Do You Have to Be a Substack Guru to Earn Big on Substack? Spoiler: No

I have interviewed nearly forty successful Substack creators over the last six months for the Career Pivot Playbooks Series (see my methodology and key patterns in ‘Over the Last 6 Months, I’ve Interviewed 39 Successful Substack Creators’).

The breadth of industries is striking.

Many of the people building the largest businesses on Substack didn’t start as creators at all. They were professionals first.

Engineers. Lawyers. Professors. Product managers. Doctors. Journalists. Managers. Marketers. Teachers. Consultants… all with deep, real‑world expertise.

Yet one criticism of Substack comes up again and again.

“The only people making money are the ones teaching everyone else how to make money on Substack.”

So I decided to test whether that was actually true.

Scroll through any “top earners” list, and yes, at first, the criticism holds up… the same faces show up.

• Growth coaches.

• Substack strategists.

• Creator-economy commentators.

But look past the growth advice, and something else was hiding underneath it and the evidence is laid out in this post.

I went back through more than forty interviews, treating each one as a case study in how modern careers are evolving. The numbers made one thing clear: the assumption that you have to write about Substack to make money from it is false.

What was worse… this idea actually puts a lot of people off starting in the first place.

Looking at what separated people earning meaningful income from those simply posting into the void, one sentence kept coming back, regardless of industry.

The newsletter wasn’t where the value was created. It was where the value finally became visible.

The more professionals I interviewed, the less these sounded like different stories. I started hearing the same story…

I began hearing the same pattern repeatedly.

That pattern is what I’m calling the Expertise Visibility Pathways.

As a Career Advisor, I see more and more professionals beginning to realise that long-term career resilience won’t come from a job title. It will come from treating their expertise as a portable asset.

… and that the biggest wins rarely come from being internet famous.

Instead, they come from being exceptionally useful to a specific audience with a specific problem.

In this article, I’ll show you why many of Substack’s most successful businesses weren’t built by media insiders at all, but by professionals who translated real-world expertise into recurring income.

Here are the seven routes I have witnessed on repeat, that can take a professional in an existing traditional career path and lead them to creating income that doesn’t depend on one employer.

It’s not about reinvention.

It’s about translation.

What shows up again and again across the Expertise Visibility Pathways below is the importance of not only knowledge, but also judgment, experience, pattern recognition, credibility, consistency, and trust.

None of that requires being a “creator.”

But it does require being willing to say, in public, what you already know.

Below is a breakdown of exactly how professionals are using to build diversified income from their expertise.

Just choose your pathway…

A quick note before we start: examples come from the Career Pivot Playbooks archive and public reporting. The examples illustrate the strategy rather than claim verified earnings. Pricing ranges are indicative based on experience and research, but notably vary by audience, expertise, industry and offer.

The move. A teacher, professor, or subject-matter educator takes the exact instructional instinct that used to serve one institution and points it at a public audience instead.

Their qualified expertise becomes the judgment filter readers trust.

Proves you can explain an area of expertise clearly, consistently, and in public. Teach one useful idea, answer one important question, or give the reader a standalone win.

Put complete frameworks, step-by-step implementation plans, templates, exercises, worked examples and deeper lessons behind the paywall. The most valuable transformation can become courses, cohorts, workshops, memberships or personalized coaching.

Most educator-led Substack businesses don’t rely on subscriptions alone. The newsletter builds trust, but the larger share of revenue often comes from applying or packaging that expertise elsewhere.

(These are illustrative market ranges based on publicly advertised offers and common industry pricing.)

Typical pricing looks something like this:

• Paid newsletter: $5–15/month

• Live workshop: $50–250

• Short cohort: $200–1,000

• Online course: $99–997+

• 1:1 coaching: $100–500+/hour

• Corporate training: $1,000–10,000+ per engagement

• Newsletter sponsorship: $50 up to $5,000+ per placement.

The biggest misconception is that educators are selling information.

They’re not.

They’re selling clarity.

People pay because you’ve already done the hard work of deciding what matters, what order to learn it in, and how to get from confusion to competence faster than they could alone.

