Now is the time for creators to build on their own land
Home is where your people are
With all the drama over whether or not TikTok will be blocked in the U.S., creators who have built an audience on the platform and depend on it for their livelihoods have been left with little comfort. But whatever happens to TikTok, it’s a moment that highlights the pressing need for creators to have control over their own destinies. While social platforms are great for reaching new audiences, relying on them alone is like building a house on rented land.
For years, creators have lived with the norm of renting space on big social media properties so they can amass a following and convert it into income through brand deals, affiliate links, sponsorships, entertainment deals, and so on. The problem is that this arrangement gives far too much power to the landlords. If you fall afoul of a platform’s opaque rules, or it decides an advertiser’s needs take priority over yours, or—God forbid—your government bans it, then you are out of luck.
You need to have your own corner of the internet, a place where you can build a home, on your own land, with assets you control.
Our system gives creators ownership. With Substack, you have your own property to build on: content you own, a URL of your choosing, a website for your work, and a mailing list of your subscribers that you can export and take with you at any time.
You also get a clear way to generate income that goes directly to you and is more reliable than fluctuating ad revenue or other third-party deals. Instead of chasing viral hits and algorithm changes, you can build sustainable income through direct support from your most engaged followers. As TikTok creator
found when he moved his political commentary to Substack, this kind of support provides reliable, consistent growth. If a thousand people pay you $50 a year, you have enough for a full-time living. Ten thousand is enough to make you wealthy. It’s a better game to play than hoping for pennies per thousand views from an occasional viral video.Best of all, you get all this for free. You can build your audience on Substack to any size at no charge, and we only make money when you do—by taking a 10% cut of subscription revenue. That incentivizes us to focus fully on helping you succeed. We are here to serve you, not advertisers.
Being on Substack doesn’t mean abandoning your social media presence. You can think of your Substack as your home base—the place where you can deepen relationships with your most devoted followers while still reaching new audiences through TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. It’s not just another place to post your content—it changes what’s possible. It’s where you can publish the work you most deeply believe in and build a community that cares just as much as you do. It’s where your people can gather around your more in-depth pieces and behind-the-scenes material, and where they can interact with you and each other in group chats.
Substack builds all the infrastructure you need for a thriving creator business. You get a home for all your work—including vertical video—plus built-in tools to chat with your community, host live broadcasts, and collaborate with other creators. You can grow your audience through the app, and even repurpose your existing social content here, knowing it will always be yours to control.
This is a time of peak volatility for creators. It’s not just the TikTok ban, but constant algorithm changes, shifting platform priorities, a fickle ad market, and a thousand other little cuts in between. While social platforms may always be important for discovery, on Substack you have a place to build something that lasts—a house of bricks, resistant to the big bad wolves of the internet. A place to call home.
Learn more about bringing your audience to Substack:
Share this post