Write2Sell: Increase Your Substack Free to Paid Subscriber Conversion Rate in 3 Simple Steps
You don't need to burn yourself out building digital products and services to monetize your subscribers. Use my strategy instead.
I got the Substack Bestseller badge in just 3 months.
But I didn’t do this with random efforts.
I chose a strategy that allowed me to keep it up on the side of my 9-5 job.
And stayed with it long enough although it seemed to not work at the beginning.
I didn’t come up with it by chance.
I came up with it by choice. After researching tons of bestsellers with thousands and tens of thousands of paid subscribers and blending what I’ve learned with what I know from my corporate background.
What gets measured, gets done.
The conversion rate is the one major KPI you should track to measure your progress on Substack.
The benchmark? Substack average 5-10%.
That’s how you know if you:
underperform,
perform, or
overperform.
It’s not about comparing yourself to others.
It’s about knowing where you stand.
It’s about understanding whether it works or not.
It’s about making data-driven decisions.
How to Measure Your Free to Paid Subscriber Conversion Rate?
You can calculate your conversion rate from your stats. I do this by acquisition channels, here’s how:
take all your subscribers by channels. Go to Dashboard → Stats →> Network → All
divide them by all paid subscribers by channels. Go to Dashboard → Stats →> Network → Paid.
As you can see, Substack App (where Notes is included) is the number one contributor for my paid subscriptions.
That’s why I keep saying this:
Using Substack Notes is so crucial for your growth. I have mapped my entire strategy in the Notes30 Challenge, find it in the attached file at the end of this post.
I created the Notes30 Challenge to help you grow your free subscribers. But not ANY free subscribers. You’ll get people who are more likely to convert to paid. So if you haven’t’ already, join my Monthly Notes30 Challenge. Next one comes right after New Year.
Back to the conversion rate.
I use Excel to calculate it. In the “Paid” column, I combine “Substack saved credit cards” “with Substack existing accounts”.
I currently have this performance:
I have 924 imported emails. Most of those people are external to Substack and they read my content only via email. The average conversion rate you can expect from such audience is around 3% - a lot lower than Substack average.
That’s why I measure this KPI in two versions:
with imported emails - here I take 3% as a benchmark (from what I’ve found in my bestseller’s research). I currently have 5.7% which is already quite good.
without imported emails - here I take Substack average 5-10% with 10% being the one to aim for. I currently have 8.3%, so I have a room for improvement. Still it’s above the 5% mark, so I’m on the right track.
But I haven’t started with a conversion rate that high.
Here’s my development over the past few months:
See?
I grew from 2% to 5.7% in total and from 4.8% to 8.3% in organic channels.
That’s double!
It’s the result of consistent efforts towards increasing this conversion rate.
It’s me not giving up, when I saw 2%.
It’s me having a long-term vision.
It’s me being patient.
Side note: if you want to get advanced, you might wanna use my Google Sheet template to evaluate whether your Substack is on track to become a Bestseller and when to expect this to happen.
How to Increase Your Conversion Rate?
I chose the name of this column “Write2Sell” for a reason.
Your writing is your sales engine.
Not promotions.
Not digital products.
I have identified the following 3 factors to play a critical role:
How you DEFINE your Substack Paid offer
How you PRESENT your Substack Paid offer
How you DELIVER on your Substack Paid offer
Let’s deep dive.
1. How you DEFINE your Substack Paid offer
This is the place to start.
Don’t try to convert if you’re not sure in your paid offer.
It won’t work.
You’ll need to build an irresistible offer. It’s an offer that feels stupid not to buy. You’ll have that effect when your perceived value is tons more than your price.
Don’t be afraid to go cheap.
That’s a big mistake I see people on Substack make.
You think you wanna be in the premium segment?
The thing is you can only be in this segment once you have enough from the cheap stuff. If you’re just starting, dump the prices and overload your value.
Then all you need to do is to deliver.
And overdeliver.
2. How you PRESENT your Substack Paid offer
You might have the most valuable stuff out there, but if nobody gets it, you won’t convert.
It’s that simple.
Your offer is about the value you deliver. You can increase that value by presenting it properly.
You’ll need copywriting. This is the skill of persuasive writing designed to sell. Use my checklist to build and present your offer for high conversion rate.
As a reminder - you might wanna read my research about what people pay for on Substack.
Where to present that offer?
It really does come down to just one single place.
The place where your subscribers have to choose whether to become paid or stay free.
Your subscription page.
Let me show you how mine looks like:
3. How you DELIVER on your Substack Paid Offer
A big part of this is about how you paywall your articles.
There’s a science to it.
Don’t go random.
Choose a strategy that works toward increasing your conversion rate.
Here’s my 2 step system: