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While I share money-making strategies, nothing is "typical", and outcomes are based on each individual. There are no guarantees.
Let me tell you what the Substack bestseller badge actually is, because it sounds fancier than it is, and that’s good news for you.
To become a Substack bestseller, you need 100 paid subscribers. That’s the threshold. Not a thousand. Not some mysterious editorial blessing. One hundred people who decided you were worth paying for. Hit that, and the badge shows up on your publication.
I hit it about four months to the day after my very first paid subscriber. And I want to walk you through what that actually took — not the polished version, the real one — because the number is reachable, but only if you understand what’s underneath it.
The badge is a side effect, not a goal
Here’s the first thing, and it’s the most important.
I did not wake up chasing the bestseller badge. I woke up trying to figure out what my people actually wanted from me, and the badge happened as a result of getting that right.
That distinction matters more than any tactic I could give you. If you set out to “hit 100 paid subscribers,” you’ll start doing desperate things — over-posting, begging, gimmicks — and people can smell that. If you set out to consistently deliver something real to a specific group of people, the 100 paid subscribers come to you as a byproduct.
So the honest answer to “how do I get the badge” is: stop aiming at the badge. Aim at the people. The badge is what the scoreboard does while you’re playing the actual game.
What it really took: showing up the same way
Let me get concrete about the work, because I don’t want to wave my hands and say “be authentic” and leave you with nothing.
The foundation was consistency. I showed up and did the same thing. I stayed on topic. I knew who my audience was. I paid attention to what worked, got rid of what didn’t, and did more of what did. That sounds almost too simple to be the answer, but it is the answer, and almost nobody actually does it.
I’ll be straight with you, because I say this to my coaching group all the time and I’ll say it to you. I am constantly telling people exactly what to do, and they don’t do it. I can hand you the rhythm. I can hand you the formula. I can hand you the format. But it is up to you to actually go do something with it. The ones who hit the milestones are the ones who took the formula and ran the reps. Every single time.
The thing that actually moved the number
Consistency builds the base. But the spikes — the moments where the paid count jumped — those came from stories.
The note that changed everything for me had nothing to do with making money. I told a story about getting divorced and starting my life over. It went viral, people felt it, and a chunk of them clicked straight past free to paid. They were bought in. They’d read something true and they wanted more of whoever wrote it.
That’s the engine of the bestseller badge. Notes get you discovered by strangers. Stories make those strangers feel something. And feeling something is what turns a scroll into a subscribe. The how-to content has its place, but it almost never makes someone reach for a credit card. A story that hits them in the chest does.
So if you want 100 paid subscribers, you need a steady flow of notes going out, and you need real stories inside them. Both. The consistency keeps you in front of people. The stories convert.
What the climb actually looked like
I want to show you the shape of it, because in my head before I started, I pictured a clean line going up. That is not what happened.
My early articles were quiet. One of my first pulled in six subscribers. The next few did two, then one, then three. I was testing thumbnails I wasn’t sure about, topics I wasn’t sure about, angles I wasn’t sure about — throwing spaghetti at the wall, exactly like I tell everyone to. Some of it was a little embarrassing in hindsight. That’s fine. That’s the cost of finding out.
Then I wrote one called something like “one woman, one desk” — about what I built after fifty. That one pulled fifty-seven subscribers. Same publication. Same writer. Wildly different result. Why? Because that one was a real story about a real life, and the quiet ones were too basic, too how-to, too forgettable.
That’s the lesson buried in the climb. It is not even. You’ll have a string of flat ones and then a single piece that does ten times the work of the others combined. If you quit during the flat string, you never get to the piece that breaks through. The 100 paid subscribers almost never arrive evenly. They arrive in lumps, on the back of the stories that land.
A note on grit, because the badge takes some
I want to tell you something about myself that explains how I keep going when a thing is slow, because the four-month climb was not all up-and-to-the-right.
I’ve done hard things on purpose to force myself forward. There was a stretch in my life where I deliberately stacked up big obligations all at once — gave myself no choice but to succeed. That’s not advice, exactly. It’s just how I’m wired. When the path is comfortable, it’s easy to coast. When you’ve got real weight on your back, you move.
I tell you that because the climb to 100 paid subscribers includes a dip. Mine did. I watched the count go backwards at one point, and it was genuinely awful to sit and watch. The people who get the badge are the ones who don’t quit during the part that goes backwards. They adjust, and they keep showing up. The badge isn’t a talent contest. It’s a who’s-still-standing contest.
Don’t confuse the badge with the business
Here’s a perspective I’ve earned the hard way, and I want to hand it to you so the badge doesn’t become a trap.
The badge is a milestone, not a finish line, and it’s not the whole business. Years ago I sold a marketing agency I’d built — sold it to my brothers, honestly doubting they’d keep it alive. They’re still thriving. The lesson that stuck with me is that the trophy on the wall is never the point. The system that keeps producing is the point.
Same with the bestseller badge. It’s lovely. It’s a nice trust signal that tells new readers other people already pay for you. But the day you hit 100 paid subscribers, your job is exactly the same as the day before: show up, tell the truth, deliver to your people. The badge doesn’t run the publication. You do.
So get the badge. Enjoy it for an afternoon. Then go right back to the work, because the work is what got you the badge and the work is what keeps it.
What I’d actually tell you to do
If 100 paid subscribers is your target, here’s the path, plainly.
Pick your topic and your person, and don’t wander off them. Post notes consistently — three a day is the rhythm I’d give you — and put real stories inside them. Write one article a week so people who get curious have somewhere to go deep. Watch what lands, do more of it, drop what doesn’t. And when the count dips, because it will, don’t panic and don’t quit. Adjust and keep going.
That’s it. That’s the whole bestseller playbook. It’s simple, which is not the same as easy.
And now the caveat I always give, because it’s true. There’s no guarantee. Nobody’s path to 100 is the same — not the niche, not the timing, not the effort. I hit it in four months; you might hit it faster, you might hit it slower, you might build something that never uses the badge at all and does just fine. Your results depend on your niche, your effort, and a hundred individual factors I can’t see from here.
If you want the full step-by-step of how I set the whole thing up — the notes, the articles, the paywall, the rhythm — I put all of it in my Substack 101 guide. You can grab it here: https://loriballen.com/product/substack-101/
And if you want to watch what a publication looks like on the other side of that badge, come read me at The Real Time Creator on Substack. That’s where I keep doing the exact work I just described — out loud, in real time, one note at a time.
Income disclaimer: I’m sharing my own results, which are not typical and not a guarantee of what you’ll earn. There’s no typical income, no guarantee, and no fast track. Your results depend on your niche, your effort, and a range of individual factors.
