What are People Paying for on Substack?

New Substack Feature: We can now add someone’s first name to our posts and emails if we want to be able to address our subscribers personally. Like this:

Hi , thank you for reading!

If you’d like to know how to do that, check out this note:

On to this month’s topic: Monetizing Your Substack. Today’s article is about the different ways Substack creators offer value for their paid subscriptions.

New writers on Substack often make the assumption that they need to paywall their articles or essays in order to make any money from their publication. This is the easiest way to create a paid tier, but is it the best way for you to add value to your publication on Substack and create a paid offer? What other options are there?

One of the assumptions that is often made by new people, is that on Substack we are selling content.

That is one option, but it’s only one option. There are other ways to look at what you can offer, and many successful Substacks offer one or more of these:

• Support

• Access

• Time

• Expertise

• Community & Belonging

• Curation

• Entertainment

There are many different ways that writers and creators on Substack are setting up their publication paid tier. Lets take a look:

This is the easiest model to implement. Everything you create remains free, and you simply add a CTA (Call to Action) that invites your readers to upgrade to paid, if they would like to support the work you’re doing on Substack.

Coach Courtney Peters has created this kind of subscription model. She states that “All her content is currently free” and for her paid subscription says “An opportunity to donate if you wish, no pressure”. This is a very low pressure way to invite people to upgrade to paid, without feeling “salesy”.

Related to this, is the “buy me a coffee” button, where writers and creators set up a buy me a coffee account and then insert the button into a post so a reader can make a one-time donation. This by-passes Substack’s subscription model all together. As of right now, Substack allows this and doesn’t penalize you for using this alternative payment model, whether or not things will stay that way is a subject of debate among Substack users.

This is what the subscription model on Substack was originally built around. Some people choose to put paywalls in all their posts, and if you would like to access their full content, you need to become a paid subscriber or you’ll see the paywall in every post. This is an easy way to create paid content for the writer, as it doesn’t require anything extra from you, however I would caution against putting a paywall in every post as you may end up losing a number of your free subscribers simply because they become too annoyed with constantly hitting a paywall.

A second way to do this is to send out separate posts, some of your posts are free, and others are paid. It’s really up to each writer to decide what works best for them, what frequency is sustainable for you as a writer, as well as what is a realistic rhythm for your subscribers to expect to hear from you.

This is probably the most popular model on Substack, and there are many examples, but Amba Gale of Awakening Heart is a beautiful example of how to manage both sustainability for herself, and a predictable rhythm for her subscribers. She creates free posts every other Wednesday, and paid posts every other Sunday.

Additional content isn’t the only thing that people will pay for.

One paid model that often gets overlooked is curation. Rather than creating entirely new content, some writers spend their time gathering, filtering, and organizing the most important information on a topic. Their subscribers aren’t paying because the information doesn’t exist elsewhere. They’re paying because someone they trust has already done the work of finding, evaluating, and curating it for them. In a world where information is abundant, saving people time can be incredibly valuable.

A great example of curation of content to avoid overwhelm is Banafsheh Zand and her team at Iran So Far Away. They do a great job of curating daily recommendations to send to her subscribers, rather than sending multiple articles she’s written. She provides a valuable service to those who just don’t have time to sift through all the news articles about everything going on with Iran.

Entertainment can take many forms on Substack, and it’s worth becoming a paid offer. A good quality entertaining Substack can offer a break from day-to-day life, and can become something that many people are happy to subscribe to, and look forward to receiving each week.

Stories have always been something people willingly pay for. Whether it’s serialized fiction, poetry, humor, or thoughtful personal essays, entertainment has real value. We don’t always subscribe because we need to learn something. Sometimes we subscribe because someone’s writing makes us laugh, helps us relax, or gives us a welcome break from our day.

Lisa Iannini of The House of Tang is a good example of this approach. She’s serializing her historical fiction novel on Substack before publication without a paywall. For many debut authors, the first book isn’t about generating subscription revenue, it’s about building the readership that can help attract a publisher.

This is the most common subscription model for those of us who have educational Substacks, whether our publications are about writing, about Substack, or something else all together. This includes things like access to tutorials, workshops, guides, courses, downloadable resources, and more.

Your Subscribers aren’t just paying for the items you offer, they’re paying for your expertise and experience. It’s your years of coaching, work, or education in a specific field is what makes your downloadable PDF valuable, not the fancy canva graphics.

An amazing example of how to set up and organize this type of offer is Mira Dessy of The Ingredient Guru. She uses a blend of different subscription models, but as a nutritionist, her Wellness Vault with all the downloadable resources, courses, ebooks and more add a lot of value to her paid subscription. Her many years of experience shines through these items as well as her weekly posts, and it’s her experienced guidance that her subscribers trust.

Often, when people trust your expertise, they start looking for something more personal.

This is a different level of access than a paywalled post or downloadable resources. Instead your readers are paying to be able to have access to you. Typically this is on a teaching level, but not always. There are a couple different methods Substack has to make this possible; the chat, and direct messaging. But you can also use Zoom or another video call option to create meetings for your subscribers.

I use this model myself; besides offering my workshops, I also host Zoom office hours for my paid subscription tier. What people are really paying for in this model is direct access to your thinking, your experience, and your ability to answer their specific questions.

This is probably one of the most popular and successful Substack offers. There are many different ways to offer community on Substack - chats, zoom meetings, and more. In this model, subscribers aren’t upgrading for information but because they want to join in the conversations and interact both with you and especially with all the other subscribers who make up your community. What makes this different from Access to You, is that you’re encouraging your subscribers to interact with each other, more so than with you personally.

If you want to see an incredible example of an active community on Substack, check out Misha Collins from The AnteSocial by eM&M. The Antesocial chats are the most active chat threads I’ve seen on Substack, and the chats aren’t the only form of community that they offer.

Notice that only one of these models relies on putting articles behind a paywall.

Before you think about pricing, or even about what specific items your paid subscribers will receive, ask yourself this question first:

Why do people already come to my publication?

Are they looking for thoughtful essays? A carefully curated collection of resources? Your years of experience? A supportive community? A place to laugh? A place to learn?

Once you’re clear about the value you’re already creating, choosing the right paid model becomes much easier. Instead of trying to invent something completely new, you’re simply giving your readers an opportunity to support, or go deeper into, the work they’re already enjoying.

Continue reading about paid subscriptions: Is a paid subscription actually the right model for your publication, and if it is, how much “should” you charge?