Start Your Substack with a Clear Path to Income (+ How I Plan to Monetize)

Decide How You’ll Monetize Your Substack from Day 1

I’ve been blogging since 2013, and teaching blogging as a business through my free content, newsletter and programs for many years now.

And while I joined Substack just recently, there’s one thing these 2 business models have in common (starting a blog & starting a Substack) - monetization can happen from day one.

Even if it’s just by having an idea of how you’d like to earn from your publication, it’s worth exploring that early on.

So, if you’ve been putting that off for some time, or assuming it will be solely thanks to paid subscribers, let’s talk about this.

When and How to Monetize

It depends.

If you’re moving from another platform and already have frameworks, workshops, or any other form of strategic content that’s worth charging for, you can start posting it soon and paywall that content.

At the same time, you can show up consistently on Notes and publish free posts to show your expertise, form relationships, grow your account and help others.

If you’re starting from scratch, creating both free and paid content might be too much, so you might first need to get to 100-200 subscribers before offering a paid newsletter.

But there’s more than one way to monetize, and others may work better for you. For example, if you already have a digital product to sell, you can make that part of your funnel (it can be offered in the welcome email to free subscribers, for example, and naturally mentioned in your posts).

If you don’t have a product but feel like creating a low-cost one now, go for it. It’s a wonderful way to have something to offer and provide massive value with it so people wonder what else they can achieve if they invest more to work with you.

Speaking of which…

Multiple Income Streams Work Best

Almost all of the biggest publications on Substack earn big profits thanks to monetizing in multiple ways.

We may see the number of subscribers, but aside from their paid newsletter, they also sell digital products (workbooks/masterclasses/courses) and services (coaching/consulting/done-for-you services/done-with-you services) or even a mastermind or VIP day (these are the highest-priced items in their sales funnel, and they can be a significant part of their annual revenue).

There’s also brand partnerships (mentioning brands or featuring them in a post and getting paid for it) and affiliate marketing.

These 3 ways are also how a blog is monetized, and while one income stream will always work better for you than the rest, diversification is crucial.

You do it because when one revenue channel goes down, you have the others to rely on until you do something about it.

How I’d Like to Monetize

In the name of transparency, here’s how I’d like to monetize my Substack:

My main publication - The 2-Hour Blogger - is where I’ll post a lot of free content, but there will also be paid posts in the near future. That’s where my most strategic content will live, and anything specific about monetizing with brand partnerships (that’s my specialty and I have a lot to share on the topic). I can also start publishing monthly income reports again, and as that’s pretty personal, it’s also more exclusive content so it can be paywalled.

Next, I already have plenty of digital products to offer, so when it makes sense, I will link to them for anyone looking to dive deeper into what I teach.

Over time, I might partner with some brands and feature them (in a natural way). This is how I’ve monetized my WordPress blog and it’s my most favorite way to earn online. So I can see it happening on Substack too. It’s not the goal, but it’s something I’m open to.

As I love digital products, I can also create new paid offers inspired my what my subscribers on here need more of.

As for my second publication - The $1K Newsletter (this one) - I’m just going with the flow for now and sharing my journey of building my Substack into a $1K/month business. But technically, all the things mentioned above apply to it too.

And one final thing to say: deciding how you’ll monetize early on also helps you stay focused, define your ideal reader and create content that attracts them, stay on topic, and get better at what you teach and how you teach it through your writing.

Over to you now.

Have you monetized your Substack already?

If not, how would you like to do it?

And what’s stopping you from doing it right now?