Editor’s Note: This article grew out of a recent Substack Live with Yana G.Y. of Unplugged with Yana G.Y., who just earned her orange Bestseller badge after crossing 1,000 paid subscribers. We sat down to talk about how she got there, what I’ve learned from my own Bestseller journey, and why growing on Substack doesn’t require becoming someone you’re not.
I came to Substack because I could write.
That was kind of the appeal.
→ Write the article. Hit publish. Send the email.
No dancing on TikTok, no perfectly staged YouTube studio, and definitely no going Live.
Actually, when Substack started adding more social features, I wasn’t exactly standing there with pom-poms cheering them on.
Notes?
“I’m not doing that.”
Lives?
“Absolutely not.”
I liked being behind the screen, thank you very much, and yet here I am. 😂
I recently went Live with Yana G.Y., and somewhere in the middle of a conversation about how to become a Substack Bestseller, we ended up talking about something I think matters just as much:
You don’t have to become someone else to grow here.
You don’t have to copy the biggest writer in your category.
You don’t have to suddenly become a polished video personality.
You don’t have to teach something nobody on Earth has ever taught before.
And you certainly don’t need a podcast studio before you’re allowed to turn the camera on.
→ You need to figure out what works and then figure out how you are going to do it.
That’s what our conversation kept coming back to.
First, Let’s Talk About That Bestseller Badge
This Live happened at a pretty damn good time.
Yana had just reached 1,000 paid subscribers and earned her next Substack Bestseller badge.
So obviously I wanted details.
→ How did she get there and what changed between her first 100 paid subscribers and the next 900?
And one of the most interesting things she said was that the answer wasn’t simply time.
Yana went all-in on Substack in September 2024. She went from roughly 20 paid subscribers to 100 in about three months.
Then things slowed down.
She kept doing more of what had worked, Notes, posts, paid content, challenges, but her paid growth stayed around 30 new subscribers a month for a period of time.
Eventually she realized something.
→ Her paid offer was already converting.
She didn’t necessarily need to invent some shiny new thing.
She needed more of the right people entering the front of what she had already built.
So she started focusing much more deliberately on growing her free subscriber base.
→ That included writing a massive free article specifically for the kind of beginner she wanted to bring into her world.
And here’s my favorite part:
It flopped at first.
Yep.
The article she intentionally created to bring in subscribers didn’t immediately take off, so she kept promoting it.
→ She answered questions from people who fit the audience she wanted to reach.
→ She linked people back to the article when it could genuinely help them.
→ She shared the article through Notes, asked others to restack it, promoted it outside Substack, and eventually Substack started distributing it more widely.
The article continued bringing her subscribers long after she published it.
There’s a lesson sitting right there.
Sometimes the thing you created to grow your publication doesn’t need replacing. It needs distribution.
Your Best Free Work Can Have A Job
This part of our conversation really stuck with me because I’ve become increasingly interested in giving every piece of content a job.
Some content builds trust.
Some starts conversations.
Some converts.
Some gets discovered.
Some can keep introducing new people to your work months after you publish it.
→ Yana’s giant free article had a very specific job: bring new people into her world.
Her paid system could take it from there.
At one point during the Live, I said something I’ve had to learn myself:
Your best work shouldn’t automatically go behind the paywall.
That can feel backwards when you’re trying to make money from your writing.
You spent six hours creating the thing and now I’m telling you to give it away?
But think about what happens when your strongest article is sitting behind a door nobody new can open.
→ Sometimes your best work is exactly what should be out front.
It gives someone a reason to stop.
Read, subscribe, and wonder what else you have.
Yana described her free article almost like an evergreen entry point.
→ The article brings people in; the rest of her system has the job of turning the right readers into paid subscribers.
That distinction matters because if every piece of content is expected to attract, educate, sell, convert, retain, entertain, and make you breakfast, we may be asking a little too much from one article.
Give the thing a job. Then help it do that job.
But Strategy Wasn’t The Most Interesting Part of The Conversation
At some point, we started talking about competition because if you write about Substack on Substack, you’re going to notice something fairly quickly:
There are a LOT of people writing about Substack on Substack.
Yana does, I do, and other successful writers do.
So why would anyone need another person talking about the same subject?
We could ask the same question about health.
Personal finance.
Travel.
Business.
Parenting.
Food.
There are already thousands of people talking about all of them.
So should you pack up your little publication and go home?
Nope.
During the Live, I pointed out that Yana and I can both teach Substack and still approach it completely differently.
→ She has a business background. She loves digging into data. She builds AI tools. She thinks deeply about funnels, conversion rates, systems, and scaling.
I came into this from a completely different direction.
→ I’ve been writing since I was a kid. My professional background is nursing. I spent over four yers writing online before I really started learning marketing and thinking seriously about positioning, offers, and monetization.
