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Running a Donation-Based Paid Newsletter on Substack
Can you ask readers to donate to support your writing?
I’ve written a lot about Substack since I started using the platform a little over a year ago. I’ll share a link to a list of all those articles at the end of this one, but today I’m sharing my thoughts on running a donation-based Substack newsletter.
If you’re not familiar with the platform, it works a little like a blog and a lot like a newsletter. But it also allows you to charge for subscriptions to that newsletter, which means in effect that it works like a membership site as well.
For a long time, I didn’t want to turn on paid subscriptions unless I had something really cool to offer my paid subscribers. Courses and trainings, and webinars and a ton of extra, exclusive, value-packed content.
Then I read How to Make Money with Substack: Unlock the Power of Subscription Newsletters by Karen Cherry, and I started to re-think things.
Cherry talks about various monetization models you can use with Substack, including what I’m calling the ‘donation model’. This is when you allow subscribers to upgrade to a paid subscription, even though you don’t offer them anything extra in return, except the opportunity to support you, your newsletter, and even other readers who…
