Six months ago, this newsletter had five subscribers. I’m pretty sure three of them were me, signed in on different email addresses.
Today it has 5,602, and 140 of those people pay me every month to read what I write. I became a Substack bestseller in four months, I’m doing this at 55, and I have no team.
But I didn’t do all of it right. I wasted my first several weeks doing the wrong things in the wrong order, and you can see it on my own dashboard: the line is almost flat through that early stretch. So instead of another “here’s my success story,” I want to give you something more useful. If I had to delete everything and start over tomorrow from zero, here is the exact order I’d do it in. The steps that actually moved the numbers, in the sequence I’d actually follow.
This is how to start a Substack and make money from it as a beginner, without a big audience, an existing email list, or twenty years of experience. Here’s step one.
Step 1: Pick one bucket before you write a single word
The very first thing I’d do, before I name anything or write anything, is get clear on one bucket. One lane. The single thing I’m going to talk about over and over.
This matters more on Substack than almost anywhere else, and here’s why. Substack grows you through its own recommendation feed, the same way TikTok or Instagram does. That algorithm can only put you in front of the right readers if it can figure out what you’re about. If you post about making money in the morning and your cat at lunch, you’ve confused it. It can’t place you, so it stops showing you to anyone.
My buckets are making money online, running a solo business with no team, and reinventing life over 50. Everything I publish lives inside those three rooms.
Here’s the exact move I’d make to choose yours: open Substack and search the topic you’re considering. If you want to write about divorce recovery, search “divorce” and see how many publications already exist. You want to find a healthy number of them.
That’s not competition to scare you off, it’s proof there’s an audience already reading and already paying. If nobody is writing about your topic, that’s usually a warning sign, not an opening.
Don’t agonize over it. You’re not marrying the bucket. You just need a direction so every post pushes the same door instead of scattering your energy. If you’re still deciding whether the platform is even right for you, start with what Substack is and how it works.
Step 2: Set up so a stranger “gets it” in five seconds
Next I’d set up the publication itself. And the mistake nearly everyone makes, including me at first, is naming the publication after themselves.
Look at it from the reader’s side. Your name means nothing to a stranger. When someone discovers you on Substack, they see three things: your photo, your publication name, and your one-line description. They decide in about five seconds whether you’re for them.
So your name and your one-liner have to do real work. They have to tell a stranger what they’ll get. “Lori Ballen” tells you nothing. “The Real Time Creator, building a solo business in real time with the receipts” tells you everything. Do the same for yours: say what the reader gets, not who you are.
Then there’s the one page almost everyone skips, the About page. Write it as if it’s answering the three questions a skeptical stranger is silently asking. Who are you and why should I trust you? What exactly do I get if I subscribe? And do I belong here? Answer those three in the first short paragraph, and your About page quietly sells subscriptions for you around the clock.
Getting these three things right, your name, your one-liner, and your About page, will do more for your growth than your first ten articles. So do them before you publish anything.
Step 3: Make Notes your front door
This is the big one. If you remember only one thing from this whole article, remember this step.
When I traced where my subscribers actually came from over the last 30 days, almost 9 out of 10 came from inside Substack itself, not from the open internet. And the single biggest source, by a wide margin, was Notes, the short-post feed inside Substack. Notes alone brought in roughly 895 new subscribers in a single month. My website, my YouTube channel, and my Instagram, the platforms I’d spent two decades building, sent a small handful between them.
Sit with that. The platform grew my audience. I just kept showing up on it.
Here’s exactly how I’d use Notes. A Note is short, one to six sentences, skimmable, and you bold the single line that’s the takeaway. Think “thought of the day,” not “blog post.”
And here’s the part most people get wrong: don’t write tips. Tips get likes. Stories get subscribers. When someone reads a tip, they think “handy” and scroll on. When someone reads a small, true story about your actual day, a decision you made, something that went sideways, what you learned, they think “that’s me,” and they follow you. Likes don’t grow you. Follows do.
How often? I post three to four Notes a day. I know that sounds like a lot. Each one takes about five minutes, usually from my phone, and the algorithm learns you faster the more you feed it, so in the beginning more genuinely is better. If you want the deeper version of this, it’s the heart of my Substack growth system.
One more thing: stop sharing your Substack on Facebook and Pinterest hoping that’s how you’ll grow. Almost none of mine came from outside. It came from the feed, from people who’d never heard of me, because I posted consistently enough that the platform could match me with the right readers.
Step 4: Publish one real article a week, with the paywall halfway
Notes are the front door. Your articles are the living room, the reason people stay and eventually pay.
So once a week, I’d publish one real article. A Substack “newsletter” is just a blog post emailed to your subscribers. That’s all it is, so don’t let the word intimidate you.
Here’s the structure that works for me. I give away the whole story and the “what” for free, the top half, where the reader gets real value and gets genuinely hooked. Then I place the paywall right at the moment they want the “how.” Below the line sits the system, the steps, the framework, for paying subscribers.
That’s the trade. The free half earns trust. The paid half rewards it. You’re not hiding your best material, you’re giving away the best idea for free and selling the complete, organized version of it. If you want my exact structure for these, I broke it down in my Substack articles framework.
Step 5: Turn on paid before you feel ready
This is the step people put off the longest, and it’s the one I’d do soonest.
Most people say, “I’ll charge once I have a big audience.” That’s backwards. I turned paid on early and priced it simply: $17 a month or $150 a year.
Here’s the math that surprised even me. 140 of my 5,602 subscribers pay. That’s about a 2.5% conversion rate, the share of free readers who upgrade. My marketer brain wanted to call that small. Then I watched what it actually does. That quiet 2.5% climbs every single week with no ads and no team. My payouts grew from around $375 in a two-week stretch in January to more than $1,000 in a single two-week stretch by late April.
A small conversion rate that compounds beats a big launch that spikes and disappears. And you do not need thousands of readers to start, you can earn from your very first paying supporter. The sooner you switch it on, the sooner the compounding starts. The full process is in my paid newsletter playbook.
Step 6: Build a system you can actually keep
The reason my line kept climbing instead of spiking and dying is that I built a pace I can sustain.
Three to four Notes a day, one article a week. That’s the whole engine. I batch the Notes by keeping a small library of ready-to-go ones pulled from my articles, so on a busy day I’m never staring at a blank screen. I post first thing in the morning, again late morning, again early afternoon, and once at night. If a Note flops, I take it down and put up another. The platform handles discovery. I just keep feeding it.
And this part is specifically for anyone reading who’s over 40, over 50, and quietly wondering whether they’ve missed the window. You haven’t. Your experience is the product. Everything you’ve lived through is exactly what makes people trust you and pay you. I’m doing this at 55. The age isn’t the obstacle. It’s the edge.
Most Substack guides are written by people who’ve read about it. This one is written by someone doing it.
Substack 101 walks you through the entire system — from creating your account and choosing a niche, to writing articles that get shared, growing your first 100 subscribers, turning on paid subscriptions, and building multiple income streams from one audience.
Inside you’ll find 16 chapters covering every major part of the platform: articles, Notes, video, podcasts, recommendations, Substack Live, paywall strategy, pricing psychology, and beyond. Plus three bonus sections — a cheat sheet, a 30-day launch plan, and a recommended tools list.
This isn’t a beginner’s overview. It’s a working system with real strategy, real numbers, and real results — from a creator who generates multiple six figures across YouTube, TikTok Shop, Amazon, Pinterest, blogging, and Substack.
If you’re ready to stop dabbling and start building, this is your roadmap.