→ Don Long: turned his experience in marketing and early-career development into The Internship Guy, an educational platform reaching more than 48,000 readers and helping students close the gap between academic learning and workplace experience.

→ Anne‑Laure Le Cunff: neuroscientist and ex‑Google PM who built Hypercurious into a newsletter read by 125,000+ people, then layered paid books, courses, and workshops teaching mindful productivity and evidence‑based learning.

→ Axel Meierhoefer, PhD: after building his own property portfolio, created Ideal Wealth Grower to teach busy professionals how to generate passive income through residential property investing.

→ Shagoon Nayyar: teaches identity work, healing and subconscious reprogramming through her coaching and healing practice, The Rewrite.

Multiplier, paired with Subscription for trust.

The move. Years spent leading teams, making decisions, fixing broken processes, or scaling organisations become a public asset instead of remaining locked inside one employer.

The value isn’t management theory. It’s pattern recognition earned through real operational experience.

Share practical leadership lessons, decision-making principles, operational mistakes, behind-the-scenes case studies and fixes that demonstrate how you approach real organizational problems.

Put operating playbooks, decision frameworks, diagnostic tools and case studies behind the paywall, then apply that judgment through workshops, coaching, consulting or fractional leadership.

Most operator-led Substack businesses generate relatively little income from subscriptions alone. The newsletter demonstrates credibility, while the larger revenue comes from organizations paying for direct access to your experience.

Typical pricing looks something like this:

• Paid newsletter: $10–20/month

• Executive coaching: $250–1,000+/hour

• Strategy workshop: $1,000–5,000/day

• Fractional executive: $3,000–15,000+/month

• Corporate consulting: $5,000–50,000+ per project

• Newsletter sponsorship: $100 up to $10,000+ per placement.

People think that operators are just selling management advice.

They’re not.

They’re selling judgment that comes with experience.

Companies don’t pay for generic leadership principles.

They pay for someone who’s already solved the problem they’re facing, knows which mistakes to avoid, and can see around corners before everyone else in the room.

→ Michael Wallace: turned three decades of experience building businesses across mortgage banking, real estate, title insurance and media into New View, now read by nearly 10,000 people. The newsletter supports paid memberships, live sessions and consulting work with founders and executives.

→ Dheeraj Sharma: 20 years in enterprise IT and cloud leadership; GenAI Unplugged hit Substack Bestseller status in just over six months.

→ John Brewton: scaled and exited a $75M family business; grew Operating from 1,014 to 6K+ subscribers and past $200,000 in ARR within nine months of consistent publishing.

→ Juan Salas-Romer: a four-time founder with $35M in exits; runs Build to Thrive after rebuilding through multiple market disruptions and now helps founders gain clarity, leverage, and momentum.

Upsell, often paired with Multiplier once frameworks, playbooks, or operating systems are packaged into reusable products.

The move. An analyst, researcher, engineer, investor, scientist, or technical specialist takes years of pattern recognition that once lived inside reports, board papers, research notes, or internal briefings and starts publishing that judgment directly.

The key isn’t just information. It’s being able to show what matters, what doesn’t, and what may happen next and why.

Explain complex developments, highlight emerging trends and share timely analysis that demonstrates your ability to separate signal from noise.

Put deeper research, proprietary data, forecasts, detailed briefings and decision-ready analysis behind the paywall, then extend that insight into licensed reports, advisory retainers or institutional consulting.

Most analyst-led businesses generate recurring income because readers are paying for judgment that stays current rather than information that quickly becomes outdated.

Common pricing ranges include:

• Paid newsletter: $15–50/month

• Premium research report: $99–1,000+

• Industry briefing: $250–2,500

• Advisory retainer: $2,000–10,000+/month

• Corporate or institutional consulting: $5,000–50,000+ per engagement

• Newsletter sponsorship: $100 up to $15,000+ per placement.

As expertise becomes more specialised and commercially valuable, institutional clients often become the largest source of revenue.

There’s a misconception that analysts are just selling information..

They’re not.

They’re selling their filtered judgment.

Information is everywhere.

The ability to recognise patterns early, filter signal from noise, explain complexity clearly, and consistently make good calls is what people actually pay for.

