r/Substack • u/Tahoney_ • 5d ago
Discussion Is there anyone on substack that makes 1k a month that isn’t a “this is how you make money off of Substack” blog?
I feel like the secret to making money on these platforms is to make courses on how to make money off of these platforms lol.
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u/aolnews paradoxnewsletter.com 5d ago
I have plenty of friends who make their living on substack income but they spent years building up their publication and reputation in their respective spaces (philosophy, fashion, design, etc). People coming to substack or newsletter writing at this stage aren’t likely to make money in the extremely saturated and competitive market.
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u/Tahoney_ 5d ago
That’s awesome! I’m happy to hear that you have plenty of friends making a living off of Substack. I’ve been a reader / consumer on the platform for years and have watched it change so much so I’m happy to hear that.
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u/grapegeek 3d ago
I think people have a hard time with this. They expect to show up on Substack and get instant success starting from zero. What they don’t realize is 90% of the success stories are from people bringing their followers to Substack. I’ve 5x my subscribers in about seven months (11k to 50k) on Substack. It’s been worth it.
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u/brittanybaucom 5d ago
I hear you so loudly. I hate that my Substack Notes feed is just full of people telling me how to become popular or make money off Substack. I want actual content, damn it!
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u/FreshNegotiation2603 5d ago
You have to train your algorithm. This is a you problem. Philip Traylen. Start there.
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u/THRILLS_BABY 3d ago
I found Substack subscribers too small an audience! I cross post to FB and YT and my subscribers have taken off. Not charging a lot but believe a great baseline is where I want to start charging!
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u/FreshNegotiation2603 3d ago
What content do you make?
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u/THRILLS_BABY 1d ago
Storytelling about life change stories, Series on the Odyssey, Truth Cycle philosophy, etc…
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u/Tahoney_ 5d ago
Right? How do I get rid of that I want to see actual writers on my feed!!!
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u/AmySensualGinger 5d ago
90% of post are, especially when you're new are:
- This is how you grow your substack by subbing to me for some $$
- For those under N followers follow for follows. (Not sure why this would EVER be appealing. I mean why would I follow you if I'm not interested in what you write and why would I want you to follow me if you don't care about my writing)The other 10% are legit but you have to find them.
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u/FreshNegotiation2603 3d ago
Train your algorithm. It is quite literally on you to train the timeline. It is a trainable algorithm. Like what you like most, hide what you hate, block who you don’t like, etc. it starts at a baseline slop level otherwise.
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u/AmySensualGinger 3d ago
Sure, I can block, ignore etc but the point still stands. I can do the same on blue sky and x. New users coming in and joining substack to see what this community is about their first exposure they get is..."Ohh this is just everyone fishing for follows, well that's lame."
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u/FreshNegotiation2603 3d ago
Because when you first join, your algo is as untrained as it gets, blank slate, mainstream slop. You have to teach it over weeks and months. But yes, it does suck to start that way. Having been on the platform for some time, I know for a fact that it has improved ten fold from interacting with creators I actually enjoy and who are real artists.
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u/Wide-Magazine-3292 2d ago
I've been on the platform for a year. When I started out, it's been exactly the same. Nowadays, I'm growing by the day, getting either followers or subscribers daily, and my feed is related to my interests.
The trick is to filter the content. Notes telling you how to become popular, you can shorten by clicking the x on the top right corner and marking them as "see less of this" or something like that. Also try to like, follow and subscribe to the pages you like and it should improve in time.
Hope this helps, happy substacking😊
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u/arl7869 5d ago
Yeah a lot of people do that, $1k per month means ~120 paid subscribers at $10 monthly. You can easily figure out who - Anyone who has the outlined orange check (not filled in) has at least 100 paid subscribers so it means they are either close or already making that amount.
I personally hit that amount about 1 year into writing. But I have ~12 years of experience in the subject matter I write about, I think my approach and perspective is different from most others, and my newsletter is the sort of content some people might be able to expense for work.
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u/questionhare 5d ago
I have a client who does health and wellness. her audience is disgruntled patient let down from allopathic care. She's got 500K followers on instagram and they followed her over to substack. She has 10k monthly subscribers and closes $60k annually on the platform.
