How to Grow a Substack for Your Business or Personal Brand

My Substack’s growth in the past year

If you’ve been watching the creator landscape shift even a little, you’ve probably noticed one thing. Substack is having a moment — and honestly, I think everybody should be starting one.

Substack recently raised another $10 million, and they’re building the kind of feature mix that makes my inner product-nerd very happy. It’s writing-forward, creator-first, and increasingly multimedia. You can publish essays, videos, podcasts, and even push those videos out to YouTube and LinkedIn directly from the editor. And behind the scenes, big brands are pouring serious ad budgets into the platform. Some of the top publications — like Feed Me — now collaborate with an impressive roster of advertisers because Substack’s audience is engaged, attentive, and willing to pay for quality.

Even legacy media brands are moving their publications to Substack. Writers you’ll recognize are already here — from Margaret Atwood to Charli XCX. It’s not niche anymore. It’s the hot platform.

And if you’re not on it yet, you’re quietly falling behind.

One of the most unique things about Substack is its business model. Unlike other newsletter platforms, Substack doesn’t charge you upfront for hosting, sending emails, or accessing advanced features. Instead, they take a percentage of your paid subscription revenue. That means the platform is financially incentivized to help you grow. If you make more, they make more.

Readers spend millions of dollars every year subscribing to writers and brands they love. From solo creators to full-blown companies, there’s a business model for everyone.

I’m living proof.

I make over $180,000 per year in annual recurring revenue from my top Substack publication — and that number is growing each month. I also consult with founders, creators, and entrepreneurs on how to scale their own Substacks. If you want personalized help, feel free to reach out and tell me a bit about your publication, business, or goals.

But let’s start with the basics. Here are the strategies I’ve used to grow multiple successful Substacks — and what you can implement today.

What Substack Actually Is (and Why It Works)

Substack is more than a newsletter platform. It’s a full ecosystem — part publishing tool, part community hub, part social network.

Key Features You Should Know About

Substack includes:

• Free and paid posts you can send directly to inboxes

• Video publishing (which can also sync straight to YouTube or LinkedIn)

• Audio and podcasting tools

• Subscriber Chat, which lets you talk directly with your community

• Drip campaigns for onboarding, nurturing, and converting readers

• Sections, so subscribers can choose which types of posts they want

• Substack Live, their livestreaming and event tool

• Notes, a built-in social feed where posts behave like Twitter threads

You can build a full media company on Substack without duct-taping eight platforms together. It’s streamlined. It’s creator-friendly. And the feature set keeps expanding.

But the secret sauce — the thing that makes Substack fundamentally different — is its organic recommendation engine.

Why Substack’s Recommendation System Is So Powerful

Every time someone subscribes to your publication, they can choose to recommend you to their own audience. Substack then surfaces you inside the onboarding flows of new subscribers across the platform.

Plus, Substack’s team uses:

• Behavioral data

• Category tags

• Curation

• Profile connections

• Topic keywords

…to push your publication in front of readers who are already primed to love your work.

If TikTok made video creators famous through algorithmic discovery, Substack is doing the same for writers and thought leaders.

And because the platform is still relatively early, the opportunity is enormous. This is the beginning of what YouTube felt like in 2012 or TikTok in 2020. If you get in now, you’re still early enough to stand out.

Substack 101: Best Practices to Start and Scale

1. Understand Your Audience and the Content They Pay For

Before you create a single post, browse Substack’s categories and bestseller lists.

Look at:

• Who’s earning the most

• What formats they use

• How often they publish

• How long their posts are

• How they structure their paid tiers

You’ll start to see patterns. Some creators run personal essays. Some run industry reports. Some publish daily link roundups. Some release audio-only rants. Your job is to understand your niche and then create a content format that you can sustain consistently.

2. Choose the Right Format for Your Brand

Examples of what works:

• Companies

  Run interviews with customers, case studies, product updates, or behind-the-scenes content. Substack Live is especially good for this.

• Creators

  Essays, tutorials, curated roundups, Q&As, personal stories, or niche commentary.

• Journalists and Analysts

  News briefs, investigative pieces, data breakdowns, culture recaps, or daily analysis.

• Niche communities

  Book clubs, wellness threads, finance explainers, fandom commentary, creative prompts.

Think of Substack as a hybrid between a publication and a community. Your job isn’t just to publish — it’s to host.

3. Establish a Consistent Cadence

My rule of thumb:

• Minimum: 1 post per week

• Growth: 2 posts per week

• Maximum growth: 5 posts per week

Daily publishing works incredibly well for categories like business, culture, gossip, and news. Phoebe, one of the top business publications on Substack, posts short daily newsletters five days a week — and the model works.

I used to worry about inbox fatigue, but the opposite is true. The more readers hear from you, the more they feel connected to your brand. It’s the familiarity rule in marketing: frequency builds trust. Frequency builds loyalty.

You can also create multiple sections so subscribers can choose how often they hear from you.

How to Grow Your Paid Subscriptions on Substack

Growing paid subscribers is different from growing your overall list. Here’s what matters most.

1. Use Drip Campaigns Strategically

Substack now lets you automate sequences for:

• Free subscribers

• Free-to-paid converters

• New paid subscribers

• Founding members

This is where real revenue growth happens. You can welcome, nurture, and convert readers without manually writing dozens of emails.

2. Optimize Your Welcome Emails

This is your one chance to make a strong first impression.

Your welcome email (or the first email in your drip campaign, if you’ve got it activated) should:

• Tell readers what they’ll get

• Highlight the value of upgrading

• Introduce yourself

• Set expectations

• Link to your best posts

Think of it as your handshake, elevator pitch, and sales page all in one.

3. Sell Without Being “Salesy”

You need to walk the line between:

• Your personality and brand voice

  and

• Direct response copywriting

I’ve spent nearly a decade working as a freelance copywriter for huge brands and founders, and scaling my Substack has required every trick, principle, and test I’ve ever learned. The good news: once your positioning is clear and your readers trust you, selling becomes natural.

Want Help Growing Your Substack?

I’ve scaled my own Substack past $180,000 per year, and I help founders, creators, and brands do the same.

If you want support:

• Strategy

• Positioning

• Content planning

• Launch design

• Conversion funnels

• Growth experiments

• Audience development

Reach out and share your publication, your goals, and what you want to build. Depending on where you’re at, I may be able to offer a free discovery call.

Substack is the next big platform for writers, brands, and creators — and if you start now, you’re early enough to win.