Social media has collectively lost the plot.

I have been on Instagram for nine years, posting religiously multiple times per day.

I have been on Substack for 9 months.

Guess which one pays us more?

Since December, we have earned $100K+ in annual subscriber revenue between two publications.

Now, I always want to be truthful in my marketing, so let me tell you the real reason why that happened for us.

It wasn’t some “magic” button.

We simply took the work we were ALREADY doing and moved it over to somewhere that actually paid us for it.

I was already writing content. I was already filming content. I have been pouring years of legitimate IP into my social media feeds and I got a few likes and comments here and there.

My team started working Substack, learning how the platform operates, decided to take my best work and migrate it there...

Same work, different address.

And… it converted. Like INSTANTLY.

Before you keep reading, I am hosting a 30-day Substack Paid Subscriber Growth challenge starting September 9th. I share all the details down at the end of this article, but if you’re already sold on the fact that Substack is the place for you to build your brand and thought leadership (AND get paid for it), you can go ahead and sign up below:

Join the Substack 30-Day Challenge!

If you’re a paid annual subscriber of The Sacred Art of Selling, you get a $180 discount, so make sure to check your email for the discount code!

Now… here’s why this is a MASSIVE opportunity for you, especially if you are new to Substack, and JUST starting to get your bearings here (we were in your shoes a few months ago!)

According to Imperva’s 2026 Bad Bot Report, bots accounted for 53% of all web traffic in 2025, up from 51% the year before. Human activity fell to just 47%.

Roughly half of all newly published English-language articles are now primarily AI-generated, per Graphite’s study of 55,400 URLs from Common Crawl, updated in May 2026 across three separate detection tools.

Instagram’s average engagement rate sits around 0.45% as of Q2 2026 per Social Insider, down about 24% year over year.

Facebook page organic reach has dropped to roughly 1.37%, which means 137 out of every 10,000 people who followed you on purpose will even see what you shared.

(Mind you, my last 8 posts on Substack have averaged between 3-5 thousand views per post).

Trust is collapsing before our eyes right alongside all of this.

Edelman’s 2026 Trust Barometer, nearly 34,000 people across 28 countries, named the growing use of generative AI platforms as one of the five forces that most eroded trust over the last 5 years.

You are creating for a room that is half machines, filled with content half of which was also made by machines, watched by people whose trust in everything they see online is at a record low.

And you have been banging your head against a wall, wondering why the content you spent hours creating, got 11 likes.

Instagram is monetized by keeping you on the platform through dopamine hits that capture attention in 30-second increments. It’s simply the business model, and it works.

Substack, on the other hand, is monetized by building deep trust through long-form content. Also a business model. Also works.

They are not competing for the same thing. They are rewarding two completely different behaviors, and most of you are running conviction content inside a virality machine and wondering why you can’t crack the code.

It’s because Instagram rewards the aesthetic. Constructed personas, curated feeds, content created based on what’s “trending.”.

If you’re anything like me and value deep, meaningful long form work, your content probably underperforms there.

My content is too boring for Instagram.

As a former NFL cheerleader, there was a point where I came to the conclusion that I wanted to use my brains over my body to grow my business.

That led me to the Fortune 500 world, where I learned sales and how to lead teams, where I ran 17 locations, carried full P&L responsibility, and became our team’s youngest female Senior Vice President.

I did not do all of that so I could come dance for an algorithm at 41 to go “viral” and get clients.

Some people are.

Some people want to climb the ladder of influence, go viral, gain internet popularity

And there are people like me, who want to be quiet millionaires.

If you are reading this, I am going to guess you are the second one. Which means your content is probably not built to win where you have been posting it. And that gap between the quality of what you are making and the results you are getting is not a talent problem.

It is a location problem.

Three things are happening on Substack that are not happening anywhere else.

First, the platform is optimized for trust, and we are in a trust recession. People need seven to eleven hours with you before they buy anything meaningful. If they are consuming you in 30-second B-roll, that can take months. Long-form articles, videos, Substack lives, podcasts… allof it moves someone through that window in a FRACTION of the time. You are not making more content. You are making content that counts more per unit.

