How to Make Money Off Substack :)
Think revenue, not paid subscribers
Substack is a Renaissance platform that can be used in so many different ways by so many different people. If you see it solely as a way to get paid subscribers, you’ll likely end up disappointed and bitter.
If you take one thing away today, I want it to be this: stop thinking about paid subscribers and start thinking about revenue. Revenue, not paid subscribers.
We get very distracted by paid subscribers. We want the check mark. Substack has gamified paid subscribers, so we want that number. But that number isn’t doing you any good. A lot of people will tell you to hold these ridiculous sales, and it is a dopamine hit. It feels really good, but if you’re on here to make money, it doesn’t really matter how many paid subscribers you have if you’re making money.
So today, I’m bringing you the five hidden avenues for revenue that no one’s talking about.
5 Ways to Make Money Off Substack—Using Substack
1. Book sales
Substack is still a platform primarily of people who’ve published (or want to publish) books—even those who don’t think of themselves as “writers.”
Substack is a place to sell books. The stats are staggering (at least to me):
Substack open rates of 30-70% compared to social media’s 1-5% (Substack)
Book links on Substack posts get click rates of 5-15% vs. social media’s 0.1% (Substack)
So many of you have books—forthcoming or backlisted (more than a year old)—to sell and aren’t or are barely tapping into the audience you have here.
For those of you with forthcoming books, Substack can be a way not to pay $20,000 for an independent publicist or $5,000 for Amazon ads (which entails giving yet more money to Jeff Bezos).
I created an entire course about How to Use Substack to Sell Your Book, which includes the Substack Book Launch Method™️ that I used to hit the USA Today bestseller list with a backlisted book, using only Substack and no outside publicist or media.
Because when we think of Substack, we need to consider how much money the platform is saving us too.
Many people pay hundreds of dollars a month on MailChimp or other email service providers, and Substack just became a free one. We now have subscriber tags (not to be confused with post tags, which aren’t to be confused with hashtags, which we don’t have on Substack), so we can tag and segment our email list. Tags and segments allow us to organize our email lists and speak directly to certain subscribers when we send custom emails without posting. Here’s how to do that.1 And here’s how to tag and segment your subscriber list.
2. You’ll likely make more money off Substack than you will on it
No one tells you that if you have any type of off-platform business, service, or offer, you’ll make way more money off Substack than you will on it—which only makes Substack that much more valuable.
If you have one-to-ones, if you have a membership, if you offer courses, if you’re thinking of offering workshops, your Substack is gold. You have the most intimate relationship with people. You have what’s called a warm audience—you’re showing up in their inbox and building trust.
Substack is what marketers and business strategists call your “top of funnel” and its value comes from having amazing organic traffic (compared to any website) and an internal social media platform (Notes) that’s straightforward for growth, if you do it right (see Notes Hour One). Notes brings high-quality subscribers who will likely buy your other offerings. And even if you’re only making a bit from paid subscribers, it’s all gravy because top-of-funnel sources tend not to be thought of as a revenue stream.
The best part? You’re not paying for Meta ads (ech) and not giving Mark Zuckerberg any more money. (This is all in keeping with my now five-year quest to put him out of business.)
I just worked with a client who was paying a social media manager and paying for this and this and this, and just by cutting expenses she saved $1200/month. I’m not saying you should get rid of your social media manager, but Notes is going to bring most people more subscribers than any other social media platform, and you don’t need a social media manager for Notes.
Use Substack to build your business. I’ve had clients build five- and six-figure businesses because they made the mental shift from getting paid subscribers on Substack to using Substack to generate revenue.
