books and over 400 articles in his career. When asked how he was so productive, he pointed to his note-taking system—a physical box of index cards where each card contained one idea, linked to related ideas.

Sönke Ahrens explains how this system works and why it’s so powerful.

Most people take notes to store information. Luhmann took notes to think.

Every time he read something interesting, he didn’t just highlight it or write “good point” in the margin. He created a permanent note—a single idea, written in his own words, with connections to other ideas already in his system. Over time, these notes formed a web of knowledge that could generate new insights on its own.

That’s the paradigm shift.

Before reading this book, I was taking notes but they were scattered everywhere. Highlights in my Kindle that I’d never look at again. Random observations in my phone. Quotes scribbled in notebooks I’d lose three months later. And when I needed an idea for an article or wanted to remember what I’d learned from a book six months ago? Gone. Lost in the chaos.

Here’s what changed.

Now I underline everything that seems interesting while reading. Then I go back and process those highlights. I don’t just copy them—I rewrite them in my own words, connect them to other ideas in my system, and store them in my knowledge database. I use Obsidian, but the tool doesn’t matter. The process does.

It takes time. I’m not going to lie about that. But I’m building something that compounds.

Every note I take today becomes raw material for future writing. Every connection I make between ideas generates insights I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. My newsletter? Half the time it starts with me connecting my notes and noticing patterns I didn’t plan before.

This is why this book changed my life. It didn’t just give me information. It gave me a system for turning reading into thinking, and thinking into output.

Why This Book Stands Out

The other books I read this year were excellent. They gave me knowledge, inspiration, frameworks for specific problems.

Deep Work taught me to protect my time. On Writing Well taught me to cut clutter. Forbidden Keys to Persuasion taught me what actually moves people.

But How to Take Smart Notes taught me how to build a system where all of that knowledge compounds over time instead of fading the moment I close the book.

Most books give you insights. This one gives you a meta-skill: a way to get more value from every other book you’ll ever read.

In 2025, with AI everywhere, we’re starting to wonder what intelligence even means. Can AI replace thinking? Should we let it?

This book reminded me that the goal isn’t to outsource thinking—it’s to extend it. When you build a system for capturing and connecting ideas in your own words, you’re compounding the limits of your human intelligence. You’re creating something bigger that grows over time.

The act of processing ideas, connecting them to what you already know—that’s where the magic happens. AI can help you write. But it can’t replace the thinking. Your note system becomes an extension of your mind.

The Bottom Line

If you’re going to read a book from this list, make it How to Take Smart Notes.

Not because the other books aren’t worth it—they absolutely are. But because this one will change how you approach all the others.

Start building your knowledge database now. Every note you take, every idea you capture and connect, becomes part of a system that gets more valuable over time. Most things depreciate. Your note system appreciates.

What was your standout book in 2025? or do you have any other recommendation? Hit reply and let me know—I’m always looking for my next read.

➤ Kicking off 2026: What if building a thriving Substack was as simple as answering 50 questions for your ideal reader? Curious about this quiet path to authority? Read next week’s issue.

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Limited time: Get the Top 10 Substack Take-off Secrets free (paid members only after December 31st)

The ten foundational steps to turn your writing into a sustainable business. Stop guessing what to write, who to write for, and how to make money. These ten steps give you the complete business foundation successful creators built before they “made it.”

Back when I was living in Berlin, one of my best friends ran his own design studio.

Most days they designed boring dashboards for mid-tier startups. But what he really loved and the whole reason he started the agency was to create brand identities for other companies.

He’d talk about it with this contagious energy. One day I finally asked him to show me the workshop process they ran with every new client.

So one Saturday morning, while our girlfriends were off having posh coffee somewhere in the city, we locked ourselves in his office. He was going to run me through a full brand sprint—the kind companies paid thousands for—except I didn’t have to pay anything.

He pulled out this rolled-up poster from a cardboard tube and pinned it to the board on the wall.

I could read the letters at the top that said: The 12 Brand Archetypes.

I had no idea what I was looking at. Two hours later, everything I thought I knew about building a recognizable brand had changed.

Here’s what I learned—and how can help your newsletter attract the right audience.

Why Brand Archetypes Matter for Newsletters

Like we explored in the past article people don’t subscribe to content. They subscribe to personalities.

Substack is a warzone of thousands of newsletters. Eachone fighting for attention. The ones that win aren’t necessarily the ones with the best information but the ones that feel like a real person talking to you.

