How to Generate $10,000+ per Month on Substack (Without Paid Subscribers)
Substack is a powerhouse to build your online business - even without paid subscribers.
Most Substack creators assume paid subscriptions are the main way to make money on the platform.
I get it. It’s the most visible feature. The “turn on paid” button is right there.
And when you see creators hitting Bestseller status with hundreds of paid subscribers, it’s easy to think that’s the whole game.
Now, even though we love Substack’s paid subscription feature, what might surprise you is that over the last few months, our paid tier accounts for only 5-15% of our total monthly revenue (despite bringing in roughly $5,000 every month).
The other 85-95% comes from a three-tier offer stack built on top of our Substack publication.
In this article, I’ll break down exactly what those three tiers are, what we sell at each level, and how you can use the same structure to generate at least $10,000/month from your Substack, without relying on paid subscribers at all.
Let’s jump straight in.
Tier #1: Low-Ticket Offers ($9–$97)
Low-ticket offers are your entry point. They’re affordable, low-friction purchases that turn casual readers into paying customers for the first time.
The beauty of low-ticket products is that they require almost no “selling.” At $27 or $47, readers don’t need to think hard about it. The decision is impulsive, and that’s exactly what you want.
At Write • Build • Scale, our primary low-ticket offers are digital products sold through our Gumroad store. Two of our best-sellers are:
365 Substack Notes Templates — a full year of done-for-you Note frameworks, one for each day, organized by goal and niche. At $47, it’s a no-brainer for any creator who wants to show up consistently on Notes without staring at a blank screen every morning.
Free-to-Paid Playbook — dozens of proven strategies to convert free subscribers into paying ones, also at $47. A direct, actionable resource for any creator ready to start monetizing.
Low-ticket digital products are easier to build than most creators think. Some ideas to get you started:
A mini-course teaching one specific skill in your niche
A template pack your readers can plug straight into their workflow
A guide or playbook walking through a process you’ve already figured out
A swipe file of examples, prompts, or frameworks
An AI prompt pack built around your niche or topic
A resource database — tools, links, or references your audience keeps asking for
If your readers are already asking you, “how do you do X?” — that’s your low-ticket product. Package the answer.
The Pros of Low-Ticket Offers:
Low-ticket products are easy to create, easy to sell, and almost completely passive once they’re live. You build them once, and they generate revenue practically on autopilot.
The Cons of Low-Ticket Offers:
The numbers are small per sale. To hit $10k/month from low-ticket alone, you’d need significant volume. That’s why low-ticket works best as the foundation of a wider offer stack, not as the only way to monetize.
Tier #2: Mid-Ticket Offers ($297–$997)
Mid-ticket offers are where things start to get serious.
These are your online programs and live cohorts — structured learning experiences that take your reader from a clear starting point to a specific, meaningful result.
They require more effort to build than a digital product, but the return per sale is dramatically higher.
Here’s the key difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2: a low-ticket digital product zooms in on one very specific pain point.
One micro-solution. One micro-outcome.
That’s exactly what makes it easy to sell at $47.
A mid-ticket program is different. It covers a topic from A to Z.
At Write • Build • Scale, our two flagship mid-ticket programs are Substack System and Mini-Course Accelerator.
Substack System covers everything to succeed on Substack — starting your publication, growing your audience, monetizing your Substack, writing Notes, all of it.
It’s a complete system for building a thriving Substack, and it’s largely self-paced. Members work through the video lessons and support material on their own timeline.
(As a bonus, they also get three months of free community access to support their results.)
Mini-Course Accelerator follows the same model. It’s a comprehensive, self-paced program focused specifically on building and launching your first mini-course in 14 days or less.
Both are priced in the mid-ticket range at $497, and together they make up roughly 40-60% of our total monthly revenue.
The math at this level works very differently from Tier 1.
You don’t need high volume.
A handful of sales per week can generate serious revenue while still giving you a high degree of leverage, because the program delivers value at scale.
That’s the beauty of a self-paced program or cohort; your efforts are multiplied without requiring proportionally more of your time.
