4 mistakes keeping you under 100 subscribers
Smarter Substack | May 13, 2026
Wednesday. 3 resources. Here’s what Substackers need to know today:
🎯 Case Study
Collaboration on Substack — A deep dive into what makes collaborations actually work on Substack — the outreach approach, how to structure joint content, and the specific types of partnerships that compound into real growth.
📈 Growth
4 Mistakes Keeping You Under 100 Subscribers (And Why #4 Is the Hardest to Fix) — Two months of daily Notes and consistent publishing, still stuck under 50 subscribers — it turned out four specific things were quietly killing the growth. If you’re putting in the work and not seeing movement, this is worth your time.
📊 Data Drop
I Used Notes Templates Every Single Day for 90 Days. Here’s What the Data Actually Shows. — 30+ templates built from the highest-performing Notes, tested daily for 90 days, with over 1,000 new subscribers gained in a single month. The key finding: templates don’t make your Notes sound the same — they make your output consistent.
P.S. Want a library of proven Notes templates ready to use? 365 Notes Templates gives you a full year’s worth of Substack Notes templates.
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You've said it all. Thanks a bunch.
The notes templates data point really stood out to me. 1,000 new subscribers in a single month from consistent templates is hard to argue with. I think a lot of writers resist templates because they worry it'll make their voice feel canned, but what you're describing is the opposite -- consistency in format actually frees you up to put more into the actual content. That's worth sitting with.