A few weeks ago I pulled up all my Stripe dashboards at once. Three of them. Side by side.
Not because anything was wrong. Because I realized I'd never actually looked at all five together. I knew roughly what each one earned. I had a general sense of "this is going well." But I'd never laid out the full picture and asked: where is the money actually coming from?
So I did.
I've been building on Substack for about 18 months now. What started as one newsletter with zero subscribers turned into an ecosystem with 16,000+ readers and three separate income streams. I didn't plan it that way. It built itself, layer by layer, because each thing I created made the next thing possible.
Today I'm opening all five dashboards for you. Real numbers. Real percentages. And the honest answer to the question 29.7% of you asked in my recent poll: "I have free readers but no clue how to convert them to paid."
The short answer: You don't jump straight to paid. You build a trust ladder. The longer answer is the rest of this post.
I normally keep this stuff behind the paywall. Not today. If this helps you, pass it on.
The Breakdown: $5,000/Month, 3 Main Streams
Hereâs what April actually looked like:
Coaching + Implementation | ~$2,500 | 50% |
High-ticket tools (Drift) | ~$1,250 | 25% |
Subscriptions + small tools | ~$1,250 | 25% |
Total (recurring) | ~$5,000 |
â AI business consulting | $5,000+ per client | = everything above
Half my income comes from coaching. A quarter comes from Drift, a high-ticket tool I sold twice in April. And the remaining quarter comes from what most people think of when they think ânewsletter monetizationâ: subscriptions, small digital products, and tools.
When a consulting client lands on top of all that, it matches the entire month in a single engagement.
Most people assume newsletter income means subscriptions. Mine tells a different story. Let me walk you through how it actually builds, from the bottom up.
Layer 1: Free Content (Where Everything Starts)
Before any revenue stream existed, there was one thing: free content.
Free posts every Tuesday. Substack Notes every day. Lives, chats, conversations in the community. All free. All public. All building reach.
This layer earns exactly $0. And itâs the most valuable thing I do.
Every single dollar that comes in through the streams below traces back to someone who first found me through something free. A Note that showed up in their feed. A post someone restacked. A live session they stumbled into.
I still spend the majority of my time here. Not because Iâm being generous đ. Because this is the engine. Free content builds reach. Reach builds trust. Trust builds everything.
Layer 2: Low-Hanging Fruit ($0 to $100)
Once people know you and trust what you share, some of them want more. The trick is making that first purchase as easy as possible.
Write with Tools is my browser extension. Subscriptions from $4.99 to $14.99 per month. Small digital products on Komi: template packs at $29, frameworks at $39 and $49. Things that solve one specific problem.
These donât make or break my month individually. Combined with subscriptions, this layer makes up about 25% of my revenue.
But hereâs what this layer actually does: it turns readers into customers. Someone who pays you $4.99 has crossed a line. They went from âI read her stuffâ to âI pay for her stuff.â That shift means a lot. A $5 buyer is far more likely to become a $500 buyer than someone whoâs never paid you anything.
75% of my coaching clients have started that way. They bought a template, tried a small product, or subscribed at the lowest tier first. The small purchase built the trust that made the big one feel safe.
Layer 3: Subscriptions ($6.99 to $200)
Wander Wealth subscriptions range from $6.99 per month to $47 monthly or $139 annually. Level Up with AI, my second newsletter, adds smaller recurring revenue on a different topic for a different audience. Cozora affiliate commissions bring in about $200 per month.
This is the layer most people think of when they think âmaking money from a newsletter.â Paid subscribers, recurring revenue, monthly charges.
And itâs real. Itâs steady. Itâs predictable. Iâm grateful for every subscription.
But itâs 25% of my income. Not 80%.
What surprised me: the subscription tier people choose most often isnât the cheapest. Itâs the mid-range annual plan. When the value is clear, people donât default to the lowest price. They read free content for weeks. Maybe bought a small product. Then they upgraded.
Layer 4: Coaching and Implementation ($300 to $1,200)
This is where the real money lives. 50% of my monthly revenue. Half.
I didnât expect that.
Coaching packages range from $300 to $1,200 on Komi. These arenât generic âletâs chatâ calls. Theyâre hands-on consulting or implementation sessions. Substack design. Publication structure. Growth audits. Someone books a session, and they walk away with actual changes made to their newsletter.
Two coaching sessions in a good week earn more than an entire month of subscriptions.
People who book coaching almost always came through a free post, not a paid one. They read something actionable, thought âI want someone to help me implement this for my own newsletter,â and booked. My free content is my best sales page for coaching. I never had to sell. The content did the selling over weeks and months before they ever clicked âbook.â
I would have started this earlier. I spent months thinking I needed more subscribers before I could offer services. I didnât. I needed 10 people who valued what I knew enough to pay for my time. Those people were already in my audience at 2,000 subscribers. I just hadnât asked.
