How I Convert Over 40% of Substack Subscribers Into Paid Subs

All right, it looks like I am actually live. Welcome everyone to my very first Substack Live video. Uh, what I'm gonna do today is share some numbers, that I've been getting over the last 6 months or so that have helped me boost my paid subscribers to 40% of all of my enrolled or subscribed free, uh, new subscribers. So 40% of all new subscribers in the month of January, over 40%, have become paid subscribers. And I'm going to show you some numbers, so just so that you can know that I'm not just blowing smoke here. And I'm also going to announce that I am going to show members of the Solopreneur Success Circle, which are members of the Solopreneur Success Stack that are paid subscribers, I'm going to show you the exact process I use to reach those numbers in the month of January and actually starting in the month of December last year. So this weekend I'm going to give you an over-the-shoulder look at a Silver Bullet campaign how I pre-qualified prospects, clients, and leads to become interested in a free workshop that I was doing and how I enrolled some of those people that attended the workshop to become paid subscribers, how I enrolled some of them to become one-on-one clients, and how I enrolled some of them into my Close the Gap 90-Day Solopreneur Success Accelerator. So I'm going to show you here in just a second, some of the numbers, but I want to give you a little hint about the process. And that is that what I have done is over the last 6+ months, I've been running what I call 90 Days Success Accelerators. These are quarterly goals that I set, a quarterly objective that I set with specific strategy and tactics to accomplish that. Objective, and it really helps me refine and iterate my systems so that I get increasing results over time. And so for the last two quarters and going into this first quarter of 2025, my goal, my objective has been to increase my overall number of subscribers, but also more importantly, to increase my overall paid subscriber account because it's the paid subscribers that are actually purchasing my backend offers, my one-on-one coaching program, or my Close the Gap Solopreneur Success Accelerator, which is a 90-day program I only offer 4 times a year. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you what I started with, and I hopefully can still flip my camera around. Yeah, there it is. So in July of 2024, My objective was to get 900 Substack subscribers and make 30 of them, turn 30 of them into paid subscribers. And you can see that I didn't quite achieve my goal, but if you look down at the very bottom, you'll notice that the overall percentage of all subscribers who became paid subscribers was 2.8%. That, and based on what I'm observing, is pretty standard. That's what almost everyone is getting. Um, but I continued to leverage what I learned from this 90-day accelerator that I put myself through to try to boost that percentage of paid subscribers to all subscribers. So in the last quarter of 2024, what I did was I set myself a goal of getting 1,000 Substack subscribers and getting 40 of them to become paid subscribers. That would have given me a 4%, would have doubled almost my percentage of all paid subscribers to all subscribers. Now you can see I didn't quite reach my goal again, but I did significantly increase the number of paid subscribers and the percentage of paid to all subscribers rose to 9.6%, almost a 10% conversion of paid subscribers to all subscribers. So that was fantastic. I'm really grateful and proud of that number. Now, going into the final quarter, I'm taking everything I learned, and this is where the Silver Bullet campaign came in. I'm going to talk about that after I get back on camera. But just to give you an idea of how iterating and improving an existing system that I already proved is viable and have traction in terms of its viability and sustainability. It's already working. All I'm doing is optimizing that system. Here's where I'm at so far, so far in January of 2025. So I have added 17 subscribers in 17 days, one a day, and 7 of them have become paid subscribers, which gives me an overall paid-to-all subscriber rate of 41%, which is absolutely bonkers. I have no idea if I can sustain that for an entire quarter, 3 months, But that is honestly where I am at, at this very moment. How I did that was I employed something called a silver bullet campaign. If you have done any marketing in your business and gone through any programs, you may have heard of this thing called the 9-word email. Dean Jackson coined the term and has a very specific process for it. I have learned a process from my mentors, Nick Peterson and Laurel Portier, that I've kind of tweaked and iterated and personalized that has been humongously helpful in terms of getting more people interested in my publication, but even more importantly, getting more of my free subscribers into my monthly workshops, which are free for all subscribers. Uh, but I make the Q&A and implementation session at the end available only to paid subscribers along with the replay. And by leveraging this Be a Blessing marketing approach, which is what I call my marketing system, I am giving away as much value as I can. I'm being as generous as I can with all of my subscribers and all of my followers on social media or here on Substack. I'm giving away as much information as I can that people can take and DIY it themselves, do it yourself, and apply it to getting closer to what they want with their business. But