That’s what a brand archetype does. It gives your newsletter a consistent personality that readers recognize instantly. Open rates go up. Replies increase. People forward your stuff to friends. And when you launch a paid product, conversions are higher because readers already feel connected to you, not just your content. (This is important)

The numbers back this up. Research shows that brands with strong, consistent archetypes are valued up to 97% higher than those without. The same principle applies to newsletter brands, only that you building it around yourself instead of a company.

The best example I can think of is about a financial newsletters. The space is crowded with the same voice: serious, analytical, slightly boring. A clear archetype lets you stand out without changing your expertise. You’re still teaching markets—you’re just doing it with a personality that represent you, creating your own category.

The benefit? Easier content creation (you know exactly how to say things), stronger community (readers attract similar people), and natural differentiation (you’re not just another market newsletter).

What Brand Archetypes Actually Are

I didn’t know this at the time, but brand archetypes come from Carl Jung’s theory. He identified 12 core personality patterns that show up across all human cultures and stories.

These aren’t random marketing categories. They’re universal character patterns hard-wired into the human psyche. The Hero. The Rebel. The Sage. We recognize them instantly because we’ve been seeing them in myths, movies, and stories our entire lives.

Smart brands use these archetypes as a shortcut to trigger specific emotions and desires in their audience.

• Nike → Hero

• Rolex → Ruler

• Apple → Creator

• Disney → Magician

But they also work with people:

• Banksy → Outlaw

• Jim Carrey → Jester

• Warren Buffett → Sage

These becomes a framework for authentic, consistent communication. You’re not inventing a fake personality—you’re clarifying what your closest natural archetype is so readers can feel it immediately.

The 12 Brand Archetypes

Here’s the full breakdown. Each archetype triggers different emotions and attracts different readers. As you go through these, pay attention to which ones feel natural to you—not which ones seem ’coolest’ or most successful.

You’ve read through all the archetypes, the feelings and strategies that accompany them.

You’ve probably already spotted one or two that feel right. Maybe you read “Outlaw” and thought, “Yeah, that’s my whole vibe.” Or maybe you’re torn between Sage and Caregiver because you love teaching but also want to protect people from mistakes.

Your personality could fit multiple archetypes. Most people aren’t purely one thing—you might be 70% Hero with 30% Outlaw, or mostly Explorer with some Magician mixed in.

You don’t need to know exactly what you are right now. Think of this as a starting direction, not a permanent identity. The goal is to have a general guideline to position your brand, choose your visuals, and make content decisions faster.

In the next section, I’ll show you exactly how to choose your dominant archetype (and whether you need a supporting one), plus how to test it without overthinking it.

How to Choose the Right Archetype for Your Newsletter

You don’t need a 3-hour soul-searching session for this. Here’s the process:

1. Look at your core values and mission Why did you start your newsletter in first place? What do you actually care about? If you’re writing about markets because you want to help people avoid Wall Street’s bullshit, you’re probably an Outlaw. If you’re doing it to share knowledge and educate, you’re leaning Sage.

2. Look at your audience’s deepest desires and fears What keeps them up at night? What are they trying to achieve? Match your archetype to what they need emotionally—not just informationally. A beginner writer needs a Caregiver. An ambitious entrepreneur wants a Hero. etc.

3. Review your current content tone and reader feedback Go back and read your most popular posts. What do people quote back to you? What gets the most replies? The patterns are already there, you’re just naming them now.

4. Narrow it down to 2-3 archetypes that feel natural Write them down. Don’t pick what sounds impressive. Pick what feels like you on your best writing days.

5. Test one for 4-6 weeks Commit to one dominant archetype. Adjust your tone, choose topics through that lens, write subject lines that match the voice. See what happens.

6. Watch your metrics and get feedback Are open rates climbing? Are people replying more? Do you feel more confident writing? If yes, you found it. If no, adjust.

A few things to remember:

You can have a dominant archetype (70-80%) and a supporting one (20-30%). Sage + Outlaw works. Hero + Caregiver works. You just have to test what fits you best.

Don’t force an archetype that doesn’t match your personality. If you hate being funny, don’t try to be the Jester. If you’re naturally irreverent, don’t force yourself into Ruler mode. Authenticity beats strategy every time.

This isn’t permanent. You can evolve. But pick something and commit for at least a month—clarity comes from testing, not theorizing.

