Substack is the easiest way to launch a paid newsletter. And one of the hardest places to actually make money from one.

With 5 million paid subscriptions, a fresh $1.1 billion valuation, and $450 million flowing annually to creators, the platform looks like a goldmine. But dig beneath the surface: 50 creators earn $1M+ per year while the typical paid writer takes home roughly $16,000. The Spanish-language ecosystem remains embryonic, and the platform’s deliberate simplicity creates real ceilings for serious creators.

If you’re a consultant, founder, or professional in LATAM evaluating Substack as a channel to launch a newsletter in 2026, I know the amount of contradictory information out there can feel overwhelming. The honest answer is: it’s a brilliant starting tool with genuine structural limitations that matter more the further you grow.

This guide isn’t a feature recap. It’s an unfiltered analysis of the real numbers, the limitations nobody mentions, the Spanish-language ecosystem as it actually is (not as we’d like it to be), and an honest evaluation of when Substack makes sense to grow your list, your authority, and your revenue.

The Good: Zero Friction, Real Money, and a Network That Works

Substack’s core promise is radical simplicity, and it delivers. You can go from zero to publishing a professional-looking newsletter in under 30 minutes with no technical knowledge.

The editor feels like Google Docs. There’s no hosting to configure, no SSL certificates to manage, no code to write. You sign up, import an existing email list if you have one, and start writing. For someone who wants to focus on creating content rather than technical infrastructure, this matters enormously.

Frictionless monetization

The monetization system is equally straightforward. Creators connect a Stripe account, set a price (minimum $5/month), and start accepting paid subscribers immediately. No minimum audience threshold.

Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue. Stripe adds roughly 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction plus a 0.7% recurring billing fee. In total, creators keep approximately 86-87 cents of every dollar. Payments land in your bank account within 48 hours.

The total ecosystem now processes an estimated $450 million in annual gross writer revenue, up from $300 million in 2023 and $370 million in 2024.

The discovery network

The discovery network is Substack’s most underrated advantage. The recommendation system (where creators suggest other Substacks to new subscribers) drives 50% of all new free subscriptions and 25% of new paid subscriptions across the platform.

Substack Notes, the short-form social feed launched in April 2023, is particularly powerful for smaller creators: data suggests smaller publications acquire 60% of their new free subscribers through Notes. One creator documented gaining 600+ subscribers from Notes activity alone over several months.

The Substack app, used by millions weekly, creates an additional discovery layer that functions like a curated reading app. The company says its algorithm optimizes for quality matches rather than time-on-platform or ad clicks.

Beyond the newsletter: multimedia and ownership

Substack has evolved into a genuine multimedia platform. Creators can host podcasts (with Spotify distribution since April 2024), publish and monetize video directly, run livestreams, manage subscriber-only Chat communities, and use Notes for short-form engagement. 82% of the top 250 earners now publish audio or video content.

And crucially, creators own their email list and can export it at any time. A meaningful differentiator from platforms like Medium where you don’t own your audience.

Custom domain support, legal protection through Substack Defender (covering up to $1 million in legal fees for accepted cases), and the new A/B testing feature for subject lines round out a surprisingly complete free toolkit.

Key takeaway

Substack removes all technical friction and offers a real discovery network. If your goal is to publish and start building an audience as fast as possible, there’s no more direct alternative.

The Bad: Design Handcuffs, Analytics Blindspots, and an Integration Desert

Substack’s simplicity is also its cage. There are real limitations that matter more the more serious you get as a creator.

The design ceiling

There’s no custom HTML, no custom CSS, no drag-and-drop email builder, and no custom templates. Creators choose from roughly five subtle homepage layouts and can adjust colors, a limited set of fonts, and a logo. That’s it.

Every Substack newsletter looks fundamentally the same in the inbox. Same structure, same formatting, same visual hierarchy.

“Everybody’s website kind of looks like your website.” — Steve Hayes, CEO of The Dispatch, explaining why he left Substack

For a creator building a distinctive brand, this is a genuine constraint, not a minor inconvenience. Ghost offers full theme customization and open-source code access. Beehiiv provides a website builder and custom email templates. Kit has a full drag-and-drop builder. Substack offers none of these.

