The Full Time Substack Dream - How Long Does It Take?

What Does It Take For Substack To Become Your Job

Substack offers the tantalising vision of being able to make a living on the platform through their PAID subscription model. But…..

• How many Paid subscribers do you actually need?

• How long does it actually take to get to those heady levels of Paid subscribers?

• What would be the logical steps from zero free subscribers to earning enough money to start paying the bills?

This post explores all these things and maps out a realistic time frame for getting there.

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Brooke Lark on Unsplash

Aimed first at professional writers looking for a freelance way out, the dream has now been taken on by many people just starting out in the world of online writing.

The ability to create something, publish it on Substack and be actually paid has fuelled a resurgence in writers seeking this new way of making their writing pay.

And, as is typical of this very creative community, there’s almost infinite approaches to how to go about this. Some people charge for all their posts, some leave all their posts FREE, some charge for the community aspects such as comments. Now we also have podcasts, videos and discussion boards plus threads. All things that can be put behind a paywall.

But this isn’t a post about the different options for what to charge for. You should visit

Substack Writers at Work

or

Claire Venus

for their wonderful insights here.

This post is about the numbers.

To make it your day job you need the numbers to stack up

This post is about the numbers because, once you’ve settled on your offering, it’s the numbers that will get you to the point of being able to say that your Substack is your full time job.

Part of my day job is to create spreadsheet models to help businesses plan their strategies for growing their revenue over the short, medium and long term horizons. Taking some of these approaches I have set out below the various stages you might need to go through before being a full time Substacker.

As with any modelling exercise we will need to make some assumptions. It would be impossible to predict the trajectory of an individual Substack but what I’ve been able to do is apply some assumptions based around what I’ve observed since joining in August 2022, Substack’s view on conversion to paid and how that might project forward.

Growing the “average” Substack

This allows us to see where an “average” Substack might be heading and how long it might take start earning enough money to think about it becoming someone’s sole income.

In this spirit, the first assumption I’m making here is that we are starting with someone coming to Substack with no email list, a social following that only really contains their immediate social circle - no social media influencers - and someone who doesn’t have a public persona. ie this is a normal person, starting from scratch with just the talent and dedication of a beginner.

This leaves us with these “seasons” that we will work through in this article.

1. In The Beginning - starting out and finding your way to kick start some growth on the platform

2. A Purposeful Hobby - the FREE subscriber growth phase

3. Going Paid - taking the leap and starting to earn

4. Going Part Time - Scaling back the day job with partial replacement of income by Substack

5. Going Full Time - Full replacement of income by Substack

Before we continue, we need to make some simplifying assumptions

1. The Substacker is starting from scratch with no email list, no social following and no public persona

2. They currently earn $50,000 dollars per year and looking to replace this income like for like

3. All numbers are pre-Tax which can differ by location and country

4. Fees assumed to be 10% for Substack and 3% for the Stripe payment fee

5. Charge $6 per month or $50 per year assuming half of people choose each option

6. Growth is based around extrapolating what I have seen on my Substack. ie assuming this is a relatively average Substack growth wise

7. Conversion of Free to Paid of 4% which doesn’t feel silly (10% does feel silly)

8. 1-2 posts per week with half of these being PAID when you turn on PAID (this all depends on your strategy which is not covered in this post)

9. Regular engagement on Substack Notes

10. No big social media push - focus is on the Substack Platform

Caveat: these forecasts are best guesses given the assumptions above and a leap of faith in terms of where that takes things. Real life could end up higher or lower than these projections.

1. In The Beginning

• Timeline: First 3 Months

• Starting Free Subscribers: 0

• Ending Free Subscribers: 100

• Free Subscriber Growth per 30 days: 33

• Ending Paid Subscribers: Paid not turned on yet

So you’ve started a Substack and you sit there writing your first post. You have zero subscribers.

Focus on:

• Working out what you enjoy writing about

• Achieving a sustainable posting cadence

• Engaging with people on notes, commenting on other Substack posts and building relationships.

Starting from scratch you should be able to achieve 100 subscribers in the first 3 months. This is really about building the foundations. The next phase is when you will start to see growth accelerate.