Gut health, glamping, druids … Whatever your passion, there’s a newsletter for it
A reported 50,000 publishers around the world make money from their Substack newsletters. Credit: Getty Images
Each week, 1000-odd kilometres apart, Maggie MacKellar and I go through similar agonies. At her desk in the book-lined study of her northern Tasmanian farmhouse, MacKellar spends up to 10 hours worrying over her newsletter, The Sit Spot, which she sends to her 5500-strong mailing list every Tuesday. “Every week it takes a certain amount of creative courage to press ‘publish’ – I panic every week,” says MacKellar, who has no reason for panic; in March, her 2023 memoir Graft won the Premier’s Prize for Non-fiction in the Tasmanian Literary Awards.
Meanwhile, in Sydney, I spend a similar amount of time in a slick of anxiety writing my newsletter, Vamp, which goes out to my mailing list of nearly 3000 people, mostly on Friday evenings, later if other deadlines and life get out of hand. And then I watch, heart-near-mouth, to see how it lands. Will people comment, will they click on the heart emoji to indicate a “like”, will I gain or lose subscribers, will some of the gains be paid subscribers to add to my modest freelancing income, will readers find my words remotely interesting?
MacKellar and I are contemporary iterations of the old-fashioned newspaper or magazine columnist. We both have Substack newsletters – as do hundreds of other Australians, including Sarah Wilson, the Paris-based former magazine editor, MasterChef host, I Quit Sugar founder and author, who writes about living in a collapsing world on This is Precious; Queensland writer John Birmingham, who runs two Substacks – his politically oriented Alien Sideboob and his “dive bar on the internet” Cheeseburger Gothic (“if my dog steals a loaf of bread from the kitchen bench, that’s probably going into the ‘burger,” he says); and politician George Christensen, whose Nation First newsletter, in a dispiriting sign of the times, has one of the country’s biggest Substack followings with more than 135,000 subscribers and headlines like The UN’s war on truth.
John Birmingham, George Christensen and Sarah Wilson all publish on Substack and have attracted strong followings.Credit: Joe Armao; AAP; Supplied
Despite controversies, including claims that Substack has hosted and profited from writers who voice Nazi sentiments, the platform has democratised the media landscape and reshaped how content is created, consumed and monetised. Substack, which launched in 2017 describing itself as “a new economic engine for culture”, claims that it surpassed 5 million paid subscriptions globally in March – up from 4 million in November 2024. It says 50,000 publishers around the world make money from their Substacks and there are now tens of millions of active subscribers across the network. In March, an article in New York magazine observed, “this is Substack’s moment … [it] has escaped its humble newsletter beginnings to become a juggernaut collective of independent voices.”
‘You can very quickly pile up so much reading that you can’t possibly keep up with it.’
John Birmingham
With its suite of DIY digital publishing tools and capacity to take subscriptions on behalf of writers (and a 10 per cent cut), the platform enables anyone to become a publisher. Researching this story, I stumble on a Ukrainian writing about his nation “from the perspective of my soul”; an Aussie Rules fan, AFLGlicko, who describes himself as “some mug with a computer who thinks he knows something”; and “Wendy the Druid”, a trans woman and LGBTQIA+ advocate in Atlanta, Georgia, hosting a live chat on the topic of “One flew over the MAGA’s nest” and the decline in American intelligence (nearly 100 people have their eyeballs on it). From the personal to the political, topics covered on the platform encompass the full gamut of human interest and endeavour, from climate change and gut health to AI empathy bots and glamping in Tuscany.
But it’s not just a platform for hobbyist writers. In an era where traditional media has been disrupted and diminished by the digital revolution, many prominent media figures, particularly in the US, have defected to Substack. Former The New York Times opinion writer Paul Krugman and CNN’s Jim Acosta are among those who have made the leap, joining other notable names such as former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown and historian/commentator Heather Cox Richardson, who publishes Letters from an American, reportedly the platform’s top-earner, generating up to $US5 million ($8.5 million) a year.
Substack has adopted social media infrastructure – including a mobile app and a Twitter/X-style feed called “Notes” for short-form text, recommendations and reposts – and many news junkies now use it as their first port of call. “The Substack app has become my go-to news source,” says John Birmingham. “If you have an interest in any particular area, there are going to be a heap of subject-matter experts writing about it. I’m interested in international politics, I’m one of those nerds, and there are a heap of people writing about it on Substack who have spent decades in the field. You can very quickly pile up so much reading that you can’t possibly keep up with it.”
