Is Substack a side hustle?
Conscious planning, writing in flow and living in connection whilst earning in an online world.
The question;
“Is Substack a side hustle?”
- popped up in a recent Open Office Hours hosted by the Substack team and supported by the community of writers here.
People are curious - is there a golden goose or at least an egg - what’s the deal?!
There are folks who are definitely making a “great” living from writing here on Substack. It’s their main income - (they say).
There are journalists who write here and successful authors, dreamers, ‘want to be’ writers who don’t call themselves writers but definitely are, burnt out content creators, those who niche, those who don’t - it’s a real mixed bag.
It’s hard to fathom the black and white numbers of paid or free subs because it’s not published (which I for one am glad about).
In the spirit of being transparent…
Sometimes people alude to numbers but in the main it’s generalised and woven into their ‘about’ page or popped in their footer.
One rabbit hole I went down gave me an approximate sum for you to think on if you’d like…
If someone says (and the do say this exact thing) they have hundreds of paying subscribers.
600 subs is £42k a year at substack’s suggested rate of £70 per sub per year. 300 is £21k per year.
Minus fees etc of course.
In the North East of England, £42k is not a side hustle it’s a healthy household income.
Let’s take another example;
Someone else I follow online who has a large (30k) following on instagram moved her mailing list of 8000 people here and quickly launched pay walled posts.
If just 1% (80) of them subscribed to her for £70 a year that’s £5600 in income - I suspect it’s a lot more. It might be less?
And right here…
I have 7 paid Substack subscribers - it’s my little internet circle of trust.
I can write for them or for me or both.
I don’t expect likes or comments or anything in return - I’m building a space for me for them - it’s the same and I am so grateful for it.
Whatever your economy of scale is, income to fuel your life here is possible there’s no doubt about it. If you’ve never earnt money online it really does feel like magic.
As I open each little email to let me know someone has bought one of my online products or subscribed here it smashes a tiny bit more of the patriotic glass ceiling.
More than that, it nudges the out dated patriarchal system of time for money for the man and be grateful for it into the ether!
Connection and Consistency
It’s true, I’ve felt more held by the online community these past few years than a lot of my ‘in person / real life friends’. (using friends loosely - that’s a whole other Substack post)…
I want to consistently show up for a community who I share values with whether that’s online or in person!
I am 41 and I’m SO bored of vacuous conversations.
I want to connect with people right here or on the other side of the world that have time for conversations around creativity, wellbeing, neurodivergence, empowerment, our planet, permaculture and the slow lived life.
I want to share quiet ambition and pour my life experiences and gift for observing the world and authentic sharing into writing.
Ultimately, I want to write because it’s a beautiful courageous act but I also want to connect on all the levels we have as humans and I want to cheerlead others too.
Don’t we all want that?
Or maybe some people want the challenge of clashing opinions? Or the glossy make believe stuff. I’ve heard twitter is good for that or we can always circle back to Instagram and search #interiors! ;)
I’m being fickle here because you’ll know I LOVE a good interior before and after carousel and Interior Design Masters is one of my fave shows on telly!
So to our individual goals….
I shared in this recent post, my goal around writing and growing here on Substack this year. I’ve switched 98% of my energy over here from Instagram and it feels great!
Subscribers are flowing in one by one, sometimes two by two and that feels both a compliment and an opportunity.
I weave writing into my week. I write in the notes app in my phone alot. It’s currently 5.41am and I’m back upstairs with a hot coffee writing holding my two year old as she needed settling back to sleep.
I’ve made a plan for the year which looks like this;
2023 at a glance
This is how I’ll write;
Monthly
Notes from the Sea - my monthly chatty update email and journal prompts for the month ahead. My offers to my community if they want to work with me/ connect on a deeper level. Notes from the Sea comes out around the 1st of each month.
Seasonally
Writing in tune with the seasons is really important to me and I hope to unpack that more for you all.
