This is an interview with Melanie Goodman of The Link Tank.
At a glance
Current subscriber count: 22,000
Most successful post: ChatGPT is Now Replacing Google. Here’s How to Make It Recommend You
Most underrated growth tactic: Commenting well on other people’s posts. Being useful where your future readers already are, rather than only broadcasting into your own feed.
Favourite Substack feature: Recommendations.
One creator everyone should follow: Ruben Hassid – the world’s best AI person!
One tool you can’t live without: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, for finding my ideal clients and Wispr Flow for dictation and time saving
Key metric to track: Whether the right people are subscribing and replying, not the raw open rate.
Main revenue source: My done-for-you LinkedIn strategy & management services and CPD-accredited training. The newsletter feeds the business rather than being the main earner.
One sentence describing your newsletter: The Link Tank is a practical LinkedIn newsletter for busy professionals who want to use LinkedIn more effectively; always focusing on the how-to.
One piece of advice for new writers: Be useful and keep showing up. People are noticing.
The Beginning
Tell us about your publication. What do you write about and who is it for?
The Link Tank is about using LinkedIn intelligently, without hacks, hype, or spam.
I write about the things that actually move the needle: how the algorithm reads and rewards content now, how to build a profile that works while you sleep, how to publish with purpose, and how to turn a network into real business. It’s written for busy people who don’t have time to waste. Founders, creators, entrepreneurs, and professionals of every kind.
I’m a practising lawyer and a CPD-accredited LinkedIn trainer, so the advice is practical and evidence-led. My whole approach is to show people the how, not just the what.
What was your writing journey before Substack?
I trained as a lawyer and spent years writing in that world, where precision matters and there is no room for filler.
Since I started my firm, Trevisan, I’ve written for various publications, including The Entrepreneur, Wealth Briefing & Family Office Magazine. Writing was always part of how I built Trevisan Consulting.
I was posting consistently on LinkedIn long before I opened a Substack, and that taught me the most useful lesson of all: write like a person, for a person, and respect the reader’s time.
What did your first few months on Substack look like?
Honestly, slower than people assume.
I already had an audience on LinkedIn, so I wasn’t starting from zero in the way a brand-new writer does. The real challenge was working out what The Link Tank was for that my LinkedIn posts weren’t already doing.
Once I understood that Substack was the place for longer, more useful pieces, and for the relationships a fast-moving feed doesn’t allow, it started to make sense.
The Growth Story
Can you walk us through your subscriber growth journey?
The bulk of my early subscribers came straight from LinkedIn. I emailed all my connections and asked them if they would be happy to follow me on Substack and that gave me a solid foundation to build on.
Every time I wrote something useful there, a percentage of readers wanted more of it and that place was The Link Tank. This is still the case and forms the basis of the LinkedIn-Substack Flywheel.
Contrary to what people might think or want to hear, growth wasn’t a single viral moment. It was consistency over a long stretch, plus the compounding effect of Recommendations from other writers once the publication had a track record.
That organic growth grew steadily. It passed 500 by October 2025, crossed 1,000 in January 2026, and reached 2,000 by that May.
My biggest organic drivers have been Substack Recommendations and Notes.
Recommendations from writers whose readers overlap with mine bring people who are already the right fit, and my Notes about combining LinkedIn and Substack have been among my best performers.
Today the publication sits at around 22,000 subscribers, and the monthly intake of genuine new readers has roughly doubled across the year.
What were the biggest growth drivers?
Three things. First, LinkedIn. It’s my largest audience by far, at 43k followers, and it’s the top of the funnel for everything.
Second, Recommendations inside Substack. Being recommended by writers whose readers overlap with mine brought people who were already the right fit.
Third, consistency. Turning up every week for people who came to expect it – I now generally write 2 posts per week and 3 x day notes. There was no single hack.
This is the post that has brought me in the most subscribers:
Was there a particular moment when LinkedIn and Substack started working together as one ecosystem instead of two separate platforms?
Yes, once I stopped treating them as two jobs and started treating them as one system with a clear order.
I publish in sequence. The long piece is written first, it goes out through The Link Tank, and then LinkedIn does what LinkedIn does best, which is spark conversation and send the right people back to subscribe.
LinkedIn is where people meet me. Substack is where the relationship deepens.
