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👋 Meet the creator
Valentina Jemuović is a TDD Coach who helps engineering leaders reduce bugs and speed up delivery by adopting Test-Driven Development in legacy code.
Her journey from sharing bite-sized posts on LinkedIn to becoming a Substack Bestseller with 5,000+ subscribers and 180+ paid members is truly inspiring.
It’s a powerful example of how creators can grow a niche audience and build a paid newsletter the smart way.
So how did she get there? She kept it simple:
Analyzed her audience
Identified their pain points
Found a clear solution
Turned that solution into a paid offer
Now, nearly 200 paying subscribers trust her expertise, and her impact keeps growing.
🥁 From LinkedIn posts to a newsletter hub
Valentina began by posting thoughtful, educational content on LinkedIn, often incorporating visuals and illustrations to make complex technical concepts easier to understand.
Over time, her audience grew to 20,000 followers, and people began asking her if she had a blog or a more structured online presence where they could easily revisit her posts. It was too hard to scroll endlessly through her feed.
That’s when she realized she needed a platform where she could write longer, more thoughtful pieces without worrying about the algorithm. So she launched Optivem Journal on Substack.
🚀 A failed paid launch… and a comeback
She introduced her first paid tier in 2022, but it didn’t take off. Why? Because she hadn’t yet figured out what real value she could offer to her paid members.
Instead of giving up, she took time to understand
Her audience,
Their challenges,
And what kind of content they’d actually pay for.
Two years later, she relaunched her paid tier, this time with clear value, and became a Substack Bestseller within just two months.
Today, her newsletter serves a very specific group: senior developers, not juniors. She now has over 5,000 subscribers and 180+ paid members.
📌 How she understood her audience and created real value
Valentina didn’t start with a clear target audience. She simply shared what she knew well.
But as she kept posting on LinkedIn, her audience slowly revealed itself. Here’s the path she followed:
Defined the problem in her niche
Had a solution based on real-world experience
Identified her ideal audience (senior devs with 10+ years of experience)
Shaped her content format to be clear, actionable, and expert-driven
💸 Her approach to paid content & promotion
She didn’t start with live Q&As, which could feel overwhelming for her in the beginning. Instead, she focused on actionable writing, drawing from her coaching experience.
She promoted her newsletter both on LinkedIn and Substack, offering 20–30% discounts to encourage early upgrades.
🎯 10 step guidelines from Valentina on growing & monetizing a newsletter
At the end of our session, Valentina summed up her 10 steps to becoming a successful Substack Bestseller.
It’s a powerful roadmap for anyone looking to grow and monetize their newsletter.
Find your biggest interest, expertise, and a topic you’ve already succeeded in.
Understand the problem you’re solving and who needs it.
Start by growing your audience on social media, and build consistency first.
Once you launch on Substack, link your newsletter in every social post.
Keep your newsletter free at first, to test your voice and process.
Launch a paid tier when your content delivers clear, actionable steps.
Start with writing, get the rhythm right before adding extras.
Add live Q&As only if you feel ready to handle them.
Track your metrics to see what resonates and what doesn’t.
Talk to your audience, ask for feedback, and use that to evolve.
Each bullet holds valuable insights we discussed. Don’t forget to catch the full live interview for all the details!
In this interview, we also talked about:
How she added effective Q&A sessions as a paid benefit
Her strategies to increase paid conversions
Her thoughts on Substack Notes and how she uses them for discovery
Her most effective formula to be seen and catchy on Notes
Her biggest takeaways from running a paid subscription (Quote at 25:25)
Why identifying the right target audience is key before launching a paid tier
How she stays connected and engaged with her audience
Watch our full live interview above to dive deeper into how Valentina Jemuović built her newsletter. 👆
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Thanks for reading, and feel free to reply if you’d like to connect!
See you next week.
Ciler
Find me on Substack Notes & LinkedIn
