Going paid on Substack: A checklist
Get our PDF download covering how to turn on paid subscriptions
On Substack, you own your mailing list, subscriber payments, and intellectual property. If you decide to leave, you’ll take what you’ve built with you.
Writers, podcasters, and video creators at all stages can pursue a creative side project or build an independent media business supported by their subscribers.
This checklist documents the essential knowledge writers need to turn on and grow their paid subscriptions on Substack.
Download a PDF copy here:
Step 1: Update your marketing
Revisit and update the following elements of your publication via the Settings page in your writer dashboard.
One-line description
The one-line description appears on your welcome page (yourpublication.substack.com/welcome). For readers visiting your publication for the first time, this is the first thing they will most often see. Your description should convey the unique value of subscribing to your newsletter. Learn more.About page
The About page’s goal is to establish credibility with your readers while showing off your writing voice and style. Of all the key Substack surfaces (posts, welcome emails, and About pages), our data shows that About pages convert viewers to free subscribers at the highest rate, so it’s worth revisiting from time to time to update. Learn more.Welcome emails
In the welcome note to free readers, tell them why they should consider paying. In the paid note, communicate their new benefits, and ask them to help spread the news (don’t forget to include the appropriate “share” buttons). Learn more.Email banner, header, and footer sections
Edit the email header and footer from your Settings page to encourage your current free readers to subscribe. Learn more.Design and branding
Effective, evocative design elements can level up how you visually communicate your publication’s value. Learn more.
Design advice
“Find an aesthetic. I collaborate with an artist who creates a unique illustration for each post. This creates an aesthetic for the entire newsletter, which in turn makes everything look more professional, which in turn builds the reader’s faith that you’re going to lead them somewhere interesting.”
Step 2: Prepare for payments
How much you charge for your newsletter depends on what you write about and who your readers are.
Connect a Stripe account
Stripe is Substack’s payments processor, and it’s how the money from subscriptions will go directly to your bank account. Once it’s set up, you’ll see new options on your Settings page for setting the price, customizing language about your subscription, and more. Learn more.Draft a free/paid post strategy
Writers have found success with a variety of approaches, including offering everything for free and putting everything behind a paywall. Take a first stab at mapping out your paid benefits, then iterate as you go. Learn more.Customize pricing for monthly, yearly, and founding members
This can be done on your Settings page. A standard offering is $5/month, $50/year, and $250 for founding members, but you should make this decision based on your field, your offering, and your goals. Note: You’re likely to convert between 3% and 10% of your total free list to paying subscribers. Learn more.
Pricing advice
“My philosophy has been to price the publication at the median price of similar Substacks on the finance leaderboard.”
Step 3: Announce paid subscriptions
The best launches are not just one moment or one day, but a series of efforts that drive a wave of excitement, attention, and subscriptions to your work.
Prepare a series of 3-7 launch posts
Post and promote daily for the week after launch. Use this as a chance to preview the kind of content that you’ll be putting behind the paywall. Learn about post types on Substack and free previews.Publish an announcement post
The post you publish on launch day should read as a manifesto on what you’re going to write about, why this matters to you, and how frequently readers should expect to receive your newsletter. Add multiple “Subscribe” buttons to make it easy for readers to sign up and subscribe. Learn more.Promote your publication everywhere. Learn more.
Add your Substack link prominently to your website, social media bios, and email signatures.
Link to your announcement post (and all future posts!) on your social media.
Ask friends and professional contacts to support you by recommending your new publication.
Ask free subscribers to switch to paid
In your subscriber dashboard, you have the tools to send targeted emails to engaged readers on your free list pitching them to subscribe—with teasers, unlocked posts, or limited-time discounts.
Conversion advice
“I know this sounds like a cheesy marketing line, but Substack’s interface truly did make it really easy to lead my pre-existing readership into a paid experience (so much more natural than soliciting donations with a PayPal link). A solid percentage of people from my previous mailing list and my Instagram audience became paying subscribers, which gave me the freedom I needed to focus on my book, keep my name out there, and generate some income.”
Get inspired
Download a PDF copy of the Going Paid Checklist here:
To read more writer advice on growing a paid publication, see our other Grow interviews with Glenn Loury, Mike Sowden, Elizabeth Held, Jonathan Nunn, Polina Pompliano, Michael Williams, Judd Legum, and Caroline Chambers.
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I'd like any workshop on this to cover more about special promotions. Discounts, time-limited offers, interesting CTAs around this I believe may be important to boost conversion especially at time of launch. How to create urgency, impulse conversions and FOMO when differentiation has been achieved.
Also simply to show people how to send a segmented campaign to their MOST engaged subscribers. In the UI this is not intuitive to many non Email marketing folk. That you can segment based on Emails opened, activity and Web views and re-send a Campaign similar to your Paid launch post, to your most fanatic free readers on a regular basis should be common knowledge.
Substack could have pre-made segmented "top audience" lists for campaigns, to facilitate this that automatically excludes paid subscribers. Simply sending Emails without segmentation for those of us who have worked in Email marketing is the fastest way to increase churn in you audience.
Our next workshop is all about conversion, covering the topics you mentioned in your comment.
Reid DeRamus, the founder of Yem who's now on Substack's growth team, will guide us through strategic best practices for conversation—including key messaging for targeted outreach, utilizing special offers, and paywalling posts.
You can RSVP here: https://lu.ma/download-conversion
Wow that sounds perfect Katie! I'm thrilled at all these extra classes and events.
Not sure if I'll ever go paid but this was definitely a helpful guide. Any tips on increasing your audience for paid when you don't have a huge following?
Saving this for later
Loved this resource. Though I don't plan to go paid anytime soon, it's definitely informative to learn what’s possible.
Share your Substacks. I'm open to subscribing to reed something new. 😊🚀
I write sonnets and generally post one with a detailed explanation every Monday. I've recently added a Sunday song exploration that's usually accompanied by a little vignette related to the song.
Vritant, you may enjoy what I write about. Feel free to have a look around my SubStack. Thank you.
Check me out Roland’s Travels rolandmillward.com
Just launched tetherware - about fundamentally new approaches to make AI more humanlike or even alive. :) tetherware.substack.com
I was re-reading this post again and saw my year old comment... kinda wholesome that I still love Substack as a platform ❤️
Will the video of the event go up after or some kind of article on what advice was given? I gotta work during the call so I can't make it, but would love to learn from it
Great question! I'll put in an ask to get this recorded and posted to our YouTube.
Can you send out a link?
Is this link still available?
Same
Huge thanks...this is extremely helpful - saves me a bunch of time!
Dear Substack members,
I'm inviting you all to take a look at my page, the last review I have published https://jaroslavnovosyolov.substack.com/p/-?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F99309116--&utm_medium=reader2
I am going to publish more reviews on a regular basis. Thank you in advace!
Can Substack make money from my presence? It may need to find a way because I prefer to remain free from reader payments. For a decade my readers have been seeing my work free of charge, on Facebook, Twitter and Discord. I cannot bring myself to slip behind a paywall now. That would be so disrespectful to the loyal followers I have who followed me here.
Frances, I think that the whole model of SM is the users *are* their assets. So yeah, Ss *is* making money off all of us, newsletter writers and only-commenters alike. They are data-mining at the very least.
Hey there. We aren't in the attention economy here. No ads. We only make money when writers make money and decide to turn on paid subscriptions.
So you are not data mining for profit?
I started paid subscriptions this week because of two reasons: 1) Someone offered to pay for posts 2) I got laid off with only 48 hours notice. I have been writing my newsletter for over three years, so it's time.
I love the embedded PDF guide - is it possible for writers to easily create a similar PDF version of their post (with the Substack symbol in the top left corner)?
You can simply drag a PDF into any post and share with readers. More on what files are supported and how to do that here: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408381643156-How-can-I-attach-a-file-to-my-Substack-post-
Thank you Katie! I guess my question is kind of the reverse of that - What is needed to turn existing Substack articles into PDFs (with Substack header) to save and share with friends and family?
The best way to do that would be to copy and paste into a document application (like Google Docs or Word Docs) and save as a PDF.
Thanks. Didn’t know that
Great to read and plenty to work on.
Some good suggestions in here, didn't know we could send targeted emails to specific readers. Will use this the next time I give away subscriptions so I can engage those most likely to want one.
Helpful. Thanks
In my experience, it takes one good viral post. Everything rolls from there. It might happen in the first year, or the next year, and your chances increase with consistent postings, ... but ultimately you write for sheer Substack luck.
How about SUBSTACK promoting us? It's the same with all the marketplace sales platforms. Take the money and do very little to market its clients.
We're building features that are helping writers grow their audiences from within Substack, most notably recommendations. Today, more than 30% of all new free subscriptions and around 10% of paid subscriptions to Substacks come from within our network. https://on.substack.com/p/substack-generates-1-in-3-new-subscriptions
I agree about the censorship. It's not fair and it's not right.
Propaganda is not new (of course you know that), but the means for distributing it have reached a *whole new level* of psychological manipulation, especially to the wider audience which is severely dumbed down and obedient.
I realize that you can't comment here now because substack has banned you from the thread but this is not really Substack's problem, it's a problem of the wider society that we've built. Pharma is the elephant in the room and it also has a significant share of other media (TV, newspapers) advertising. If Substack tried to shut that down they'd probably be out of business pretty quickly. We just have to work with it in the meantime while trying to work to a better society which does actually focus on health instead of its opposite.
