The Ultimate Guide To Monetizing Your Substack

What we've learned after going from 0 to 200+ paid subscribers.

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We believe online writers and creators should get paid for their knowledge, expertise, and value—and that’s why we love Substack.

Substack makes it pretty easy to turn your ideas into income.

With the paid newsletter model, you can set up your subscription tier, offer exclusive content, and start earning—all without needing to be a tech wizard or sales expert.

But what should you offer as part of your paid tier? And what’s the best way to get paid subscribers? And when should you start your paid tier?

After going from zero to 200+ paid subscribers in six months, we’ve learned what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to monetizing your Substack.

In this guide, we’ll pull back the curtain and share our best practices to help you turn your Substack into a revenue-generating machine.

Here’s exactly what we’ll cover:

• Part 1: When To Turn On Your Paid Tier

• Part 2: What To Offer As Part of Your Paid Tier

• Part 3: Practical Strategies To Grow Your Paid Subscriber Base

• Part 4: Monetizing Your Substack With External Offers

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to take your Substack monetization game to the next level, this guide has you covered.

Ready? Let’s dive straight in.

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Part 1: When To Turn On Your Paid Tier

One of the most common questions we get is: When should I start my paid Substack? When is the right time to turn on my paid tier?

There are two strategies you can choose, and both have their pros and cons. Let’s break it down.

#1: Start As Soon As Possible

This approach is all about diving in and turning on your paid tier right from the start (or very early in your Substack journey.)

The benefit of this approach is:

• You’ll learn faster: Once you turn on your paid tier, you’ll start figuring out what works and what doesn’t. You’ll see which content converts free readers into paid subscribers, and you’ll get better at promoting your paid plan.

• You’ll get your first paid subscriber faster: Getting that first paid subscriber is a game-changer. Suddenly, you’re not just writing for free anymore—but someone values your work enough to pay for it. That first paid subscriber can spark the motivation to make your paid tier even better (and promote it more often).

But the downside of this approach is:

• Lack of clarity: It can feel a bit overwhelming to figure out what to include in your paid tier so early on, especially if you don’t have a large audience to survey.

• Slow growth: Your audience might be small in the beginning, which means you may only get a handful of subscribers at first (and that’s okay).

#2: Wait Until You’ve Built a Bigger Audience

The second approach is to wait until you’ve built up a solid free subscriber base before turning on your paid tier.

The benefit of this approach is:

• You have time to refine your offer: Waiting until you have a bigger audience gives you time to figure out what your audience wants most. You can use free content to test ideas and see what resonates, so when you launch your paid tier, you know it’s precisely what your audience wants and needs.

• You’ll have a larger group of potential paid subscribers: If you wait until you’ve hit a milestone—say, 500 or 1,000 free subscribers—you’ll be promoting to an audience that already knows, likes, and trusts you. This increases your chances of converting more people into paying subscribers from the moment you launch.

The downside of this approach is:

• Delayed momentum: If you wait too long, you miss out on the confidence boost that comes from landing your first paying subscribers. That feeling of someone valuing your work enough to pay for it is a huge motivator—and waiting delays that moment.

• Procrastination trap: Waiting until you have a “big enough” audience can quickly turn into an excuse to keep putting it off. There’s always going to be a reason to wait just a little longer. If you’re not careful, waiting until you have more subscribers can become procrastination in disguise.

All in all, if you prefer to take a more deliberate approach, waiting until you’ve grown your audience might be the better fit.

It allows you to build a strong foundation and launch your paid tier with a bang.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Perfect

In short, there’s no right or wrong answer.

Some people turn on their paid tier right away and grow as they go. Others wait until they’ve hit a specific subscriber milestone before monetizing.

Personally, I’m a fan of the “start as soon as possible” approach. The moment you land that first paid subscriber, something shifts in your mindset.

Suddenly, you know people value your knowledge enough to pay for it, and that boost of confidence and self-belief fuels the motivation to keep improving, growing, and promoting your paid tier.

But nevertheless, both approaches work.

You just need to choose the one that feels right for you.