Bottom Line

That Saturday morning in Berlin, I walked out of my friend’s office with the framework companies pay thousands for and now you know it too.

Brand archetypes aren’t some abstract marketing theory. They’re a shortcut to giving your newsletter a personality people actually remember and connect with.

You’ve got the 12 archetypes. Pick one that feels closest to you right now and test it, adjust it, and combine them if needed. Keep it in mind the next time you sit down to write your newsletter. Notice how it changes your tone, your examples, your opening lines. etc.

And if you’ve already done the exercise—if you’ve figured out which archetype fits you best—reply and tell me. I’m curious which ones resonated most with you.

The clarity you’re looking for doesn’t come from overthinking it. It comes from picking something and testing it.

➤ Next week: I read 57 books in 2025, but only one transformed how I think and work. Curious which book is it? Read next week’s issue.

➤ If you liked this article, help me restacking it 🔄

Limited time: Get the Top 10 Substack Take-off Secrets free (paid members only after December 31st)

The ten foundational steps to turn your writing into a sustainable business. Stop guessing what to write, who to write for, and how to make money. These ten steps give you the complete business foundation successful creators built before they “made it.”

Think back to when you were in school

I’m sure you had some subjects you were good at and others you weren’t.

I had this teacher who taught history. Topics I was genuinely excited about. The biggest empires, ancient civilizations, how the world was shaped. These should have been the most engaging classes. But she managed to make every single hour feel endless. The content was fascinating. She made it feel like a chore.

On the other hand, I had teachers who taught subjects I didn’t care about. But they made them fun. They made me want to go to class. Suddenly I enjoyed learning something I thought I’d hate.

The difference? Not the content. The delivery.

The same thing happens with the books you read. You follow certain authors not because of their genre, but because of them. Their voice. Their perspective. How they make you feel.

This is exactly what happens on Substack.

People don’t just follow topics. They follow people. On Substack especially, readers aren’t looking for generic tips or rehashed advice they can find anywhere on the internet. They’re looking for you. Your personality. Your life experience. Your unique perspective.

Your real competitive advantage isn’t what you write about. It’s you.

On Substack, where you’re surrounded by thousands of good newsletters, the only way to stand out is through differentiation. You need to understand what makes you different. That’s your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP—something competitors won’t or can’t replicate.

Your newsletter should do the same.

This framework breaks down how to build that USP in three parts: the WHAT only you can talk about, the HOW you express it, and the composition of both that makes it impossible to replicate.

Part 1: The What — Your Uniqueness & Zone of Genius

Your zone of genius is the things only you could write about.

The things only you can speak to because of who you are, what you’ve lived through, and why you’re good at what you do.

Start with this question: Could anyone else besides me have written this?

If the answer is ”yes,” you haven’t found your zone of genius yet. If an AI could have written it, or if a thousand other people could say the exact same thing, then it’s not your content—it’s content that happens to have your name on it.

Your uniqueness lives at the intersection of:

• Your story and unique experience (why you do it)

• Your topics and work (what you do)

• Your processes (how you do it)

It’s why you do what you do. It’s the things you enjoy talking about. It’s the hard-won lessons nobody else has learned in exactly the way you have. Weave those in. Share your story. Amplify your personality. Make it impossible for someone to read your words and imagine them coming from someone else.

This will be the foundation everything else builds on it.

Part 2: The How — Your Unique Expression

Ask yourself: Why do you admire certain creators but ignore others?

It’s not because they’re smarter or more talented. It’s because they’re _themselves_. They show up with personality. They don’t polish away everything that makes them interesting.

Back in 2007, Scott Adams—creator of Dilbert—figured something out that is still relevant today.

He was talking about paths to an extraordinary life. He basically said: don’t try to be the best at one thing. That’s near impossible. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. Instead you should strive to become very good at two or more things.

I believe everyone has at least a few areas—that with some effort—they can become very good at.

Adams knew he could draw better than most people. Not great. Just better than most. He also happens to be quite funny. Funnier than most people, anyway.

Here’s where the magic happened: few people could draw and write jokes. The combination made him rare. Then he threw in his business background. Suddenly he had insights about corporate culture that cartoonists didn’t have.

That combination—drawing + humor + business knowledge—that’s what made Dilbert unmistakable.

And this is exactly what your HOW should be.

