These are some notes I made on the YouTube video Masterclass: Everything bloggers and creators need to get started on Substack.
Nov 10, 2023If you take one thing from this masterclass, it’s this: just start. We cover a lot in the masterclass, but publishing your first post and sharing it with your audience, wherever they are, is the best thing you can do today. You can iterate on the rest of your publication as you go. Over the course of an hour, I covered:
- What a Substack is
- How to earn money
- Getting started in four steps
- A tour of the settings and the dashboard
- How to bring your community with you
Christina Loff spent her career working with writers, artists, and independent business owners. Part of her job has always been to give the best advice to help creatives grow their businesses, own their audiences, and make a living doing what they love. In her two years at Substack, she’s helped writers like Joanna Goddard, Evan Ross Katz, Gabrielle Blair, and more build a direct relationship with their audience and earn an independent living the Substack way. In her masterclass, she packages up everything bloggers and creators need to know to get started. Learn more:
https://on.substack.com/p/masterclass…
Get started: https://substack.com/christina
5:29 Shaun King’s substack. He has a podcast in addition to his newsletter. See my post on Substack podcasting resources.
6:06 Patti Smith’s substack She uses video which the speaker says is very easy.
6:56 A great benefit of being on substack is you can create your community. Subversive Cross Stitch.
7:46 See her welcome page.
8:20 She interacts with her community through Chat. These are private messages sent only to your subscribers. It is best to access Chat on the app. But you can also access it on the web. You can make Chat a feature for your paid subscribers.
9:07 Community: Notes. They are short form posts shared in your about profile.
10:48 Growth: Recommendations. 20% of paid subscriptions come from the substack network.
11:25 Growth: Recommendations. Farrah Storr. “I’m Farrah, Head of Writer Partnerships for Substack UK and Europe. In another life I edited Elle & Cosmo. Now my writing lives on my Substack-Things Worth Knowing. Come say hi!” She has 25,000 subscribers and 1000 paid subscribers.
Chrstina says that we should shoot for 5% of our subscribers to be paid subscribers.
12:19 Growth: Cross Posts
12:36 Growth: Tagging
13:02 How To Earn Money
13:40 When Should I Go Paid?
People ask me when to go paid I always tell them when they launch. your launch moment
is a really big moment so it’s a great time to get in front of a lot of people and let them know what you’re offering
and how they can support you in this new Endeavor people will pay you for the content you create even if you’re not
putting any of it behind a pay wall I think that’s really important to remember people who have the means and
want to support you will support you if you’re just starting out well I always tell people as soon as they launch you
know make sure that you’re showing all of the content you’re going to be creating make everything free the first
two weeks the first month so that people can see the range of things you’re going to be offering and they’ll get to
understand what they’re going to get if they upgrade to paid um if you are just
starting out and building your list or getting the hang of it you can enable paid subscriptions but wait to start pay
Walling posts for a while before you grow that audience I just always think you should have it on um because you
deserve to get paid for the content you’re creating so these are two examples of people who’ve launched recently who went
paid right away and them doing a great job of why they’re doing
14:54 Pledges
that if you don’t feel comfortable turning on paid right away we now have pledges um which I love because this
gives people an opportunity to show you that they would support you and to tell
you they’re raising their hand they’re saying hey if you ever turn on paid here’s here’s what I’m going to come in
at and you get these lovely notes so William here is probably pledged this is
probably founding member um level and he’s you get these Nice Notes so you you
know um what it just makes you feel good um and then as soon so people enter
their credit cards here so as soon as you turn on paid all of these people will automatically become paying
subscribers and they know that when they’re pledging so I’m GNA go oops I’m G to go
over a range of what you can offer uh we’ll share a few models I’m
gonna okay so one model is everything is free
16:12
Everything free. Example: Cafe Anne by Anne Kadet.
Anne is a bestseller with 100s of paid subscribers even though she keeps everything free.
16:45 Freemium
Publish some free posts to attract new subscribers, but paywall your deep dives or behind the scenes content.
Example: Recovering by Holly Whitaker.
My premium would be one or two free zoom visit for paid subscribers and weekly zoom call in show with archives available to paid subscribers [maybe]
“Keep your best work free!” Pay wall the extra access to you.
18:10 Community Access
“Keep the posts free but paywall the community, like Comments, Chats, and Events.” Example: Grow On with Tara Schuster.