No matter which approach you take, remember this: your paid tier doesn’t have to be perfect from day one. You can always tweak, improve, and add more value as you go.

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Part 2: What To Offer As Part of Your Paid Tier

If you want your paid tier to feel like an irresistible offer, you’ve got to pack it with value. Exclusive articles are a great starting point, but to really make your paid tier a ‘no-brainer’, I recommend going a step further.

The more tangible and actionable perks you offer, the easier it is for readers to justify paying for your Substack.

For our paid tier, we offer exclusive articles, monthly live training sessions (where paid subscribers can ask their questions directly), in-depth guides, and a library of mini-courses and workshops.

This significantly increases the value of our paid plan versus our free plan—and it’s one of the key reasons we’ve grown to over 200 paying subscribers on Substack.

If you’re wondering how to make your paid tier stand out, here are some ideas for what you can offer beyond exclusive articles:

E-Books / PDF Guides

E-books and PDF guides are a fantastic way to provide extra value to your subscribers.

They give your subscribers something tangible and actionable as it’s something they can download, reference, and use immediately.

Here’s how to approach it:

• Write short, focused guides (aka, mini-ebooks) that solve specific problems for your audience

• Make them easy to consume (clear formatting, actionable advice, and straight to the point)

For example, if you write about productivity, you could create a guide like ‘The Ultimate Time Management Playbook’.

Or, if you write about freelancing, you could write an e-book like ‘7 Strategies To Consistently Get High-Paying Freelance Clients’.

Live Monthly Sessions

Hosting monthly live sessions—whether they’re Q&As, workshops, or group coaching calls—is incredibly valuable and creates a true sense of community.

Nothing builds a stronger connection with your audience than live interactions.

When subscribers know they’ll get the chance to ask questions and get tailored advice from you, that’s a strong selling point to join your paid tier.

We find that our paid members love to watch (whether live or the replay) our monthly live training, and it’s a big reason why people join our paid tier in the first place.

Tip: Always record your live sessions and make replays available exclusively for paid subscribers who couldn’t attend live.

Tools & Templates

Practical resources like templates, frameworks, or spreadsheets are another way to provide huge value to your paid subscribers.

These tools save your audience time and effort—and people are often willing to pay for resources that make their lives easier.

For example:

• If you write about productivity, you could share Notion templates, downloadable productivity planners, or goal-setting trackers

• If you write about freelancing, you could create word-for-word client proposal templates

• If you write about personal finance, you could offer budgeting spreadsheets or net worth trackers

Workshops / Mini-Courses

Adding video workshops or mini-courses to your paid plan makes it feel like a full-blown membership—not just an upgraded newsletter.

When you plan to create a workshop or mini-course, don’t try to cover everything—but make it very specific.

Focus on one specific problem, skill, or topic your audience is eager to learn about and keep it between 30 - 90 minutes per workshop.

For example, one of the workshops we offer is on how to write engaging Substack Notes. It’s a one-hour workshop with actionable tips that help our paid subscribers achieve a specific outcome (which is to get more engagement on their Notes).

Yes, creating a workshop or mini-course is more work, but it transforms your paid tier from just extra content into an immersive, valuable learning experience—and that’s exactly what people pay for.

Part 3: Practical Strategies To Grow Your Paid Subscriber Base

To convert free readers into paying subscribers, you need to take intentional, strategic actions. It simply doesn’t happen by chance.

So, in this part of the ultimate guide, I’ll walk you through proven, practical strategies that have helped us grow our list of paid subscribers.

Let’s dive straight in.

#1: Talk About Your Paid Plan More Often

You could have the most valuable paid tier in the world, but if nobody knows it exists, you won’t get any paid subscribers. That’s why promotion is key.

Promoting doesn’t mean you have to become an aggressive, pushy marketer.

It just means talking about your paid plan more often. It means letting people know it’s there, what they’ll get out of it, and why it’s worth paying for.