Stop trying to be the best writer on Substack—that would be nearly imposible. Stop trying to be the best designer or analyst or storyteller—same principle. You should try to be very good at multiple things and let that combination speak for itself.

Think about how you actually think. Do you visualize things? Then add charts and data to your storytelling. Do you naturally break complex ideas into simple frameworks? Then combine that with humor and personal examples. Do you think in stories? Then weave narratives through your analysis.

Don’t confuse with being well-rounded. This is about expressing your actual, natural way of thinking through your newsletter.

Robert Greene did this. He didn’t invent the study of power. But he combined historical narratives with principle extraction in a way nobody else did before. He pulls a character from history, tells their story, distills the universal principle. Few people execute both skills at that level. That’s his HOW. That’s why his writing feels unmistakable.

Your expression is the combination of skills you bring, how you naturally think. Made visible on the page.

Part 3: The Composition — Your USP

If your newsletter can be written by AI or replicated by someone else, then it’s not really yours.

But if it’s the unique blend of multiple mediums and skills you bring—your topic, your format, how you actually present ideas—then it becomes impossible to copy.

That’s what separates you from the rest.

While researching this article, I stumbled across a Substack that perfectly exemplifies what I’m talking about:

📙 Little Almanack

How To Know If You Are On The Right Path

👋 Hey friend…

Read more

a year ago · 28 likes · 5 comments · Julio Froment

Look at how every element—the nuggets he talks about, the visual identity, the mind-maps, the quotes—work together to make his newsletter HIS. You can’t copy it because it’s not a technique. It’s just him, authentically.

Stop hiding behind perfectly-polished writing. Stop copying exactly what chat-GPT says. Stop erasing your personality to sound ”professional.” Stop trying to fit into what you think a newsletter should be and find your newsletter personality. Is your competitive advantage.

The way you think. The way you explain things. Your sense of humor. Your unique combination of interests. The specific blend of skills nobody else has. That’s not something you hide. It’s the only thing worth sharing.

Here’s what happens when you actually let your personality shine through: people recognize themselves in you. They see someone who thinks like they do. Someone who expresses ideas in a way they enjoy. And suddenly they’re not just readers—they’re subscribers. They’re part of your tribe.

This is what builds a real newsletter. Not algorithms. Not viral hacks. Not trying to be everything to everyone.

Just the unique expression of yourself. Authentically.

”You can escape competition through authenticity, when you realize that no one can compete with you on being you.” — Naval Ravikant

Your goal is simple: When someone reads your newsletter, even if they don‘t see your name, they immediately have to know it was written by you.

➤ Next week: You’ve got your unique personality dialed in. Now let’s uncover which of the 12 brand archetypes fits you best. Curious what yours is? Read next week’s issue to find out. Read next week’s issue.

➤ If you liked this article, help me restacking it 🔄

Limited time: Get the Top 10 Substack Take-off Secrets free (paid members only after December 31st)

The ten foundational steps to turn your writing into a sustainable business. Stop guessing what to write, who to write for, and how to make money. These ten steps give you the complete business foundation successful creators built before they “made it.”

We’re all trying to figure out what Substack really is.

I mean, is it a blog? An email marketing tool? A social media platform? Some kind of subscription magazine? The confusion is real, and honestly, I was right there with you when I started.

According to Substack themselves, they’re “the subscription network for independent writers and creators.” That sounds important, but if you’re like me, I still don’t know what a subscription network even means.

For me, Substack represented something different. It’s my first real attempt at writing online, showing up and seeing where this journey takes me. I was excited. I was committed but also completely confused about what the platform actually wanted from me.

I came to Substack with a familiar mindset: the mindset of traditional social media and email marketing combined. If you’ve spent any time in content creation, you’ll know that the advice is always the same: consistency is king. More emails, more touches. More touches, more conversions. It’s a numbers game, and the more you show up in someone’s inbox, the better your results.

So I decided to test this on Substack. My plan was simple: write a 300-word newsletter every single day for 30 days. Thirty days. Thirty emails. Surely, I thought, this would build momentum, establish a habit, and show my subscribers that I was serious about this writing thing.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t work the way I expected.

What Went Wrong

About halfway through my experiment, I started to notice something. The usual email marketing playbook wasn’t translating to Substack. The platform felt different. It was different. And the more I pushed my daily content strategy, the more I felt like I was swimming against the current rather than with it.

