How it's going monetizing writing (2 years later!)

What it's like, what I've learned, and how it's been going since I added a paywall tier to my writing.

I think there’s this misconception that Substack writers who monetize or paywall their writing are raking in the cash. That’s true for a super select few— they’re just very visible, they write popular newsletters. Many of them brought an audience they spent a long time building elsewhere to the platform. There’s years of hard work there.

The vast majority are making little to no money. Substack defines its “Best Sellers” as newsletters that have over 100 paid subscribers. That’s it! That’s all it took for me to become a Substack Best Seller, which I wore like a little badge of honor for a few weeks after I hit the milestone. (Before it started to stress me out, which is a whole other story below…)

But I didn’t hit the milestone the day I started paywalling my writing… not at all. (By the way, revisiting that post… it was a banger! Good tools in there, I forgot I made that resource.)

I came to Substack with an email list of somewhere between 10-15,000 people who had been following along with my journey as the founder of a design-forward, sustainable marketplace. (Hi, if you’ve been here the whole time!) As I started writing about other stuff, a lot— almost half— of those people left the party. Another few thousand found me afterwards and came to join the party!

When I hit publish on that post above and added a paid tier, I thought for sure I’d have a decent swath of readers who’d come along for the ride. I’d done the math, done it again, and contemplated the decision for over a year. Monetizing at the “right” time felt really important! (In hindsight, there’s no “right” time.)

There are all sorts of valid arguments for not paying for a Substack. I’m human, I have bills to pay. I rotate my subscriptions, I can’t spend $5-9 on every single newsletter I want to read. I get it.

But this is a candid look at the positives, the negatives, and the learnings that I’ve slowly unearthed since monetizing my passion.

This foray into earning income from my writing? Very much a first rodeo for me!