3 Dead Simple Steps Turned One Note Into $6,282 (Anyone Can Do This)

The easy formula to turn casual posts into paid offers.

The first time I made $100 online, I thought I’d hacked the matrix.

I refreshed my bank app every ten minutes, convinced it would vanish. Fast forward to this week: I’m running a live cohort. Six one-hour sessions. Bringing in over $6,200. That’s $1,000 an hour.

And it all begin with a Note I posted.

But honestly? It still feels surreal. Like I’m going to wake up and find it was all a glitch. The good news this wasn’t luck. It was a process. Simple. Repeatable. Built for ordinary people like us who’ve tried before, failed before, and wondered if maybe we were too late.

Let me walk you through exactly what I did. So you can experience the magic of making money from Substack.

The hidden power of Notes

Notes are sneakier than they look

At first, I treated Notes like scraps. Quick thoughts. Half-formed ideas. Things I didn’t care enough to polish into full posts.

But then something odd happened.

I posted this simple Note about Substack. So obvious I nearly didn’t hit publish. But it blew up. Hitting 347 likes.

That got my attention.

So I tried another, explaining how Substack works and how you can grow. Again, huge response. I realised people aren’t looking for sleazy hacks. They wanted clarity. Because Notes aren’t noise. They’re signals.

They tell you what to go deeper on.

How scraps turned into subscribers

I turned those little signals into longer posts.

The first was this one:

Confused by Substack? These 10 Lessons Saved Me

Honest, straightforward, born from my own mess. It got doubled my usual views and pulled in floods of new subscribers.

Over the next few months, I wrote three more posts about growing here. Same result: comments, shares, connections.

Clear proof I was onto something.

The $39 masterclass that changed everything

So I took a risk.

Every month I run a live masterclass on writing — things like:

• How to write faster

• How to stand out

• How to make money from your words

This time, I made it about Substack: 5 Smart Moves That Got Me 3,500+ Subscribers.

Tickets? $39.
Turnout? Huge.
Result? Double the sales I normally get.

Can you see how simple this was? No marketing team or paid ads. Just me, my laptop and an idea born from Notes.

And that masterclass changed everything.

The big shift from $39 to $6,200

The flood of questions at the masterclass told me a one-hour session wasn’t enough.

People wanted more. So I launched a six-week live cohort: The Substack Growth Map. The exact system I used to reach 4,500 subscribers. I expected solid interest. What I didn’t expect? Over $6,200 in sales.

That’s when it hit me: this wasn’t just a lucky break.

It was a repeatable formula.

The repeatable loop that built my business

Here’s the simple loop I’m using to make money on Substack:

1. Test on Notes – quick, messy, no pressure. They show you what resonates.

2. Expand into Posts – when a Note lands, stretch it into story, depth, examples.

3. Build a Product – package the post into something people can buy. Start small. Scale if it works.

The formula is simple. Anyone can use it:

Notes → Posts → Products

But so many writers don’t follow it.

The two traps keeping writers invisible

When I coach writer’s to grow on Substack I see them falling into these 2 traps:

Trap 1: Selling in a vacuum. Writers dream up products nobody asked for, polish them for weeks, then wonder why they flop.

Let your free content teach you what people will pay for.

Trap 2: Sitting on their gold. Letting Notes and Posts with traction gather dust instead of turning them into assets.

The enemy? Perfectionism disguised as productivity. It whispers: wait until it’s polished. Wait until you’re ready. Wait until it’s bigger. But waiting kills momentum. Your readers are already telling you what they want.

My secret? I didn’t draw up a five-year plan. I ran small tests.

If a Note landed, I reused the idea. If it flopped, I moved on. Over time, those micro-experiments compounded into a business. The distance between $0 and $1,000/hour isn’t measured in years.

It’s measured in experiments.

Here’s how you can use this too

You don’t need:

• 10,000 followers

• A glossy brand

• Years of grinding

What you need is to notice what makes readers lean in — and build from there.

Because the gold you’re searching for? It’s already in your scraps.

Your words are seeds. The right ones can grow into freedom.

Derek

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