How to start and grow your own Substack

It's the best platform for community-building and making money from emails. Here's why you should start a Substack and how to make it work for you (even if you have no following or mailing list)...

This is coming from the new ‘business’ section of my Substack. If you’d prefer not to receive emails like this - you can change your preferences here: annieridout.substack.com/account.

Substack.

I launched my Substack back in March 2023 for a few reasons.

Firstly, I was fed up with paying Mailchimp £60 a month to host my list and send out emails, even if I wasn’t earning any money from those emails.

Secondly, I was looking for a new way to earn a living as a writer. I write books, and I love it, but I can’t yet live entirely off advances/book sales.

Thirdly, I liked the idea of creating a proper writing habit: one email a week.

I signed up and within months, I was earning a few hundred pounds a month. A few months later, that had doubled.

Most importantly, this is all from writing articles. It feels like blogging, which I love, but I get paid something to do it.

I’ve been in the boom-and-bust cycle while running an online course business and I don’t want to go there again.

This time, it’s about a slower, more sustainable approach. Bringing in the feminine energy of community, creativity, collaboration and reciprocity.

But the aim is to earn enough each month from Substack that I don’t need to do any other work.

I’m getting there.

(I will continue writing books as long as I’m being commissioned, because I love that work too.)

Disclaimer:

I can’t promise that by following my instructions, you’ll soon be earning loads of money.

But I can promise that there’s a possibility.

And that if you really want to do this, and put in the work and keep going… there’s a chance you’ll be earning a neat income in time.

And that on the way there, you’ll likely have lots of fun. Because Substack is a brilliant platform. I feel more excited about this right now than I do any other platform.

I feel like Substack is, in 2023, what online courses were in 2019: about to massively BOOM. So why not get in now, and be a part of that?

Here’s everything I know, so far, about launching a Substack and making it work for you and your readers …

Why join Substack?

Someone in my community (also a friend) asked me if it was worth her setting up a Substack, as she doesn’t have much of a mailing list or social following.

My answer was: YES. Because Substack is not just a platform for sending out emails but it acts like a social platform, too.

The algorithm will pick up on accounts that are getting attention and send more potential readers their way.

If you compare this to Mailchimp, MailerLite, Klaviyo etc - other email hosting platforms - you send out emails there and unless your readers share them, that’s where it ends.

With Substack, you can add…