Ready to turn your passion into profit? This video will let you in on the secrets of monetizing your Substack publication! Dive headfirst into the Payments settings where you’ll learn everything from setting up Stripe accounts to customizing subscriber plans. Whether you’re a marketing pro or just starting out, we cover it all.
Learn how to strategically price memberships, create compelling subscriber benefits, and even offer special discounts to attract more readers. Get full control over your monetization strategy and start earning from your content today. Buckle up.
00:00 Substack: 5 Payments Settings for Publications
01:16 Substack publication payments
01:52 Pause subscription billing
02:08 Set up or connect your Stripe account
03:37 Substack subscription plans
06:16 Benefits for Substack subscribers
08:02 Group subscriptons on Substack
08:30 Billing settings
10:27 Discounts
13:53 Paywalling
Substack: 5 Payments Settings for Publications
[00:00:00] You will need to set this section up if you intend to receive payments or in short monetize your Substack publication. Um, you can have free subscribers to your Substack, but you can also have paid subscribers and this allows you to actually get paid by your subscribers.
[00:00:22] This video is going to show you how to go through your payments settings of your Substack publication. This is one of the lengthier sections. Buckle up. It’s also going to entail if you have a third-party Stripe account that is outside of Substack but integrates. As we go through this, this is talking dollars and cents. This is how if you plan to monetize your publication, how you would go around getting paid for that. Hence the title – Payments. Let’s go ahead and dive in.
[00:00:52] Once you’re in your dashboard for your publication on the left margin you can click on creator tools that will take you to payments settings or you can jump into the entire settings spread uh where you can again go through payments that’s going to take you through the whole thing. We’ve already done an overview video that takes you through this entire wealth of settings. So today we’re going to go through this step by step.
Substack Publication Payments
[00:01:16] So first of all payments. You will need to set this section up if you intend to receive payments or in short monetize your Substack publication.
[00:01:25] Um, you can have free subscribers to your Substack, but you can also have paid subscribers. And this allows you to actually get paid by your subscribers. Uh, it also means that you will have free content plus you’ll have paid content. Uh, a lot like a Patreon, like a YouTube channel once you’re able to monetize it and and have paid subscribers versus free content for other people. Spotify is does the same thing. This is not new. Um, but this is
how you set that all up.
Pause subscription billing
[00:01:52] So, first of all, at the very top, you’ll notice that you have a pause subscription billing. So, if you at any point need to just like, hey, put the brakes on. Um, I don’t want any more new subscribers or billing or anything like that. Let’s just put the brakes on. And then you can unpause it. I’m not going to pause it right now.
Set up or connect your Stripe account
[00:02:08] Notice that the second item down is manage your Stripe account. In order to get paid by Substack, you will need a Stripe account. So, for your Stripe account, you are going to need to have some business information where if you haven’t set up Stripe before, you’re going to need uh either your own social security number if you’re kind of being paid as an individual or if you have a business, you’re going to need the business information that includes the federal tax ID number or the employment identification number that you had created when you first created your LLC. or S Corp or whatever, you should have a document from the government and this is again referring to United States.
[00:02:51] You may have a different process and how Stripe helps you interact with that. But again, Stripe is its own separate payment receiving and paying system. What you’ll want to do is set up or connect your Stripe account with Substack and it’ll walk you through the steps to do that. I’m going to go back to Substack.
[00:03:11] So once you’ve got that set up, now that will mean that you can receive payments. And remember, you’re going to have to go through verification process just like with any other monetary app where it needs to verify, is this a real business or are you really you? It’s going to go through those protocols. So, just be prepared for that.
[00:03:27] You probably will have a little bit of a delay. Sometimes it’s only an hour, it might be a day. Okay? Just know that you’re going to have to go through this. Plan accordingly.
Substack subscription plans
[00:03:37] Then we get into plans. Now, this is where you can establish how much someone would pay in order to become a paid subscriber on your Substack and receive anything that is behind a paywall that is not free content. And you will need to decide this.