→ Ollie Forsyth: left venture capital and built NEW ECONOMIES, a technology intelligence newsletter read by more than 78,000 subscribers, turning market analysis and trend spotting into a premium research business.

→ Cristina Patrick: Equal Employment Opportunity Specialist and responsible AI expert who transformed years of analysing AI governance, employment law, and emerging workplace risks into The Responsible AI Brief, helping professionals understand not just what's happening, but what it means and what to do next.

→ Nitin Sharma: His Substack, AI Made Simple, is practical, accessible AI guidance for professionals. He has transformed years of analysing AI tools and workflows into a newsletter read by tens of thousands, helping people use AI to work smarter and earn more.

→ Carter Lusher: former Gartner Research Fellow who turned three decades of analyst-relations expertise into AR Intelligence, supported by research, workshops and advisory services.

Subscription, often paired with Upsell for executive advisory and institutional consulting, with Revenue becoming increasingly important as a trusted audience attracts sponsors.

The move. Doctors, psychologists, physiotherapists, dietitians, pharmacists, therapists, lawyers, accountants and other licensed professionals take the judgment they’ve developed through years of practice and make it available beyond appointments or consultations.

The expertise doesn’t change. The reach does.

Explain evidence, correct common misconceptions, and offer general educational guidance that demonstrates trustworthy professional judgment.

Put deeper education, specialist resources, case-based learning and premium Q&As behind the paywall. Then expand into courses, memberships, group programs, professional training or consulting without replacing individualized advice.

Most licensed professionals build their newsletter around education rather than diagnosis or individual advice. The newsletter establishes credibility, while the larger opportunities come from teaching, community, and specialised programmes.

Common pricing ranges include:

• Paid newsletter: $8–20/month

• Professional membership: $15–50/month

• Educational course: $99–1,000+

• Group programme: $250–2,000

• Professional workshop or CME/CPD training: $500–5,000+

• Corporate or organisational consulting: $2,000–25,000+ per engagement

• Newsletter sponsorship: $100 up to $10,000+ per placement.

Licensed professionals are not just selling medical or professional advice.

They’re selling credentialed, trusted and validated judgment.

Information is available everywhere.

Professional judgment… built through years of education, regulation, and real-world experience, is what helps people decide which information actually applies to them.

That’s what readers pay to access.

→ Matthew Snider (BitFinance): left management consulting, got fully licensed (Investment Adviser Representative Series 65), and built BitFinance as an investment advisory newsletter for 18K+ investors.

→ Nick Norwitz MD PhD (StayCurious Metabolism): Harvard MD and Oxford PhD; grew paid subscribers from 900 to 5,200 in eight months; now writes to an audience of tens of thousands (60K+ total).

→ Dr. Linda Bluestein, MD (The Bendy Bulletin): writes to 11,000+ subscribers as an education and peer-collaboration space for joint hypermobility, EDS, HSD, POTS, MCAS, and chronic pain.

→ Annie Fenn, MD (Brain Health Kitchen): former OB-GYN who transformed decades of clinical experience into Brain Health Kitchen (44K subscribers), combining newsletters, courses, books, recipes, and educational programmes focused on Alzheimer’s prevention and brain health.

→ Ellen Hendriksen, PhD (How to Be Good to Yourself When You're Hard on Yourself): clinical psychologist at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders; 8,700+ subscribers; translates evidence-based psychology on perfectionism, anxiety, and self-acceptance into practical guidance.

Subscription, often paired with Multiplier through courses, books, and professional education programmes.

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The move. Designers, writers, chefs, photographers, illustrators, stylists, marketers, creators and makers spend years developing an eye for quality long before anyone pays for it.

Over time, instinct becomes expertise. What once looked from the outside like “just a hobby” becomes a valuable commercial skill that can be taught, applied, or licensed.

Showcase your taste, creative process, techniques and finished work while giving readers useful inspiration or a small result they can create themselves.

Put detailed tutorials, templates, behind-the-scenes processes, critiques and premium resources behind the paywall. Then you can offer courses, workshops, commissions, consulting, products or licensing.

