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.

To get the latest post each week from Never Stop Learning please hit the subscribe button here. Each post is dedicated to helping you improve your life one post at a time.

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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 or 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.

2. A Purposeful Hobby

• Timeline: Month 3 to Month 18

• Starting Free Subscribers: 100

• Ending Free Subscribers: 1,250

• Free Subscriber Growth per 30 days: 77 (this is the growth I saw in that time which accelerated beyond this towards the end of the first 18 months)

• Ending Paid Subscribers: Paid not turned on yet

You know you’re serious now. It’s still a hobby so you’re still fitting it around your day job but you get into a groove that you know you can maintain. Subscribers know what to expect from you which comes with its own responsibilities.

Focus on:

• Building rapport with your readers

• Build connections with other Substackers by being generous with your sharing and time - be genuine

• Keep refining what works for you. Don’t fall into a rut. Experiment.

3. Going Paid

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• 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.

To get the latest post each week from Never Stop Learning please hit the subscribe button here. Each post is dedicated to helping you improve your life one post at a time.

Subscribe now

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 or 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.

Read more

The world today encourages us to set big goals and strive with all our being to achieve those goals. But what happens when we finally get there? What if we find the world at the top of that mountain isn’t full of milk and honey after all? What if there’s just another mountain on the other side?

I hadn’t even consciously set 1,000 subscribers as particul…

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In this video I cover:

• What you need to know in the Settings page

• Checking the Preview for the view that most of your readers will see

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• One Big Thing - Start the day with three questions that could change how you think.

• Two Recommendations - A podcast and a YouTube video to get you started.

• My Top 3 articles of the week

Enjoy.

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With new feature releases comes a wave of different emotions.

There are some who crave for things to stand still, there are those excited for the new shiny object and there are those who see an underlying agenda.

Of course, we all sit in each each of these three camps at different times and in different situations. The thing we need to remember here is that this fantastic place called Substack is pretty new. We’re living in a building site. It’s constantly changing. What appears to upset us is when we see decisions being made that appear to go against the founding principles of the platform.

If you’re someone who’s been one of the first to move into a new housing estate then you’ll probably know how everyone is feeling as Substack builds around them.

Lets take those people who were first to move in.

It was exciting. A fresh start in a new place. Everyone around you was here for the same reason and had become tired with their old life over in the centre of town where everyone had become transactional and cynical. It was grey there. Polluted. People were craving a new start. You’d had enough. It was time to move on.

Substack was the new start.

So you moved on and it was great in Substack Town. The sun shone, the hills were green and the future felt simpler and more pure.

But things started to change.

As new houses were built around you, more people move in. New people. Different people. People who are also looking for a new start but may not appreciate the vibe that had been there in those early formative days.

The Elite Capture of Substack post by summarised these worries and is brilliantly written but I disagree with a lot of it. Let’s take a deeper look.

Substack is becoming a “greedy feedy” social media platform

Was Notes a play at grabbing some of the Twitter users? Maybe. And the response from Mr Musk to remove Substack links from their approved list was evidence of the war that was always brewing under the surface.

Regardless of the Twitter play, Substack notes offers a different discovery platform based primarily around who you subscribe to and recommendations of those people you subscribe to.

I don’t feel a the pull of an algorithm here. At least not yet.

Is the addition of followers bowing down to the social media pull of the world? I don’t think so.

I see this as a “subscriber light” option that doesn’t require me to commit to having emails flooding into my inbox. I admit to being one of those people who subscribed to a lot of Substacks in the early days of being here. In fact, I subscribed to so many that it seemed all my inbox contained was Substack newsletters. I even missed an email from my bank that was lost amid this inundation!

Becoming a “follower” has allowed my to keep track of other writers without that commitment of a regular email. Maybe I will even consider subscribing later once I’ve got to know them better.

I see followers as a neat gateway and Notes as a different discovery platform where we can converse with other writers. It’s still a nice place to hang out.

Verdict: At the moment were ok but keep a close eye on how it develops.

Notes is driving users to focus on shorter, more frequent posts

Notes feels like a nice community of writers.

Yes, the content of a Note is often short but most of these are either advertising newsletter posts or starting a discussion. I don’t see the evidence of this leading to shorter newsletter posts.

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I’ve not talked massively about this on here before but I work for the train company that transports people from London to Edinburgh.

It’s my teams job to know all the stats about the railway. What’s our biggest earning train? Which train had the most delays? Which tickets do we sell the most of on a sunny Wednesday in June?

I love all of that.

So taking that passion into my Substack was always going to happen.

But let’s be honest, the stats you get as standard in could be better

told us recently that a churn metric may be on the way which will help but I wanted a way of seeing engagement from the point of view of my community.

I want to know if the people who subscribed a year ago are still reading my posts or whether gave up on me a long time ago.

Quite often we focus on post metrics. What percentage of your subscribers opened your last post? This is of course your open rate but you don’t get a feel for whether these are the same people turning up each week or a new tribe who join and then dissipate.

People dip in and dip out

They might go I holiday. They might be sick. They might (get this) have better things to do that week! You might have sent your post out at a strange time where all your engaged subscribers were asleep (interesting in itself but that’s for another post maybe).

If you’re looking to build a newsletter for the long term (See my recent post on thinking long term) you need to focus on long term engagement. Don’t fixate on post to post metrics.

So this is how I flipped these metrics on its head so that I could view long term engagement

I want to know if I’m building rapport with my subscribers over time? I needed a metric that could both give me this information AND be possible to calculate using the data given to us by the Substack platform.

In this post you will learn how to:

• Download Your Data

• Set up a Bespoke Dashboard

• Create a new Engagement Metric

• Understand Engagement by Acquisition Channel

You can sign up to read these posts using the link below. Not only will you get access to this post but also the entire Never Stop Learning Archive plus learn how to start/improve your Substack with my Substack Strategy section.

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I never started with the intention of “Going PAID”

I started

my Substack as an experiment to see if I could keep a weekly newsletter going, see how quickly you could scale it and improve my writing in the process. Making money didn’t really come into it.

But I was curious. On Substack Office Hours there were often discussions about “going paid” which intrigued me. Surely no one would actually want to pay to read my work?

After all, this is Substack’s forte. It must be doable - right?

This is the platform you would want to be on if you were thinking of creating a PAID subscription newsletter. So, in the interests of science I gave it a go.

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In this post I take you through the different angles I’ve tried and the reasons many of them didn’t work. Plus I set out my strategy for the next year.

This post will save you time and ensure you land on a successful strategy quicker than I did.

1. Taking the plunge - Tentative Steps

I was always a little queasy about charging. I worried about what my FREE subscribers would think. “who is this upstart who thinks people will pay for his work” etc etc.

Therefore, my early forays into this space would always be quite tentative. First up, I turned on paid and simply asked people to contribute so that we could “Keeping Never Stop Learning Free”.

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