Creating a profitable Substack that grows your brand

In this Lunch and Learn, PR expert Lucy Werner takes you through her process of building a Substack that not only generates revenue but also strengthens your personal brand.

Learn how to craft engaging content, attract the right audience and turn your newsletter into a powerful platform that supports both your creative and financial goals.

Lucy is the author of Hype Yourself and Brand Yourself and the creator of Hype Yourself on Substack, a top 50 global business newsletter.

With over a decade of experience helping entrepreneurs and creatives build their brands, she's passionate about making promotion easy and fun. She believes in the power of newsletters to build personal brands and generate revenue while balancing the demands of motherhood and solopreneurship.

Topics covered in this session

• Positioning your newsletter for growth: How to define your niche and grow a newsletter that aligns with your personal brand

• Monetising your Substack: Different ways to turn your newsletter into a revenue-generating stream

• Building and engaging a loyal audience: Strategies for building an engaged community that drives both your brand and your business forward

Lucy's key points from the webinar

Building your presence on Substack

• Choose a personal name as your Substack handle, pair it with a clear publication name and select categories that match your niche.

• Monetise your Substack by offering paid subscriptions with exclusive content like PR recipes, personal essays and live classes, while giving free readers a seven-day preview.

• Consistently publish content on a set cadence (weekly or monthly) to build a loyal audience, and offer a free preview to attract new readers.

Increasing engagement and revenue

• Engage with your audience by responding to comments, creating a two-way conversation and encouraging subscribers to communicate through threads in the chat section.

• Set up various payment plans (monthly, yearly) and offer a founding plan for one-on-one time, mixing free and paid content to attract subscribers.

• Use Substack's recommendations and notes features to grow your audience, with 4,000 to 5,000 subscribers potentially coming from recommendations in a year.

Making the most of Substack's features

• Share audio and video content on Substack to help grow your audience quicker, and link to other platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram.

• Create sales moments like Black Friday or your business's birthday to reward long-time subscribers with introductory rates.

• Use Substack's sections feature to organise content by topic and allow subscribers to opt in or out of specific sections.

Understanding Substack's pricing

• Be aware that Substack takes a 10% platform fee and 3% payment processing fee on top of your revenue – which could affect your actual earnings.

• Export your email list data as a backup using Substack's export feature. That helps makes sure you own your subscriber information if you leave the platform.

• Use Substack to monetise your newsletter and build a personal brand while balancing demands of motherhood and solopreneurship.

About Enterprise Nation

Enterprise Nation is the UK's most active small business network, helping thousands of people turn their good idea into a great business. Join today to get everything you need to start and grow your small business, in one place.

About Constant Contact

Constant Contact offers email and digital marketing tools that make it easy for your small business or nonprofit to get the attention and revenue it deserves. Constant Contact has joined Lunch and Learn to share its extensive marketing expertise.