It's been incredible watching your growth Wyndo, very inspiring. Your articles bring a ton of value, every single time. Hope to collaborate with you in 2026 🤗
Wyndo, I relate so much to everything you shared! Especially those points:
First, I didn’t even realize I was #1 on your recommendation list! I’m honestly humbled and grateful for that!
The virality of your two NotebookLM articles is incredible. So many people never quite get any of that at all.
SEO was definitely a painful mistake for me too (I talked about it in my post), but thankfully I’ve been able to course-correct.
And the point about the About page being the main entry point in the Substack app is such an important one. A lot of people optimize for desktop and completely forget the app experience.
Haha, I’m so glad we crossed paths early on and that I’ve gotten to watch your growth, it’s been genuinely inspiring. Eight or nine months already feels fast, and I’m really thinking in terms of eight or nine years from now when we still being amazed by how time flies.
Loved collaborating with you last year Wyndo! I'll let you know if any more ideas come across my desk that I think we could work together on. Happy new year!
btw, using h2 is the right approach. h1 comes from your title so you dont have to use them again. but just make sure it has right structure with h3 and h4.
Man, congrats on your crazy growth. 300 paid subscribers in less than a year ain't nothing to sneeze at, to say the least!
And I'm 100% with you on Substack's recommendations engine. Yes, it's cool to get "free" subscribers whenever someone signs up to a related newsletter...but I bet many of them aren't even aware they're doing it. My engagement numbers from recommendations tell the same story as yours.
I also reached the same conclusion about being selective with how many Substacks I recommend, which also makes me curb the need to chase mutual cross-recommendations from others. (Something I briefly tried.) The longer the recommendations list grows, the more it dilutes their value.
Thanks for sharing your lessons without sugarcoating or BS.
EDIT: By the way---those neat infographics for each tip, I'm guessing they're Nano Banana Pro creations?
Seeing you talk about recommendations confirmed I’m not the only one noticing this pattern. I set up an automation a few weeks ago (or maybe two months… my time tracking is terrible:))) and most unsubscribes come from recommended signups. And I did the same before being active on Substack - I bulk-subscribed without realizing it and ended up with newsletters I didn’t actually care about. I’m planning to dig deeper into the metrics soon but the insight is already pretty clear.
And as always, great post, Wyndo. I love how deeply you think things through.
And I’m really happy for what you’ve built and where it’s heading. Cheers to an even bigger 2026 and I’m really glad we crossed paths early on in this journey. You’re setting a strong example for a lot of us here.
Wyndo, congrats on your quick growth. While the 9700+ subscribers are impressive, I am very interested in learning more about your 305 Paid subscribers, which I think is even more impressive. That puts you at almost a 3% conversion rate, which is pretty good. Do you know the breakdown of annual vs monthly for your Paid subscribers? Did you see any type of boost from getting the Bestseller Badge with 100 Paid subscribers? Any tactics that worked better for converting free to Paid that you can share? Thanks so much!
Thanks Mack, most of them are on monthly. It's really hard to quantify bestseller badge impact though. But I'm sure it creates more trust for paid subscribers making decision. I think it's important to have 1 strong paid product that acts like a lead magnet. I have 1 paid post that generates most of paid subscribers. Hope it helps!
It's been incredible watching your growth Wyndo, very inspiring. Your articles bring a ton of value, every single time. Hope to collaborate with you in 2026 🤗
Thanks Karo, appreciate your support since early in the beginning. Sure, happy to :)
Wyndo, I relate so much to everything you shared! Especially those points:
First, I didn’t even realize I was #1 on your recommendation list! I’m honestly humbled and grateful for that!
The virality of your two NotebookLM articles is incredible. So many people never quite get any of that at all.
SEO was definitely a painful mistake for me too (I talked about it in my post), but thankfully I’ve been able to course-correct.
And the point about the About page being the main entry point in the Substack app is such an important one. A lot of people optimize for desktop and completely forget the app experience.
Great suggestions! We are just starting!
You were one of the first ones after Jeff, I guess haha.
Damn, it's been 8–9 months since the first time we connected. Time flies so fast!
Yeah, NLM has its own magnetic way of attracting readers.
Yes, most people optimize for desktop, but most of our subs come from the app.
We are still early! 🙌🏻
Haha, I’m so glad we crossed paths early on and that I’ve gotten to watch your growth, it’s been genuinely inspiring. Eight or nine months already feels fast, and I’m really thinking in terms of eight or nine years from now when we still being amazed by how time flies.
And yes, we’re still early! 🙌🏻
Loved collaborating with you last year Wyndo! I'll let you know if any more ideas come across my desk that I think we could work together on. Happy new year!
thanks Nick!
happy to feature u again, just DM me whenever u have new ideas to share. Happy new year!