Once I understood that, the two stopped competing for my time and started feeding each other.
Substack + LinkedIn
What are the biggest mistakes you see people making when they try to promote their newsletter on LinkedIn?
The most common one is dropping a bare link and expecting people to click.
LinkedIn wants to keep people on LinkedIn, so a post that’s only “new issue, here’s the link” gets very little reach.
The fix is to give the value in the post itself, tell people what they’ll gain. Use LinkedIn newsletters to give a teaser of what is in the full article and then send them over to Substack to read the whole post.
The second mistake is broadcasting instead of engaging.
People post and disappear, when the reach comes from the conversation in the comments, not the post alone.
The third is inconsistency. One burst of promotion, then silence for a fortnight, teaches the algorithm and your audience to ignore you.
What kinds of LinkedIn posts consistently send the most subscribers to your newsletter?
The ones that teach something specific and useful, and leave the reader wanting the fuller version.
A post that solves one small problem well earns the click for the deeper piece.
Personal stories work too, more than people expect. When I wrote about turning 50 with a trip to India, it was one of my best-performing posts ever and gained me the most paid subscribers, because people connect with the person, not only the tactics.
The pattern is simple: be genuinely useful or genuinely human and make the newsletter the natural next step.
Have recommendations inside Substack or relationships built on LinkedIn been more valuable for growth?
For raw numbers, LinkedIn, because that’s where my largest audience already is.
For quality and fit, Substack Recommendations, because they bring people who already read in my world.
The two do different jobs. LinkedIn brings volume and first contact. Recommendations bring warm, well-matched readers who tend to stay. I wouldn’t give up either.
How do you decide what belongs in a free LinkedIn post, what becomes a free Substack article, and what stays behind the paywall?
I don’t hold back the useful material and that’s deliberate. A free note is one clear idea, small enough to act on that day. A free Substack article is the fuller treatment: the how, the steps, the examples, the reasoning.
Almost all my articles are free, because trust is built by being useful, not by rationing.
What sits behind the paywall isn’t necessarily better secrets; It’s access and application: the live sessions and the premium LinkedIn tools that help people put the advice into practice. The copy and paste which save time.
People pay for time with me and for doing, not for information they could eventually piece together themselves.
Behind the Scenes
What’s your content creation process like today?
It starts with one idea that’s genuinely useful to my reader - often taken from conversations I have had with clients or potential clients. I use Read.ai and then download the transcripts and identify questions asked of me. I then know what people want to know about!
I write the long piece first, because that forces the thinking to be clear. From that single piece I draw the shorter LinkedIn posts, with slight variation for the platform rather than copying and pasting.
I publish in order: the long-form home for the piece first, then LinkedIn to spark the conversation.
How often do you publish, and how did you find that rhythm?
The Link Tank on Substack goes out on a regular weekly or bi-weekly basis with the LinkedIn newsletter mirroring the same cadence.
I’m active on LinkedIn daily -posting one post per day.
Substack – 3 notes per day and occasionally more, as spontaneity is key for authenticity!
I found the rhythm by being honest with myself about what I could keep up indefinitely without burning out, not what looked impressive for a month.
The right frequency is the one you can sustain when you’re busy, tired, and travelling. Anything faster than that eventually breaks.
What metrics do you actually pay attention to?
Whether the right people are subscribing, whether they reply and whether they are moving from free to paid subscriber and then off LinkedIn and Substack into paid consultancy / LinkedIn coaching services.
On LinkedIn I watch comment depth and inbound messages, because those are what the system actually rewards now, not vanity likes.
Growth in the right subscribers matters more to me than growth in any number for its own sake.
What was the biggest mistake you’ve made on Substack?
Early on, treating Substack as a place to re-post my LinkedIn content rather than giving it its own purpose.
It took me a while to see that people subscribe for something the feed can’t give them, and that copying across platforms shortchanges both. I rarely post the same content on both platforms.
How has Substack changed your consulting business?
It’s made the leads warmer and the conversations shorter.
By the time someone has read a few issues, they already understand how I think and how I work. The teaching does the qualifying. People arrive knowing whether we’re a fit, which means less convincing and more getting on with it!
The newsletter isn’t the biggest revenue line, but it makes the rest of the business easier.