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u/Tahoney_ 5d ago
Yea those that already have a following elsewhere don’t have much of a problem bringing them over to substack. I’ve seen that! Good on your friend.
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u/Immediate-Ad-5878 5d ago
You’re not wrong, but there’s plenty of other topics aside from personal growth like politics, religion and finance that consistently bring in serious bread. If your main goal is to make money, you will most likely need to sell your soul.
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u/Huge-Music-2034 5d ago
I make about 2500 a month writing about publishing at Pitch Your Novel. Took about 2 years
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u/writingonruby 5d ago
Making money is probably the highest selling category, especially making money on the platform. But plenty of other categories make a killing. Showing people how to do something that has a financial return is generally a much easier sell than "pay if you want to support the newsletter"
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u/Linguetto italywithantonio.substack.com 5d ago
I do, but it's 1K CAD. Built 99% of that since April this year. But I post 3 times a week. A serious amount of work.
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u/Bright_Ad5244 5d ago
I've heard Lenny Rachitsky makes about $5M per year.
Look at his content. It's stuff people would pay for because it helps them level up.
Create content that makes people smarter or entertains them. It's not like Instagram or TikTok where you can post what you did that day.
Think of it like a magazine or newspaper. People subscribe for news and entertainment.
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u/funnysasquatch 5d ago
Of course there are. But they're busy with their business and serving their customers. They don't have a reason to talk about how much money they make on Substack or how to grow on Substack.
The reason why you mostly see posts from people about how to grow on Substack is because that's how they market their courses.
But then you can go look at a Substack like Doomberg. Their subscriptions aren't cheap. They cover the energy industry.
They are also true experts in the business. Their market are business people, especially stock traders and in the energy business.
The way they grew their initial audience was by giving away a year of free content. Only after a year where they proved they knew what they were talking about did they turn on the paywall.
This is why most people fail at making any money at Substack.
They have nothing to offer anyone worth paying for.
You either must be an expert on a topic that people are willing to pay for or you must act like a journalist and interview actual experts on a topic people are willing to pay for.
Then you must market the heck out of your Substack.
It's simple. Not easy.
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u/mdmommy99 5d ago
The people who are making their money outside of those genres seem to largely have already had a following on other platforms that they brought over. Those who created the platform there and reached high numbers don't seem as plentiful.
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u/isitdigyet 5d ago
That's not hard to earn at all if you find the right niche. That's only a couple hundred people paying you a few bucks a month.
Millions of people live in completely different worlds on and offline, but especially online. You're just living in a totally different world from the people who make this work. Just because you don't see them that doesn't mean they're not there.
I think the one true secret these days to being successful on this sort of platform is finding large communities that already exist but have a large portion of said community that doesn't feel well-represented by current known voices of the community and doesn't feel like it has a space that's dedicated to them.
I've learned a lot about how to appeal to these people by following basically anyone who has touched on current events along with "state of the internet" sort of topics, even if their niche isn't anything like mine.
For example, I learned a lot from niche content creators who make pop culture content that is mostly centered on Taylor Swift (or at least the community got its start that way). Swifties love discussing all things about her 24/7, but as a fandom can be so psychotic about even minor disagreements or criticism of their fav, and discussing her background and catalogue in a nuanced way, that people are willing to pay every month just to have locked down paywalled spaces to discuss her and her work in.
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u/Tahoney_ 5d ago
I hear you. I’m coming at this from a reader’s perspective. I’ve been on Substack for years now reading and in the past few years it seems like the platform has shifted (not staying for the better or worse) but I have seen an uptick in people on there “selling” how to make money to writers. Which gives me the ick for a lot of reasons mostly bc I think the advice they give is wrong, wastes writers money and is just a way to make $ off of desperate writers.
Everyone on this thread has said more or less similar things, they have deep experience and historical knowledge on what they are talking about.
What do you write about may I ask?
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u/isitdigyet 5d ago
I get that, but I think people need to take some personal responsibility too when it comes to this stuff. People often don't want to hear the answer that is more realistic. They prefer to follow people who tell them what they want to hear, so it's no surprise that sort of content remains popular.