Thank you Wyndo for another high value post!! Learned so much simply by reading through.
Thanks Lulu, appreciated!
Wyndo, this is so informative. I have a feeling this one’s headed straight for viral territory too! 😉
Your growth is really inspiring, and I appreciate how honest you are about recommendations.
Also thank you for the SEO reassurance, I’ve been paying attention to it from day one, so it’s nice to know that patience isn’t wasted here.
Congrats, you’re on a roll. 🩷🦩
hopefully :)
If u focus on SEO then you are doing the right thing. the growth could be slow but once hitting right keywords, it can go wild suddenly!
thank you, much appreciated! 🙏🏻
Extremely grateful that you’re willing to share this level of detail and break it up into more of a tiered approach based on time and subscribers.
I’ve been researching the right way or I should say the best way to engage at my level & the next level to have a strategy versus reacting.
Also, I never use heading one so I do need to go back and edit my posts for some reason I always start with heading 2!
Thanks Judy, glad to know this helps :)
btw, using h2 is the right approach. h1 comes from your title so you dont have to use them again. but just make sure it has right structure with h3 and h4.
A lot of wisdom here, thanks Wyndo! Many takeways for me to implement, appreciate you sharing.
Thanks Zain, glad u find it useful! :)
Man, congrats on your crazy growth. 300 paid subscribers in less than a year ain't nothing to sneeze at, to say the least!
And I'm 100% with you on Substack's recommendations engine. Yes, it's cool to get "free" subscribers whenever someone signs up to a related newsletter...but I bet many of them aren't even aware they're doing it. My engagement numbers from recommendations tell the same story as yours.
I also reached the same conclusion about being selective with how many Substacks I recommend, which also makes me curb the need to chase mutual cross-recommendations from others. (Something I briefly tried.) The longer the recommendations list grows, the more it dilutes their value.
Thanks for sharing your lessons without sugarcoating or BS.
EDIT: By the way---those neat infographics for each tip, I'm guessing they're Nano Banana Pro creations?
Thanks man! Been enjoying your posts too every week! :)
Recommendation is such a tricky one. We need them to grow yet if we depend solely on it, it might hurting us in the long term.
Yes nano banana pro but I use Glif app to generate all my visual process now.
Everyone wants the "post 3x daily" advice but not the "actually have conversations" work.
Great post!
Thanks Laura :)
As a new author this will be my go to list for growth! Thank you.
glad it resonates with you, lets execute!
Thanks for sharing all these great insights! Sounds like more than a fulltime job 😅
defly a whole new level of job 😄
I resonate a lot with this.
Seeing you talk about recommendations confirmed I’m not the only one noticing this pattern. I set up an automation a few weeks ago (or maybe two months… my time tracking is terrible:))) and most unsubscribes come from recommended signups. And I did the same before being active on Substack - I bulk-subscribed without realizing it and ended up with newsletters I didn’t actually care about. I’m planning to dig deeper into the metrics soon but the insight is already pretty clear.
And as always, great post, Wyndo. I love how deeply you think things through.
And I’m really happy for what you’ve built and where it’s heading. Cheers to an even bigger 2026 and I’m really glad we crossed paths early on in this journey. You’re setting a strong example for a lot of us here.
Well, that explained a lot about the quality of recommendation subs, thanks for the analysis :)
But of course, the action plan isn’t to turn off recommendations; it’s to be careful if they start becoming the only channel that grows our subs.
Much appreciated, Daria. Glad you found it useful, and thanks for the kind words!
Yes, glad we connected. Cheers to 2026; we’re still early! 🚀
thank you so much for the shout-out 🧡
we all need to learn from you :)
Thanks for sharing your journey, wisdom and experience! Been incredible to follow you and your teachings Wyndo ✨
thank you Chris!
appreciate you :)
Awesome article, really appreciate your honesty and willingness to share the learning experiences.
Glad it resonates with u tom, thanks for the support! 🙏
Wyndo, congrats on your quick growth. While the 9700+ subscribers are impressive, I am very interested in learning more about your 305 Paid subscribers, which I think is even more impressive. That puts you at almost a 3% conversion rate, which is pretty good. Do you know the breakdown of annual vs monthly for your Paid subscribers? Did you see any type of boost from getting the Bestseller Badge with 100 Paid subscribers? Any tactics that worked better for converting free to Paid that you can share? Thanks so much!
Thanks Mack, most of them are on monthly. It's really hard to quantify bestseller badge impact though. But I'm sure it creates more trust for paid subscribers making decision. I think it's important to have 1 strong paid product that acts like a lead magnet. I have 1 paid post that generates most of paid subscribers. Hope it helps!