Remember when back in the days it was super easy to rank your blog posts on Google and get traffic? And then everyone became a blogging expert and earned so much teaching this (whether through affiliate marketing, courses or coaching).
That was before everyone started teaching people how to make money blogging.
Remember the beginning of platforms like Instagram, where it was easy to grow a massive following? Those people then quickly figured out they have a lot to teach and earned from that.
The same is happening on Substack.
And for once, bloggers might actually have an advantage.
Writers are moving there. Creators are bringing their audiences. Experts are starting from scratch.
Readers aren't only reading. They're subscribing, replying, recommending and paying.
And because Substack has its own discovery network, you don't necessarily need a massive audience somewhere else before you begin.
Five months later, I’m getting 15–20 new subscribers a day from Substack itself, have a total of 1,400 now (that’s the size of an email list that took me years to build as a blogger), and 29 paying subscribers.
I landed my first brand deal with fewer than 300 subscribers, I get constant feedback from my audience which helps me validate my ideas, and I made more friends on the platform that I did in all my years of blogging.
It shows you how to take what you already know as a blogger and use it to start, grow and monetize a Substack. You’ll learn how I approached Substack as someone with more than a decade of blogging experience, what actually helped me grow, what I’d do differently, and how you can build your own publication without spending all day on the platform.
Whether Substack makes sense for you and how it compares to running a traditional blog.
Why bloggers have an advantage and which skills, content and assets you can bring with you.
How to position your publication so people immediately understand why they should subscribe.
How Notes actually work and how I use them for discovery and connection.
How to get your first 100 subscribers without relying entirely on an audience elsewhere.
How recommendations, comments, Notes and conversations create a snowball effect.
When to turn on paid subscriptions and what you can offer paid readers.
How I got my first paid subscribers and what I learned from those early members.
How to monetize beyond subscriptions.
I’ve been blogging since 2013.
I built my blog, Let’s Reach Success, from scratch, eventually grew it to more than 100,000 monthly page views, ranked articles at the top of Google, worked with more brands than I can count, sold digital products, built multiple income streams and turned blogging into my full-time business.
I've been named one of the top 10 course creators and experts to watch in 2021 by Yahoo! Finance, been featured on TIME magazine, Thrive Global, Disrupt Magazine, and more.
Then I became a mom, blogging changed, Google changed, and I wanted something that felt exciting again, and something that was less lonely.
I found Substack.
What surprised me was how much of my blogging experience transferred. I was new to the platform but not to the content, email, SEO, audience building or monetization.
Now, I introduce myself as the writer behind The 2-Hour Blogger.
And that's exactly why I wrote this book for other bloggers.
I can’t promise you’ll get 20 subscribers a day.
I can’t promise you’ll have paid members within five months.
Your niche, writing, audience and offer will be different from mine.
What I can give you is everything I’ve learned from building a writing business for more than a decade and then applying those lessons to Substack, including the strategies that worked, the mistakes, the experiments and the systems I’m using now.
I don't know what Substack will look like five years from now. No one does.
But I do know that right now, discovery is working, writers are recommending one another, readers are paying for newsletters, and creators of all sizes are joining.
That makes this an interesting time to start.
Especially if you've spent years building skills as a blogger and thought you were too late for the last big opportunities.
Maybe this time, you're not.