Grow: How Laura Kennedy made more money on Substack than anywhere else
On moving from Patreon and earning a steady income
The Grow interview series is designed to share the nuts and bolts of how writers have gone independent and grown their audiences on Substack. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
We invited
, who writes the publication , to share insights on how she moved from Patreon to Substack and went on to earn a steady income that’s more than any newspaper column she’d written, affording her the opportunity to move halfway around the world.
What’s your Substack about in one sentence?
Peak Notions is your weekly deep-dive into what we presume we know—by a writer whose favourite questions are the ones we aren’t supposed to ask.
What did you do before Substack?
I’ve written for legacy media in the U.K. and Ireland for about nine years. Over that time, I built up small but engaged followings on social media. During the pandemic, I decided to see whether there was any market for my writing if I went independent and stopped relying directly on bigger platforms to provide the readers. I started publishing on Patreon in May 2020. I held off on hitting “publish” on Patreon for about five months out of sheer terror. That’s putting it mildly.
Why did you choose to move from Patreon to Substack?
It became clear that I was going to hit a wall in terms of growth on Patreon if I stayed—my reach would only ever be as large as my social media following (which is only getting harder to grow), and paywalled content on Patreon can’t be shared.
When veteran U.K. magazine editor
moved to a role at Substack, I guessed that big change was coming in U.K. legacy media and that a concerted recruitment effort of bigger legacy media names in the U.K. would follow and, in turn, more mainstream awareness of Substack. It felt like a “now or never”-type moment—I decided to jump on the Substack train while I felt there was still capacity for less-well-known writers like me to get established on Substack.How does your Substack fit into your personal and professional life?
My Substack started as a side gig. When I first started writing Peak Notions on Patreon, I was doing it to help myself untangle that sense of frustration and rudderlessness that a lot of people working in media these days can feel.
The move to Substack meant starting back at square one, financially speaking, so it had to be a way of supplementing other income rather than my main focus. I went into Substack with a lot of drive, and it has felt different to my legacy media work from the very start—every subscription and achievement (or mistake!) is a direct result of action I take and work I produce. That generates an intense sense of satisfaction and responsibility toward the people who read and fund it.
Every subscription and achievement (or mistake!) is a direct result of action I take and work I produce. That generates an intense sense of satisfaction and responsibility toward the people who read and fund it.
Who reads your Substack?
The people who have always annoyed their family and friends by asking too many questions, or who feel a sense of discomfort around the ideas and norms that those around them don’t seem to care to look at carefully.
It’s been an immense joy to discover firsthand that readers on Substack are invested, engaged, smart, and interested. And they absolutely will pay for work they value. Overall, almost 11% of Peak Notions subscribers choose to pay for their subscription.
It’s been an immense joy to discover firsthand that readers on Substack are invested, engaged, smart, and interested. And they absolutely will pay for work they value. Overall, almost 11% of Peak Notions subscribers choose to pay for their subscription.
What do you uniquely offer them?
In Ireland, where I grew up, we refer to someone or something as “notions” when they’re considered to be pushing too far beyond their socially designated place. So often, in so many contexts, asking questions is understood as a threat, or an indirect judgment. I look at the questions or issues our culture tells us are black or white and find the grey places. The interesting stuff happens in the grey.
What’s your content strategy?
Weekly free column and paid subscribers receive an audio version: I write about diverse topics, from the philosophy of mental illness (my background is in the philosophy of psychology) to body image, grief, and why it is that millennials are doing worse than their parents. Also why so many women (including me) are fascinated by true crime. Because that’s an awkward question, right? And there are lots of potential lazy answers. Peak Notions isn’t about lazy answers.
Chat: The weekly paid subscriber chat is always oriented around a question.
Book club: The monthly book club for paying subscribers is designed to hone critical thinking skills and use philosophy as a practical skill.
Occasional bonuses for paid subscribers: I share extra pieces of writing and audio for paid subscribers as bonus content when I can. I also occasionally answer reader-problem letters in a series called Wicked Problems. Here, I’ll consider their problem for as many words as it takes, on the understanding that while a PhD in philosophy equips me to think about and look at problems in a careful and detailed way, it doesn’t qualify me to solve them. At all.
Learn more: Discover more about the features Laura uses to reach her subscribers, including podcast posts and Chat.
Growth by numbers
Started on Substack with paid subscriptions: June 2022
All subscribers: 3,035
Paid subscribers: 322
Meaningful growth moments
Getting started: I imported my Patreon email list of just under 400 people and got to planning how best to launch my Substack in June while balancing my media work, which was still the bread and butter of my income. At the time, I was sans Patreon income. I gave every monthly Patreon subscriber a free month on Substack and every annual subscriber a free year (regardless of how far they were into their year’s Patreon subscription). I stayed in touch to minimise the inconvenience, helped anyone who reached out with any subscription or technical issues moving to or from the new or old platform, and made sure to communicate how much I valued subscribers and appreciated their patience during the transition.
