What Is Substack?
What is Substack?
Substack is an email newsletter platform designed for small publishers hoping to turn their subscribers into paying customers.
Writers get a content management system (CMS) built for publishing email newsletters, integrated payments through Stripe, and a website that can host free and subscriber-only content.
Consequently, Substack makes it very simple for a writer to start a paid or free newsletter.
Besides offering the technical infrastructure to support writers, Substack:
- Gives authors a sense of freedom, since they are no longer tethered to the whims of a single social media platform.
- Increases the personal connection between writers and readers, which allows writers to create digital content that is unique suited for their audience, while still being fairly compensated.
- Allows authors the choice of charging for access to their writing, offering it for free, or some combination of both to their subscribers.
Substack Review: Pros and Cons
Pros
- A flexible, user-friendly platform: In fact, drag-and-drop tools make it easy to incorporate images and audio files into your newsletter. You can format a professional, attractive newsletter in about 5 minutes on Substack.
- No experience necessary: As a freelance writer, you usually need to convince a client to buy your writing before it ever sees publication. With Substack, the only people you have to convince are your readers, who can subscribe or unsubscribe at will. And for emerging writers, launching a Substack not only gets you clips (writing samples you can use to get more work) but also the potential to get paid right away.
- Write about whatever you want: Substack newsletters cover every niche imaginable, from data to witchcraft. If there isn’t a paying market for what you’re passionate about, create one.
Cons
- No audience, no money: Building a mailing list from scratch takes time and effort. Convincing them to fork over extra money is no small ask, either.
- Minimum subscription of $5 per month: It’s particularly tough to get people to spend $5 per month on one newsletter, which is Substack’s minimum monthly price. While it’s possible to set a lower annual price, the relatively high monthly minimum may prevent some subscribers from opting in.
- Fees, fees, and more fees: Substack’s 10% cut, Stripe’s 2.9% and $.30 per transaction fee, and income tax are all coming out of your monthly earnings. That’s quite the chunk of change.
Getting Started With Substack
Choose a niche.
Many of the top newsletters on Substack focus on a specific topic, like China,climate change or productivity. But if you don’t want to be limited to one marketing topic, don’t worry. Some popular newsletters are writers showcasing their writing.
Set up your newsletter.
Once you know what you want to write about, it’s time to set up your Substack. To start, you have to choose a URL where your newsletter archive hosted. From there, you can mess with various other settings, like who allowed to comment.
Start writing!
Now onto the most important part: writing your newsletter! Substack has an intuitive word processor built in to their website where you can write and format a post. You can also get support for embedding for photo, video and audio in your newsletter.
Proofread your work.
Double-check your formatting, too; there are more than enough ugly newsletters in the world. You want to make sure everything looks polished before you schedule your newsletter to go out to your digital readers.
Remember what your audience is there for.
Focus your content around your editorial vision. If your newsletter is about witchcraft, don’t send out a random newsletter about pet care.
Stick to a schedule.
Create an editorial calendar and schedule posts in advance. It keeps you honest and gives your readers something to look forward to.
Spread the word.
Make sure people know about your newsletter. You can import existing email contacts, like friends and family interested in keeping up with your work, into the platform. in general, you can post it on social media, advertise it online, and connect with other newsletter writers for cross-promotion.