Lucia Fontaina-Powell
As a self-employed copywriter and a career coach, I meet a lot of freelancers, business owners and entrepreneurs. One thing most of us have in common? The self-promotion ick – particularly when it comes to social media.
Maybe you want to post more on LinkedIn, Instagram or TikTok. But you don’t know what to say, you don’t have the design skills or you can’t dance.
Well, I can’t pretend that building an online presence is easy. It’s hard putting yourself out there. It can be demoralising when, after all your hard work, you get a few likes at best. I know, because I’ve spent almost a decade working in digital marketing.
And yet, social media holds potential for business owners and creators. In my own career, it’s helped me get jobs, meet clients and make genuine friends. So we remain hopeful – if we can just crack the algorithm/create the perfect content calendar/change our whole personality, we can almost taste success.
But what if there was a different kind of platform? One where you didn’t need to follow trends, master the algorithm or pay to play?
Say hello to Substack.
What is Substack?
Substack is a digital publishing platform for writers and content creators (and avid readers).
| Check out Lucia’s Substack ‘Messy work” here.
It’s essentially a cross between a newsletter and a blog. Your subscribers receive every post directly to their inbox, allowing you to grow and nurture an audience. But unlike a regular newsletter, all your content lives in an archive on your Substack page, making it discoverable through search engines and the app.
When Substack first launched in 2017, its mission was to “make it simple for a writer to start an email newsletter that makes money from subscriptions”. Its promise? That “you don’t need to play by the rules of social media to succeed”. Enticing indeed.
Since then, Substack has become a major player in the digital media landscape.
At the time of writing this, Substack had:
20 million+
active subscribers
2 million
paid subscriptions
17k+
paid writers
Up to 50 million
unique visitors per month
An audience that’s not to be sniffed at – but also, small enough that you won’t get completely lost in it, as with other social platforms.
So, with everyone from Instagram influencers to celebrities jumping on board, should you consider starting a Substack too? And if the answer’s yes, what do you need to know before you get started?
First, why should you start a Substack?
My portfolio career blends freelance copywriting with life, career and creativity coaching (and who knows where it will take me next!).
I started my Substack, Messy Work, in February 2024 for two reasons:
After almost a decade helping brands find their voices, I wanted to find mine.
I realised that I didn’t have a creative outlet that was just for me - one where I could choose what to write about and really be myself.
I wanted somewhere to document my learnings, explore ideas and attract clients as I built my coaching business.
In my work as a coach, I’m constantly encountering new theories and psychological frameworks that I believe could help so many people get more out of life. Since I love writing, Substack seemed like a natural place to share my journey and help other people along theirs.
Substack has played an instrumental part in building my personal brand – not just in the audience I’ve grown, but because it’s given me a space to freely explore my own identity and thoughts.
But that’s not to say that Substack is for everyone. So here are the pros and cons, as I see them.
The pros
You can lean into long-form content
Long-form content can be really valuable to portfolio professionals, as what we do is often tricky to condense into a snappy carousel. Without the constraints of character limits and shorter attention spans, there’s room to explore and explain various interests and skills.
You can boost discoverability and reach a new audience
Substack has a built-in network of readers and writers who can discover your content through the app. They also aim to make content rank in search engines, so with the right optimisations, you can write content that people are already looking for (just like an SEO-driven blog).
As someone with two professional identities, I really like that Substack allows me to build an audience outside of platforms where people already know me. I’m more comfortable sharing personal stories on Substack than LinkedIn, where my audience includes past employers and brand clients.
You can build a genuine community
One of the things I love about Substack is that it feels like you can build a real relationship with your audience (rather than shouting into the void). Whether it’s my friends WhatsApping me off the back of a post, or complete strangers sharing something beautiful in the comments, my Substack posts drive meaningful conversations.
Successful Substackers like Emma Gannon have really embraced this, using Substack Chat, discussion threads and private messages to build closed communities.
You can earn money from your content
And last, but not least, Substack gives you the option to put your content behind a paywall. Just keep in mind that the platform takes a 10% cut of all revenue and Stripe charges a 3% handling fee.
As traditional media falters, more and more professional journalists are turning to Substack to write and edit their own publications, and build a career on their terms.
The top ten authors on Substack earn $25 million a year between them, so if you’re in the market for a new side hustle, it could be an additional revenue stream.
The cons
Writing the content is time consuming
Depending on what you’re writing, you may have to factor in planning and ideation, research and fact-checking, sourcing and curating, editing and formatting…oh, and the actual writing.
That’s not to say that you’ve got to find writing easy to like it—I regularly find myself staring at a blank word doc, wondering what on earth I’m going to cobble together for my next post. But even though it can feel impossible at times, I do (perhaps somewhat masochistically) enjoy it. Writing gets me into a flow state and the end result, for me, is always worth it.
To build an audience, you need to do the work
If you want to grow your subscriber base, you’re going to need to do some heavy lifting – and have a lot of patience.
Unless you’ve already got an existing audience elsewhere, it’s going to take time and commitment to build an audience from scratch, just like any other social media platform.
Ultimately, it boils down to the following
1. Do you like writing?
2. Are you willing to invest time and energy into your Substack on a regular basis?
3. Are you approaching Substack as a marketer, or as a creator?
This platform is primarily for creators – so you need to provide something that’s of value, show up authentically and really lean into it as a creative outlet. Substack is unique in the social media landscape in that it is ad-free, so if you try to hard sell on the platform, you’ll be doing the very thing most of us are on there to escape from.
How much time does it take to build and maintain a Substack?
Before you get started, you need to think about:
Your positioning
What kind of value are you hoping to provide? The type of content you produce will affect your posting frequency and creation process. If you’re curating a roundup of news headlines, you might need to post daily. If it’s meaty guides or essays, it might be monthly.
Your objectives
What are you hoping to achieve? If you want to monetise, you need to post consistently and give people a reason to subscribe. If you’re simply writing for yourself, you can be more spontaneous.
Your reality
Realistically, what do your lifestyle, temperament and other commitments allow you to give to Substack? Not only how much time you can carve out per week/month, but how much energy you have for writing.
What kind of results can I expect from Substack?
Success on Substack comes down to a mix of talent, persistence and sheer luck – and of course, ‘success’ is up to you to define.
To me, success is a) dedicating time to channel my creativity and ideas into my own writing (not just other people’s) and b) writing something that resonates with my readers – even if it’s just one person.
Here are my results from my first nine months on Substack:
19 published posts (never missing my self-imposed deadline!)
Almost 4k views
200+ subscribers and 300 followers
Countless moments of connection
New friends and acquaintances
Growing confidence in my voice as a writer
A deeper commitment to my creative practice
Greater clarity on my identity as a coach
Several coaching leads and paying clients
| Lucia’s Substack subscribers growth over time
How can I stand out on Substack?
Don’t overthink it! When I joined, I had to make a real effort to take off my marketing hat and put on my Lucia hat – because Substack is all about authenticity and personality.
I can offer some more practical best practice:
Have some branding, even if it’s very simple (I created my Substack logo and headers in Canva).
Make posts scannable and digestible using headers, short paragraphs, lists and images.
Make use of the platform’s various features (my subscribers more than doubled after I blew up on Notes).
Cross-promote your Substack on other channels: website, social media posts and bios, email signature, etc.
Cross-post with other authors to reach a new audience.
But my main tips would be:
Lean into vulnerability
Take people behind the scenes and share personal stories to build connection and trust with your audience.
Set some boundaries
Some authors love treating Substack like a diary that’s away from the prying eyes of people they know in real life. But if, like me, you’re using Substack to build a professional reputation, you might want to have some boundaries around what you share (e.g. political opinions, personal traumas, details of your relationship).
Make joy and connection your KPIs
When we feel pressured or resent doing something, we’re much less likely to do it (and do it well). So what if your biggest KPI on Substack was simply whether it brings you joy? And then, whether it brings other people joy – even if it’s just your mum and your best friend, that means something!
Now it’s your turn
If you’re curious to see what Substack has to offer, now’s the time. Quick to set up, easy to navigate and free to use, it’s well worth testing if you enjoy writing and are struggling to cut through the noise elsewhere. And even if writing’s not your thing, Substack is fast rolling out new features like video and audio – so who knows what the future holds!
And if you’re still feeling a bit nervous, reach out to The Portfolio Collective community to learn from other people’s Substack experience. There are plenty of content creators out there, and they’d be more than happy to have a chat.
Think this sounds like the right path for you? Come along to our monthly Get started event for new members to find out what a portfolio career could look like and how The Portfolio Collective can help you take those first steps towards professional success – and don’t forget to connect with our community!