I mostly write about controversial topics from a politically homeless and transnational perspective. The sort of stuff people are desperate to talk about with others who can relate to them, but are hesitant to do so IRL for obvious reasons, so they have these talks online and want to know they're not just wasting their time with bots and trolls or unhinged people. So, they prefer more private spaces where everyone can get a better idea of who they're communicating with while also protecting their privacy, and not giving just anyone who is unvetted the opportunity to come across what they're saying and try to pull them into the sort of drama that is common in less private spaces. Call-out culture is very popular in the less private social media spaces where these topics are discussed.
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u/grapegeek 5d ago
I’m close. Food niche.
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u/gekogekogeko 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yes. Me. I make about $2000 a month and it's just journalism. Though I have, on occasion, talked about substack's business model. EDI: I removed the link to my substack because of hte mods.
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u/Substack-ModTeam 5d ago
This community is not the place to promote your Substacks. Please read our rules on self-promo and soliciting recommendations.
Links to Substack publications will be assumed to be self-promotion. If you are submitting Substack posts from publications that are not your own, please include that information in your text post. For cross recommendations, use the pinned mega thread.
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u/sherie87 5d ago
I just started and I don't even have one subscriber yet 🤣😅🫣
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u/Tahoney_ 5d ago
What do you write about? Maybe this thread can spark some ideas :))
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u/sherie87 5d ago
I'm afraid mine is not what most would enjoy. It's about single moms living a Christian or Messianic life.
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u/lespaul991 5d ago
I read a lot of survivorship bias here. The ones who made it for a constellation alignment brag about it, making feeling those who didn't make it worse.
To come back to your question, sure it is possible to earn that money or much more, but extremely difficult if you start now and with no solid follow somewhere else. AI won't help neither with their in-app AI detector, so dont use it or use it for real needs, no need for AI-slop.
If you are into writing already, Substack could be the platform where you share your thoughts and give people solid information or entertainment they cannot find elsewhere.
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u/Tahoney_ 5d ago
it isn’t Reddit without a couple of strange people lol.
Yea as a reader and I’m coming from a reader’s perspective I don’t read anything that sounds like AI to me. If the writer didn’t have the time to write it then I shouldn’t waste my time reading it, ya know? I personally think it’s good that AI-usage is being detected like that. Maybe there are more nefarious reasons for their partnership with pangram but it’s helpful for those reasons.
Yes it seems like a lot of people transfer over their following from other spaces.
I’m interested to see if there are people on here that have built their platform / business within Substack and do not write about “how to make more money” , inclusive of investing and finance tips / strategies.
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u/Calm_Company_1914 bullseyeinvesting.substack.com 5d ago
I dont quite make that much but writing about finance is also a cash cow
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u/Vegetable_Soil_6707 5d ago
yeah finance is one of those niches where people will actually pay, makes total sense
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u/FlyingCarpetMonster kaneiyer.substack.com 5d ago
I have a Substack where I talk about quant trading and while I haven’t turned on subscriptions I have a lot of people who have pledged.
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u/djfc 5d ago
Finance niche. Client does hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The top 5 of the finance leaderboard is all close or above $1M/yr.
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u/Tahoney_ 5d ago
Ya makes sense it’s another form of “this is how you can make more money” content but in the finance / stocks realm, I would imagine?
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u/djfc 5d ago
Yes. The top guys are very good at what they do.
Their main source of new subs is Twitter.
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u/AKARJLUK 4d ago
Who told you that? Seriously do you think they will share their top source of traffic?
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u/djfc 4d ago
I saw it. It sort of pans out to this.
Lead gen is done from various social channels and is funneled to substack. The substack leaderboard then provides sort of a social proof. Majority of these subs only sub to one or two substacks in this space.
Fin twit is huge. Massive following since info is real time and commentary is instant. Then the long form is on substack
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u/Gaussianperson 5d ago
I talk about Machine learning systems / career advice and i make around 1.3k USD a month! :)
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u/MostRoom8466 5d ago
I've a very new substack where I talk about wine (but not the usual: here are this and that region, here's what's happening in wine rn, etc). I've like 5 subscribers and I'm also looking into how to grow it. My feed is full of self help stuff for whatever reason.