I launched my weekly newsletter in mid-2022 –initially on the email-marketing platform Mailchimp – with a love for sharing great stuff, a hope for some supplemental income and a clear vision. As a former magazine editor, I sensed a gap in the market for something primarily aimed at women over 45 with broad interests and hungry for intelligent content beyond the usual magazine diet of fashion, beauty and lifestyle. It would be grounded in my belief in the importance of curiosity, authenticity and creativity. Each edition would include an essay on one topic or another, curated links to standout content (on politics and current affairs, the environment, issues affecting women, art, books, film, food and design), and a handful of the wittiest or most striking things I’d spotted on social media that week. A modern mini-magazine, if you like.
I thought it might take me half a day each week. I miscalculated: for the first 15 months or so I spent at least a day a week on Vamp, working without payment (collecting subscriptions on Mailchimp is not straightforward). In mid-2024, I moved to Substack. To my eternal gratitude, loyal readers opened their wallets and I’ve now earned about $18,000 (before tax).
But it is not yet an unalloyed happy story: I failed to predict that receiving money for my work in so direct a way would trigger extreme imposter syndrome and lead me to double the time I devote each week to the project; my essays got longer, the number of links and features I included exploded. Calculating an hourly rate for the time I have invested? That way madness lies. I might as well be taking orders in a fast-food joint’s drive-through.
Calculating an hourly rate for the time I have invested? That way madness lies.
John Birmingham and Rick Morton, a senior reporter for The Saturday Paper and author of four non-fiction books including One Hundred Years of Dirt, have both been on Substack longer than me, and have happier stories to tell. Birmingham, who started Alien Sideboob (the name was inspired by an Xbox game) in 2020 to replace income he lost when a column he wrote for the Brisbane Times was axed, has more than 7000 subscribers, nearly 1000 of which are paid. “It’s pretty good mate, I’ll take it,” he says of his Substack income.
Morton, who launched his Substack Nervous Laughter in 2022, has close to 10,000 subscribers, of which nearly 9 per cent are paid. “It has become a very lovely little outlet,” Morton says of his newsletter, a delicious stew of reflection, wit, outrage and stories about his mother, Deb (“people love her”, he says). “I think it has demonstrably made me a better writer.” Nevertheless, he acknowledges he had a goal when he started – to earn enough money to pay his mortgage on the house he shares with Deb in his Queensland home town. “I was familiar with the idea that maybe you could monetise it, which makes it sound kind of artless and soulless, but frankly, writing is work.”
Morton says he is now earning a “not insignificant amount of money” from Nervous Laughter. “If it was the only thing I did, it wouldn’t be enough to live on, but it would be close.” Although, he is considering tackling the enormous task of shifting Nervous Laughter from Substack to another newsletter platform, possibly the lesser-known Ghost. “It’s got to the point where I can’t, in good conscience, stay on [Substack].”
Morton believes the platform has used its claim of being a bastion of free speech to justify lax moderation of paid newsletters that promote Nazi messages, thereby profiting from such content. He also contends that its founders and venture-capitalist backers support ideologies that aim to undermine democratic institutions.
Maggie MacKellar, meanwhile, describes her Substack earnings from 500 paid subscribers as “not very much money” but, nevertheless, a “significant income stream for me”. She started The Sit Spot, a term birders use to describe a place in nature from which they watch birds, as a way to introduce potential readers to her work.
“The concept was that I would bring something that happens in my natural world [to readers],″ she says, “and I’m so lucky because I live in this beautiful place and I get to do a lot of things.” Still, she is in two minds about her newsletter; she rails against the self-promotion that authors need to do and finds producing it each week draining. “The creative energy involved is intense.”
Each week, by the time I hit “send” on Vamp, I am drained, too. And my thoughts almost immediately turn to what to write for the next edition that has the potential to cut through the cacophony – those 50,000 voices clamouring for eyeballs, many begging for spare change to support their work in the saturated creator economy. And many of my subscribers’ annual subscriptions are due soon, too. Will they renew? Will I sleep tonight?
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