Analytics: what’s missing

Substack provides open rates, click-through rates, subscriber growth, basic traffic sources, and a five-star engagement rating per subscriber.

What’s missing is everything a growth-focused creator needs:

The workarounds are clunky. UTM parameters offer limited tracking, and some creators have rigged Gmail-to-Zapier automations to sync subscriber data to external tools. But Substack’s refusal to offer a public API makes true integration essentially impossible.

“Substack doesn’t have an API, making it one of the most frustrating platforms on the internet.” — A creator frustrated with integration limitations

SEO: a mixed picture

Substack’s domain carries strong authority (Semrush scores it at 82 with 616,000+ referring domains) and content gets indexed quickly. One small creator saw a post rank #2 on Google, driving 30,000+ monthly visitors.

But individual publications on substack.com subdomains may rank less well than custom domains. There are no redirect capabilities, no canonical tag controls, no schema markup options, and paywalled content isn’t indexed at all.

“The only way a Substack grows is through tweets.” — Casey Newton, tech journalist (an exaggeration, but one that captures the SEO frustration)

AI and LLM crawling

Substack offers a “Block AI Training” toggle in publication settings, but it’s opt-in, meaning AI bots like GPTBot can crawl your content by default.

When enabled, the setting adds instructions to your publication’s robots.txt, but Substack warns this “will only apply to AI tools that respect this setting” and “may limit your publication’s discoverability in tools and search engines that return AI-generated results.” Each creator must enable this individually. There’s no platform-wide policy.

Key takeaway

Substack’s simplicity has a real cost: zero brand customization, shallow analytics, limited SEO, and a nonexistent integration ecosystem. These ceilings weigh more as you grow.

What Nobody Tells You: The Migration Trap, the Fame Prerequisite, and the Brutal Math

This is where Substack’s story gets uncomfortable, and where honest analysis matters most for creators making platform decisions.

The earnings distribution follows a brutal power law

The top 10 Substack publications collectively earn $40 million per year. More than 50 creators clear $1 million annually.

But with 17,000+ writers earning any money and $450 million in total creator revenue, basic math reveals the average paid writer earns roughly $16,000-$26,000 per year. The median is almost certainly far lower.

More recent data from the Cookie Finance 2025 Creator Earnings Report confirms it: the median newsletter creator income is ~$4,000/year. The average jumps to $11,400, but that gap between median and average tells you everything: the money flows upward.

Nearly 50% of creators earned less than $500 in 2025. And the top 10% captured 62% of all payments, up from 53% in 2023. The concentration is accelerating, not slowing.

Here’s what that looks like in the data:

Substack Income Power Law

50 creators earn $1M+. The median earns $4,000/year.

Sources: Sacra, Cookie Finance 2025 Creator Earnings Report

The churn treadmill

An industry analysis noted that across 50,000+ publications, the average Substack has only about 100 paid subscriptions, which at $5/month yields approximately $6,000 annually before fees.

Making this worse, Sacra estimates that paid subscription churn runs approximately 50% per year. The retention data shows a brutal staircase pattern:

To sustain $50,000 in annual income at $8/month, a creator needs roughly 600 paid subscribers (after deducting the 13% in fees) and must add ~34 new paid subscribers every month just to replace those who cancel.

Here’s the treadmill dynamic in action:

The Churn Treadmill

To earn $50K/year at $8/mo, you need ~600 paid subscribers — and must replace ~34 every month.

Churned (lost) New needed

Source: Sacra, Substack subscription retention analysis

This is a treadmill. Sound sustainable? It’s not. It explains why 52% of creators report burnout and 37% are considering leaving the profession entirely. The #1 cause isn’t creative fatigue: it’s financial instability (55% of cases).

Calculate your own treadmill numbers:

Paid Subscriber Calculator

How many subscribers do you need to live off your newsletter?

The “Substack bubble” is real

Almost every top-earning Substack belongs to someone who was already famous:

Substack itself paid advances of up to $400,000 to recruit high-profile journalists in 2020. As one independent creator wrote:

“Big names come in with built-in audiences grown through traditional publicity, promotions, and budgets associated with being part of the machine. Independent writers are now competing for attention on the same platform as people who already have millions of followers. Spoiler alert: You will not beat them.”

Only about 25% of paid conversions come from Substack’s internal discovery network. The other 75% requires external promotion: Twitter/X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, podcast appearances.

And there’s a worrying signal: in 2025, many writers reported that their subscriber growth dropped 80-90% due to algorithmic bias toward big names and increasing platform saturation.

The 500-subscriber wall

Industry data reveals a consistent pattern: most newsletters plateau around 500 free subscribers.

Average organic growth without paid promotion is 50-100 subscribers per month at best, and the average visitor-to-subscriber opt-in rate is just 1.95%. That means to gain 100 new subscribers per month, you need 5,000 unique monthly visitors reaching your page.

And growth doesn’t compound the way you’d expect. Email lists suffer a natural decay of 25-30% per year: subscribers who unsubscribe, emails that bounce, abandoned addresses. If your list has 1,000 subscribers today, you’ll lose between 250 and 300 over the next 12 months without doing anything wrong.

For those considering paid acquisition, the cost per email subscriber (CPA) ranges from $18 to $30 USD using Meta Ads or Google Ads. Building a list of 5,000 subscribers this way costs between $90,000 and $150,000. And those are free subscribers, not paid.

Migration: technically possible, practically painful

Substack lets you export your subscriber list as a CSV with email addresses, subscription dates, engagement data, and payment info. The platform deserves credit for this portability.

But real-world migrations tell a different story. One creator exported 4,020 subscribers but the CSV contained only 3,749. 271 addresses vanished inexplicably. After importing to a new platform, only ~3,100 came through. GDPR re-consent requirements can further decimate your list.

Molly White’s migration to self-hosted Ghost required provisioning a server, configuring Mailgun at $75/month, setting up SPF, DMARC, DKIM, and BIMI records, and troubleshooting mass email bounces. Her first send was mostly failures. This is far beyond what non-technical creators can handle.

And you lose Substack’s recommendation network entirely. That “huge bargaining chip” keeps many creators locked in even when they want to leave.

Deliverability: an industry-wide problem

The deliverability problem isn’t exclusive to migrations. Gmail data shows that out of every 100 emails sent by newsletters, only 58 reach the primary inbox. The rest ends up in the Promotions tab, in spam, or simply doesn’t get delivered.

This affects all platforms, but it hits especially hard for creators who depend on a single channel. The following chart shows the full funnel:

Where Do Your 100 Emails Go?

Gmail delivery rate & inbox placement (Q4 2024)

Sources: Mailreach 2025, Unspam.email Deliverability Report

Key takeaway

Substack’s math is brutal: power-law distribution, 50% annual churn, and an ecosystem that rewards existing fame. The typical creator earns $4,000/year. Migration is painful and deliverability erodes your reach.

The Spanish-Language Ecosystem: Promising but Still Foreign Territory

The Spanish-language Substack ecosystem exists but remains dramatically smaller than its English counterpart.

The top Spanish-language creators

The top Spanish-language creator by subscribers is Jesús Terrés (Nada Importa, cultural commentary) with approximately 35,000 subscribers, based in Spain.

Samuel Gil (Suma Positiva, tech and startups) has around 29,000 subscribers, also based in Spain, and notably monetizes through sponsorships at ~€900 per edition rather than paid subscriptions. That suggests Spanish-speaking audiences may be less willing to pay for newsletter content.

Other notable Spanish-language creators include Joan Tubau (Kapital, economics) and Álvaro García (Jardín Mental, psychology, 29,000+ subscribers). Again, Spain-based.

Mexican representation is thin

The most notable Mexican-based Substack creator appears to be Oso Trava (entrepreneurship and business strategy), named Entrepreneur of the Year by Expansión and featured in Forbes’ 30 business promises.

Latinometrics offers data-driven analysis of Latin American business and economics. Smaller efforts like El Taims (Mexican news) exist but without significant subscriber bases.

“Despite Substack’s promise of financial independence for creators, even the most prominent Spanish-language cultural newsletters generate only modest earnings.” — Academic study published in 2025

Structural barriers

Several factors explain the gap between the anglophone and Spanish-speaking ecosystems:

Platform infrastructure. Substack’s UI translations cover Spanish, but system emails, account settings, and much of the platform infrastructure remain English-first.

Biased discovery. The Explore page, bestseller lists, and editorial curation are overwhelmingly English-dominant. The discovery algorithm, trained primarily on English engagement patterns, likely disadvantages non-English content.

Anglophone categories. The top-earning categories (U.S. politics at $18.4 million of the top $40 million, finance, and technology) are inherently anglophone niches.

Payment culture. The cultural habit of paying for email newsletters is less established in Latin America than in the United States, where readers are accustomed to digital subscriptions.

Key takeaway

The Spanish-language ecosystem is embryonic: the top creators are in Spain, not LATAM. Infrastructure, discovery, and payment habits all favor the anglophone market. The barriers are structural, not just a matter of timing.

Controversies and Departures: Substack’s Growing Pains

The Nazi content crisis

The most significant recent controversy was the Nazi content crisis of late 2023 and early 2024. Journalist Jonathan M. Katz identified at least 16 newsletters with overt Nazi imagery on the platform.

When 247 writers signed an open letter demanding action, co-founder Hamish McKenzie responded that removing the content would be counterproductive, stating Substack would not ban content unless it constituted direct incitement to violence.

Substack eventually removed five small newsletters (totaling about 100 readers) but explicitly said it was not changing its content guidelines. This triggered high-profile departures:

But the crisis didn’t end there. In July 2025, Substack sent a push notification to users promoting a Nazi blog called “NatSocToday” with a swastika logo and Holocaust denial content. More creators left for Ghost.

In October 2025, Patreon managed to attract top Substack writers like Anne Helen Petersen, Lyz Lenz, and Virginia Sole-Smith. Beehiiv claims approximately 3,000 creators migrated from Substack in 2025, with nearly 1,000 moving in just the first quarter.

The native sponsorship pivot

In December 2025, Substack introduced native ads through a pilot “native sponsorships” program. For a platform that built its reputation rejecting the “broken” advertising model, the move felt like a betrayal.

The company maintained total silence with creators between the July announcement and December launch. Substack support staff denied ads were coming. And when they finally arrived on December 9, the company didn’t make a public announcement, instead giving an exclusive interview to Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me newsletter, behind a paywall.

“Introducing sponsorships is the worst decision Substack could make right now.” — Claire Swinarski, consistent Substack advocate

Funding and business model

The platform raised $100 million in Series C funding in July 2025 at a $1.1 billion valuation, nearly 70% above its 2021 valuation of $650 million. But Substack is not yet profitable despite $45 million in estimated annual revenue.

“If their business model were actually as simple as described, they’d already be profitable and wouldn’t have needed to raise another $100 million.” — John Gruber, tech industry observer

The company has roughly 100 employees and appears to be prioritizing expansion over profitability, pivoting aggressively toward video with features like Substack TV (launched January 2026 for Apple TV and Google TV) and native sponsorships, signaling a potential shift from the ad-free model.

Key takeaway

Substack faces reputation crises, creator exodus, and a still-unprofitable business model. The introduction of native ads signals that the “ad-free” platform may be changing direction.

Which Niches Actually Work and Why It Matters

The data is clear about which niches thrive. Of the 52 highest-earning Substacks, U.S. politics accounts for 46% of top-earner revenue ($18.4 million). Finance ranks second, with some publications charging up to $1,200/year (Citrini Research). Technology and business follow, driven by professional audiences.

All 45 publications earning $1M+ come from just 7 of Substack’s 29 categories. Creative, lifestyle, and literary categories earn significantly less even at the top end.

The common thread among lucrative niches: content that offers direct financial, career, or identity-based ROI to readers.

