Substack Notes30 Challenge: January 2025
Announcing the winners from December and kicking off the new month and the new YEAR!
Happy New Year!!
New Year - New Challenge!
This is why joining a challenge is so important 👇
The December Notes30 Challenge is OVER! It was an amazing 2024 year! And I’m confident 2025 will be even better!
Congrats to all participants who completed the Challenges and who already started to gain traction!!!
We made it!!!
Now let’s announce the winners!
WINNERS AWARDS
Winner from December Notes Challenge:
→ ←
Warren is one of the most active paid members and for me it’s no wonder he won that award! Congrats,
!! Looking forward to our session!Award:
→ A spotlight session to talk about your Substack. To give you and your Substack more exposure, I will share this session:
all subscribers
in the CREATIVETECH social media accounts
→ Watch all previous spotlight sessions here.
Time to kick-off January 2025!
Last month I’ve got a viral Note with almost 10k likes, which got me about 200 incremental new subscribers (not great, but not terrible).
I added a template for it in the Challenge materials (attached at the end of the post), so you can write one like this for yourself.
You have to be on Notes if you’re serious about growing on Substack!
All you need is to:
post a daily note (and use my templates from this challenge attached at the end of the post)
interact with others (and use my engagement strategy from this challenge)
That’s it!
No rocket science!
The Challenge:
PARTICIPANTS:
The challenge is open to free subscribers! Anyone can:
join the challenge
share their Note in the weekly thread
add themselves to the Accountability tracker
All the templates, strategies, the Notes Writer GPT, and other supporting materials are paywalled for paid members only. The WINNER AWARDS are reserved for paid members only.
WINNERS AWARDS:
The most active among the paid members will be entitled to join me in a spotlight session to talk about their Substack. To give you and your Substack more exposure, I will share this session:
all subscribers
in the CREATIVETECH social media accounts
Rules:
I’ll do these sessions monthly after the Challenge finishes.
I’ll invite one of the most active participants in the Challenge based on the Accountability Tracker. Rules:
1. must be in the Accountability tracker
2. must have completed the challenge (at least one Note every day)
3. you can win the same challenge more than once but in different months
4. you can’t win both Writing and Notes challenges in the same month. If you do, I’ll invite the next most active person for a session
We’ll do the session only if you’re willing to. If not, I’ll invite the next most active member until I get a “yes”. Priority of inviting:
1. most active among the VIP members
2. most active among the annual paid members
3. most active among the monthly paid members
Announcement of the winners: start of next Challenge
When do we do the session: during next month upon your availability
How do we do the session: over Zoom. I ask you questions (we initially agree on the list), you talk :). You can prepare slides if you want to (not a must).
The Substack Notes30 Monthly Challenge - January 2025
What you need to do?
Post at least one Note every day.
Engage with at least 5 Substack members. Apply everything described here.
Add yourself to the Accountability tracker.
Share your Notes in the weekly sharing post: I will post one each Saturday, you’ll get it in your inbox. Use the one from yesterday to share your Notes. And remember to read, like, comment and restack some of the other Notes you like. This is how we help each other grow.
The goal?
To gain subscribers who are engaged with your writing and who can be converted to paid subscribers later.
How?
Follow my guide - attached file at the end of this post.
The Challenge includes:
For all subscribers:
Link to the Accountability Tracker. Add yourself now!
For paid members (download links at the end of this post):
My Content Strategy: what type of Notes get the most traction
My Engagement Strategy to attract new subscribers that are convertible to paid (my conversion strategy is not part of this Challenge, paid members have access to it here). You’ll have three modes:
EASY: engage with at least 5 new accounts per day
HARD: engage with at least 10 new accounts per day
TURBO: engage with at least 15 new accounts per day
A set of 8 Notes Templates I’m using with a short guide on how to write them and an example from my Notes:
Image [with Canva template]
Opinion
Mini story
Mini listicle
Mini how-to
Mini analysis
Success story
Personal update
[NEW] Personal Story (based on my first Note with almost 10k likes!!)
Image with simple text are performing very well. They are highly re-stackable. I’ve prepared a Canva template you can easily edit (see resources below).
[NEW] Two slides with selected recent viral notes examples. You can study and templatize them if you like. I added a slide with ChatGPT Prompt to help you do that with AI.
My Notes Guiding Principles on how to use Notes to gain convertible subscribers. A set of short rules about:
How to write
What notes to use currently
How to engage with others on the platform
List of 17 types of Notes Ideas you can easily craft. If you don’t want to stick to my templates, you can use these as references in case you get stuck.
A set of 31 Writing Prompts Formulated as Questions to provoke thinking rather than give a direction. A new set will arrive each month.
My list of 17 Rules of Short Form Writing I’ve proven to be working on Substack. The majority of these rules also work on Medium, X, LinkedIn, Quora. You can use them anywhere.
My custom GPT Notes Writer trained to write Substack Notes that get high engagement. I used everything from this Challenge to train it (value $69.99) (invite only, you won’t find it in the ChatGPT Store)
All this will arrive in a short presentation (find the link below). Use this knowledge as a reference. Adapt the templates and guidelines to your niche and style.
Here’s your Challenge pack of resources:
The challenge resources are for paid subscribers. If you’re a free subscriber, upgrade your plan:
Upgrade your subscription now and you’ll never get a price increase in the future! You can unsubscribe at any time.