Second, the friction is gone. Think about where you spend money without thinking. The places your card is already loaded and it is one click. On Substack, a reader never even has to leave the platform to upgrade.

They don’t have to create an account to read your article.

One click… and they are paid. And from there, they can move from your Substack straight into your actual ecosystem It’s frictionless.

Third (and this could change in the future, which is why now is the time to take Substack seriously) is that does not support advertising yet. Which means, they make money when you make money. When you start generating paid subscribers and hit bestseller status, they have a direct financial reason to put you in front of more people. It becomes a discoverability engine pointed at you, for free.

Almost 50% of our new traffic in the last two weeks stretch came from inside the platform. Not from our list, not from our socials. Directly from Substack.

As of April 2026, Substack reports 50 million active subscriptions and more than 5 million paid. Nearly 100,000 publications are earning money, double from May 2025. Writers collectively earned $450 million through the platform in 2025. Average open rates run about 44%, which is about twice the email industry standard.

I was not in business yet in 2012 when Instagram had this moment, and the people who took it seriously then are still sitting at the top of that platform 15 years later.

I am a slow adapter and an early innovator. I resisted Instagram for years. I did not want to be on Substack at all.

We only got on because my publishing coach told publishers expect it now for a book deal, so I did it.

Whenever I rave about Substack, I hear some version of the following:

“Does this only work if you teach business?” There are bestseller leaderboards on Substack in the categories of parenting, health and wellness, culture, faith & spirituality, art & illustration, tech, food & drink, sports, politics, news, fashion & beauty, music, climate & environment… I could go on.

The second publication I launched is about parenting and raising confident, courageous daughters. We generated close to $5,000 in under 20 days.

One of our clients is a speech therapist, and got her first 100 paid subscribers in less than a month here.

Another client’s team runs a faith-based publication that has done $6,000+ in revenue.

You don’t have to teach people business or how to make money to do well on Substack.

“My audience isn’t big enough.”

False.

Bestseller status on Substack starts at 100 paid subscribers. Not 100,000 followers. One hundred people who value your work enough to pay for it.

There are no “rules” to how many followers you need to have or how many views your content needs to get before you can start making money here. you can turn paid subscriptions on from day one, with two subscribers.

If you have no audience anywhere, of course this will be a slower and harder process than what we experienced. But if you already have an email list, an Instagram following, a Facebook group, anything, it will be faster. That is just math.

If you have no real expertise, no material, and no willingness to do the daily work, I have no easy button and no fairy dust. This is for people with legitimate IP who have been doing the work and have not been getting paid for it.

The point is that the barrier to entry here is DRAMATICALLY lower than anything else in this industry, and the reward curve is dramatically steeper. That is what low pressure and high reward means: you are taking what you already know and doing it on a platform that will pay you and promote you.

So, for 30 days starting September 9th, my team is running our entire Substack Sales System with you in real time.

One activity texted to you every single morning.

Four live trainings, from setup and fine tuning, to notes that convert, to articles that convert, to a deep-dive on our campaign strategy.

Two live coworking sessions where we give you real feedback on your actual publication.

A curated pod hand-picked by industry and business model, for engagement and accountability.

A Group chat with our full team, to ask questons and get feedback.

Our templates, prompts, and access to our custom GPT.

Plus…weekly prizes to keep you motivated.

You get to keep the prompts, templates, the system, and the recordings forever.

All for just $297 (and if you’re an annual subscriber here, you get $180 off.

Let’s do the math…

30 subscribers at $10/month, or just 3 annual members at $100 means a positive return on your investment.

We are not doing this again until at least next year, and it will 100% cost more when we do.

I am not asking you to add one more thing to your plate, but I am asking you to move something you are already carrying to a place where you will actually get paid for it.

I'm in! Sign me up!

Now, let’s get into the Asset Inventory I make every client go through before they publish a single thing, the free-versus-paid split that decides whether anyone upgrades, and the pricing math I would use if I were starting your publication from zero this week.