Here’s How Substack Could Drive Revenue To Your Small Business

Every day, small business owners are bombarded with new tools or platforms to use in their business. But one platform that could be well worth the time and investment is Substack.

Substack is an online platform that allows business owners and content creators (or anyone who enjoys writing) to publish a newsletter. Followers and customers can subscribe to the newsletter, and you can make this either free or paid. Your subscribers get notified via email whenever a new one is published.

Here are three ways in which Substack could add extra revenue to your small business.

1. Paid Newsletter Subscription

Anyone with a Substack newsletter can monetize it through a paid subscription. Once you’ve built a substantial subscriber base, this could become consistent and recurring revenue for your business. However, keep these things in mind when starting a paid newsletter:

• Set expectations upfront: Be clear about what your readers can expect by subscribing to your newsletter – especially a paid version.
• It needs to be exclusive: To make the subscription fee worthwhile for your readers, give value in the form of exclusive insights, premium advice, or behind-the-scenes content that your readers can’t get anywhere else.
• Consider the paid subscription fee: Substack takes a 10% commission if you create a paid newsletter.

2. Drive Sales To Your Main Business

Substack can be a helpful platform to drive leads and sales to your business. Here’s how:

• Build trust to increase sales: A newsletter that’s genuinely helpful or shares expertise can help position you as a thought leader and helps build trust in your brand. Trust is important when it comes to increasing sales; a report by Edelman found that 88% of consumers say trust is just as important as price and quality when it comes to making purchases.
• Link to your offers: Within your newsletters, you can drive traffic to your website, online course, digital products, or any other channels you use to sell your products or services.
• Use clear call-to-actions: Don’t be afraid to use strong CTAs (for example, “Book a consult”) to encourage action and turn engaged readers into paying customers.
• Add affiliate links (optional): If you recommend other brands’ products or services to your readers, you could add affiliate links and earn a commission from referrals.

3. Build An Engaged Community

It’s important to note that Substack is primarily there to help you build a loyal readership and community with your audience, rather than being a purely promotional marketing tool.

However, building a community is still a powerful way to help grow your business and revenue. One report found that 73.6% of consumers are more likely to purchase because of an online brand community. Keep these in mind when engaging your readers:

• Have a two-way conversation: Read and respond to your readers’ comments and ask what they’d love to hear more about. Let that influence your content strategy.
• Experiment with audio and video: You can publish different content types on Substack. Test these out and see which gets the highest engagement from your audience. 82% of Substack’s 250 highest-revenue creators utilize audio and video features.
• Let authenticity and transparency guide you: This helps to build trust. You could do this by sharing personal stories, insights into your business journey (the highs and lows), customer stories, and case studies.
• Get consistent: Aim to write a newsletter at least every couple of weeks. Whatever cadence you settle on, ensure you’re consistent so that your readership knows when to expect your content.

Substack could be a powerful tool for small business owners looking to build a stronger community and add extra revenue to their business. Remember that the more subscribers you have, the higher the earning potential, so you need to actively build your subscriber base. It will take work and strategy, but it could have great payoffs for those who stay consistent.