Layer 5: High-Ticket Tools ($1,400+)
Earlier this year I built Drift, a co-writing system for newsletter writers. Itâs a high-ticket product at $1,300. I sold two in April.
Thatâs 25% of my monthly revenue from two sales.
Drift works because it solves a real, specific, expensive problem. Newsletter writers who already know they need help with consistency and workflow will pay for a system that actually works. But theyâll only pay $1,300 if they already trust me deeply. Every Drift buyer was a subscriber first. Most of them had already bought something smaller from me before.
You canât sell a $1,300 product to a stranger. You can sell it to someone whoâs been reading your free content for a while, bought a $49 template, subscribed for a while, and now trusts that what you build is worth it.
The ladder again: free â small purchase â subscription â high-ticket. Each step makes the next one possible.
Layer 6: AI Business Consulting ($5,000+)
And then thereâs this.
Iâve been quietly building a consulting practice on the side. AI business integration. Working directly with companies that want to bring AI into their teams and workflows. Longer sales cycles. Bigger commitments. Fewer clients.
One of those projects earned me over $5,000. One single engagement. More than an entire month of all five other streams combined.
There was no âbuy nowâ button. There was a conversation that started with someone whoâd been reading my newsletter for months saying: âI think you could help us.â
I donât land a client like this every month. The cycles are longer. But when one lands, it changes the math completely. And it always, always traces back to someone whoâs been reading my free content for months before they ever reached out.
My newsletter didnât just build a subscriber list. It built a reputation. And some of the people watching werenât other newsletter writers. They were business owners, team leads, decision-makers who eventually thought: we need someone who actually knows this.
The Truth About the Ladder
Most people chase subscriptions because subscriptions feel like ârealâ newsletter income. And subscriptions are real. But theyâre 25% of what I earn.
The low-hanging-fruit products make sense in volume. They create buyers and build trust. But I get from one coaching client what all the small products and subscriptions earn combined. And I get from one AI consulting engagement what the entire month earns combined.
The ladder isnât just about revenue getting bigger at each step. Itâs about the math changing at each step.
At the bottom, you need volume. Lots of $5 to $50 transactions.
In the middle, you need consistency. Recurring subscriptions that pay monthly.
At the top, you need one or two people who trust you enough to pay for the real thing.
And the only way those one or two people find you is if the bottom layers exist. The free content that built your reputation. The small products that proved you deliver. The subscription that kept them reading every week.
What This Means for You
I polled my community recently. 37.4% said growing subscribers is their biggest challenge. 29.7% said converting free readers to paid.
Both of those are the right problems to solve. Hereâs the order:
Under 500 subscribers: stay in Layer 1. Write free content. Post Notes. Build a body of work that shows what you know. Every post, every Note is depositing trust into a bank account you canât see yet. Donât rush to monetize. The foundation matters more than anything above it.
Between 500 and 1,000: add Layer 2. Create one small product under $50. A template, a checklist, a framework. Something you can build in a weekend. Turn on paid subscriptions at the lowest tier. The goal isnât to get rich from $6.99 subscriptions. The goal is to turn readers into buyers. That shift changes everything that comes after.
Past 1,000: add coaching. You have enough readers that some of them have problems you can solve at a higher price point. The newsletter already did the selling for you. Theyâve read your thinking for months. The trust is built. Donât wait as long as I did to offer this.
And somewhere along the way, pay attention to whoâs reading you that you didnât expect. The business owner. The team lead. The person whose questions sound like business problems, not content questions. Thatâs Layer 6 arriving. You donât chase it. You notice when it shows up.
What Iâd Do Differently
I would have created low-ticket products earlier. Not because they earn a lot. Because they teach you what people will actually pay for. My first $29 product taught me more about my readers than months of free content did.
I would have offered coaching at 1,000 subscribers instead of waiting. The people were already there. I just hadnât asked.
And I would have charged more from the start. The people who book at $300 and the people who book at $1,200 are often the exact same people. The difference is your confidence, not their budget.
The biggest lesson: Donât try to build all six layers at once. Build one. Let it stabilize. Then add the next. Each layer funds your time to build the one above it.
This is what my paid subscribers get access to: the frameworks, the templates, the community chat, and everything I don't publish for free. If you've been reading for a while and wondering what's on the other side, come see.
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What an informative and practical guide this is. I had to take the time to read it from start to finish.
Claude Faith, this is one of your best posts for everyone who wants to grow on Substack.
Very very helpful! I'm in a similar boat with my income and how my services are structured. How do you like Komi? I am browsing software for coaching and I hadn't heard of this until you mentioned it.