For LATAM creators, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge: the most lucrative niches are inherently anglophone. The opportunity: niches serving Latin American professional audiences (LATAM fintech, regional venture capital, business strategy for emerging markets) are genuinely underserved.

The Alternatives: Ghost, Beehiiv, Kit, and Your Own Website

Substack isn’t the only option, and depending on your priorities, it may not be the best one. There’s also an alternative that most comparisons ignore entirely: building your own platform.

Ghost: total control, zero revenue share

$18/month (Starter), no revenue share, full design control, excellent SEO. Ghost is open-source, meaning complete access to the theme code. You can make your publication look exactly how you want.

SEO is native and strong. The downside: you need technical comfort (or a developer) to get the most out of it, and there’s no built-in discovery network. You build your audience on your own.

A creator earning $500,000/year pays $50,000 to Substack versus roughly $216/year for Ghost. The economics at scale aren’t close.

Beehiiv: growth engineered

Free up to 2,500 subscribers, built-in referral programs, ad network, advanced analytics. Beehiiv was built specifically for creators who want growth tools.

The platform includes everything Substack deliberately omits: audience segmentation, content A/B testing, automations, and an ad marketplace for monetization without charging readers. The analytics tools are substantially deeper than Substack’s.

Kit (formerly ConvertKit): the creator CRM

Free up to 10,000 subscribers, 3.5% transaction fee, email automations. Kit works best for creators running broader businesses who need CRM-like functionality: automated sequences, behavioral segmentation, landing pages with personalization.

It’s less a “newsletter” and more an email marketing platform with creator economy features.

Your own website: the option nobody mentions

There’s a fifth alternative that almost no comparison includes: building your own content platform with a modern web framework like Astro, Next.js, or similar, connected to an email service like Resend, Mailgun, or Amazon SES.

What do you gain?

What do you lose? Substack’s discovery network and the ease of one-day setup. You need a technical team or an agency to build and maintain the platform. And distribution is 100% on you: SEO, social media, partnerships.

Who is this for? Professionals and businesses who see the newsletter as a long-term strategic channel, not an experiment. If you already know your content generates value and you want to maximize returns without giving up control or commissions, this is the option with the most long-term upside.

When to choose what?

If your priority is…Choose
Start fast, no cost, with discovery networkSubstack
Full brand and design controlGhost
Growth tools and advanced analyticsBeehiiv
Automations and CRM functionalityKit
Maximize revenue at scale (minimize fees)Ghost
Existing audience you want to monetize fastSubstack
Maximum SEO + interactivity + zero commissionsOwn website (Astro/Next.js)

Here’s how the platforms compare visually:

Newsletter Platform Comparison

Evaluation across 6 key dimensions for creators

Substack Ghost Beehiiv Kit

Original analysis based on documented features 2025-2026

Brilliant Launchpad, Not Necessarily a Permanent Home

Substack is genuinely excellent at one thing: removing every barrier between your idea and your first paying subscriber. The zero-cost entry, frictionless monetization, and real discovery network make it the most accessible starting point to launch a newsletter.

But the platform’s structural limitations (design rigidity, analytics blindspots, integration poverty, an ecosystem that overwhelmingly rewards English-speaking creators with existing fame) mean that Substack is often a better launchpad than a long-term home.

The honest math says most creators will earn modest side-income at best. The churn treadmill is relentless, and LATAM creators face an ecosystem that hasn’t yet built critical mass in Spanish.

I first thought the lack of Spanish content was just a timing issue. That the market hadn’t arrived yet. But after digging into the data, I realized something deeper: the barriers aren’t just temporary. They’re structural. The algorithm, the top categories, the payment habits. Everything is designed for the anglophone market.

The pragmatic recommendation: If you’re evaluating Substack to launch a newsletter that drives your business, go for it. It’s the fastest path to validate your niche, test what content resonates, and start building a list.

But own your email list from day one, build your audience across multiple channels, and be prepared to migrate when the 10% fee and platform constraints start costing more than the convenience is worth.

Need Help with Your Newsletter Strategy?

From Platform to Strategy

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