Here’s how we do it:

• In every free post, we link to at least one (but often more) premium resource that builds on the topic of that free post

• We regularly share snippets of our premium content in our Notes

• We make most of our premium content free to read for about 25 - 50% and then we add a paywall (more about that later in this section)

• We regularly link to our Premium Content Library (more about that later in this section)

If you genuinely believe your paid tier delivers value, don’t hesitate to talk about it. You don’t have to be pushy, but if you’re not regularly reminding people about your paid tier, they’ll forget it exists.

#2: Create a ‘Premium Content Library’

Our premium content library is a separate page on our publication where we feature all links to our paywalled content.

This way, paid subscribers can easily access the exclusive content they’ve unlocked, making sure they get the most out of their paid subscription.

But aside from keeping paid subscribers happy, this premium content library also serves as a marketing tool for our paid tier.

Since the page is accessible to free subscribers as well (they just can’t access any of the content), they get a glimpse of everything they’re currently missing out on, which creates interest and desire to join the paid tier.

Here’s how to create your premium content library:

• Go to your publication’s settings and click on ‘website’

• Go to ‘custom pages’ and click on ‘add’

• Hyperlink to all of your premium content and sort it by content type (like guides, courses, templates, and replays of live sessions, etc.)

• Add this page to your Substack’s navigation bar so your subscribers see it often

So, create your premium content library, keep it up to date, and feature it prominently in your Substack publication.

#3: Create a 'Become a Member' Page

The default offer page Substack provides is okay, but let’s be real—it’s pretty basic. If you want to convert more subscribers, you need a more compelling page.

That’s why we created a 'become a member' page for our publication (think of it as a sales page for your paid Substack). This page is by far the most profitable page of our entire publication

A custom ‘become a member’ page allows you to explain the value of your paid plan in more detail, share testimonials of other paid subscribers (to add social proof), and add visuals that make your offer ‘pop’.

In other words, it’s a much better marketing asset than the standard offer page Substack provides.

Here’s how to create your 'become a member’ page:

• Go to your publication’s settings and click on ‘website’

• Go to ‘custom pages’ and click on ‘add’

• Write a clear explanation of what’s included in the paid plan

• Be specific about the benefits (e.g., “Save hours with exclusive templates and tools”)

• Add screenshots and testimonials from existing subscribers

• Be clear about the pricing and add a link to the standard Substack offer page

Once you have this page ready, link to it from most of your posts and make it easy to find on your Substack (add it to your publication’s navigation bar).

#4: The Free + Paywall Strategy

One of the best ways to convert free subscribers into paying ones is the free + paywall strategy. Here’s how it works:

1. Write a premium article

2. Make 25 - 50% of the post free to read

3. Add a paywall that prompts readers to subscribe to unlock the rest

The free + paywall strategy is really effective because it lets readers experience the quality of your paid content without having to take out their credit card first.

It’s like giving your readers a taste of the cake before asking them to buy the whole thing. If the free section is valuable enough, they’ll likely want to see the rest as well.

I strongly prefer this strategy over simply paywalling entire articles. When you lock 100% of your premium content behind a paywall, free subscribers will never get a taste of your premium content (making them less likely to join the paid tier).

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Part 4: Monetize Your Substack With External Offers

When it comes to monetizing your Substack, the paid newsletter feature isn’t the only game in town. In fact, one of the most effective (and profitable) ways to monetize is to promote external offers to your Substack audience, such as:

• Online courses

• E-books

• Coaching

• Consulting

• Done-for-You Services

By combining both paid subscriptions and external offers, you’re not only creating multiple ways to monetize your Substack, but you’ll simply make more money.

Again, paid subscriptions are great, but selling a $200+ online course or landing a $2,000 coaching/consulting client can generate far more revenue than $10/month subscriptions alone.

For example, Substack helped me land dozens of $1,000+ clients for my 1:1 consulting program, Digital Course Launchpad.

These clients came to me because they read my posts about creating and selling online courses, and they wanted personalized help to launch their own profitable online course.

So, even though the monthly recurring revenue from paid subscriptions is amazing, you can also monetize Substack by introducing your readers to offers (like courses, coaching, or consulting) outside of your paid Substack.

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