By Substack’s rules, I should be a bestseller by now.
The playbook says I should have 200+ paid subscribers and be earning $1,000/month in recurring revenue.
But you won’t see a bright orange badge next to my name.
Because I never gated my content.
It felt wrong.
Putting my work behind a paywall meant fewer people would see it—throttling my growth and limiting my impact.
I knew there had to be a better way.
A way to hit $10,000 a month without relying on paid subscriptions, gating my content, or writing more.
So I ignored the conventional advice and did something different.
That decision changed everything.
But the path I chose wasn’t what you might expect...
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The Hidden Cost of Paid Subscriptions
The default playbook puts you in a trap.
You’re told that the path to success is through paid subscriptions: grow your list, convert a percentage into paying readers, and let the recurring revenue roll in.
But that model comes with a hidden cost.
Every time you gate a post, you limit your reach. You hide yourself from new readers. Growth slows. The very thing that fuels future income starts to dry up.
I watched it happen to other writers.
Talented creators I knew capped their earning potential by locking their best content behind a paywall too early. Some even made $2k, maybe $3k a month—but their growth and income flatlined.
I didn’t want that.
I wanted to make money—$10k a month or more—without shrinking my reach or putting a ceiling on my earning potential.
So I broke the playbook.
The Diversified $10k/Month Strategy
The secret isn’t more subscribers. It’s leverage.
In March 2024, I wrote a post announcing, "I'm officially open for work."
A reader reached out, curious about my services.
That email changed everything.
They didn’t hire me—but it confirmed what I’d suspected: I could monetize Substack without paid subscriptions.
Instead of chasing more subscribers or relying on low-cost paid content, I shifted my focus to three things:
Focus 1: High-Ticket Offers
I began creating high-value offers behind the scenes by applying what I knew from two decades of marketing—and it worked.
I realized that my services and consulting could earn far more money, faster, than putting a paywall on my content.
When a reader becomes a client, they aren’t paying me $5/month—they’re paying $4,000/month.
That’s the power of high-ticket work.
Selling high-ticket gives you leverage because you can hit your income goals with fewer sales—one client at $2,500/month = 500 paying subscribers at $5/month.
It creates cash flow, giving you space to reinvest in content and build diversified revenue streams—without the pressure of paying the bills.
It also provides an ascension path for your audience, making it easier to scale.
And with fewer moving parts, you can test, validate, and refine your systems for future offers with less risk.
High-ticket is relative, it doesn’t have to mean you start by charging clients thousands more than you're comfortable with.
What you charge should reflect what’s high enough to provide a sense of security or cushion when working with a couple of clients. This is based on where you’re at in your business and the value of the problem you’re solving.
My pricing has evolved just as much as I have.
I started by charging what felt good to me—and I still do a gut check before rolling out pricing for any new product or service. My first high-ticket offer was a flat rate—$250 for a call. That felt like a stretch at the time, but it was enough to make me take the work seriously without feeling overextended.
From there, I tested things. I played with different formats — flat rates, monthly retainers, and one-off calls. I raised prices as I gained confidence and got better at delivering results.
I’ve sold new offers for $500 that eventually became $2,000+ because I refined the process and improved the value. I’ve pitched deals for $30,000 — something I never would have dreamed of two years ago.
Pricing is fluid. You start with what feels good and sustainable. Then you test, adjust, and increase as you get proof of value and confidence in what you’re delivering.
That’s the leverage — once you get the system down, you’re not working harder; you’re just earning more.
Focus 2: Diversified Income Streams
In 2024, I built eight revenue streams—without creating more content or increasing my workload.
Multiple income streams meant I didn’t rely on a single one to pay my bills.
Here are the 8 revenue streams I built.
Paid advertising services: My core high-ticket offer.
Marketing audits and consulting: One-off services for clients needing strategic guidance.
Profit share partnerships: Earning a percentage of revenue from businesses I help grow.
1-1 Mentorship and coaching: Consulting and guidance for other creators.
Book sales: Turning my best content into long-term revenue assets.
Digital products: Selling workshops and templates based on my expertise.
Medium revenue: Repurposing Substack content for additional passive income.
Affiliate revenue: Getting paid to recommend products and services I trust.
