u/Gaussianperson

Quick shape of the graph since I can't attach images: launched paid in June 2025, crawled to about 15 paid subs by October, then a dead flat line through November, December and most of January. From late January to now it went from ~15 to ~115. Same person, same publishing schedule, very different slope.

Newsletter is about production machine learning (I'm an ML engineer at a big tech company, the newsletter is my side thing).

Honest notes on what actually happened:

Months 1 to 5: 0 to ~15 paid. Friends, true believers, people who would have paid for anything I wrote. Zero signal about whether the business worked.

Months 5 to 8: completely flat. Publishing consistently, nothing moved, even lost a few. This is where I almost concluded paid wasn't viable for technical content. The actual problem: I was writing the content I enjoyed (deep technical breakdowns) and paywalling it. People will read technical deep dives for free all day. They pay for something else.

Month 8: changed what goes behind the paywall. Free content stayed technical, that's what builds trust and grows the list. Paid became career strategy: comp, promotion dynamics, what actually gets engineers promoted, career advice and ML job board.

Stuff people can't get from documentation.

Months 8 to 12: 15 to ~115 paid. Same publishing effort. Different paywall logic.

What I'd tell anyone staring at their own flat line:

1. The plateau usually isn't a volume problem. Publishing more of the thing that isn't converting just gets you a longer flat line.
2. Track revenue per post by category. When I finally did this, one content type was converting at roughly 4x the other. The data was there for months, I just wasn't looking at it.
3. Free and paid don't have to be the same content. Free is your top of funnel and credibility. Paid is the thing people can't Google.
4. ~13k free subs converts to ~115 paid for me, so under 1%. If your free list is small, the paid plateau might just be math, not strategy.

Not selling anything, link in DM only if someone asks.

Happy to answer questions about the numbers.

Just crossed 100 paid subs on my substack. Sharing what worked for me to give back to the community.

Niche for context: ML engineering / AI infra, technical audience, B2B-ish.

Two and a half years in. 12k free subs, 42k on LinkedIn, and now 100+ paid.

I write about ML engineering (I'm at Google), and almost every "how I grew my Substack" post I read is either vague or survivorship-biased. What worked for me:

1. Two content lanes, not one.

I run a technical lane (deep dives on ML systems) and a career-strategy lane (what senior MLEs actually do, comp data, interview patterns). The technical lane builds authority and volume. The career lane drives ~70% of revenue at roughly 4x revenue per post. Most people only run one lane and wonder why growth and revenue don't correlate.

2. Personal/reflective posts convert badly. I use them for top funnel. Speaking of which:

3. LinkedIn is the top of the funnel, not Substack Notes.

At least for a B2B-ish niche. Six posts a week, each grounded in a specific real thing I did or saw. No generic takes.

4. A five-email conversion sequence can absolutely fail.

Mine did. It was retrospective ("here's what we covered") instead of forward-looking ("here's what you're about to miss").

5. Grandfathering existing subs at the old price when you raise prices is the move.

Zero churn from the raise, and the email announcing it converted more free readers than any sequence I've run. I have actually reduced churn!

6. Content schedule

I x6 on LinkedIn, x3 a week on the newsletter. 2 of them paid only. Lots of different things: ML Job board hand curated, ML deep dives, Personal stories. Everything is tied together!

What's next for me:

Keep grinding. Keep expanding. I will additionally post once per month the "status of the business".

Feel free to ask questions!!