Iโm almost at 100 Paid Subscribers and become a Substack Bestseller.
The next 5 2 annual subscriptions will get a 20% discount ๐ฅ
The best thing about Substack is that you can Substack your way:
- Post weekly, daily, or whenever.
- Pick a niche or write about multiple topics.
- Move the paywall back and forth as you see fit.
When it comes to monetization, thereโs not one formula that fits all.
This is not a prescription but a motivational pill: my experience as I figure things out.
After 12 months of experimentation with the paywall, I have refined a 3D strategy that helps me grow my community and monetize my passion for writing.
For context, I gained 43 paid subscribers in the last 30 days,
It could have been luck, serendipity, or hitting the Substack jackpot, but thereโs more to it. My growth really took off once I started to try new things, take risks and invest in building a real community.
This is how.
1. Products
Exclusive newsletter
Most of us start our monetization journey with the low-hanging fruit: exclusive articles for our paid subscribers.
This is a good starting point, but itโs challenging to monetize at scale, and the growth tends to be marginal rather than incremental.
With platforms like Medium offering access to thousands of brilliant writers and their content for 5$ a month, itโs hard to stand out unless your name is already its own trademark.
Playing the exclusive content card can work if you find the sweet spot between high demand and low offer (think micro-niche or technical topics), but itโs a tough one to crack.
Digital products
Besides exclusive newsletters, digital products are a powerful incentive to convert subscribers.
I give away The Lemon Tree Mindset ebook to my paid members, as it complements my newsletter and itโs an effective guide to start writing online.
While this practice was an incentive for subscribers to upgrade, it was ironically also an incentive to unsubscribe: 2 people used the 7-day free trial, downloaded the ebook, and then canceled the subscription before paying.
Ouch.
I was upset, but hey, if the system is broken, itโs up to me to fix it, so I didโฆ
2. Services
Thereโs something premium about a service: it elevates your offer and makes it more desirable, especially if itโs exclusive.
Think about Apple: You can buy an iPhone everywhere, but what differentiates an Apple Store from the resellers is the service: the customer service, the Genius Bar, the high-touch experience. I worked there for 7 years and we always led with a service-first mindset.
Services can become your competitive advantage, and they can take different shapes:
High-touch services
A one-to-one strategy only applies in the early stages, as itโs time and resource-consuming. Once you reach a certain threshold, you will have a bottleneck, so itโs not sustainable in the long term.
In my early days on Substack, I used my LinkedIn footprint to offer a profile audit as a bonus to upgrade. It was a bargain because most LinkedIn profiles suck (mine did too) and a fresh coat of paint can do wonders and attract leads.
As it was not scalable, I stopped this practice once I started to gain momentum and evolved to a one-to-many strategy. Now, I only offer one-to-one sessions to Founding Members who want personalized coaching.
However, a personalized offer is effective to gain your first paid members - and they will love you for it.
Take advantage of having a small paid subscriber base to offer a high-touch service: private coaching, an audit, or simply a 30-minute coffee chat. You will create your most loyal supporters.
Courses & Cohorts
This is where big Substackers play to win.
Courses and cohorts are great because of their trifecta nature:
Perceived value
Flexibility
Scalability
Cohorts
If you havenโt heard of the Substack Campfire ๐ฅ๐ชตโบ๏ธ, a cohort by top Substackers
and , you should. They joined forces to create a virtual bootcamp to help writers grow on Substack.They offer webinars, interviews with Substack staff and top creators and they are building an awesome community. Iโm speaking on a panel about Substack Notes on 11 July with
, , and .If you are interested, The Lemon Tree Mindset members enjoy a 10% discount.
Courses
In April I launched the Personal Brand Studio๐ฌ, a weekly email course. The content is based on questions and challenges from my subscribers, so I didnโt reinvent the wheel: I built a solution around pre-existing pain points.
The results were immediate: every lesson generated 2-4 new paid subscribers, which is much more than what I was getting until then.
This week, I turned it into a digital guide and launched it on Gumroad, so you can also repurpose your Substack content to monetize it in other channels.
Webinars
In May, I launched the monthly webinars and although I have only hosted 2 so far, the results exceeded my expectations.
Only 6-7 people join the sessions live, but it was enough to keep them interactive, and many others watched the replay on demand. Plus, I had a blast connecting with my tribe live for the first time!
This initiative generated over 20 paid subscribers because my members saw value in having an exclusive session and an opportunity to connect live and ask questions.
Making people feel like people and not just followers and subscribers goes a long way.
My next webinar will take place at the end of July and the topic will be on Substack Acceleration, as requested by my paid subscribers.
The sessions are monthly and paid subscribers can watch them live or on-demand.
3. Community
Iโm still working out Substack Threads to add value to my subscribers (both free and paid), because I see it as a catalyst for connection and collaboration.
Spoiler alert: You will always have more to offer as a community than as an individual, so think bigger.
My vision is to turn my Thread into a positive and collaborative space where my members participate, share experiences and contribute to the collective value and IP of The Lemon Tree Mindset as a community.
I donโt want to plant one lemon tree but an entire forest ๐ณ๐
This is what I mean:
A community helps you drive engagement and loyalty versus having a one-way newsletter. It shifts the focus from you to your tribe.
It doesnโt necessarily attract new paid members, but retention is just as important, as otherwise, you end up with a leaky bucket.
One final thought-provoking question to challenge us all:
Are you nurturing a real community, or are you just scoring numbers on a dashboard?
When you have a true community, the sum is larger than its pieces.
Lemons & Lemonade๐ณ๐
A lot of my work is FREE because I believe in adding value and growing lemon trees together.
If you would like to support my writing, you can upgrade to get some fresh lemonade.
๐Monthly Webinars
๐ The Lemon Tree Mindset ebook
Excellent! I really enjoyed this one. Iโm not sure exactly how the Substack algorithm chose to connect us since we both write about very different topics, but perhaps because weโre both triathletes who like mindset skills!
Iโve launched my Substack one month ago and have almost 100 subscribers (79 were carried over from my personal website) and 1 paid. I have several ideas about things I would like to implement to generate revenue, but Iโm not quite sure how to go about doing it. For example, โIt Listโ- all the gear, kit, equipment, nutrition my husband and I use on a daily basis for our Ironman training, with discounts we use. E-books on transition tips, mental skills for developing a pre-race plan, how to write a race report, creating a race calendar, our ultimate triathlon packing list. But Iโm not sure if the best way to do that is to make them paid posts with a free preview (Not a fan of this) or another method. Suggestions are appreciated!
Really insightful! I will try some of these in the upcoming future!โบ๏ธ