Creative businesses rarely depend on one income stream. The newsletter builds an audience, while multiple products and services create a resilient business.

Common pricing ranges include:

• Paid newsletter: $5–15/month

• Digital templates or resources: $20–200

• Creative workshop: $50–500

• Online course: $99–1,000+

• Brand or creative consulting: $150–500+/hour

• Commercial projects or licensing: $1,000–20,000+ per engagement

• Newsletter sponsorship: $50 up to $10,000+ per placement.

Creatives aren’t just selling their talent.

They’re selling taste.

Thousands of people can learn the same software, recipes, or techniques.

Very few develop the judgment to know what works, why it works, and how to create consistently high-quality outcomes.

That’s what clients and readers pay for.

→ Caroline Chambers: grew What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking from a few thousand early subscribers into Substack's #1 Food & Drink publication, with hundreds of thousands of readers and more than 20,000 paid subscribers.

→ Wendy MacNaughton: built DrawTogether, now reaching 112,000+ subscribers and ranked #3 in Art & Illustration, turning artistic expertise into a thriving subscription community.

→ Kate Watson-Smyth: turned more than 20 years of interiors journalism into Mad About The House, combining a Paid Tier with bestselling books, design consultations, interior-design retreats, a podcast, and a curated affiliate store.

→ Marcus Bridgewater (Garden Marcus): Wellness educator who combines plant care with personal growth on Life’s Toolbox. His revenue mix includes a Paid Tier, books, speaking engagements, workshops, and digital content, that help people nurture their gardens and themselves.

Multiplier, often paired with Upsell through consulting, commissions, or bespoke creative work. As audiences grow, many creative experts also add Subscription for recurring income.

The move. Journalists, authors, commentators, and subject-matter writers stop renting someone else’s audience and start building their own.

Instead of creating value for a publisher, every article compounds into an owned readership, intellectual property, and future opportunities.

Publish distinctive reporting, essays, stories and commentary that demonstrate the perspective readers will want to return to.

Put premium essays, deeper reporting, exclusive series, archives and direct access behind the paywall. Your strongest ideas can grow into audience-backed books (validated through feedback, testimonials and pre-orders). Options to extend into live briefings, events, communities, courses, speaking or advisory work then open up.

Most writer-led businesses don’t rely on subscriptions alone. A loyal readership becomes the foundation for books, speaking, consulting, communities, and other intellectual property.

Common pricing ranges include:

• Paid newsletter: $5–20/month

• Writing membership: $10–50/month

• Book: $15–35

• Writing workshop or cohort: $100–1,000+

• Speaking engagement: $1,000–10,000+

• Corporate writing or advisory projects: $2,000–20,000+

• Newsletter sponsorship: $50 up to $20,000+ per placement.

The biggest misconception is that writers are selling words.

But in truth, they’re selling perspective.

Readers can find information anywhere.

They subscribe because they trust how you interpret events, connect ideas, and consistently produce thinking worth returning for.

Over time, that perspective becomes intellectual property that extends far beyond a single article.

→ Neera Mahajan:15 years in IT management; “One Book To $100K” became an Amazon New Releases bestseller, its companion cohort filling in three weeks. She writes Author Circle.

→ Gunnar Habitz: 31-time published author who built Busy Book Builder to help professionals turn their expertise into books that build authority, audience and income, supported by author coaching, courses and his Write Your Book Backwards programme.

→ Laura Kennedy: journalist whose newsletter and Podcast, Peak Notions, now earns her more than any newspaper column she wrote in her media career with 15K+ subscribers.

→ Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and Cecilia Lyra: turned their publishing expertise and popular podcast into The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, an 85K+ subscriber newsletter, with paid memberships, courses, virtual retreats and writing resources forming a broader ecosystem for emerging authors.

Here’s the final profession that proves the same principle.

Subscription, often paired with Multiplier through books, courses, communities, and speaking.

The move. Some professionals don’t fit neatly into education, management, analysis, or the creative industries. Instead, they build careers around a highly specialised capability.. privacy law, sales, product, AI ethics, procurement, customer success, or project delivery.