Mid-ticket offers can also include light support that a digital product wouldn’t, like office hours, Q&A calls, or a community element.
Not the full hands-on access of a high-ticket program, but enough to meaningfully support your students through the process.
At Write • Build • Scale, we sell our mid-ticket offers using two approaches.
A few times per year, we run big product launches, which are dedicated promotional campaigns (usually with a big webinar) that drive a lot of new members.
These launches generate momentum and typically produce our highest-revenue weeks of the year.
But we don’t rely on launches alone.
We’ve also built an automated evergreen funnel, an email sequence that runs in the background 24/7, introducing new subscribers to our programs and converting them into buyers without us having to actively sell.
Combined, these two approaches mean our mid-ticket programs generate revenue consistently, not just when we’re actively promoting them.
The Pros of Mid-Ticket Offers:
Mid-ticket is the engine of a scalable Substack business. High enough price point to generate real revenue with relatively few buyers.
Leveraged enough that it doesn’t consume all your time.
And transformational enough to produce the kind of results that fuel testimonials, referrals, and repeat customers.
The Cons of Mid-Ticket Offers:
They take more time to build and more trust to sell.
Your audience needs to believe you can get them the result before they invest a few hundred dollars.
That trust is built through your free content, which is exactly why your Substack posts matter so much.
Tier #3: High-Ticket Offers ($1,000+)
High-ticket is where a few sales can make a huge difference.
Our high-ticket offer is the Substack Accelerator, which is a hybrid between private coaching and tight-knit group coaching for creators who are serious about building a profitable Substack business.
It’s high-touch, highly personalised, and deliberately kept small. Members don’t just get access to our knowledge, but they get access to us, in real time, helping them implement as they go.
In April, this high-ticket program generated $19,000 in revenue. In May, we’re already at $23,000, with a few more days left in the month.
That’s the power of high-ticket offers. You don’t need to make many sales to generate significant revenue.
(For context, members can join our coaching program for $1,500 per quarter, or $3,500 per year.)
To build your own high-ticket offer, start with your audience’s biggest pain points and most desired outcomes. Then ask yourself:
What’s the fastest, most effective way I could help someone achieve that result if I were working with them directly?
That answer is your high-ticket offer.
It might be one-on-one coaching.
It might be a tight-knit group coaching program.
It might be a hybrid program like ours.
It might be a small mastermind.
It might be a done-for-you service.
There are people in your audience right now who want the best possible outcome, want it fast, and have the finances to invest in getting there. Your job is to build the offer that serves them.
If I had to sum up the key distinction between the three tiers is that:
Tier 1 is do-it-yourself. You buy a product, you get someone’s knowledge, and you apply it on your own.
Tier 2 is do-it-with-guidance. A structured program walks you through the process step by step, by following a system with more support.
Tier 3 is done-with-you or even done-for-you. You’re not applying knowledge alone, but you have experts in the (virtual) room helping you implement, adjust, and move faster in real-time.
The Pros of High-Ticket Offers:
You don’t need many clients to generate serious revenue. A handful of high-ticket members per month can add $10,000–$25,000+ to your bottom line.
The math works at a scale that low and mid-ticket simply can’t match on their own.
The Cons of High-Ticket Offers:
It requires real delivery. You can’t fake high-touch support.
Your clients are paying for your time and attention, so you need to show up fully and serve them as best as possible.
How The 3 Offer Tiers Work Together
The three-tier stack means you’re never leaving money on the table, regardless of where a reader is or what they’re ready to spend.
Some of your subscribers already know they want done-with-you support. They’re not interested in a $47 template. They want to move fast, they have the budget, and they go straight for your high-ticket offer.
Others are earlier in their journey. They want to learn, but they’re not ready to invest $497 in a course yet. A $47 playbook or template pack is the perfect entry point, and it starts the customer relationship.
While for others, a $497 program or cohort is the best fit right now.
By having all three tiers, you’re able to serve different buyers (at different price points) in your audience - and your Substack becomes a resilient business with multiple streams of income.
Want to dive deeper into the most effective strategies to monetize your Substack? Watch some of our member-only workshops below:
