6 Ways I’m Using Substack to Grow My Business

If you haven’t heard yet, Substack is my favorite platform right now.

Of course, I haven’t left behind this blog or my email list. But I’ve pretty much replaced everything else with Substack, because it’s a whole business ecosystem (publishing and content distribution platform, visibility channel, a place for collaboration, a place to grow organically, social media, a newsletter, and a content monetization platform).

My publication is called The 2-Hour Blogger. Join me there.

In this post, I want to share with you the ways I’m using it to grow my brand, business and revenue.

I hope this inspires you to start a Substack if you haven’t already, or monetize your existing publication/newsletter there and take it more seriously.

1. Growing an audience. 

The first way I use Substack for my business is to grow an audience on a new platform. That means being in front of totally new people who might like my content, subscribe to my publication, follow me on socials, buy my products, spread the word about my blog, collaborate with me, or anything else.

Substack offers anyone a chance to go viral, to grow an engaged readership, form connections, and just gain visibility even if they are just starting out.

As long as you’re posting consistently (articles + Notes) and genuinely (and consistently!!!) engaging with others, you can grow a lot in 1 year.

2. Growing my brand.

This is similar but deserved its own place in this list. Personal brands are more important than ever now. Search engines and AI tools see that as a trust signal. It requires presence on multiple platforms, engagement, content, and sharing your expertise. And Substack allows you to do that in a pretty awesome way.

Of course, you have to love writing to make it on there. When you do, just go ahead and start that publication and teach what you know.

So, I’m growing my brand in many ways this year, one of them being that my name appears on Substack. 

It clearly says it in my bio that I teach bloggers how to earn from sponsorships, and my publication is about that too. I’ll be publishing strategic content around that, and naturally promoting my products in that niche.

3. Have a paid newsletter.

I’m also using Substack to add a whole new income stream to my business – recurring revenue thanks to paid subscribers.

That happens by turning on paid subscriptions for your newsletter and allowing people to sign up. 

I did it before I was technically read, and before I started actively promoting it. And I got my first paid subscriber soon after that (he joined for a whole year), and another one (monthly).

I wrote about it here.

My initial plan was to first learn more about how the platform works, gain a couple hundred subscribers, give the algorithm a chance to see who my content can actually help the most and connect me with those users, and to plan what to post for my paid subscribers so I can really overdeliver and avoid cancellations. But I did it anyway.

4. Monetizing in more ways.

I can share affiliate links in Notes and articles.

I can link to my digital products.

I can work with brands. (I actually had one paid collaboration already, with just around 215 free subscribers. Here’s the breakdown.)

I can launch any future paid offers.

It can all be done on Substack. In fact, the successful Substack newsletters I know rely on that for their revenue, and paid subscribers are often just a small part of it (even if they have many of them).

5. Validating ideas.

I see Substack as a great place to validate ideas before you start a new project or release a paid offer.

Write about it first, or just mention it in Notes many times, and see if there’s interest.

6. Growing an email list I can take with me.

While growing an audience, you’re also building a list on Substack. And no matter what happens to the platform in the future, your own that list.

You can export it one day and take it to another platform, or to your email marketing tool. That means you can stay in touch with these people and continue the relationships you’ve built.

This is priceless.

So that’s how I’ve integrated Substack into my business and how it supports my growth. I’m excited to see how that will look like by the end of the year. But for now, it’s about showing up there daily and learning more about it.

If you’re on Substack, make sure you subscribe to The 2-Hour Blogger.