Same platform, overlapping subject, and very different people.
And Yana said something that landed:
→ People subscribe to you.
Yes, the subject matters.
Your work needs to be useful, but your personality is part of what separates you from everybody else talking about the same damn thing.
There’s only one you.
That means your job isn’t to figure out how to become Yana, or me, or whoever currently has the shiny badge you want.
→ Study what they’re doing and look at what works.
→ Test it and borrow the principle, but then run it through your own brain, your own experience, your own strengths, your own audience.
That’s where your version comes from.
Which Brings Me Back To Going Live
This might have been my favorite part of our conversation because the irony is not lost on me.
I used to LOVE that Substack didn’t require me to go Live.
Seriously, that was a feature.
I could sit behind my computer, write my little articles, hit publish, and continue living my peaceful camera-free existence.
Then Substack added Lives.
When people first started asking me to go Live, my immediate reaction was basically:
No, thank you.
But eventually I had to ask myself whether refusing to use an entire part of the platform simply because it made me uncomfortable was actually helping me.
So I tried it.
Now I go Live regularly and I actually look forward to it.
During my conversation with Yana, we talked about why Substack Live feels different from some of the other places we’ve experienced video.
You don’t need to make it look like television.
You don’t need a studio.
You don’t need to wait until your hair is perfect.
You don’t need to turn yourself into whatever bizarre version of “internet professional” you think people expect.
→ Good audio?
PLEASE.
People do need to hear you. 😂
But beyond that?
Show up and have the conversation.
Yana described it almost like a Zoom call.
I said it feels like hanging out with friends and that’s pretty much what happened.
→ People joined us from different places. They asked questions in the chat. We talked about paid subscriptions, Notes, monetization, offers, content, going Live, and everything else the conversation wandered into.
It wasn’t perfectly scripted. That was the point.
You Might Be Making Growth Harder Than It Needs To Be
There’s a weird thing that happens when we decide we want to grow something.
We start looking outward.
What is that person doing?
What should I add?
What new platform do I need?
What tactic am I missing?
What do successful people know that I don’t?
Yana did this too.
When she wanted to increase her paid growth, she started thinking about what ELSE she could do.
Collaborations?
Affiliates?
Software?
Something nobody else had tried?
Then she looked at what she already had.
→ Her paid system was converting.
The answer was sitting inside the business she had already built.
→ She needed to bring more of the right free subscribers into it.
I think there’s a bigger lesson there.
Before you decide you need to reinvent yourself—or your publication—look at what’s already working.
Maybe you need more people seeing your best article.
Maybe you need to talk about your paid offer more often.
Maybe you need to make the offer clearer.
Maybe you need to use Notes to start more conversations.
Maybe you need to finally accept the Live invitation you’ve been avoiding since March.
Growth doesn’t automatically require becoming a completely different creator.
Sometimes growth asks you to do more with what’s already yours.
The Badge Is Proof.
It Isn’t The Personality.
A Bestseller badge is exciting.
Hell yes, celebrate it.🎉
Yana should be proud of reaching 1,000 paid subscribers.
And if you reach your first 100 subscribers, celebrate that too. (of course!!)🎉
Your first paid subscriber?
Celebrate.
First month publishing consistently?
Celebrate.🎉
First article that takes off?
Celebrate.🎉
First person who replies and says, I needed this today?
I’d celebrate that one too.🎉
We talked during the Live about sharing milestones because people like seeing other people make progress.
It lets your readers see that they’re part of something that’s moving, but the badge itself isn’t the thing that makes someone worth reading.
The person behind it does.
The work does.
The conversations do.
The willingness to keep testing things does.
Sometimes growth means doing something you swore you weren’t going to do.
→ Like Notes or going Live.
Apparently Substack has personally made it its mission to keep ruining my plans. 😂
It’s all good.
I’ll adapt, but I’m still going to do it like me and I think that’s the part I want you to take from my conversation with Yana.
Learn the strategy.
Pay attention to your numbers.
Build an offer people have a reason to buy.
Promote your work.
Try the features that make you a little uncomfortable.
Study the people who are further ahead.
But don’t mistake learning from someone for needing to become them.
Yana became a Bestseller her way and I became one mine.
→ You’ll have to find yours and maybe that starts with showing up exactly as you are and simply having the conversation.
↑ Watch my full Live conversation with Yana GY above
Resources From This Conversation
Yana’s top article for new writers & creators on Substack who are building a newsletter from scratch →
Follow Yana at Unplugged by Yana G.Y. →
Follow Jess at NP Fellow Become The CEO of Your Health →
Follow Jess at Unstuck to Published →
Follow Jess at Nurse in the Market →
Thank You
Thank you so much for everyone who tuned into this live, your presence is truly appreciated, and to the people who are watching the replay, thank you!
-Jess, The Creator & Yana G.Y.
