How to write an awesome Substack and create a semi-passive income from it.

Monday Muse #20 - Email course on creating a Substack for authors & writers

Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash

There’s a bit of a change up happening with the Monday Muse!

You’re still going to have everything you need for your weekly content creation ahead, but I want to tweak this Monday newsletter for the next few weeks and include a little mini-course on setting up a Substack where you can create a semi-passive income around your writing.

This would also work in a blog, Facebook group etc, but Substack is the easiest way as there is an inbuilt paywall.

Make an income

Let me tell you why; over the weekend, I had a great conversation with a friend who has a brilliant idea for a book.

It’s a non-fiction book, a really great idea that I can see flying off the shelves, but it’s going to take time.

There’s research involved, lots of writing to do and my friend already works full time. She was asking for advice on where to start, and we’re meeting up for one on one session soon, but the first thing I told her to do was to start building her audience and I saw her deflate a little.

‘Audience building takes so much time,’ she said, ‘it’s like a full-time job where you don’t get paid!’

And that’s where this idea came in. Because it’s the same for any book.

Create a community of readers

The first thing you need to do, as well as writing the book itself, is to start building your audience so you have a community to sell it to once it’s finished.

And if you can monetize that, so you can make a semi-passive income whilst writing the book, so much the better.

Obviously you don’t have to do this!

I get that creating and writing is not all about money. My Friday newsletters do none of what I’m going to write about in this mini-course and that’s because I like writing informally in those and because, well, I’m a bit lazy to be honest.

I get asked about a lot of stuff that I could make into things to buy, but I haven’t got the time for it - yet!

I also could push my readers into becoming paying subscribers more, but I’m just not there yet. So I suppose this is me saying, go at your own pace. See what feels right as you work through these next weekly notes and, if you’re like my friend with a superb idea for a book, but don’t know where to start with the audience building side and how you can get some income from it, read on.

In the next few Monday Muse’s I’m going to cover:

Who and what you should write about

How to generate topic ideas so you’re never short of things to write about and you never stare at a blank page!

Prepping your page & Formatting for ultimate SEO

To make sure people can find you and that you have evergreen content that is always working for you.

Headlines and CTA’s

How to make them work for you in every single post to make people subscribe and get interested in what you have to offer.

Effective offers

What to offer to your community. How to convert readers into paying subscribers and customers!

Simple four week e-mail course for paying subscribers

By the end of this mini-course you should have a clear idea of who you’re writing to, what to write about, how to optimise all your posts so they work for you, how to build up subscribers and an idea for a semi-passive income offering.

The Trending sounds and News section, will move over to chats so we can talk about what’s hot as it’s happening and how best to use it in our socials.

The chat and this e-mail course is only for paying subscribers as it takes time to put together, and I’d love it if you could support me so I can continue to make content like this and subscribe.

You could have this whole email course for £6 which is, I’m sure you’ll agree, very good value indeed!

And if you’d like to become a paying subscriber, but can’t afford it and need a comp sub, let me know.

So here is the first instalment of the mini course!

This week, it’s all about what words to put down on the page. This is what stops most people, they know they need to write about stuff, tell people what they’re doing, get visible and start building a community, but then they stare at the screen and…..nothing!

In this first week, I’m going to show you where all your inspiration is for what to write about - and it’s not where you think!

I’m skipping over the technicalities of how to start a Substack, but if you’ve any questions on that side, pop them in the chat and I’ll answer as best as I know.

So once you’ve opened a Substack or blog, what the hell do you write about? Let me answer that question for you right now…

What should you write about?