[00:03:51] This is definitely something you can toy around with if you’re like, “Okay, I’m not getting any subscribers based on the current price. Maybe I need to reduce it.” We’ll have some opportunities here in a little bit about discounts and things like that. But this is where you can establish it.
[00:04:04] So, monthly plan price, that would mean, okay, someone would be paying me $8 per month to access my paid content in addition to my free content. Then you’ve got someone if they pay annually.
[00:04:16] Now you’ll see guidance in here when you’re first filling this in. Anytime you’re buying something and you buy in bulk, if you’re going to do a monthly subscription versus an annual subscription, the monthly one is always more expensive because you’re kind of doing it short-term, you know, month-to-month, commitment to this tool. Whereas, if you buy annually, you’re kind of saying, “Okay, I’m in for the whole 12.” Usually, you will get some kind of discount. So, I make the annual plan a bit less than what it would be. 8 * 12 is more than 8 * 10.
[00:04:45] Okay. Founding plan. Now, if you have founding members who you kind of want to distinguish them saying, “Maybe you get some kind of benefit because you were the first members I ever had,” and you can say, “Yes, and if you pay this, – “. This is why you want to make it worth the while.
[00:05:00] Notice that the founding plan price is a bit more than an annual plan price because you’re going to give them something additional. So keep that in mind as we get down below to the benefit section in a second. And then you can call the founding plan name whatever you want, whatever might be relevant to your publication.
[00:05:16] My publication is, But Wait, There’s Moore. And therefore, I call this the BWTM starters. Might be a terrible name. You can tell me that in the comments. Plus you have the opportunity, you can toggle this on or off if you want to. A flexible founding plan pricing.
[00:05:31] If you do that, you’re basically going to say, well, maybe founding members can say, “I’d like to be a founding member. I can’t quite uh handle the $100.” I’m actually going to turn this on and leave it on and see. Who knows? I’m here to test the Substack all through this year, so I will find out. My Substack’s been going for a little over a month.
[00:05:49] I’ve got one founding member. I would like to have more, right? So, I’m going to need to test this out. And I need to also assess, am I making this worth people’s while? Is it a discoverability issue? All these things. These are things that you can test and try and change and see what the data tells you.
[00:06:03] I’m going to hit save on that. Okay, that means that flexible founding plan pricing means someone can say, “I would like to be a flexible founding plan member, but uh I would like to talk to you about maybe paying a little less than what you say it should be.”
Benefits for Substack subscribers
[00:06:17] Then we get into benefits. I want everyone to put on your full marketing hats on here because this is where you actually sell people on the value. What does your Substack publication give them? think what pain points, what are the ways that they can feel exclusive, that they can feel special.
[00:06:31] Free subscriber benefits on my Substack. They get free public videos about marketers on AI, marketers on Substack and Discord, and marketers going fractional, plus random notes and observations by Rachel Moore. So, anyone who subscribes to my Substack gets that stuff for free.
[00:06:48] If you become a paid subscriber, it lets you put three different benefits in here, up to three. Notice that I have two listed. I don’t have a third. So, paid subscriber only post videos, Boss Level Mondays and Hot Mic Fridays and full archive. Then get invited to Rachel’s live video and studio chats.
[00:07:04] So, I do a live stream on Mondays and on Fridays and those are paid subscriber only. Anyone who’s a paid subscriber on my channel gets to see those and also be an audience member in the live video get invited to be an audience member in Rachel’s live video in studio chats. Maybe I need to offer a little bit more detail so someone knows exactly what they’re getting.
[00:07:30] And then, founding member benefits. Again, this is someone who said, well, I want to be a founding member. Here’s what they get. I give the person’s name or handle mentioned on my video end screens of my videos plus a verbal shout out during live streams. So, I just updated that as well.
[00:07:51] This is where you want to be explicit and again, play around, noodle with the verbiage. Maybe you’ll find if you update things, you could help move the needle on if you get free and paid and founding subscribers.
Group subscriptons on Substack
[00:08:02] Did you know that you can offer group subscriptions? So, this could be a class. Maybe someone finds your content so valuable, they’re like, “Well, I should have like a college course or a group, or organizations. Like, let’s all get this together. So you could do a minimum group size of three people, do more.