Project Bloom updates - project bloom is my gardening and wellbeing project for 2023
Big Dreams begin with me - behind the scenes posts. In these posts for paid subscribers I share behind the scenes processes, projects, figures and the emotions of running our own businesses and building the big dream. Click here if you want to read a taster of those!
Guest post for another publication. I have one coming for The Ladybird Purse.
Weekly
Every third week - A guest post - Big Dreams begin with me. If you’re running your own business in the creative or wellbeing sector and would like to apply to be interviewed drop me reply here by replying to my email.
Write what I want to write when I want to write it and see if it turns into anything - no pressure!
Questions I still have!?
What on earth I do with the content on my Wordpress blog! H E L P (edit - I moved them all over here and locked them to paid subs)
Can I stay true to myself as my audience grows…
Am I sharing TOO much (the dreaded vulnerability hangover of the over share)… GULP
Getting organised
So if you’re reading this thinking oh that’s all great but HOW do you relate that to your personal time and energy.
Here’s what’s working for me…
I have a list of titles I want to write and unpack in the notes of my phone and my plan is to get ahead on some writing and scheduling in advance over our precious winter!
It looks like just over one post a week so some weeks there’ll be two, other weeks there’ll just be one.
I’ve experimented with the chat thread to see how it feels to show up there - my intent is always creativity and thought provoking playfulness.
So to the title of the article.
So is Substack a side hustle?
For me there’s no space for hustles ever!
It’s not part of how I work or want to work.
The title is purposefully inflammatory really because although I am a huge advocate for diversifying your income especially if you’re self employed I don’t connect to the energy of “hustle culture” - it just doesn’t work for me.
Everything I do is planned and shared in a way that feels good to me and fuels my love for creativity and connection.
So yes Substack does earn me money and I’m grateful for that but no it’s not a side hustle.
It’s an integral part of my ecosystem. Do I want to turn writing into a part time/ full time “job”?
Ask me again in a year!!
What do you think? What is Substack and writing for you in the here and now?
A place for self expression, to test content with an audience, a white space away from the noise?
I’d love to know!
Cx
PS - I REALLY recommend subscribing to The Ladybird Purse - Keris is SO open and honest about money and her guest interviews are FAB!
I love your transparency here, thank you! And your parting comment that you don’t agree with hustle culture just made me so happy, because I’ve come to feel the same way 😊
I love the idea of including subscriptions on my substack, I just feel like I’m not quite there yet. For me, this space is really about non-performative creativity and challenging my own insecurities around imperfection. I worry that adding on subscriptions will make me start seeing this as a “business” where I’m trying to please others, rather than a space for me to play and grow and be creative.
On the other hand, I wonder if that’s me getting in my own way a bit, assuming that people won’t want to subscribe if I’m just doing what I want to do for me. I know there wouldn’t be any harm in adding them, so long as I didn’t get in my own head about it. Maybe people would be interested, maybe they wouldn’t 🤷♀️
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Thoroughly enjoyed it and so much to say. I don't like the whole side hustle thing either and there's a whole array of issues I'm working on actually valuing my own work and taking that courageous step to choose a paywall for some of the content. The way I see it, paid content is for me and for the people who truly resonate with it and want that extra bit more of intimacy and vulnerability, and want to offer the support for me to keep writiting in that capacity. As you said, at 39, I'm done with meaningless conversations. I wanna go deep. I wanna know you deeply. What's holding you back from living your vision (besides the fact that we all gotta pay the bills and live in this human body). What's the nudge in you that just won't let go? And how can we support and empower each other to actually heed the call to live in alignment with our visions for our lives? I'm done chasing and hustling. If you know Tarot, my life card is the Hermit. So I'm gonna embrace my inner Hermit and just sit on my mountain and share the wisdom that emerges. And the people that resonate will just have to follow that light from my little lantern. Anyway, went off on a little daydream trip there. All in all, I love your intentionality with this space and I resonate with it. Cultivating a community of like-hearted people feels way more resonant than side-hustling.