How to Make Money With Substack Newsletters in 2020: Overview
By: J.J. Pryor
Tags: Side Hustle, Entrepreneurship, Freelancing, Newsletter, Substack

Can I make money with a Substack newsletter?

For sure! But don’t expect to make a million dollars, or even $10 right away.

Let’s start off by asking a few questions:

Is your goal to quit your job and start a new career? Are you trying to make a new side hustle for some extra coffee money? Do you just want to start writing & creating for fun?

It’s important to set your priority before delving further into Substack. But luckily for us, all three are potentially achievable on the platform!

If you’re new to blogging and newsletters in general, you should also be aware that this is a long-haul game.

You won’t get rich overnight, no matter what e-marketing course tells you otherwise. The only way that ever happens is if people pay tens of thousands of dollars for ads or to influencers to sneak their way into success. Or if you’re famous.

I’m going to assume that you’re a normal person and don’t want to do that/haven’t starred in the latest Hollywood Blockbuster.

This leads me to my mantra for success factors on any of these platforms:

Time + Repetition + Quality = Success on Substack

The good news is if you follow the advice below you can be on your way to making side hustle money with Substack. Or even potentially over $200,000 a month like Robert Cottrell (after many years of hard work and high quality, of course).

1. Switching careers

If you’re here to start a new career — know that it takes time.

I was in your shoes a bit over a year ago. I was earning a lot of money as a corporate product manager for a multinational tech company. But I wasn’t happy, so I changed things.

The one regret I have is that I didn’t start my side hustle on the side.

Since this is a time game, I could’ve easily researched these endeavors while still working and started them slowly. Slowly build an audience. Slowly produce content. Slowly improve my craft.

I went with the accelerated version of this — I quit, traveled, and wrote every day. Sure, I’ve probably improved at a faster rate — but I’d be much happier to be slightly behind while still having a year’s worth of paychecks!

I’d advise doing it on the side for a while and gain some traction before you jump head-first into it.

Either way, start right now with guides like these to learn the ropes of what you want to do. There’s a lot of paid info out there, but there’s even more free stuff.

I cover all the basics below to give you a good idea of if Substack is for you or not, so please read further!

2. The true side hustle

For those that truly want to use Substack as a source of extra (but not the main) income — welcome to Substack!

One of the nice parts about newsletters is that you don’t necessarily need to be working on them full time. The choice is completely yours if you want to put in 1 hour a week or 20.

And since this is a time-based game, it makes sense to do a little work — consistently — every week to slowly build a content base. Since this is Substack and not a normal blog, your audience & following should grow right alongside your content production.

Please read on for all the basics of Substack and if this is the right platform for you to start your writing/podcast side hustle on.

3. Just here for fun

If you’re just looking for a way to get people to see the results of your writing hobby — Substack is also the perfect place for that.

It’s free to use It’s incredibly easy to navigate and setup There’s no penalty for missing a week or two here and there

There’re lots of places for you to post your writing if it’s just a hobby, but right now, my two favorites are Medium and Substack.

The free-to-use factor is definitely a huge plus. And setting up a personal blog on Wordpress, etc, can take a long time to learn (or a couple of hundred bucks to pay someone).

Freemium platforms that are easy to use are great for the hobby writer. And who knows, maybe people will enjoy your work enough that you start to make some cash too (or even a living)!

Takeaway

For all 3 of the above type of people, I believe Substack has a place for them. Just keep in mind that it takes time to be successful on this platform (or any other).

But if you enjoy writing and love people seeing your work — then you’ll probably stick with it.

Before you know it, you might find yourself making a few hundred extra dollars every month (or potentially a lot more later on).

Let’s now look at some key facts about Substack to start.