Have you heard of Substack? I seem to be late to the party. I had heard about it, but didn’t really get it, and assumed it was a fad that wouldn’t last. 

However, as I am now interested in writing about some topics that don’t fit on my company blog or here on this blog, I felt like I needed a place to publish a new body of work and started to explore different options. 

I noticed that my friend Phil Gerbyshak has been promoting his newsletter on Substack, and that Jill Salzman has been promoting her content there as well. That got my attention because both of them are very smart and often ahead of the curve. 

So, I went to check out Substack. I loved the business model and mission of enabling writers and other content creators to get paid well for their work. From the website, “Own all of your content and your subscriber list. Decide what you write about. Build a community. Keep 90% of the revenue.”

If you knew how little an author makes from selling a book, this would make you snap to attention.

On Substack, which is free for creators, you can start out offering free content and then have a paid tier where subscribers get additional content or access. Author Elizabeth Gilbert has readers pay a very small subscription fee if they want to comment on posts to keep out internet trolls. That seemed really smart to me. Other creators charge more. What you charge is up to you.

I reached out to Salzman and Gerbyshak to see why they chose the platform and what they like about it. Salzman said:

“I moved to Substack to launch a podcast, and 3 years later, I converted it to a newsletter outlet for my business. I love Substack’s simplicity, it’s ease of use for makers and readers alike, and the community Substack has built has helped me to grow my readership. After years of Mailchimp and MadMimi and ConvertKit and more, I’m thrilled with Substack and recommend it to everyone I know.”

Check out Sweating Through the Insights. 

Gerbyshak added some additional details about the functionality. He said: 

“I love Substack because of the ease of publishing and delivering my content via email. When I write an article, I can schedule when it publishes and when it goes live, an email immediately is sent to my subscribers, or a notification to those who follow using the Substack app. 

I also love that I can host my podcast in the same place and use almost the exact same interface to schedule and publish podcast episodes as I use for my articles, giving my readers a chance to also become podcast subscribers. 

The last thing I’ll mention is the portability of subscribers. I can import subscribers from any CSV file and I can export my email subscribers to import them anywhere else – both very easily. 

I typically publish my articles on Mondays and Fridays and my podcasts on Tuesdays.”

Check out The Happiness Practices. 

I am excited to get some new and different content out into the world. I hope to grow my audience and maybe some readers will join my new online membership community if they want to go deeper into the topics and connect with others who are interested. I’ve just started publishing on Substack and I’m still figuring it out. 

Check out my Sanctuary2024 content and subscribe if you like it. 

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash