Monthly Round-Up: August'24 Earnings Report

August was my all-time high as a writer!

Image created with Midjourney

So, a bit later this month, as I was into setting up and running the Monthly Notes30 Writing Challenge (which by the way is working amazingly well for those who joined).

But now I’m on track!

As usual, this is what I have for you today:

• Content: strategies I implemented last month and their outcome

• Distribution: platforms I used and how they performed

• Monetization: how much I earned in total and a breakdown by platform

• Outlook: what I plan to start, stop, change, or continue, and why

Let’s begin!

Content & Distribution

This month I reconciled everything and set a new routine. I had to ramp it up with Substack as it was kind of a side thing the last two months since I was testing and learning growth strategies.

So in August, I was ready with the big picture and I’ve managed to also set it up. It came a bit earlier than expected, I planned it to become ready in September, but I’m glad I managed.

So here it is - now I have the following on my plate (in order of priority):

• Substack:

  • I write 1 short form note every day. This is to grow my subscribers faster.

  • I engage with 10+ new people on the platform. I do it strategically to win subscribers that can convert to paid (more about that in some of the next posts)

  • I write 1 long-form post 2 or 3 times per week, as I learned bestsellers are more consistent.

  • I kicked off my community within the Notes30 Challenge. So now I do Challenge follow-ups in the weekends. We share notes and help each other grow.

Some changes I made in August:

• I revamped my subscription benefits, added a brand new and more specific VIP plan, and started a new column dedicated to selling on Substack.

• I kicked off my second newsletter Have a GUT Time, which is more closely related to my professional background. It will be in bite-sized format and for now, I’ll publish everything free. It has payments enabled just in case :)

• Medium:

  • I’m slowly returning to a more frequent posting, hopefully daily again. I paused around some discoveries I made that simply didn’t (and still don’t) resonate with my values. But I decided to take what I can and run :D. I currently write mainly short-form stories.

  • I also maintain my community within the CREATIVETECH Publications. I publish weekly editor picks and I share to social media friend links to help aspiring writers grow.

  • I don’t engage, I only answer my comments. Nowadays you never know when Medium will decide you’re a fraud or some kind of an organized criminal. That limits any kind of community building, so I keep my presence there as minimal as possible.

• ConvertKit:

  • I run my atomic newsletter CREATIVE BiTES, for now with limited monetization intentionally. I use it mostly to gain some more reads on my Medium stories, as this is a luxury nowadays.

• Gumroad:

  • That’s where all products & benefits for my Substack live for now.

That’s it. Everything else will stay out of focus for now until I get these up and running at the pace I want them to be.

My content creation process

I call it my Closed Loop thing, Yana’s style. No, not the fintech type of closed loop, although it’s a similar concept. Here it is:

Topics AI and Writing:

1. I start with a Substack Note. I don’t do random. You can find my exact content strategy and templates in the Challenge.

2. I turn it into a Medium short-form article. I add the same article on Substack, for free (I never paywall these). On Medium, I add a link at the beginning of the article for non-members to be able to read for free on Substack. I also add the Substack link as a canonical link on Medium for SEO reasons. For these stories:

   1. My CTA on Medium leads to my Substack

   2. My CTA on Substack leads to my atomic newsletter

This is how the loop works:

• writing: Substack → Medium → Substack

• traffic: Medium → Substack → CREATIVE BiTES → Medium

It’s like two circles intertwined together.

Took me some time to figure it out, but here it is :)

Steal it if you want.

I also have Gumroad connected to ConvertKit, so every download or purchase becomes a subscriber to CREATIVE BiTES. This is another path to get Substack to work for my ConvertKit newsletter growth.

I stopped importing new subscribers to Substack. I have a very low conversion rate, see for yourself:

If I exclude the imports, I’m already higher than 5%!

Finally, I’m at the Substack average! However, I believe I can do better. So I’m now focused on building the community on the platform.

By the way, look at the “Substack App” channel - it’s more than 8%! That’s what my Notes Challenge and a good upsell strategy do together! If you want to grow your Substack, you have to be on my paid member community. Period.

Topics exclusive to Substack (Challenges, Write2Sell, Earnings reports, Analyses, Monetization):

1. I write long-form posts exclusively on Substack. CTAs are always for an upgrade to paid. No other promotions in these posts. No external links. Just pure focused value delivery.

2. I work with my paid members almost every day.

Because of my loop, I now have more time to focus on building high-quality content for my paid members.

So that’s all in a nutshell.

Monetization

August was an all-time high for me!

I’m currently earning the majority of my income from:

• Medium

• Substack

• Gumroad

And some additional streams:

• Quora

• Amazon KDP

• Affiliates - Gumroad, Amazon, Impact, few AIs, ConvertKit and Sparkloop.

Medium is still the main source of income, staying flat for now. I was not so active in August, but I plan to recover to daily posting in September. Now with my new workflow, it takes literally 10 to 15 minutes to repurpose a Substack Note to a Medium article.

Substack was an all-time high and is rapidly growing. Especially since I kicked off the revamped version of the newsletter.

I had an all-time high also on Gumroad, as I started earning from my paid products. I think I’ll be adding more soon.

All of the other income streams remain supportive and out of focus for now.

Here’s my monthly earnings report for the whole 2024 year split by channel:

---

My earnings reports are for paid members only. If you want to read the whole post, insert a coin to continue ;)

Upgrade your subscription now and you’ll never get a price increase in the future! You can unsubscribe at any time.

---