Hi Yana, thanks a lot for all your tips. I think everything you publish is very helpful but without a good way of self manage it, it might end up in failures and abandonment of our publications.
How do you manage to publish daily newsletters and to be responsive in the notes and comments in substack? Right now I am trying to figure out the time that I should be using in commenting, writing notes, of which kind.. when to share links.. I feel bad using time to other things different than writing in my publications.
In regards self management tools, I have that piece covered, in fact in my publication I shared the self management framework or protocol I use for self managing myself. If you have the time I would like to hear your feedback about it too in case you see something missing.
Hi, Yana, thank you for the above answers! All were things I was wondering as well. I have one more to add. Just so I am clear.
So you start on Medium with an article and you take the exact same article and you published it here? Do you do that with all of them? So that your medium and substack accounts basically match?
If yes then that means that in Substack most are behind a monthly subscription paywall? But in Medium they’re available for the $5 monthly subscription paid to Medium where subscribers can read from the entire platform?
I am so grateful I am reading this article from you, referenced btw from Christina Piccoli, just to give her that plug, because these are questions I have been having. I am about to begin a newsletter and I’ve gone back and forth on who to go with. It seemed to make sense to go with both Medium and Substacks. But lord, that’s a boatload of writing this for one and that for another. Like really. That would become a lot fast and confusing to keep straight over time about what I talked about in one and then the other. When the topic would be the same.
So, thank you so much for being willing, kind, and truly helpful to bring clarity to this whole topic.
I changed a bit the workflow because of SEO reasons and also because I believe Substack has better potential. Here’s what I do now:
1. I start on Substack and publish here first for free.
2. I post on Medium and add a link to the Substack post so non members can read for free
3. On Medium post I add the Substack link as a canonical - this way I tell Google to direct traffic to Substack and not Medium in case it finds duplicate content.
My accounts don’t match 100%. I have exclusive posts here. On Medium I also run publications and everything related to them is exclusive there (I don’t see their fit here).
Everything that matches is free here. My intent is to:
1. Enable Medium non-members to read
2. Get these readers emails and monetise in the future
My challenge now is how to send the emails. A lot of my subscribers overlap, so I don’t want to spam them from both platforms. But on the other hand I don’t want to send too much emails on Substack. I write daily to stay consistent on Medium. Right now I send some from Medium and some from Substack but I’d probably will send only from Substack in the future…
I want to ask you a couple of probably dumb questions, perhaps it would help others here too. I value your experience, kindness and wisdom. And I'm don't mind looking stupid (one of those benefits of aging LOL).
I don't really get Substack. Some of the concepts, I do. I guess its the monetizing portion I don't fully understand. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the only way to monetize on Substack is to sell subscription to a newsletter?
I get that for people who have an expertise in some area / great bio, but I'm not one of those. I'm not sure anyone would want to pay for a subscription for my writing. Plus I have a newsletter going on Beehive (started a few months ago).
I feel like I'm missing something, or not connecting the dots somehow?
Hi Val, I like to say there are no stupid questions or bad ideas 🤗
You’re right (partially)! You monetize by selling subscriptions yes, but that’s not the only way.
Other ways to monetize are the same as any other email marketing platform:
- promote affiliate products
- have sponsored content
- sell your digital products / courses
The only thing Substack lacks is automation, but I hope they bring that in the future.
Back to the subscriptions: here the whole platform works towards helping you get more subscribers. There are people who will also support you just because they love what you do even if you’re not a super expert in it (similar like patreon).
From my research I believe you can monetize anything in a specific niche - you only need to write what you’re passionate about. Yes, you need to deliver value, but it doesn’t have to be expertise. It’s even better if it’s not!!! See, that’s the key here - people love to read from experience. They trust experience, not experts, they prefer to read more about experiences of other ordinary non-expert people (like themselves) 😊
All you need is to do what you love, talk about it and share the outcomes - the good and bad, successes and failures.
A few examples come to my mind for you specifically:
- write about your gardening hobby - I believe people will love to read that.
- I see you’re into DYI, it’s a good niche too
- recipes for healthy food
- home made cosmetics
For all of these you can write few guides and sell via Gumroad and Amazon and also provide for free to your paid subscribers.
That’s just a few but I’m sure you can come up with others too.
There are creators here, who monetize their hobbies pretty well. Just focus on value and not entertainment - people will want to pay to learn how to deal with their struggles / problems.
Think about it: all you need is 1000+ subscribers to make $5k/monthly just by selling a $5/m subscription.
Oh, I just make the time. I don’t find time :) that’s it :)
Hi Yana, thanks a lot for all your tips. I think everything you publish is very helpful but without a good way of self manage it, it might end up in failures and abandonment of our publications.
How do you manage to publish daily newsletters and to be responsive in the notes and comments in substack? Right now I am trying to figure out the time that I should be using in commenting, writing notes, of which kind.. when to share links.. I feel bad using time to other things different than writing in my publications.
In regards self management tools, I have that piece covered, in fact in my publication I shared the self management framework or protocol I use for self managing myself. If you have the time I would like to hear your feedback about it too in case you see something missing.
Hi, Yana, thank you for the above answers! All were things I was wondering as well. I have one more to add. Just so I am clear.
So you start on Medium with an article and you take the exact same article and you published it here? Do you do that with all of them? So that your medium and substack accounts basically match?
If yes then that means that in Substack most are behind a monthly subscription paywall? But in Medium they’re available for the $5 monthly subscription paid to Medium where subscribers can read from the entire platform?
I am so grateful I am reading this article from you, referenced btw from Christina Piccoli, just to give her that plug, because these are questions I have been having. I am about to begin a newsletter and I’ve gone back and forth on who to go with. It seemed to make sense to go with both Medium and Substacks. But lord, that’s a boatload of writing this for one and that for another. Like really. That would become a lot fast and confusing to keep straight over time about what I talked about in one and then the other. When the topic would be the same.
So, thank you so much for being willing, kind, and truly helpful to bring clarity to this whole topic.
Hi Theresa,
I changed a bit the workflow because of SEO reasons and also because I believe Substack has better potential. Here’s what I do now:
1. I start on Substack and publish here first for free.
2. I post on Medium and add a link to the Substack post so non members can read for free
3. On Medium post I add the Substack link as a canonical - this way I tell Google to direct traffic to Substack and not Medium in case it finds duplicate content.
My accounts don’t match 100%. I have exclusive posts here. On Medium I also run publications and everything related to them is exclusive there (I don’t see their fit here).
Everything that matches is free here. My intent is to:
1. Enable Medium non-members to read
2. Get these readers emails and monetise in the future
My challenge now is how to send the emails. A lot of my subscribers overlap, so I don’t want to spam them from both platforms. But on the other hand I don’t want to send too much emails on Substack. I write daily to stay consistent on Medium. Right now I send some from Medium and some from Substack but I’d probably will send only from Substack in the future…
how often do you post here. just coming over from medium
I post all my Medium stories, so daily, but you don’t have to. Weekly is just enough.
thank you
Thanks Yana.
I want to ask you a couple of probably dumb questions, perhaps it would help others here too. I value your experience, kindness and wisdom. And I'm don't mind looking stupid (one of those benefits of aging LOL).
I don't really get Substack. Some of the concepts, I do. I guess its the monetizing portion I don't fully understand. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the only way to monetize on Substack is to sell subscription to a newsletter?
I get that for people who have an expertise in some area / great bio, but I'm not one of those. I'm not sure anyone would want to pay for a subscription for my writing. Plus I have a newsletter going on Beehive (started a few months ago).
I feel like I'm missing something, or not connecting the dots somehow?
Hi Val, I like to say there are no stupid questions or bad ideas 🤗
You’re right (partially)! You monetize by selling subscriptions yes, but that’s not the only way.
Other ways to monetize are the same as any other email marketing platform:
- promote affiliate products
- have sponsored content
- sell your digital products / courses
The only thing Substack lacks is automation, but I hope they bring that in the future.
Back to the subscriptions: here the whole platform works towards helping you get more subscribers. There are people who will also support you just because they love what you do even if you’re not a super expert in it (similar like patreon).
From my research I believe you can monetize anything in a specific niche - you only need to write what you’re passionate about. Yes, you need to deliver value, but it doesn’t have to be expertise. It’s even better if it’s not!!! See, that’s the key here - people love to read from experience. They trust experience, not experts, they prefer to read more about experiences of other ordinary non-expert people (like themselves) 😊
All you need is to do what you love, talk about it and share the outcomes - the good and bad, successes and failures.
A few examples come to my mind for you specifically:
- write about your gardening hobby - I believe people will love to read that.
- I see you’re into DYI, it’s a good niche too
- recipes for healthy food
- home made cosmetics
For all of these you can write few guides and sell via Gumroad and Amazon and also provide for free to your paid subscribers.
That’s just a few but I’m sure you can come up with others too.
There are creators here, who monetize their hobbies pretty well. Just focus on value and not entertainment - people will want to pay to learn how to deal with their struggles / problems.
Think about it: all you need is 1000+ subscribers to make $5k/monthly just by selling a $5/m subscription.
Wow, thank you Yana for such a thorough and thoughtful response. It is so appreciated!!!!
I hope it helped you with some insights :)
It sure did, thank you.