How to Start a Newsletter on Substack for Your Small Business If you've been thinking about setting up a Substack newsletter as a part of your content marketing strategy, here's how to get started and grow your following.

By now you've undoubtedly run across a few Substack newsletters. More than simply a publishing site, Substack allows you to set up paid subscription options and collect credit and debit card payments through its partnership with Stripe.

Most Substack-centered how-to articles focus on its utility for writers and other creators. It might not be immediately apparent what a small business or startup can do with a Substack newsletter.

Yet it's definitely something to consider, particularly if you're intrigued by the promise of content marketing but aren't sure you want to go to the trouble of setting up a blog to host your content — or if you simply want to build a new channel based on inbound marketing techniques. You can use this tactic on your own or in conjunction with others for collaborative marketing.

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Why newsletters are so effective

Newsletters are an effective way to reach almost any audience. Although we all complain about the proliferation of spam in our inboxes, inbound email marketing with content-driven newsletters is the opposite of spam. It's permission-based, requiring the active consent of the user via simple sign-up forms. And, with content-based newsletters, there's often no offer and call-to-action to finesse. Instead, you create meaningful, valuable content that addresses your user's interests and needs.

Substack is popular with creatives as a way to create, publish and distribute newsletters for a few key reasons: simplicity and reach. It promotes itself on its homepage both as a "new model for publishing" and "the home for great writers and podcasters," but there's room there for thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and brands to provide something valuable to their audiences as well.

Substack is relatively easy to begin using, free to start with (and remains so, as long as you don't start charging) and avoids the pitfalls of struggling to rank with search engines for competitive keywords. That means it's a great way to begin permission-based content marketing via email to users who are keenly interested in what you have to say and offer.

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Getting started with Substack

To begin, you'll need to sign up for a Substack account. It's free to use Substack but if you decide to offer paid subscriptions, the platform will take 10% of your revenue each month. You'll also pay an additional per-transaction fee to Stripe, Substack's credit card processor.

Next, you'll pick out a title for your newsletter and an accompanying URL. This can be either a custom domain you've previously registered (i.e., mybusiness.com) or a subdomain with Substack (i.e., mybusiness.substack.com). However, if you choose to set up a custom domain you've registered, Substack does charge a one-time $50 fee.

After you've set up your title and subdomain (or custom domain), you'll want to:

• Pick a logo
• Craft a one-line description of your newsletter
• Customize your newsletter theme with colors and photos
• Set up an email header, banner and footer, if you like

Next, you'll want to create a few basic pages for your Substack home. These include an About page, a "thank you for subscribing" page and an "unsubscribe" page with relevant information for users.

Finally, make yourself familiar with Substack's publishing guidelines so you don't get in trouble with the platform. Although Substack is fairly laissez-faire when it comes to content oversight, it does have a few rules you should be aware of, including a prohibition against content that's plagiarized, that violates copyright laws or that constitutes porn or erotica.

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Tips for crafting great newsletter content

How do you create the best possible content for your new Substack newsletter? You have two basic options: write it or find and curate it. Most Substack creators seem to focus primarily on original content. However, many do a combination of both approaches. Choose what you believe your audience would most value and appreciate.

You can craft short lists of other articles, books and other kinds of content to recommend to your readers and add those to a newsletter that also includes your own original content. Or if you prefer, set a schedule where you publish twice a week, with recommended curated content lists distributed on Monday and your content on Thursday, for example.

If you're planning to curate, it helps to find a means of saving and organizing links that you'd like to share eventually. It's always better to create one list and use it across all your devices. Apps like iPhone's Notes or the Evernote app can help you stay organized by giving you a single cross-platform place to collect all the URLs you might want to consider including in your newsletter.

Crafting your own content requires more thought and a chunk of time (or several) during which you can engage in deep work. Schedule your content writing time at least two days ahead of the publishing date for your newsletter so you can maintain a consistent schedule for your readers while still allowing yourself enough time to edit and polish your drafts.

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Who's getting it right?

Studying examples of newsletters that are doing it right is one of the best ways to garner actionable tips for creating a successful newsletter of your own. For example, several business and entrepreneurship-oriented newsletters help busy business leaders stay connected and ahead of the game. Good ones to look at and perhaps subscribe to include:

• Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
• Bill Murphy Jr.'s Understandably
• Ankler Media's The Ankler
• Lex Sokolin's Fintech Blueprint
• George Fleck's Director Moves

Other popular Substack newsletters with thousands of subscribers (many paying a small fee each month for the privilege of reading the author's thoughts and commentary) include:

• Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American on history and modern politics
• Zeynep Tufekci's Insight about the intersection between technology and sociology
• Bari Weiss's Common Sense about investigative journalism, politics and current events
• Anne Helen Peterson's Culture Study on society and culture
• Dr. Katelyn Jetelina's Your Local Epidemiologist on public health and infectious diseases
• Genevieve Roch-Decter's Grit Capital about investment advice and news

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Grow your list and improve engagement

Creating and publishing your newsletter on Substack is just the beginning. To succeed at your business goals, you'll need to grow your readership and increase reader engagement with your newsletter content. Here are several tips to help you do that:

• Get familiar with your Substack metrics page. Keeping an eye on subscription trends will help you figure out what works, what doesn't, and how to do more of the former and less of the latter.
• Be specific and clear with your newsletter's purpose. "Get updates from our brand" isn't sufficient. Offer something that's concretely valuable to your readers, such as "expert insights and late-breaking news" about your field or niche.
• Offer people a reason to subscribe. It doesn't have to require a huge investment of time or money. A checklist, an ebook copy, a white paper, some other kind of exclusive content or even a rewards program for customers can be the thing that convinces a somewhat reluctant user to sign up.
• Make sure your sign-up form is short, succinct and visibly positioned on your website. Include links to your Substack sign-up page in your email signatures, social media bios and anywhere else you can think of.
• Put thought into your newsletter, even if you have to slow down your publication schedule. A great, interesting newsletter that comes every two weeks is much better than a mediocre one that arrives weekly.
• That being said, publishing more frequently may be better for readership and open statistics for your newsletter. Experiment to find out what works best for your readers.

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Additional resources

There are lots of digital resources available to help you get started. One of the best comes straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak: Substack's guide to getting started. There you'll find guides to publishing your first newsletter, increasing your readership and going paid, plus lots of examples of great publications that demonstrate best practices and bold ideas.