And here’s what I learned:

1. Quality shrinks. When you’re committing to daily output, something has to give—and that something is usually quality. By day fifteen, I wasn’t exploring deep ideas anymore—I was just commenting on my daily life, like you’d do in traditional email marketing. That is not what you want when you publish on Substack.

2. Your content lives on your page forever. This was the realization that hit me hardest. On Substack, every single piece you publish stays there. It’s indexed, it’s discoverable, it’s part of your permanent archive. So while I was frantically publishing daily, I was also building this massive library of... okay, I’ll be honest... mediocre content. Not terrible, but not the kind of work I want people to remember me for.

3. Ideas have to be exceptional. Related to the above—every piece you publish is competing for attention in a crowded space. An okay idea isn’t going to cut it. An okay article isn’t going to cut it. You need something that actually resonates, that actually adds value, that actually makes people think “yes, I want to read this.”

4. Titles need to be really good. Your title is doing serious lifting. Unlike traditional email marketing, people don’t know you yet, so it’s crucial your title pulls them in while they’re scrolling through feeds packed with dozens of other newsletters and notes. Your headline needs to make them stop and actually click. Writing exceptional titles every single day? Possible, but exhausting.

5. Visual design matters more than I thought. I’d been treating images as an afterthought, but they’re not. The most viral articles that I’ve seen have an image that made people stop. A thoughtful image can be the difference between ten or thousands views.

6. Post length was counterintuitive. I thought shorter emails were better, but on Substack, people are reading in the app, not skimming their inbox. The platform is designed for depth and share-ability. I found that 800-1200 words was the sweet spot—long enough to develop an idea and short enough to keep people engaged.

7. The emails feel different. This is subtle but important: Substack newsletters feel branded. They have that Substack look and feel. Traditional marketing emails feel personal, like they came from a friend just for you. Substack emails feel like they’re coming through a platform. It’s a small thing, but it changes the purpose.

8. The platform isn’t built for traditional email marketing tactics. Although it has some, Substack is missing the tools you’d expect from a serious email marketing platform: automation based on events, advanced segmentation, in-depth A/B testing. And there’s a reason for that. It’s by design.

   Hard selling, promotional blasts, conversion-focused tactics go against Substack’s Terms & Conditions. The platform explicitly prohibits publications whose primary purpose is advertising products, driving traffic to external sites, or distributing offers and promotions.

The Actual Better Approach

Once the 30-days were over I stopped and recalibrated. Instead of churning out seven different articles per week, I started creating one genuinely thoughtful, well-researched piece. Then I’d promote that one article through Notes (short-form content.)

It felt different immediately. Less pressure. More focus. And the engagement numbers actually started to make more sense. I realized I was building a library instead of an archive. Now, each article adds real value to my catalog. People visiting my page would find substantive things to read, not a sea of filler.

Substack Isn’t Email Marketing

Here’s the thing I finally understood: Substack isn’t a traditional email marketing tool. It’s something else entirely.

The platform is designed for high-quality editorial content. It’s for writers and creators who want to build long-term, meaningful relationships with an audience through great writing—not for businesses trying to optimize their conversion funnels or drive traffic through promotional campaigns.

If you’re on Substack trying to hard-sell or game the system, you’re fighting the platform’s DNA. The Terms & Conditions make this pretty clear. They don’t want publications that exist primarily to advertise external products, drive traffic elsewhere, or spam people with offers. They want editorial content. Real writing. Substance.

The Long-Term Mentality

This distinction matters. Email marketing often is a short-term, conversion-focused game. You’re measuring opens, clicks, and conversions. Substack is a long-term, editorial game. You’re building a body of work. You’re creating a destination that people return to because your writing is worth their time.

My 30-day experiment taught me that you can’t use the same playbook for both. The moment I stopped thinking like an email marketer and started thinking like a writer building something sustainable, Substack started to make sense.

So if you’re considering Substack—or if you’re already on it and feeling frustrated—take this from someone who learned the hard way: align your strategy with the platform’s vision. Create quality over quantity. Build a library, not an archive. Think long-term.

If you want to know more about what is Substack long-term vision you can read my previous article where I talk about their algorithm and what they prioritize for:

That’s when Substack works.

➤ Next week: Most creators are invisible because they’re trying to be like everyone else. Next week, I’m revealing the 3 steps to uncover your unique newsletter personality and why it’s your only real competitive advantage. Read next week’s issue.

➤ If you liked this article, help me restacking it 🔄