“How to grow my Substack?”
I get this question a lot.
It’s a valid question. Substack is a great platform for solopreneurs. You should want to know how to make the best of it.
But here’s my counter question to anyone who asks me that:
“What kind of business are you building?”
To which I usually get an annoyed, “Well, I’m building a Substack newsletter and I want to go paid.”
Duh!
Okay. Let’s take a step back for a moment.
First of all, Substack is only one of many platforms that allow you to build & monetize a newsletter (admittedly, one of the best ones, especially for beginners).
If you’re going for a paid Substack, you’re not building a Substack, you’re building a paid newsletter. That’s the business, Substack is just the platform.
Second, if you’re also looking to sell services or products (which most of you are), then you’re not just building a paid newsletter — you’re building the solopreneur equivalent of a conglomerate.
And that’s difficult to build even by experienced solopreneurs.
Most successful soloprenuers are known for focusing on one of the 3 types of online businesses:
Product-based business
Services-based business
Content-based business (which is where a paid newsletter fits in)
Even if you want to do all those different types of businesses eventually, you should always prioritize one of them.
Examples:
Grant Cardone started with a consulting business (service-based). Even though he’s now doing so much more, for years, his focus was on improving businesses’ sales performance.
Dan Koe’s first business was a design & ad agency. Then he decided he didn’t like his service-based business and changed directions. He’s now 100% focused on creating & selling great products. Sure, he makes money from YouTube and X, but that’s not his focus: he creates the content to sell products, not to make money from it.
Mark Manson, best-selling NYT author of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck”, also writes a newsletter called Your Next Breakthrough (content-based business). He currently has over 650K subscribers. Instead of making it a paid newsletter, he’s monetizing it through sponsorships.
As you can see, all of these people built amazing businesses by focusing on one thing at a time.
This week, in Smarter Solopreneurs, we’ll talk about what type of business you’re building, how to start it, and how to grow it.
If you want to stop feeling overwhelmed (which usually happens because you think too much about platforms and have no idea what business you’re building), you’ll want to read through these posts and make a decision.
Because this one decision will change everything for you.
“The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus.” — Bruce Lee
Thank you for reading Smarter Solopreneurs and I’ll see you soon!
Maya
Great read! Recently read somewhere that to ensure success, you just have to be the "Last one standing".
Great article Maya, and really helpful for me as a newbie to differentiate between the business models. I’m aiming to provide value via my free newsletter in order to build trust and enable clients to chose my services-based business as the best solution for them (I’m a coach and mindfulness practitioner).
It’s been quite inspiring to also see writers on here monetise content/their creativity in that way and perhaps in the longer-term I can add content as a revenue stream. But for now my focus is building an audience and community who value what I offer them, and hopefully convert some into customers down the road! Thanks for all your valuable tips!