Write2Sell: What's Your Offer?
Is it enough to solve a problem of your reader?
So, what should be your offer on Substack?
I hear a lot of advice to just start and don’t overthink it.
I wouldn’t do that.
I didn’t do that with my Substack.
Because I’ve built products on subscriptions during my whole conscious professional life. And that’s more than 15 years already.
If you miss the product part, you’re f*cked.
You’ll end up investing tremendous efforts in everything else (writing, promoting, selling) until you realize you’ve been trying to run a dead horse the whole time. What’s worse: you’ll get attached to it. You won’t want to let it go.
Been there, done that.
It’s the worst place to be.
So before you go all in on Substack, make sure you know what you’re doing.
What do people pay for?
The million-dollar question.
Everyone knows why people read:
to get inspired
to be entertained
to learn something
But what would they pay for? Especially to writers? Directly?
This may seem complex, but it’s not.
Just ask yourself:
What would you pay for on Substack?
If you stay only in the entertainment, Substack might be a difficult place to be. This type of content is usually monetized through advertising - like YouTube, social media, traditional media, the gaming industry, partially the movie industry, you get the idea.
The same goes for the inspirational content.
So we’re left with educational content.
Yes, but there are tons of “How-to”s on the internet…
The truth is you need all three from above, plus something else:
Solve a painful problem.
The more painful it is the more money you’ll make.
But a lot of people solve that same problem. Why subscribers should pay you?
Simple.
Because of the way you solve that exact same problem. You don’t need to invent the electricity once again. Just bring your unique perspective.
Can you solve that problem in a new much easier way?
There are 7 billion people on the planet.
Every day, each of them finds something to eat in a uniquely different way.
Your unique perspective is the secret ingredient.
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What makes your paid subscription irresistible?
Three things:
The level of pain it removes - the more pain the better
The level of effort it requires - the less effort the better
The level of perceived value vs. cost - how much you charge vs. the value you deliver measured by the two above (pain and effort).
And the way you sell it. And the way you sell yourself.
We’ll talk about all that in the upcoming posts.
For now, let’s focus on the offer.
If you don’t have a big fat problem to solve for your reader, go find one. Make a progress. Prove a concept. Then start talking about it. Bring your unique perspective. That’s the heart of your offer.
If we look at the 5 elements you need to succeed on Substack, the offer covers just one, but it’s the most crucial one - the product/service design. It’s the reason why people should pay you.
It’s also the foundation on top of which you’ll build your business model on Substack.
It’s the core of the content you’ll create.
I’ve identified five major types of offers you can build on Substack. In the next post, I’ll cover their elements, and I’ll give you a comparative analysis of their:
potential for revenue growth
potential for competitive strength
level of effort they require to maintain
So jump to it →
Yana
P.S. The Write2Sell column is for paid subscribers. If you’re a free subscriber, upgrade your plan:
Upgrade your subscription now and you’ll never get a price increase in the future! You can unsubscribe at any time.