[00:08:20] If there’s a group subscription discount, what is that discount per seat? 20%. You can do whatever you’d like here. You can be very liberal or very conservative with this.
Billing settings
[00:08:30] Then we get into billing in price, in-app pricing options. That is like if you are conducting some commerce and I just clicked on the edit button so you can see this. Apple and Google charge additional fees to use in-app purchases on their platforms. Adjust prices for in-app purchases.
[00:08:46] You’ll earn approximately the same on all platforms versus keep prices the same. Subscribers will pay approximately the same amount on all platforms. This is if you are kind of conducting some commerce in your publication but it’s also being occurring over the mobile app. So people can actually buy directly.
[00:09:03] Accept direct debit payments. Direct debit payments can take 5 to 14 business days to clear and readers can access paid content during this period. Let’s say someone signs up today, They’d be like I’m a paid subscriber, Rachel. They get instant access. And I could turn that off if I’m like, well, I don’t know if they’re using a debit card or, you know, direct debit. How do I know that’s going to go through? What if they get my content for free?”
[00:09:23] I’m willing to take that chance still, to still accept direct debit payments. You can disable direct debit payments if the content behind your paywall is especially sensitive. If you’re doing like some super serious things in here where you’re like, “Oh my god, this is so proprietary,” then maybe you want to disable this. It’s like really and truly only for the people who are paying and you know you’ve got their payment before they actually access the content.
[00:09:48] Automatically localized prices displays all prices in the subscribers local currency. I’m a huge fan of this. To me, that’s like a time zone. Tell me what the time zone is based on my local time zone so I don’t have to do math. And, that works the same way when you’re talking about prices.
[00:10:08] All right, then you can say, see the supported currencies. Obviously, there are several here. If you are working with someone who does not conduct business or you know conduct their money with these currencies they will not be able to become a paid subscriber to your Substack publication.
Discounts
[00:10:27] I alluded to discounts. You can offer some special offers. For instance, I did do this – I’m going to click on manage here. I did create a cheat code for myself where I could give somebody a code and uh something to enter as they’re getting subscribed and they would have 25% off forever. But, I also did a first month members cuz I was trying to prompt founding members in the first month.
[00:10:51] Obviously we’re in February so that is now expired and nobody redeemed it. Maybe, I need to try something else to say maybe I need to do first six months and offer something a little bit more palatable. Actually, let’s do this right now. New offer – first six months become see – so become a paid subscriber of But Wait There’s Moore and receive 50% off.
[00:11:21] Let’s see. So we’re going to actually update that down here. And you can also say if you just want to do a free trial of maybe a certain amount of time. I could do that too. So it does give you a few options there. Actually, let’s do that. Let’s do since I was going to do 50% off anyway. So, first 6 months paid subscriber. Become a paid subscriber. But Wait, There’s Moore and receive 50% off for 6 months.
[00:11:42] Okay, there’s a free trial and I can hit create. There’s also some advanced options here. This could automatically apply to all new subscribers. Toggle that on or off. Limit to annual plans. I’m not going to do that. I could. Custom end date – let’s say that the custom end date should be, see, you guys are watching this in real time, it’s cool, 11:59 PM on June 30th is when that goes.
[00:12:08] Okay. Whoops. All right. I could do a custom short link for this. But Wait, There’s Moore. So, let’s see. It lets me enter this here. It’s kind of like a bit.ly a little bit. First six months free. So now, I could share this link around and say and maybe it’s like, okay, everybody, I’m running an insane promo right now. If you go ahead and click on this, you get the first six months free.”
[00:12:36] I could limit to custom email domains. So maybe, if I’m only wanting to give this to, I don’t know, a particular subset of people who are part of a community or members of an organization or employees. Limit educational institution emails. So maybe, I don’t want to give this out to college courses and things like that. limit to group subscriptions.