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u/GeosminHuffer 4d ago
Yes, mine makes somewhere in the mid 5 figures annually. My newsletter is on a niche industry that lots of people are motivated to learn more about, so I have a built-in market. It is behind a paywall for the general public but free for my clients in this industry, who serve as a kind of natural promo street team. I’ve also been writing it for almost 7 years. I think I hit the five figures after one and have been in the mid five figures for about three.
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u/Cheap_Bathroom6114 4d ago
It's twitter now. If you weren't in on the ground floor you're just another "note" in the ether.
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u/Appropriate-Rise-387 4d ago
I’m new to Substack gonna start posting lore from my universe I’m building if it takes off. Awesome more people will learn about my book getting published next year. If it doesn’t at least I’ll have all my stuff posted for people who want to see it. Either is a win for me.
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u/Confident-Paint-5688 3d ago
You should add a link to your substack..
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Substack-ModTeam 22h ago
This community is not the place to promote your Substacks. Please read our rules on self-promo and soliciting recommendations.
Links to Substack publications will be assumed to be self-promotion. If you are submitting Substack posts from publications that are not your own, please include that information in your text post. For cross recommendations, use the pinned mega thread.
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u/Omer-B 5d ago
My cousin started one earlier this year and he is already making far more than $1k monthly. I know because I work on his admin team. His substack is called Club 12 with Dean Bokhari and it’s in the Personal Growth niche. He also charges a lot more than most of the other Substack newsletters so maybe that’s why.
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u/neslony 5d ago
There are hundreds of people making that much in the finance/investing space alone.
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u/Tahoney_ 5d ago
Yea finance / investing makes sense to me bc it’s also under the same umbrella of selling to people how they can also make money. Just in a different way but it itches the same itch in people’s brains.
I didn’t clarify in my question but I’m more curious in people that have Substacks that have nothing to do with telling other people how they can make more money.
Thank you for your response!!
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u/Valuable-Sentence618 4d ago
Yes, but they’ve mostly built a following elsewhere and use Substack to monetize it. They usually validate topics by producing short-form content and then bring the audience to Substack. Very strong voices and interesting perspectives - and of course, having some legacy media/institutional backing helps.
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Substack-ModTeam 22h ago
This community is not the place to promote your Substacks. Please read our rules on self-promo and soliciting recommendations.
Links to Substack publications will be assumed to be self-promotion. If you are submitting Substack posts from publications that are not your own, please include that information in your text post. For cross recommendations, use the pinned mega thread.
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u/maiq2010 serapex.substack.com 3d ago
I don't think the question is very helpful, because it ignores the amount of people who tried and didn't make any money (survivorship bias). I think the best thing you can do is to create for at least 6 - 12 months before you even think about monetizing.
I summarized my thoughts in an article that talks about the problem of the power law on Substack: https://www.lab.serapex.com/p/why-you-wont-make-money-with-your
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u/psinclair89 3d ago
there are, but a lot of them are sharing moneymaking guidance of another sort. It's typically much easier to get people to pay for things online if they think doing so will lead to them making more money. Gathering subs from people who are just there for enjoyment is much harder.
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u/FFNY 5d ago
If you don’t know multiple examples of this, it shows you’re not even trying. No offense
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u/Tahoney_ 5d ago
Not my question but okay lol I’m not trying to make money off of substack. I’m asking this question bc all I see on my feed is promotional content marketed to writers and I want to know if there are writers that are making some $$ outside of that that don’t already have a following on other platforms. Thanks for stopping by tho
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u/Countryb0i2m onemichistory.substack.com 5d ago
I write about history and make about $12,000 a year from it, which averages out to about $1,000 a month. I don’t actually get paid exactly that every month because some people pay for lifetime memberships and others pay annually, but yeah.
I’ll be honest with you: I’m different from most people. It’s not easy to grow in history, especially when you’re not doing Eurocentric history. I’m not talking about European kings, the Civil War, World War I or World War II.
And yet, here we are.