My First 112 Days on Substack: Every Number, Every Mistake, Every Surprise

I launched AI with Leah on Substack on December 21st, 2025. As of today I have 450 subscribers, 814 followers, 5 paid subscribers, 60 published articles, and $580 in total revenue. I wrote 30 articles in my first 30 days.

Those numbers are small. I’m sharing them anyway because the polished version of early-stage growth that most people publish after they’ve already made it is useless to someone who is actually in the middle of building.

The Part Nobody Sees

There was a stretch in late January where I seriously questioned whether any of this was going to work. I had been publishing daily for over a month. The subscriber count was crawling. I’d look at the numbers every morning and the line was barely moving. 67 new subscribers in all of January. I was putting out some of my best work and the engagement on certain pieces was brutal.

I published “AI Won’t Fix Your Business” and got a 4.9% engagement rate. I wrote “The Dirty Secret Behind Most Influencer Engagement” and got 3.8%. These were articles I was proud of. Articles I thought would land. And the response was basically silence.

That’s the part nobody tells you about building a Substack. The compounding everyone talks about is real, but there’s a long stretch before you can see it where you’re just publishing into what feels like a void and choosing to believe the math will eventually catch up. For WEEKS, that’s all it was. Publishing and believing.

I kept going because I didn’t have a better option. I had committed to this platform publicly. I had 120,000 words of unpublished content that proved I could think but not finish. AI had finally solved the finishing problem. And quitting after 30 days would have confirmed every fear I had about myself as a writer.

And then March happened.

The Growth Curve

December 2025: 28 new subscribers (launched Dec 21st, so really 10 days) January 2026: 67 new subscribers February 2026: 77 new subscribers March 2026: 256 new subscribers April (first 11 days): 25 new subscribers

March was the breakout. 256 new subscribers in a single month after averaging about 70 for the two months before it. A 232% increase month over month. And I can tell you exactly what caused it.

Substack Notes Changed Everything

58% of my total subscribers came from Substack Notes. FIFTY-EIGHT PERCENT.

Not from Pinterest, which has 200,000+ audience and drove 2 direct subscribers. (Two. The number after one. LOL.) Not from Instagram. Not from Facebook (which drove 34, the second highest social source). Notes drove 265 of my 453 tracked subscriber additions.