Want Your Substack to Stand Out? Look at Online Shopping Best Practices

Start experimenting with these principles to attract readers and build a loyal audience

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When you think about your newsletter, you probably focus on the writing: the ideas, stories, and personal experiences you want to share.

That’s where most DIY writers feel their best—swimming in layers of narrative, character development and perfecting sentences. But if you’re hoping to get paid for your writing through a newsletter, you need to start thinking beyond the words themselves.

Most Substack writers are deeply invested in the creative side of their work, and that’s important—but it often leads to a big oversight: they’re not treating their newsletter like a product. They focus on the writing, not the experience of selling it or how readers will perceive its value.

To turn your writing into something readers are willing to pay for, you need to understand key principles from a different world: e-commerce. Your writing, just like a product in an online shop, is sitting on a digital shelf, competing for attention. By thinking about your newsletter more like an online store—where customer experience, value and differentiation matter—you can unlock a whole new way of attracting and retaining paid readers.

Today, I’m sharing the lessons I learned from my time running an e-commerce store and translating them for DIY writers who want to grow without compromising their craft. These principles are rarely discussed in the newsletter world, but they’re vital if you want to build a loyal subscriber base and turn casual readers into paying ones.