by being generous and giving it all away and making access to me and my help with answering questions and implementing the information, I am getting really, really, uh, pretty substantial numbers of paid subscribers coming in. Obviously my overall subscribers is not growing at any kind of astronomical rate. I'm averaging one subscriber per day currently, but 41% in the month of January have become paid subscribers, which puts me on target to become a bestseller sometime in the first half probably of this year. So it's been a system that's been really effective. But here's the even better news, is that this system doesn't rely on any digital marketing tricks. It's not some system I learned from a bunch of gurus that are leveraging false urgency and false scarcity and digging into pain to get people to do the things that they want them to do. This is all employing what I call empathetic antagonism. I am connecting with people that are seasoned solopreneurs, people that already have businesses that are working, but they want to optimize so that they can better have that business fund and fit the ideal lifestyle that they want to live. And by leveraging what I call empathetic antagonism, I'm giving them all the information they need to, to see that there is a path to greater flourishing and financial security and filling their programs by simply being generous and sharing all of their processes and systems, all of their information, and just simply making you the differentiating value proposition, the difference only you can make in the way only you can make it, making that the thing that people pay for, whether it's one-on-one coaching or masterminds or coaching programs or just becoming paid members of your Substack. So it's a system that's been working really well for me. And what I'm going to do this weekend, probably on Saturday, probably around 11 o'clock, you Eastern Time in the morning. I'm going to actually walk everyone through the exact entire process. I'm going to show you how I pre-qualified my best fit prospects, leads, and clients. I'm going to show you the natural deadlines that I created and leveraged in order to make it kind of organic and natural that this is what I'm doing and this is why I'm doing it. So I didn't have to use countdown timers or using false scarcity and false urgency to get people to attend, how I got 90% of the people that signed up for the workshop to show up for the workshop, how I converted 34% of those people into paid subscribers or clients. And so if you're interested in learning more about that, I've left a message there. Just leave an I'm ready in the comments. Just fair warning and to be fully transparent, this is probably something I'm I'm only going to offer to my paid subscribers, in part because it's really about— it's not only is it really valuable information, I think everything I share is pretty valuable, but this is valuable information that only really works if you do it in the right way, if you do it with transparency, with generosity, with empathy, and with a generous spirit and, and desire to help people that are ready to receive the process or the program that you have that will help them close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. If I get a bunch of free subscribers or, or just, um, window shoppers in this program, they're going to get a lot of information, they're going to take it, they're going to employ it very crudely and probably very improperly, and it's just going to make the whole system look like it's another digital marketer guru scam, and it's not. This is a system that actually works if you do the work, if you actually are good at what you do, get results for the clients that you have already served, and are ready to enroll more of the right people into a program or into your readership so that you can educate them and inform them so that they become your best fit prospects, leads, and eventually clients. And you actually get them to close the gap and achieve whatever result or outcome that you help them achieve. So that's the deal. I just showed you all the numbers, um, and I'm happy to show my screen, my dashboard, and show you how the numbers I just shared are actually true. But, uh, obviously I'm not going to do that right now. I'm going to do that, uh, on Saturday in the workshop. So if you're interested at all in the workshop, drop an I'm ready down below. I'll be happy to show you the whole system. And, uh, we've already got about 10 people enrolled. So we're We're going to have a great turnout. I'm going to be available for answering questions, for helping you implement the information so that you can actually get— put yourself on track at least to get the kind of results I'm getting in terms of getting more of your subscribers to become paid subscribers and more of those paid subscribers to enroll in your coaching programs or purchase your products that will help them close the gap and achieve their objectives with greater efficiency. Greater velocity and much more ease. So I hope that's all helpful. If you have any questions, drop them down below. And if you have any comments or reflections, let me know in the comments there, or just write, write me a message. This is my first ever live, so I hope— I appreciate that we've got 7 people that came on and hung out. I see some names that I recognize, some people I really respect and follow. So great to have you all here. Let me know how I did. And I'll look forward to seeing some of you in the workshop on Saturday. Have a great day.