This is for my blogger friends around here.
Remember when back in the days it was super easy to rank your blog posts on Google and get traffic? And then everyone became a blogging expert and earned so much teaching this (whether through affiliate marketing, courses or coaching).
That was before everyone started teaching people how to make money blogging.
Remember the beginning of platforms like Instagram, where it was easy to grow a massive following? Those people then quickly figured out they have a lot to teach and earned from that.
The same is happening on Substack.
And for once, bloggers might actually have an advantage.
Writers are moving there. Creators are bringing their audiences. Experts are starting from scratch.
Readers aren’t only reading. They’re subscribing, replying, recommending and paying.
And because Substack has its own discovery network, you don’t necessarily need a massive audience somewhere else before you begin.
I joined with 0 subscribers.
Five months later, I’m getting 15–20 new subscribers a day from Substack itself, have a total of 1,500 now (that’s the size of an email list that took me years to build as a blogger), and 29 paying subscribers.
I landed my first brand deal with fewer than 300 subscribers, I get constant feedback from my audience which helps me validate my ideas, and I made more friends on the platform that I did in all my years of blogging.
From Blog to Substack is the guide I wish I had when I started.
It shows you how to take what you already know as a blogger and use it to start, grow and monetize a Substack. You’ll learn how I approached Substack as someone with more than a decade of blogging experience, what actually helped me grow, what I’d do differently, and how you can build your own publication without spending all day on the platform.
Inside, you’ll learn:
Whether Substack makes sense for you and how it compares to running a traditional blog.
Why bloggers have an advantage and which skills, content and assets you can bring with you.
How to position your publication so people immediately understand why they should subscribe.
How Notes actually work and how I use them for discovery and connection.
How to get your first 100 subscribers without relying entirely on an audience elsewhere.
How recommendations, comments, Notes and conversations create a snowball effect.
When to turn on paid subscriptions and what you can offer paid readers.
How I got my first paid subscribers and what I learned from those early members.
How to monetize beyond subscriptions.
This isn’t a “get rich on Substack in 30 days” ebook.
I can’t promise you’ll get 20 subscribers a day.
I can’t promise you’ll have paid members within five months.
Your niche, writing, audience and offer will be different from mine.
What I can give you is everything I’ve learned from building a writing business for more than a decade and then applying those lessons to Substack, including the strategies that worked, the mistakes, the experiments and the systems I’m using now.
I don’t know what Substack will look like five years from now. No one does.
But I do know that right now, discovery is working, writers are recommending one another, readers are paying for newsletters, and creators of all sizes are joining.
That makes this an interesting time to start.
Especially if you’ve spent years building skills as a blogger and thought you were too late for the last big opportunities.
Maybe this time, you’re not.
If you’re ready to take action, the eBook is waiting for you behind the paywall: