How Much Should you Charge for your Substack Newsletter?
The data on different segments of Substack are scant. But a quick 10-min market analysis fixes that.
Substack does not provide average Monthly premium rates per leaderboard category. But we can do some digging ourselves if you want. Market analysis is after all important for deciding on a fair monthly and yearly rate. It’s also just useful to decide on which category to write in.
You will notice this varies wildly with investing (Finance) and crypto Newsletters charging an arm and a leg more than some cultural or more light-hearted topics. Once has to assume that is is due to the profit motive.
Sometimes writing less, and for more money is actually the way to go.
While this is not a good sample size, it will quickly give you a general idea of a baseline market rate for Substack writers.
Finance
I took the top 20 Newsletter in Technology on Substack’s Leaderboards.
Average Monthly Sub: $40.95
Yearly (at a 10x multiple): $409.50
Crypto
I took the top 10 Newsletter in Crypto on Substack’s Leaderboards.
Average Monthly Sub: $26.70 (this would be considerably higher if you took the top 20)
Yearly (at a 10x multiple): $267.0
Technology
I took the top 10 Newsletter in Technology on Substack’s Leaderboards.
Average Monthly Sub: $24.90
Yearly (at a 10x multiple): $249.0
Climate
I took the top 10 Newsletter in Climate on Substack’s Leaderboards.
Average Monthly Sub: $9.65
Yearly (at a 10x multiple): $96.50
News
I took the top 10 Newsletter in News on Substack’s Leaderboards.
Average Monthly Sub: $7.15
Yearly (at a 10x multiple): $71.50
Politics
I took the top 10 Newsletter in Politics on Substack’s Leaderboards.
Average Monthly Sub: $6.40
Yearly (at a 10x multiple): $64.00
Conclusion
Technically speaking if your aim is to write for profit, Finance and crypto far exceed other audience segments of what your audience might be willing to pay. If you write in the passion economy just about a particular hobby of yours you might expect to charge as little as one tenth of the amount.
Substack Economics is really a pretty basic assessment of the ecosystem to see if writing on a Newsletter is a valid stream of income for you. After all, some writers will actually want ROI for their time spent in the Creator Economy.
I’m not a monetizing savvy writer and cannot personally afford to create Ads or marketing funnels that are paid, but if you were good at that and at some cash to invest in the business, you could make it profitable by simply choosing the write topic to write about and doing it better than your competitors and growing faster.
Of course there is a huge recency advantage for those who started earlier and have been growing faster for longer due to the leaderboard mechanic. Good luck competing with them!
However there are actually some surprises. A segment like Climate Change, actually surpasses our expectations on what an audience is willing to pay for good information.
Some segments are likely too new to find a good baseline where Creators are actually under-charging (a common theme we find in writers). The amount you charge can be somewhat arbitrary depending on how easily you find subscriptions come your way.
Some creators get off to such a running start on the Leaderboard boost (or on a viral Hacker News post) that they can afford to scale their operations. For those Substack Creators, there’s no catching them since they find marketing funnels that are have synergy with their value proposition and are gifted with real business acumen. This typically includes creating a Substack that scales into a YouTube account.
Other Creators realize they have been under-charging due to their audience’s behavior. Some readers subscribe, download your evergreen content and run and do this every quarter (in the case with investing reports). On Substack, you live and learn.
Anyways I hope I have given you some food for thought here, what’s common knowledge to some of us here, might be new to you if you are new here. For many Creators in the passion economy, they just do this for fun. But for others, this is a major side gig or even becomes their main gig.