The Business Side
Where does Substack fit inside your client journey?
LinkedIn is where people meet me. The Link Tank is where they can see my expertise in depth. My services are where we work together.
Someone reads a useful LinkedIn post, subscribes for the fuller version, and over a few issues builds enough trust to book a call or bring me into their firm.
Substack sits in the middle of that journey, doing the work of turning a follower into someone who’s ready to buy.
What are your different revenue streams and roughly what percentage of your income comes from each?
My revenue comes mainly from my done-for-you LinkedIn service and my CPD-accredited corporate training, which are the two largest lines and bring in 5 figures per annum, per client.
The Link Tank is a smaller, regular income from paid subscriptions (I am a bestseller with 100+ paid subscribers, so I will leave you to do the maths 😉) with one-to-one strategy calls sitting alongside as a way of qualifying the right clients.
The newsletter’s real value to the business is trust and reach, not its own subscription revenue.
What kind of content actually converts readers into paid subscribers for you?
Content that helps people do the thing, not only understand it.
When a free article shows the method clearly, the natural question becomes “can you help me apply this”, and that’s what the paid live sessions and tools are for.
People upgrade for time with me and for practical help, so the content that converts is the content that makes the value of doing it together obvious.
What surprised you the most about the behaviour of paid subscribers compared to free ones?
How much they value access over information.
I’d assumed people paid mainly for more content. In practice, paid subscribers care most about being able to ask, to turn up live, and to get 1-2-1 help via the VIP membership option for applying the ideas to their own situation.
The free readers want to learn, whilst the paid ones also want to act right now, and they’ll pay for the shortcut to doing it well.
You offer several subscription levels, including a VIP experience. How did you decide on that structure?
The structure follows a simple principle. Free for the knowledge, paid for the application, and a higher tier for people who want more direct access to me.
What I’ve learned is that people don’t pay for information, which is everywhere and free: They pay for time, for guidance tailored to them, and for the confidence that comes from doing it with someone who knows the platform.
The more personal and hands-on the level, the more people value it.
I have intentionally made my monthly subscriptions reasonably expensive, which makes my annual subscriptions a no-brainer for most – a £5 p/mth subscription will only ever be pocket money even if high volume is achieved; the value-driven annual subscriptions are 57% cheaper than monthly and make better financial sense.
What’s Next
What’s your goal for the next 12 months?
To keep growing The Link Tank with the right readers and to keep the newsletter and my consulting feeding each other. I’d rather have engaged subscribers who become clients and stay than a vanity figure that looks good and does nothing.
On a more personal level, just because I’m quite competitive, I’ve reached #4 rising in Education but would love to hit the #1 spot one week!
If someone had 100 subscribers on Substack today, what would you tell them to focus on for the next 30 days?
Two things:
Be genuinely useful in one place where your future readers already gather, which for most people is LinkedIn, and do it consistently for the full 30 days without stopping. Give the value away in the post, make your newsletter the obvious next step, and reply to everyone who engages.
Don’t chase hacks. At 100 subscribers, don’t worry about reach. Focus on trust. Get 100 people to genuinely look forward to hearing from you and your emails and the growth follows.
Where do you think Substack is heading as a platform, and what opportunities do you see opening up for creators?
The word newsletter is starting to mislead. A growing share of my new readers find me through Notes, through another writer’s recommendation, or straight inside the app, and they read there.
Substack is turning into something closer to a professional network, where your back catalogue of writing does the job a CV used to do.
People read three or four pieces, work out how you think, and then decide to follow. For anyone building authority, that’s the real opportunity. LinkedIn gets you noticed whilst Substack is where people go to check whether you’re worth their trust, and the pieces you publish keep working for you long after you’ve pressed send.
The writers who do well from here will be the ones whose archive earns the reader’s confidence on its own. (Top tip – pin a “Hero Post” to your Substack homepage and include a link(s) within it to other articles / your Gumroad / Stan store of other products you produce!)
Saved to read in the evening
This was such a beautiful read and it's so valuable to me as a beginner still trying to figure out things here on substack.
I sincerely loved this part " The right frequency is the one you can sustain when you’re busy, tired, and travelling. Anything faster than that eventually breaks. And I'm going to be fixing my frequency so it fits and does not break on the hard days .
Thanks for sharing ♥️