I think it *is* Ss's problem at least in part, because the platform allows and even supports the *artificial elevation* of fraudulent ideas and practices, which of course equate to violence and a violation of our Divine Rights. Yes, I am saying that proffering fraudulence — even in writing or as a platform for it — is an act of violence because it is psychological manipulation. I consider the whole being as a physical *and* psycho-spiritual.
Scoring them I'd give
Substack - 5 or 6 depending on how much use they are to the military industrial complex of Eisenhower's
Facebook - minus 10 because they are very useful to the same.
Twitter - minus 7 because they're also very useful to the same, just not quite so integrated.
I don't know about reddit, tumblr.
Tiktok is interesting (probably a minus 20 score). Someone on the radio was calling it Chinese software on the radio yesterday. They should have a closer look at it.
Not sure how you get to an 8 or 9 let alone a 10 score. Nothing around currently it seems, maybe Signal is the best but somewhat limited feature & public platform wise.
Thanks for the assessment, but they're all still part of the matrix and false-white-light projections designed to manipulate Divine consciousness. So now what?
Create alternative platforms (which is already happening, thank god - its about time), and parallel societies (also already happening).
The primary point is to stop waiting for someone else to "do something". Stop waiting for "accountability" or "justice" or "change" - none of that will ever happen and its a waste of time believing otherwise.
And self-responsibility to act. Even if you aren't tech savvy enough to build an alternative THING - whether its a new social media platform, or something else - there are other ways you can contribute.
I dont know if I misunderstood your question, but even if I did, I hope this provides some hope & gives folks something to consider.... there are changes being made - just not with the current corrupted systems. They can't be fixed.
No, you didn't misunderstand my question. I agree with your points if getting out of the matrix completely is the desire. For me, it's a matter of using the matrix tools to share my perspective and perceptions, my music/art, and getting out of it to do more discerning and creating.
As Frank Zappa said, "You gotta get into to it before you get out of it. You gotta get out of it before you get into it."😂
I can respect that. But for me... im exhausted and in my opinion, we are way beyond the "information/waking up others" stage. This is quickly becoming a life or death situation for the human race - with Agenda 2030 around the corner (if you haven't read the Sustainable Development Goals, and the rest of their transhumanist plans, you should....its happening and it can't be stopped. This is AT LEAST 100 years in the making by people far more powerful & rich than us).
We likely only have a few short years to get prepared & have an exit strategy. And by that I mean, EXIT ENTIRELY. No more participation within THEIR system. If, and when, it all collapses (as its been designed to do... and we're starting to witness the deliberate & controlled collapse), the Higalean Dialectic will come into play once again when people become desperate for basic needs like food, water, electricity, other services & assistance. And they'll come swooping in with a "plan" - at a HUGE cost.
Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I am. But based on my research and the things we're seeing unfolding in lockstep all over the world - at this point, I feel the best strategy is to plan for the worst (and I have NO CLUE what I'm doing.... ive never been a planner, or a prepper - hell, if I'm being honest, ive been a terrible procrastinator all my life and I STRUGGLE to get out of bed at what most would consider a "normal time" 😂 but I digress)
Sorry to be all doom & gloom. Its been a fucked up day for me. But there is always hope- thats the beauty of the human race, we are resilient, creative problem solvers. 💪
I do hope you find success in your endeavors and I hope you find your path if you haven't already. ♡
I don't know.
And hi Sharine. Nice trip that you've been on.
Hi, Rich, and thanks. It's currently day 26 of 45, with many more adventures to come.
Nice
I've spent weeks contemplating a title and now I'm going through the settings and working on getting prepared for a launch. Thankfully I have plenty of written work in the bank. I can't wait, thank you for the help, especially with the pricing.
Great resource. I recently joined substack like a month ago and now posting short byte posts for easy digestable information or tip or hack around my niche and area of expertise and Just got one subscriber which is myself. so am not sure if this is relevant for me as of today but definitely will get there someday with lots of subscribers and enable payments
I don't know if I'll ever start a paid subscription to my Substack but reading the posts in the series and other resources educate me a lot about what's happening on Substack. I just turned 18 and about to start my college, and beachae of that I am only able to write occasionally. I don't think I provide constant stream of value that's why I have kept my subscriptions off for now. Let's see.
Thank you! This one post will have me busy for a while. It's also helpful to know I've already done a few things right ;)
I'm about 90% ready to launch paid, but still need to do all the research required beforehand.
What I’d like to know is what to offer and/or how to ask others for money (especially for poetry). My subscribers are gradually building and I’m getting to the point where I think this is the next step. Although I don’t think people really find poetry that valuable. Thanks 🙏
Thank you, substack.
I have being trying to add a PDF to my post but I can't. Please we will appreciate if you tutor substack's users how to add PDF to Substack post.