Comping Patreon subscribers: This looks like nothing at all on the chart, but it was the point when my monthly comped subscriptions for Patreon subscribers expired, and I sent an email to those people to thank them for coming with me and sharing my plans for Peak Notions. Overall subscription numbers didn’t jump, but paid numbers did, and this was the moment the small income I was making from Substack doubled.
Recommendations: This jump happened when
, a writer whose work I love, recommended Peak Notions on his Substack. Hundreds of people have found Peak Notions and subscribed directly through Tom’s recommendation. This wasn’t a giant sudden spike, but you can see, that January, it increased over a period of days. People are still subscribing based on that recommendation.Free vs. paid reader growth: There are lots of ways this chart progressed, as I remind myself every time I think of Peak Notions’s slow but relatively steady growth rate—paid subscription jumps have not necessarily coincided with jumps in free readers. I’ve had a lot of conversion success over time with direct email appeals to readers and special discounts, and also noticed that paid subs jumped in December.
All in on Substack: I recently wrote a Peak Notions column about how my Substack was partially responsible for my decision to step away from most of my legacy media work and move to Australia. Now Substack provides me with a modest but steady income which pays more than any single newspaper column I’ve ever written. Without Substack, I wouldn’t be able to make this international move, and I wouldn’t have this completely independent, meaningful work to anchor me as I establish life in a new country. It’s allowed me to avoid getting an office job (which I really don’t thrive in—too many questions etc.) while prioritising the writing I’ve always wanted to create.
Without Substack, I wouldn’t be able to make this international move, and I wouldn’t have this completely independent, meaningful work to anchor me as I establish life in a new country. It’s allowed me to avoid getting an office job while prioritising the writing I’ve always wanted to create.
What is the sharpest piece of advice you can offer other writers about growing a Substack publication?
A lot of writers appear to see the marketing and monetary element of writing as grubby or embarrassing. Marketing is definitely not my forte, but when I communicate within and about my work in a way that positions it as valuable, worth reading, and worth paying for, it lands better. More people read it. More people pay for it.
Writers are undervalued. Those of us who cut our teeth in traditional media are very much accustomed to bad pay, rigid hierarchies, and the constant message that it’s the platform and not the writer who holds power. My experience of Substack so far (in just over a year) is very much the opposite. So my advice to other writers on Substack: don’t apologise for your best efforts. Don’t preempt rejection or lack of engagement by smothering or diminishing your own work. Push it as though it has value, because it does, and because no one will ever invest in it as deeply as you will.
When I communicate within and about my work in a way that positions it as valuable, worth reading, and worth paying for, it lands better. More people read it. More people pay for it.
What advice have you received about growing your publication that didn’t prove to be helpful?
“Be consistent” is great advice. It would benefit Peak Notions if I could do that.
“Don’t quit when conditions aren’t optimal—find a way to make it work, publish regularly, and keep going!” would have been more fitting advice for me this year. I’ve lived between Ireland and the U.K. this year, moved house three times, and had a lot of unexpected hurdles and changes.
Peak Notions has grown despite the unpredictability of my schedule, and now that I’m about to emigrate and make Substack my primary job, I can finally initiate that more rigid consistency which was—and still is—great advice!
Who’s another Substack writer you’ve turned to for guidance or inspiration?
is a writer whose work makes me feel that writing for a living is actually feasible and not just the insane “notions” pipe dream it felt like when I was growing up. He rejected the old media model long before there were platforms like Substack and proved for all the rest of us that, though it’s challenging to make a living without compromising your work, it can be done. ’s model is an excellent blueprint for other writers on Substack. I often fret about balancing research time with constant output. Mike writes in seasons, which ensures that what he creates is always meticulous and so refreshingly enthusiastic. He’s been an incredibly supportive source of advice and help with Peak Notions and is one of those Substack writers whose expertise I’ve been so lucky to benefit from.Takeaways
Great writing is valuable. Laura has found that when she positions her writing as valuable, it resonates with her audience and people go on to support her work. Don’t apologize about it.
Take the leap and communicate. When Laura moved to Substack, she took a chance and was transparent with her subscribers each step of the way. In communicating with them thoughtfully and generously, she found even greater support.
Learn more about switching from Patreon to Substack
Build a paid offering around your free work. Instead of creating distinct, ongoing series for paid subscribers, Laura adds paid perks to her free posts, including voiceovers and Chats. This offers paid readers a richer experience around Laura’s best work.
What questions do you have for
that we didn’t ask? Leave them in the comments!To read more from this series on growing your publication, see our interviews with Hetty Lui McKinnon, Katelyn Jetelina, Rob Henderson, Tyler Bainbridge, Melinda Wenner Moyer, Leslie Stephens, and more.
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