[00:12:57] So I could limit this to be only for people who are doing a group subscription. So, I’m gonna hit create and it’s saying here, please only enter letters or numbers. Taking those hyphens out. All right, and I just made myself a new offer that I could start using right away. Okay. So, you can do offers there and that way you can make really test and try to see if that helps move the needle and getting you some um some different, some subscribers that you might not have gotten.
[00:13:22] Gift paid subscriptions. I f you do maybe you know somebody you’re like, well, I want you to have access to everything. I don’t need you to pay and I just want to gift this to you. Maybe it’s a parent, you know, maybe it’s a colleague up here, whatever. You would just enter their subscriber um email here, tell them they’ve got a free subscription. You could also give them trials, lifetime paid subscription, whatever you want to give them.
[00:13:43] You could also upload those as well if you are so inclined. You can have multiple list and say these all people should have free subscription to my paid content.
Paywalling
[00:13:53] All right, now we’re getting to paywalling. So remember this is, if you do have paid content versus free content. Quick, we will go over in a future video how, when you create anything new for your publication, how you can um make the settings to where this is for free subscribers versus paid subscribers.
[00:14:14] You actually will determine this as you post each new thing from your publication. But that’s where paywalling comes in. Auto-paywall older posts. I have that currently clicked on right now. We can auto-paywall them after 8 weeks. So that means your archive of free posts will automatically be locked, and free subscribers and new readers will see a paywall when they try to scroll down and see, or even have a direct link to whatever that post was.
[00:14:42] This might be beneficial for you to try. Right now, I do have this turned on, and so it’s like if something’s older than 8 weeks, my publication’s been going since January. So, I’m not even out 8 weeks yet, but once we hit March, then if somebody’s a free subscriber and they try to go see one of my first videos about using AI as a marketer, they’re going to see that it’s behind a paywall, and they’ll have to pay to get to it.
[00:15:04] That may make me fall flat on my face. I’m not sure, but it can offer some appeal, saying ooh, maybe I should become a subscriber, or maybe I need to make sure that I do pay attention to Rachel’s alerts and subscribe so I can see this stuff right when it comes out.
[00:15:18] Offer 7-day free trials in PayWall. So, you can offer a trial coupon that increases conversion 10 to 20% average. So I went ahead and turned that on. You’ll see too when you are posting something as a paid subscriber post or content, it’ll offer you the option saying, “Do you want to make this a 7-day free trial,” to people who opt into that, saying, “Hey, I like this post. I want to see it.”
[00:15:40] And now I’ll have seven days free using your paid content. Kind of gives them a preview to assess if this was worth $8 a month for me. You can also do a custom paywall for churn subscribers. So, if someone has canceled their subscription, they’ll see a special paywall message saying, “Hey, you’re back.” You know, kind of thing, so glad to have you back.
[00:16:01] Please go ahead and subscribe again so you can get all this great content. Auto paywall paid post. Make a portion of all paid posts visible to everyone before adding a paywall. So, here is where you can say, “No, I want to shut that off. I don’t want anyone to have any kind of preview.”
[00:16:15] Maybe you want them to short preview, a long preview, or a default preview. I just stuck with default preview, but you can kind of determine what works best for you there. And finally, advanced subscription invoice reports. If you are needing to make reports about this income to your tax professional, your accountant, or to any other entity that is requiring you to report on this, this is where you would obtain that.
[00:16:38] Click view. Request new report. And that way it’ll tell you, you can enter the date range of what report you’d like. And then it will make sure you and alerts you once that is available for download.
[00:16:50] All right, that is the whole run-through of the payments section of your Substack publication. Told you this was going to be a long haul, but it deals with money, and remember, you can always go back in and change things in here if what you’re setting up is not working.
[00:17:06] Give it some time to cook and see how it goes. But you have control here. So, make sure you take some time to set that up and tune in next time for the next Substack where we’re going to talk about all this growth stuff in here.
[00:17:19] You’re still here. It’s over, but you should hit like on this video before you head out and subscribe if you want to get more videos that’ll help you realize how much Moore there is to marketing.
[00:17:31] See what I did there?
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