Create a Substack Newsletter from Scratch

One mistake of every new writer is not building their email list as soon as they start blogging.

For over two years of my writing experience, I have learned from other writers to start collecting emails from your audiences.

This is because you can connect with them when you are launching a new product or service and then turn them into sales.

You can use this opportunity for various things, such as content promotion, affiliate marketing, etc.

What is Substack?

Substack is an email newsletter platform that everyone can use to write a blog on the web and earn money from it by monetization.

You can earn on Substack from their subscription feature, which most creators use to give exclusive content to premium subscribers.

Why Should You Use Substack?

There are many reasons why you should use Substack. Here are the biggest WHY you should use it.

Huge community

You can compare Substack to Medium. It has a community on the web, as many creators use this platform, whether in the humor genre, finance, business, crypto, entertainment, etc.

This means you don’t need to worry much about the audience because you can quickly get attention from other creators by consistently commenting, liking, and supporting them.

Also read: 4 Powerful Platforms That Will Double Your Blog Traffic in 2023

User-friendly

One of the reasons I decided to migrate to Substack is the clean user interface that lets everyone use it more accessible, even while you are using your mobile phone.

Unlike other newsletter platforms, Substack has a mobile app that lets every user read any content in the community. On the other hand, its mobile app is still in read-only mode. Meaning you cannot write and send any newsletter issues from there.

But the good part is that you can use their web version on your mobile app, which is also user-friend and has no extra hassle.

How to Create a Substack Newsletter?

1. Start by creating your account in Substack. You will need to provide your publication’s name or the name of your newsletter, its tagline or headline, etc.
2. There are cases where you will need to follow the topics you are interested in so that your Home feed will not be boring.
3. Start designing and customizing your publication. Customizing your publication is as easy as 1,2,3, depending on the design you want.
4. You can also add extra pages on your Dashboard to help your readers sort the content.
5. Finally, it is up to you if you turn on the subscription feature. It allows you to receive money from your audiences. The only downside is they are using Stripe as a payment service which is unavailable in other countries.

You can read How to Start Writing on Substack: A Beginner’s Guideby Ming Qian from The Side Blogger for full guide.

How do you keep your email list active and engaged?

Email marketing is like content writing. You just need to be consistent in what you are doing.

You can do this by doing the following;

Give value to the community

Remember that blogging is not all about you but your audience. If you want to make it profitable, you must start giving value to them.

Give a freebie, helpful information, etc. People love it when there is extra knowledge that they learn.

You can start giving short informative blog posts like what Mind⁺⁺ is doing. You can receive an email containing a blog post, a writing prompt and challenge, and featured posts explaining the next point.

Acknowledge them

Stop overpromoting yourself through their email. Start acknowledging your subscribers. By this, you are building connections with them and start gaining their trust to support you.

In Mind⁺⁺, we are creating a small movement that will become huge soon by using a specific hashtag from the weekly newsletter prompt they will receive.

This weekly prompt and challenge are helping every writer, especially the novice, to stop writer’s block and build a connection with like-minded people.

Conclusion

Using Substack as your email newsletter provider is good because you can easily build your email list compared to other platforms.

I even got more than 10 new subscribers right after creating my publication. It is also handy and customizable.

By building your email list, you are giving yourself an advantage that will have a good outcome in the long term.