What Is a SubStack and How Does It Work?

The social media space is so full of jargon and buzzwords that it can be hard to keep track of them all. Keeping track of Wordle, NFTs and metastore is enough, but what is SubStack?

Resisting the urge to joke about a pile of sandwiches, we’ll tell you that Substack is a big game changer in the online publishing world. In fact, it’s the biggest disruption to journalism, personal writing, and thought leadership since the blogging boom of the 2000s. And it just might be the missing piece of your social media marketing plan.

Read on to find out everything you need to know about Substack and whether it’s the right choice for your brand.

What is a SubStack?

Substack is an email newsletter platform. Its simple interface and ability to post (and monetize) posts on the web have made it a game changer for writers of any skill level.

For journalists, the app is attractive because it doesn’t rely on editors or ad sales to deliver their message. It’s a great way for thought leaders to jot down some thoughts and communicate them directly to their students. For new writers, it’s a great way to build a portfolio while finding an audience, no matter how niche the subject. For creators, it’s a great way to monetize the loyal followers you build on social media.

Substack is known for its non-intrusive approach to censorship. While there are still some publishing guidelines (no porn, hate speech or harassment, for example), the platform’s lack of door control has attracted both groundbreaking journalists and seriously controversial writers.

In other words, the site is just a tool that makes publishing easy for everyone. And it’s working. There are over 1 million people paying for subscriptions to Substack posts every month.

How does Substack work?

Substack’s Bread and Butter is running. With Substack, you can quickly and easily publish posts to the web or as email with a few clicks.

Posts can be paywalled or posted for free. You can also try discussion threads, a feature that lets you start Twitter-style conversations among your subscribers.

But that’s not all – there’s also Substack for Podcasts, a relatively new tool that allows audio creators to publish and grow their podcasts. In early 2022, Substack also started beta testing a video player for creators; this means that the potential for content creation is only growing.

Once you have your SubStack up and running (and more in a minute…), you will notice the simplicity of the interface. It’s really a blank canvas, but people are doing great things with the platform.

Of course, traditional writers are the mainstay of Substack, and you’ll find hundreds of media figures, journalists, thought leaders, and anyone with a keyboard and something to say. Some notable Substack players include Gawker’s Will Leitch, feminist journalist Roxane Gay and historian Heather Cox Richardson.

Writers Salman Rushdie and Chuck Palahniuk use the platform to publish their new novels, while filmmaker and activist Michael Moore uses it to paraphrase politics.

Dig deeper and you’ll find Sub-Stacks for any niche:

• Beauty critic Jessica DeFino criticizes the beauty industry with her newsletter, The Unpublishable.
• Cultural trends are predictable and breaking with Jonah Weiner and Erin Wylie’s impeccably designed Blackbird Spyplane.
• And TrueHoop, one of the longest-running NBA podcasts in the world, streams its episodes through the platform.
• Patti Smith also uses Substack’s audio feature to stream regular poetry readings.

Because of its simple interface, your SubStack can be as simple or complex as you want.

Source: blackbird

How to Initialize a SubStack

It’s incredibly easy to sign up and start posting on Substack. Follow these steps and you’ll be up and running in minutes.

one. Define your niche

This is, of course, the first step for any endeavor on the web. Your work, discussion topic, or content type may change, but early planning before you start will still help.

Will you be writing newsletters for beginner knitters? Lord of the Rings fans? Policy junkies?

Before you begin, choose an audience and learn everything you can about their concerns, desires, reading habits, and more.

2. Sign up for an account

You can use email or sign up with your Twitter account. Substack’s Twitter integration is great – connecting your contacts is easy and you can feature your newsletter prominently next to your bio – so definitely choose this option if you have a large following on your Twitter account.

3. Set up your profile

Yes, the steps are that simple. This is where you confirm your email address and username. You will also want to upload a profile picture to use on your page.

4. Create your post

Give your post a name, a summary of what it’s about, and confirm your URL. Here’s where you need to flex your creativity (but don’t worry too much – you can make changes anytime later).

Make sure your summary is as short and descriptive as possible, as in the example below. People will be more likely to sign up if they know what they’re getting into – and they’re excited about it.