Once that expertise becomes visible and valuable, people begin paying for direct access to it.

Share specialist insights, practical frameworks, common mistakes and real-world case studies that demonstrate the depth and commercial value of your expertise.

Reserve advanced frameworks, specialist case studies and decision-making guidance for paid readers that solve their specific challenges. Then you can offer direct access to your expertise through training, consulting, advisory work or fractional leadership.

Most specialist professionals don’t build businesses around subscriptions alone. The newsletter establishes authority, while consulting and advisory work generate the majority of revenue.

Common pricing ranges include:

• Paid newsletter: $8–20/month

• Workshop: $500–3,000

• Specialist training: $500–5,000

• Consulting: $2,000–20,000+ per project

• Fractional specialist: $2,000–10,000+/month

• Speaking engagement: $1,000–10,000+

• Newsletter sponsorship: $100 up to $10,000+ per placement.

Many would argue that leaning into specialist knowledge is too niche.

It’s usually the opposite.

The narrower your expertise, the fewer people can genuinely compete with you. The real opportunity isn’t usually in a single skill. It’s in the unique intersection of skills you’ve accumulated over time.

• The teacher who learned UX and now helps organizations design better learning experiences.

• The engineer who combines technical expertise with storytelling to explain complex ideas.

• The doctor who understands AI well enough to help clinicians use it safely.

People don’t hire specialists because they know everything.

They hire them because they know one important thing exceptionally well.

Making that expertise visible is often enough to attract opportunities that never appear through traditional networking alone.

→ Nick Martin: turned experience facilitating hundreds of workshops into WorkshopBank, where he teaches consultants and team leaders how to design sessions that create measurable behavioural change, supported by facilitation tools, training and specialist consulting.

→ Jill Davidian: left the traditional corporate path and moved into instructional design and now helps others design better learning experiences. She publishes Jumpstart Your Instructional Design Career, read by more than 29,000 subscribers.

→ Daniel Solove: privacy-law professor who uses Solove on Tech to make privacy, AI and digital regulation accessible, supporting a wider business built around books, speaking, professional education and specialist privacy training.

→ Rob Litterst: former pricing consultant who built Good Better Best into a 10,000+ subscriber newsletter dedicated to SaaS pricing and packaging. He then co-founded PricingSaaS, turning that specialist knowledge into a research platform used by thousands of software operators.

→ Ashley Butler: physician turned healthcare founder who chose alignment over status, documenting her next chapter while building Not Sorry around career reinvention, purpose, and leadership.

Upsell, often paired with Multiplier once specialist frameworks, playbooks, or training programmes are productized.

Most people only see the visible layer of a successful Substack: the subscriber count, the viral Note, the follower graph, the like button lighting up.

What they don’t see is what’s underneath it.

Twenty-five years in medicine. Fifteen years in management consulting. Ten years at Airbnb. Thirty years standing in front of a classroom.

The expertise existed long before the newsletter did.

The newsletter didn’t create the value. It just made it visible to many for the first time.

Sells clarity and structured learning, through courses, cohorts, memberships, or coaching programmes.

Best engine fit: Multiplier, paired with Subscription.

Sells operational judgment earned from leading people, teams, and organisations, through fractional leadership, executive coaching, or advisory retainers.

Best engine fit: Upsell, often paired with Multiplier.

Sells insight, foresight, and the ability to make complexity understandable, through premium research, subscriptions, licensed intelligence, or strategic advisory.

Best engine fit: Subscription for readers, Upsell for institutions.

Sells trusted professional judgment built through qualifications and real-world practice, through memberships, specialist education, advisory services, or premium subscriptions.

Best engine fit: Subscription, often complemented by Multiplier.

Sells creative judgment, taste, and execution refined over years of practice, through courses, memberships, consulting, commissions, or creative services.

Best engine fit: Multiplier, often paired with Upsell.

Sells perspective, original reporting, and intellectual property, through independent subscriptions, books, communities, speaking, and premium writing.

Best engine fit: Subscription, paired with Multiplier.

Sells highly specialised expertise that solves valuable problems, through consulting, fractional engagements, workshops, speaking, or strategic advisory.

