This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey, what's up? Welcome to a brand new week. Welcome as well to my daily podcast, Side Hustle School. I've been putting together this show for 1,591 days now in a row. I'm so glad you're joining in. Whether this is your first episode or your 1,591st episode,
that's how it is for me. I've actually been here for all of them, but then again, it's my show. But hey, guess what? This is your show too. It's all about creating freedom through the form of a money-making project. What is something you can do right away to not just make some extra
money, which is cool, but also create an asset that allows you to do more of what's important to you. Whether that is to get out of debt or create an all-new income or make a big career transition or just do something creative. In fact, today's episode can hit on all those, today's listener question, let's say, because blogging is cool again. At least it seems that way. You may have heard some reports or seen some reports about journalists who've gone freelance, have gone independent, and are earning large sums of money through newsletters.
The most common platform these newsletters use is Substack, which allows independent writers to publish free and paid versions of their newsletter. So how much money are we talking about? And should you look into this? That's what today's listener wants to know. Should I start a Substack newsletter?
So let's talk about how it works, pros and cons, all that kind of stuff after this quick message from our sponsor. Stay tuned. Hi Chris, this is Sarah, and I just recently found your show. I'm really enjoying the content so far, and I'm excited there are a ton of episodes to listen to. Long ago, I had a blog, and then it went the way most blogs go to the blog graveyard of neglected posts. I enjoyed it well, it lasted, but I got busy with other stuff, and I figured that blogging
was dead anyway, so I should focus my side hustle attention on other channels like YouTube. However, I have been hearing a lot about Substack. As best I can tell, it's a newsletter service that does a lot of what blogs always did, except people pay for it. Am I right? And if I wanted to start a Substack newsletter myself, what should I know in advance? Thanks, and looking forward to hearing
from you. Hey Sarah, thanks so much for the message. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you, and I think we've all had a blog that ended up in the blog graveyard of neglected posts. So yes, always interesting to consider. Can we bring that back somehow?
So for those who don't know, listeners, if you haven't heard of Substack, just to fill you in, you can take a peek at substack.com. Basically, this is a platform that supports independent writers. It makes it really easy to start a newsletter that is free, but also has a paid version. Or even if all of your content is free, you can invite readers to support you, basically. So it's a blend of WordPress and Patreon, and a few different things all mixed up.
I have to admit, when I first saw some articles about Substack, I thought, "Oh, that's cool, but what's new about it?" Because if I go back in my own side hustle entrepreneurial history, 15 years ago, I had a paid newsletter about travel rewards. And of course, there are many others long before that. So I guess part of what's new about Substack is that it's frictionless and simple payment processing is all built in and such. But even that's been done to some degree by other services before. So as to why this is a moment now, I'm not totally sure. But I think I
have a better answer to the second question, which is more pertinent anyway. What should you know if you want to start a paid newsletter, whether it's on Substack or elsewhere? So I think two things, you know, topic and audience. So I mentioned Substack, people making money. There are a number of journalists who are making multiple six figures annually from a Substack newsletter, which is pretty crazy. And not all the data is public, but a lot of it is. And some of
the Substack writers choose to make their data available for anyone. So there are various sites that have leaderboards and such. So if you want to join the club, two things, topic and audience. First of all, unless you have an existing platform, meaning like a lot of people who already follow you, who want to hear from you about all sorts of things, you really, really need to specialize. So the topic has to be broad enough to attract wide interest, yet focus enough to allow you to go deep. Okay, so I mentioned travel before, you know, if your topic was travel,
that wouldn't be so good. Okay, frequent flyer miles to travel around the world for free. That's what I was writing about years ago. That's better, much more specific, much more benefit driven. It could also be some kind of, you know, cooking tutorials from around the world, or it could be like an industry newsletter that analyzes the hospitality world, you know, so there it's very much focused on a different audience. But if you see with each of those three examples, like whether
it's travel rewards, or cooking tutorials, or the hospitality industry newsletter, all three of those examples are much more specific. So apply that kind of thinking to whatever field you're considering. Now, as for audience, some of the people who've done the best with Substack, especially the ones who didn't have a big platform before, they have really focused hard on those free articles, they have written some posts using the Substack format that have done really well, because they've been like in depth, really helpful, practical, or maybe provocative in some way, a couple different approaches. But the point is, they're writing an article that's really interesting, they've gotten a lot of attention for them, you know, those articles tend to spread, and then they have converted some of those people who then join the newsletter over time and to paid subscribers. So topic audience, it's a lot of work, but it's also joyful work for the right person. So if you don't
like writing, this is definitely not for you. If you've always wanted to be a writer, and you're willing to spend a lot of time writing, which is important, right? It's not just being a writer, it's like to do Substack properly, you need to spend a lot of time writing. Could this be a model to look into? I think absolutely, for sure. I mean, some people, as I said, are doing quite well with
it. Even if you don't do, you know, multiple six figures a year with it, if you want to be a writer and build a portfolio in a community over time, then they make it pretty simple. So Substack, by the way, takes 10% of subscription fees, at least at the time I'm making this, which seems reasonable to me. Like you might be able to just do this on your own and not pay the 10%. But the point is, they're making it simple. They have this built-in ecosystem, etc. So I hope that is helpful
to Sarah and anybody else out there who's curious about it. Listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We're going to continue to feature them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you'll subscribe and come back tomorrow. Much more is on the way. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
