Adding the paywall on Substack

Some ideas.

Before my first session with a new coaching client, I send over a set of questions asking what they’d like support with. I love receiving their responses, always full of ideas and ambition and excitement. But I’ve also been noticing a pattern.

Almost everyone who signs up for coaching with me wants to start a Substack. Or, they’ve started one and want to talk about how to add in the paywall. Or get new subscribers. Or, they want to know if their Substack will help them to get a book deal.

When I launched my first Substack - this one - I did it for two reasons:

1. I wanted a weekly writing practice.

2. I wanted to earn money directly from my writing.

I’d been running an online course business alongside having non-fiction books published, sharing my poetry online (and self-publishing prints and books, which became quite a neat little business in itself) and I had started ghostwriting.

I liked my career but I didn’t feel I had much control over the book-publishing side of it. As a non-fiction author and ghostwriter, the power lay in the hands of the publishers, and I was working to their timelines (and payment schedules).

I wanted a way to earn money regularly, and to build something that I had full control over.

But I also wanted to make sure I remained centred as the writer, because there had been points in the past when I’d become known as the course woman and that wasn’t what I wanted the main focus of my work to be, or who I wanted to be known as.

Substack would enable me to be the writer, while also earning a monthly fee - if readers decided to pay for my essays - and I could still launch online courses that taught others how to earn a living online and build a career as a freelance writer.

So, that’s what I’ve spent the past two and a half years doing. I’m fortunate that readers did decide to pay for my essays and I now have a steady-ish monthly income (with around 500 paid subscribers, though they come and go) from Substack.

Now, I’m enjoying teaching others how to approach Substack creatively, and to build a similar writing practice and income stream for themselves. I do this through one-to-one coaching, courses and now, I’ll be sharing a weekly post about Substack here, too.

If you’re not interested in reading about Substack but would like my other essays, head here: annieridout.substack.com/account, scroll to ‘notifications’ and switch the toggle where it says ‘Substack’ to off (pink is on; white is off). If you are interested, make sure you’re subscribed…

How to add in the paywall on Substack

When you’re setting up your Substack, you will find the option, in settings, to open up paid subscriptions. Before doing this, you can invite people to ‘pledge’ if they’d become a paid subscriber, were you to switch on the paid option.

I wrote my first essay, had one person pledge, and that gave me enough confidence to turn on paid subscriptions. Then, I had to work out what to put behind the paywall and what to offer ‘free subscribers’ (who are also of value; all readers are valuable).

This is something people often get stuck on. Do you put all your writing behind a paywall? Some writers do. It gives it an exclusive feel. Do you do half/half? Do you have one monthly post that’s free, and the rest are hidden behind the paywall?

Or, do you think about the community you’re building, where they are at financially, and what approach might work best for them, your readers?

If you’re sharing business tips that will help other people to make money, this will often be quite an easy sell. They will become paid subscribers because the cost of a subscription will be well worth it if they can then earn more money themselves.

If your writing focuses on a social issue that people really care about, it can work to invite people to support your work if they are able to. So, it feels more like a donation or contribution that will help you to keep doing your work. This can feel quite good.

Then, what do you charge for a paid subscription? The lowest option is £3.50/month (about $4.75) and you can go as high as you like. I opted for the lowest, though I experimented with raising it. I settled back at £3.50/month, which feels accessible.

Some business Substacks charge £10/month, or £30/month+ which frames it more like a business membership than a platform to share your writing. Again, I wanted to be the writer on Substack, so my business pieces are mixed in amongst work/life essays.

Whatever you set the price at, you can always change it later. And you can also offer discounts every now and again, which can help to get a flurry of new paid subscribers. Whatever you decide to do, paywall-wise, you’ll need to do a bit of marketing.

Yes, we’re here to write but if we want to be paid, we need to either drag in that paywall with a good cliffhanger right above it - so seductive that people will pay because they need to read what’s written below the paywall - or invite them to support us.

Either way, it’s all in the messaging. If you explain that you love creating this body of work but also have bills to pay and would welcome some support from readers, they may support you. You can tweak the message to keep it fresh. Find new angles.

If you make clear that you are placing a monetary value on your essays by shamelessly pulling in that paywall, they will see that they need to pay to read on. But you can also add a message right above the paywall about what else they’ll get if they subscribe.

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To ‘pull in the paywall’: start writing a new post (to do this, head to dashboard, ‘create new’) and you’ll see ‘more’, top right. There, you select ‘paywall’, click on it and hold it down to drag the paywall to the point in the post where you want it to land.

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For this piece I didn’t add in the paywall, because I wanted it to be available for anyone who wants to read it. The next Substack piece will be behind a paywall, though. If I had wanted to add one in, I’d have put it under:

How to add in the paywall on Substack

[add in paywall]

Readers would have known what they were getting if they became paid subscribers: some tips for adding in the paywall on Substack. It wouldn’t have needed further explanation. Also, I’d have offered a fair bit of ‘free writing’ above the paywall.

Other ideas for what you can offer paid subscribers:

• Can they ask you questions in the Chat feature?

• Will you offer workshops for paid subscribers?

• Will they get access to your archive?

• Will your more in-depth pieces be paywalled?

• Is there some teaching that happens just for paid subscribers?

I’m going to end here but I’ll be exploring paid subscriptions more in the next essay, next week, as it’s going to be about getting your first 100 paid subscribers on Substack, which makes you a ‘bestseller’ and gets you that tick next to your name.

Any questions? I’m here for them.

Annie x