5. Subscribe to publications

If you have connected your Twitter and followed people with Sub-Stacks, you can easily follow them here. This is a good idea for two reasons – it will get you started on a similar content path to the one you have on Twitter and alert your partners that you’ve joined Substack.

6. Import your mailing list

If you’re coming to Substack from another service like Mailchimp, TinyLetter or Patreon, you can upload a CSV file and import your contacts.

7. Add subscribers

Here you can manually add friends and family to your subscriber list as a way to build a subscriber base. It may seem small, but you have to start somewhere. Consider also signing up with a second personal email address – then you can see your newsletter exactly as it appears to subscribers.

8. Create a post

After signing up, you will be taken to the Dashboard where you can create an account. new post, New subject or New chapter. As you will see, the interface is incredibly simple. You will have no trouble writing, formatting and publishing your first post.

How to grow your Substack?

The sub-stack is again more of a tool than a social network. In that sense, you will need to put your marketing skills aside and promote your business the old-fashioned way.

Here are some tips:

call to action

Yes, call-to-action copywriting is still your best friend. Fill your posts with headers, footers, and buttons that encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter, comment on your posts, and share your content.

Connect

Post your Child Stack on your homepage, social media sites, company email signatures or anywhere else that will allow URLs. This also helps with search engine rankings so people can reach your Substack organically.

Be Social

Perhaps the most obvious thing on the list, but worth repeating: post your newsletters on social media. Split your content into a Twitter thread, take a screenshot for Instagram or integrate directly with Facebook.

Comment

Even though you stopped reading the comment sections years ago, Substack actually excels at discussion. Comment on related posts and users can link back to your own Child Stack. It’s also a great way to show off your writing skills to other potential subscribers in the community.

Build Partnerships

Even so, it doesn’t have to feel like marketing. You can offer to guest post on other people’s Sub-Stacks, interview other creators on your own, ask relevant social media accounts to share your post, and even pay for a sponsorship.

Substack did its own case study after Ali Abouelatta and his blog, First 1000.

He gained more than 20,000 subscribers in just three years using a series of experiments. Ali achieved this growth through hard work, determination and a willingness to engage in his own niche outside of the platform, marketing through Quora, Discord, WhatsApp and Slack.

Find out more with Substack’s video:

Is Substack free?

As a publisher, Substack is completely free. It costs nothing to have an account and you can stream text and audio without paying for storage.

Similarly, the vast majority of Substack posts are free to read. Whether or not they put their work behind a paywall is up to the creators. Typically, a user’s page has a mix of free and premium content.

Subscriptions to a paid SubStack average around $5 a month (though some go as high as $50).

Fans can also subscribe as Founding Members, allowing users to pay extra as a show of support. Substack describes it as a donation. The chart below shows average founding member payouts.

Substack monetizes through the subscription model, as they hold 10% of the subscription fees.

The company uses Stripe, which charges an additional 2.9% in fees and charges a transaction fee of 30 cents per subscriber.

Source: bottom stack

How to Monetize Bottom Stack

There’s really only one way to monetize Substack: selling subscriptions to your content. But Substack readers like to pay, so making money on the platform is not unusual.

Some important things to remember:

• Be consistent. You want to turn your readers from commoners to fans. The best way to do this is to publish regularly and reliably. Consider posting a free post on Thursdays and a paid post on Tuesdays. Find a program that suits you and stick with it.
• Be Interesting. It can be tempting to fill your feed with content, but it’s also important to make sure that what you write is really good. And since Substack has no editor, that’s down to you. Be sure to copy your work and ask yourself, “Would I enjoy it if I was the one reading this?” Ask questions like
• Stay Free. Even if your goal is to build a subscriber base, you should still make most of your content free. Sub-stack readers don’t necessarily want to buy content – ​​if they like you, they’ll throw money your way, no matter how much of your writing is free. Ideally, you won’t want to pay more than 50% of your content, and even that might be an extension.

Is it worth the substack?

If we think of Substack as a blank canvas, the platform will be worth it depending entirely on your brand, end goal, and skill set. If you’re looking for new ways to market a product or service, you’d better expand your strategy to include TikTok or Pinterest. But if you want to tell bigger stories, engage in thought leadership, and continually practice writing, there’s no better option than publishing with Substack.

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