If you like to write and share information and you want to get paid to do, why not do it with Substack? Here’s what you need to know…
TL;DR – How Substack Works
Substack is a newsletter platform that lets you manage subscribers, send emails, and track engagement through analytics. It offers a paid subscription model allowing you to charge subscribers monthly or annually and gives flexibility to paywall posts.
Monetization: Multiply your subscription price by your number of paid subscribers to estimate earnings (e.g., 1,000 subscribers at $5/month = $60,000/year before fees and taxes). The Substack Pro program offers cash advances and reduced revenue percentages to select established writers.
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SEO is a long and slow game. Google is making life extremely hard for content creators and publishers. Young people – Gen Z, if you’re being specific – don’t even use Google anymore. But phones? Everybody uses them, especially Gen Z.
People like to read too, contrary to popular opinion. Not everybody, but there are enough readers out there for you to make a living and grow an audience with your writing. But the emphasis right now, at least from most “experts,” is that social media is king – and they’re probably right as well.
How To Be A Content Creator Without Social Media In The Age of Social Media When Blogging Is Apparently Dead?
If you want to be a content creator, the current sage advice goes something like this: start a TikTok / Instagram / YouTube channel. Post every day. Try and go viral. Sell stuff. Tweet. React to things.
Why? Because blogging is dead; Google shut the door on independent publishers en masse in 2023. Organic traffic is now systematically controlled by multinational publishing conglomerates, e-commerce stores, and, of course, Google itself with its AI Overviews.
Does this mean blogging is dead? As much as it pains me to say it, I’d have to agree there is some truth to it – search traffic is not what it once was, and there are no signs it is going to get better. And Google does not seem to care about the damage it has done to content publishers.
And this is why more and more independent publishers are pivoting to YouTube, Instagram, and other platforms. But most of these are all video-based, and not everyone is comfortable doing video – or even knows how (I admit, I have no idea either).
Is there any place left for content creators who prefer to use the written word to get their ideas across? Yes. You have Medium, a popular publishing platform, X, to a lesser extent, and Substack. But for me, it is Substack that should be getting more attention. It does things differently, focusing on a kind of hybrid between newsletters and blogging.
Blogging Might Be Dead (Thanks, Google) But Substack Content Creators Are Thriving
Tech companies, like Mother Nature, abhor a vacuum. The written word might be dying inside traditional search engines, but it is thriving inside platforms like Substack, where copy, prose, and command of language is king.
And this is what makes Substack so compelling. It’s not a blog, but it works like one. It’s not a social network, but it works like one. It’s not a newsletter platform like ConvertKit or MailChimp, but it works like one. And you don’t need to worry about SEO, things like topical authority, LSI phrases, entity stacking, keyword density, and any of that other nonsense.
You just write, share, and write some more. If your content and insights are good, you’ll get subscribers (followers), and if it is really good, some of them will even pay you to read your work. Earn someone’s trust, offer insight and value that people cannot get elsewhere, and you can make a tidy sum on the platform.
This is why I referred to it as OnlyFans for writers; only here, you don’t need to get naked. The written word is what people want on Substack, and if you have a knack for prose or writing about interesting subjects in a compelling way, you could make a living doing it.
How Much Can You Make On Substack?
For most people, not much. But that’s not because it isn’t possible to make a living – or a healthy secondary income on the platform. No, it’s because most people give up too quickly. You have got to put the hours in to get the results – and your content needs to be good too. That’s a given.
Do this, add in the factor of time, and there is no reason why someone with the right ideas, the right skillset, and the right work ethic couldn’t make a decent living on the platform.
Getting Paid To Write, The Substack Dream
If you had 100 paid subscribers paying $5 a month, you’d be making more than 99.9% of professional authors. Stick another zero on the end of that figure and you’ve got a relatively comfortable income.
Plenty of Substack users are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, some are doing millions.
Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters from an American” is estimated to bring in at least $5 million in annual subscription revenue.
Not everybody will be able to do this, but if you could do 10% or even 5% of what Heather Cox Richardson’s doing, that’d be alright, wouldn’t it?
If Your Good, People Will Pay
Substack currently has around 35 million active accounts. Of these active accounts, around 3 million of them are paid-for, meaning people are paying a fee to access the creator’s content. In total, that means around 10% of active subscriptions are paid.
I have a prediction, though: this number will increase in the coming months and years. Why? Two words: generative AI.
As more and more people seek authentic content, sometimes referred to as “acoustic content,” more and more disgruntled web users will seek out and find alternative means of connecting with good information, and that plays right into the hands of platforms like Substack.
Google is slowly killing independent voices inside its Search product; social media is great, but sometimes it’s just too much. Me? I like reading, so Substack – as well as platforms like Medium – are my new safe haven for when I want to access and consume quality written content.
So, if you’re thinking about starting a blog in 2024/25. Scratch that. Start a Substack instead. You can sign up for an account here.