Best engine fit: Upsell, often with the highest client value of any pathway.

If you need any more inspiration, let me introduce a few professionals building their own portfolio careers on Substack.

They aren’t starting from zero because they are leading with their real world successes and leveraging trust.

→ David Roy: scaled more than $100M in revenue as a technical sales leader before launching Eng Sales, where he now helps B2B sales teams and founders build predictable revenue through the Revenue Flywheel System.

→ Cory Blumenfeld: five-time founder with two startup exits across healthtech, fintech, and business services, now building Taking My Time Back by sharing practical lessons on leadership, systems, delegation, and scaling businesses from firsthand operating experience.

→ Florian Godefroy: from The AI Sales Lab brings enterprise sales professional testing AI on real deals, real prospects, and real quota pressure before sharing what actually works with other sales professionals.

→ Ilham: building 1% Wiser around a clearly defined audience of deep feelers, translating her perspective on emotional sensitivity into practical guidance for finding greater clarity and calm.

I too started Substack believing that only people who teach Substack could do well, that you had to be an ‘influencer’ or a ‘creator’ to build an audience, that you needed a ‘side hustle’ project to to make money online.

But what I now know is that the people quietly building remarkable businesses weren’t reinventing themselves.

They were translating decades of experience into something that many other people could finally see, trust, and pay for.

The common denominator? These professionals became visible experts.

Most people think building more income streams starts by finding a new idea.

These examples suggest something different.

It starts by recognizing the value that’s already been sitting inside your career all along.

The expertise was never missing.

Only the visibility and knowing how to make it happen was.

Almost nobody who reached meaningful income on this list relied on a single pathway.

• Taught something informally for years? You’re probably closest to the Educator Pathway, with the course or cohort as the real income sitting behind the free writing.

• Made decisions under pressure, at scale, or fixed a broken process? You’re probably closest to the Operator/Manager Pathway, with advisory or fractional work as the destination.

• Been early and been right, or made something complex legible to the room? You’re probably closest to the Analyst/Technical Expert Pathway.

• Applied your value one-on-one, in a clinical room, a styling session, or a brand consult? You’re probably closest to the Licensed Professional or Creative Expert Pathway, with direct paid access as the destination.

• Explained, reported, or wrote something better than the institution you worked for? You’re probably closest to the Media/Writer Pathway.

• Been paid by the hour or the headcount rather than by the month? You’re probably closest to the Niche Expert Pathway.

If you see yourself in one of those, that's not an opportunity for reinvention… it's the start of opening up your pathway to building a portfolio career full of compounding assets.

The biggest myth is that you need to become a Substack influencer to make money on Substack.

From what I have witnessed, it may just be another barrier some professionals put up to talk themselves out of even trying.

But this archive proves the opposite.

Some of the highest earners on Substack repositioned expertise they already had, built in rooms most people never see, into value for a far bigger audience than any single job ever could.

Those who have started… and kept going are now reaping the benefits.

So you do not need to become a Substack guru to build a business on Substack.

You need expertise that solves a real problem, the courage to make it visible, and an income engine that turns trust into revenue.

The expertise was never missing.

Only the visibility was.

No, not necessarily, but it is becoming a tool to showcase your expertise for sure.

But a lot of the examples above started from expertise built inside a job, not a following built in public. The audience came after the expertise was made visible, not before.

Operators, analysts, and managers all sit in this list, and none of them are conventionally glamorous. The value was never the topic. It was the judgment underneath it, so don’t be put off.

Yes, provided it’s been practiced long enough to produce real judgment, not just enthusiasm. The styling and food examples above both followed years of unpaid practice before a single dollar came in.

I would start with whichever one already has proof behind it, a document, a result, a person you’ve already helped informally, rather than the one that sounds most impressive on paper.

The newsletter wasn't where the value was created. It was where the value finally became visible.

I’m Katharine Gallagher, a career strategist helping professionals build income options and stay relevant as work evolves.

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🤔Which pathway sounds most like you… and what expertise are you ready to make more visible?
Drop it in the comments, and let’s keep the conversation going.