Write2Sell: Case Study of a Substack Bestseller with 11.3% Conversion Rate
And what's even more interesting: this writer is "just writing"! But there's a catch...
I kicked off the Write2Sell column with the results of my research on Susback bestsellers and in particular: what sets them apart.
TOP 3 takeaways from my research were:
writing is NOT enough, you need other types of content
consistency is a MUST, post MORE than once a week
communities help (a LOT)
Yet, there are exceptions.
I found one bestseller who managed to get >10k paid subscribers with just writing: Noah with his newsletter Noahpinnion. But he heavily relies on his social media presence as well as top-quality writing, solid research and tons of expertise. I love how Karen described it here, so I won’t repeat her.
Everyone else used at least one more additional type of content and most of them used community features.
I paid special attention to bestsellers with high conversion rates. According to Substack, the average is around 5% with 10% to be something to aim for.
The “Writing in the Dark” newsletter beats that with the amazing ±18% conversion rate. Yet this one is not “just writing”. Part of that success is the community features, i.e. challenges. Jeannine shared her journey and described exactly how she grew her Substack in great detail here.
Just recently I came across another bestseller with the impressive 11.3% conversion rate.
It’s Denborah with her newsletter called ”Ladyparts”:
It caught my attention because it was all just writing.
It basically beats all my three key takeaways from above.
All of them!
So I decided to dig deeper. Luckily, she helped me (a lot) and in the meantime, she published exactly how she got there.
Yet, I found more to it.
Even though it seems like it’s (almost) nicheless, nothing special, no external help, no virality and just simply writing, there’s a catch…
Let me show you…
The Case Study
So now I’ll take everything she said, and also add the findings from my own research. Let’s unpack the elements one by one:
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