Not all of them are huge yet.
I’ve only made a handful of sales from my Amazon books. Medium revenue has ranged from $50–$250/month. I only have one digital product that I sell through Substack (#2 is in the works).
But they stem from my core skills of writing and marketing, don’t increase my workload, and naturally scale as my audience grows.
Focus 3: Keep the Content Free
High-quality, free content builds trust and attracts the right audience.
In April, a single post generated over $30,000 in revenue.
It wasn’t even a sales post. No call to action. No product launch.
It spoke to a very specific problem my audience was experiencing. Someone read the post, binge-read my other articles, and referred me to two clients—both hired me, earning me $7,500/month in retainers.
Why It Works
This strategy creates a compounding effect.
That single post mentioned above has generated over $75,000 in revenue through direct clients and referrals.
Instead of making $5/month from subscriptions, I was generating four figures per client—without writing more content or gating my work.
High-ticket offers generate consistent income. Diversification builds stability. Free content drives audience growth—feeding new leads and high-ticket opportunities.
The compounding effect increases momentum over time, multiplying results without multiplying effort.
High-ticket clients referred more clients.
Free content kept feeding my ‘passive’ income streams.
Diversified income streams provide natural ascension to high-ticket offers.
Using my Minimalist Monetization Loop, my daily writing habit grows my audience, generates daily lead magnet downloads, and 100s of dollars in course sales every month.
Free content scales your reach—high-ticket work scales your income.
What I Tell Substack Bestsellers Who Wanted to Make More Money, Faster
I’ve spoken with multiple best-selling Substack writers—writers with hundreds of paying subscribers.
They’re making money—but they’re stuck.
They want to grow their revenue, but the playbook says the answer is more subscribers or more content.
There’s a different way.
The fastest way to add $2k–$5k/month isn’t through more subscribers—it’s through leverage.
All you need is a simple offer and a Google Doc.
Instead of needing 100s more people paying $5/month, you need one or two paying $2,500/month.
That’s why high-ticket work scales faster.
One or two clients generate the same revenue as 1,000 subscribers.
No extra content. No chasing more growth.
Just delivering high-value results to a small, targeted audience.
High-ticket work gives you control. It creates stable, predictable income—without the pressure of constant growth. And because you’re working with fewer clients, you have more time and energy to invest in your writing.
It’s also faster. High-ticket work gives you the cash flow to grow your audience and diversify your income streams—without relying on the slow(er), incremental path of building more subscribers.
This is why high-ticket offers are one of the fastest paths to $10k/month.
It’s not about working harder—it’s about working smarter.
Where to Start: Simple Streams of Income
Monetization doesn’t have to be complicated.
You don’t need a product to start. You don’t need more subscribers. You just need the right strategy.
Step 1: Create a Simple Offer Based on Your Skills
If you can help someone solve a problem, solve it faster, or do it for them—you have the foundation for a high-ticket offer.
While these can have curriculum or communities, they don’t have to. And often working with people in a 1-1 capacity is what precedes the future courses you create.
Some of the fastest ways to monetize a skill without needing a product or audience are:
1-1 Calls: Sell 1 off coaching or consulting calls.
Consulting/Coaching packages: Sell a package of 4 or more calls offered over a specific timeframe to help someone work towards a specific goal.
Turn your skill into a service: Offer your unique skill set to others as a service. This could be running ads, video editing, ghostwriting, marketing, consulting, etc.
Live cohorts: Run live cohorts or “beta” group coaching programs where you teach material live—not needing it beforehand—using it to refine your material, see what people need, and develop your core curriculum.
You don’t need a fancy offer to start—just a problem you can help solve.
Start by exploring these questions:
What problem do people already come to you for advice on?
What skill have you spent years developing?
What work have people previously paid you for, or have you done for work in the past?
What experience have you gained that can help people reach their goals faster?
Then,
Package that into a consulting offer, coaching call(s), or service.
Shift the focus to the outcome and/or solution you’re providing.
Keep it simple—outlining it in a Google Doc and an email is enough to start.
You don’t need a product, course, sales funnel, fancy tech, or even a big audience—just your existing skills and experience.
Step 2: Use the Cash Flow to Diversify
Once you’ve secured 1-2 high-ticket clients, the cash flow gives you breathing room—and options.
Now you can start building additional income streams without the pressure of needing immediate returns.
Such as:
Affiliate marketing: Recommend products or services you already use and trust.
Sponsorships: Sell sponsorships for your newsletter or Suback publications.
Run live trainings—convert them to products: Run a live training or workshop and convert the recording into your first (or next) digital product.
Free Q&A calls—convert them to products: Offer a free Q&A call on a specific topic and convert the recording into your first (or next) digital product. Alternatively, use it as the basis for your product.
Paid live workshops: You don’t need a product built, you can run a live paid workshop or training and then convert the recording into an evergreen product.
Build a digital product(s): While you don’t need one, you can work towards developing them over time or in the background. Or, use the ideas here to turn your content and training into your first product. Learn how to create your first one here.
Create a workshop: 30-60 min mini workshops that solve specific problems are often just as valuable as full-fledged courses filled with dozens of lessons and much simpler to create.
Compile Substack articles into a book or ebook: Convert a series of your articles into a product people can purchase. They may need to be edited or you may find gaps that can be filled in but you might be closer to a product than you think.
Ebooks and mini books: Expand your top posts, write them from scratch, or use them to validate ideas, then create an ebook or mini book.
Create (or sell) templates: Simple solutions can save people a lot of time and stress. You may be able to develop a template to solve a problem. Or, you may have already created something for yourself and never realized others would pay for it.
Partner with others: Collaborate with someone and take a cut of the revenue. This can be service-based, high-ticket offers, or even collaborating to build a product.
Repurpose content to Medium: I began repurposing my Substack articles to publications on Medium and now generate $50-$200/Month without doing any extra work. It’s a nice piece of side action that doesn’t require any extra time.
Paid community: Launch a paid community and develop assets as you go.
I prefer starting with high-ticket work because it removes the pressure on building out your diversified ecosystem. I like to tell my clients that it ‘cashflows the process.’
Here’s how:
One client at $2,500/month = 500 subscribers paying $5/month.
That cash flow gives you the stability to experiment, test, and refine new offers.
Over time, the system starts to reinforce itself—free content attracts leads, high-ticket work converts them, and diversified income builds long-term stability.
Step 3: Keep the System Running
Once the system is in motion, it compounds naturally.
This is the flywheel:
Free content grows your audience.
Diversified ‘passive’ income builds stability.
High-ticket offers create leverage and cash flow.
All you need to focus on is your writing habit.
New leads bring in new clients. Existing content fuels more reach. Diversified income sources generate sales without you lifting a finger.
This is what I refer to as The Minimalist Monetization Loop.
Building Your Profitable Substack Differently
If you take nothing else from this post, remember this:
You don’t need more subscribers to make more money—you need leverage.
That’s how you unlock stability. That’s how you scale.
After deviating from the default monetization playbook I was making enough to support my family. My wife was able to stop working and go back to school—because I wasn’t relying on subscriptions or writing more content.
It didn’t happen overnight.
I wrote for six months before I made a dollar on Substack. In those six months, I gained 31 net new subscribers. Now, 16+ months in, I have over 4,000 subscribers and a business that generates $10k+/month.
But it didn’t happen because of a single product or paywalled content.
It happened because of leverage.
High-ticket work gave me cash flow and stability.
Diversification created long-term security.
Free content kept the system growing.
And it all started with one simple offer.
So remember, you don’t need a perfect product, you don’t need a huge audience, and most importantly, you don’t need to figure it all out today.
Create a high-ticket offer. Make the ask. Let the results compound.
Hope this helps.
Landon
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PS: If you found this helpful, would you do me a quick favor and restack it? Sharing spreads the message and motivates me to keep writing practical content to help you thrive in your online business.
My god I feel like I’ve stumbled across something I should have paid for. This is bonkers. And I am incredibly grateful 🙏🏽🥹
100%! I only have 2 paid subscribers on Substack, but I've made over $10K writing for high-ticket clients off Substack. It's way easier and way less input than low-ticket offers like paid subs. It also doesn't tie you to the platform feeling like you HAVE to keep using it because you have people who paid for your content for an entire year etc.