My 'Weird' Strategy For Making $10,000 Per Month on Substack

I made $100K without selling a single subscription

It feels like cheating.

While most writers on Substack waste months and years slowly collecting $5 subscriptions hoping to maybe, one day, somehow make $5,000 a month if they’re lucky…

I’ve made that much from the platform in a single day. I’ve made $100,000+ on Substack without needing to sell a single subscription to do it.

Stop taking the slow route to making money from Substack when you can use the fast lane instead. Here’s how.

The Only Way to Hit $10K Per Month Without Needing Thousands of Subscribers

Take the same knowledge you’re already sharing turn it into an ‘offer,’ you can sell for $3,000 or more.

That way, you only need 3–4 people to say yes to reach $10,000 instead compared to needing 1,000–2,000 subscribers at $5–$10 per month, which means you can hit $10,000 per month without needing a huge audience to do it.

Some might say, “But Ayo, most people can’t afford a $3,000 offer.”

True. And that’s exactly why you shouldn’t sell to them.

10% of your audience will happily pay 10X as much for a customized, high-touch, results-driven service.

That’s what you're selling with a high-ticket offer. Information alone is a commodity people won’t pay for. They’ll pay thousands of dollars for help with implementation.

Some people in your audience want a deeper relationship with you. They want more access. And they’re willing to pay for it. You should let them.

To get this right, and make sure people actually want to pay $3,000, you need the right ‘offer ingredients’ to get them to say yes. Without them nobody will buy. Keep reading to craft an offer that sells.

How I Helped a Client 60X Her Offer Price (and Sell More)

Building a $3,000–$5,000 offer is surprisingly easy. The hard part isn’t creating the offer. It’s getting clients to believe they can sell at that price. Once they embrace it, their entire reality shifts.

I helped one client go from selling a coaching package for $50 to selling it for $3,000. Funny thing? She sold more at the higher price.

She was posting tons of free content for “engagement” and making less than $1,000. Six months later, she’s consistently hitting $15,000–$20,000 months by offering a high-ticket product.

Here’s what we did:

1. Promise: Instead of selling coaching, she sold a result—land your dream job.

2. Timeframe: We set clear expectations—get your dream job in 6 months or less.

3. Scarcity: Limited the offer—only 3 spots per month.

4. Urgency: We made the offer time-sensitive—prices go up after these 3 spots are filled.

5. Deliverables: We focused on giving enough value to get the outcome but didn’t overdo it. Once her clients hit $10K/month, we pivoted to scalable group programs.

This video explains how you can build a $5,000 offer from scratch:

Now, having a high-ticket product or service is great, but without this next step, you won’t be able to monetize your Substack to $10,000 per month.

Your Notes Are Worth Thousands of Dollars

When most Substack writers get engagement on their notes, they see likes. When I get engagement, I see dollar signs.

I kind of get sad when I see a Substack writer go viral and not capitalize on it. They may have missed out on $10,000-$30,000 dollars just waiting to be collected/

If someone likes a post where I’m describing a problem they have or a solution they want, it’s natural for me to reach out and ask:

“Hey, thanks for engaging with my post about [topic]. Was there something about it that resonated with your current situation?”

This isn’t spammy or pushy because they initiated the engagement. You simply put your writing out there, and people who resonate with it will engage. That’s your cue to start a conversation.

You’re not bothering people by reaching out. You’re helping them. Start conversations with your readers.

Ask them about their challenges and goals. Understand where they are now and where they want to go. Then, position your offer as the solution to bridge that gap.

These are the basics of offers that sell and conversations that convert, but you need a newsletter writing strategy that attracts buyers instead of people who just want to read free content or pay $10, which is why you must avoid these writing and strategy mistakes.

Common Substack Writing Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

If you want a newsletter that sells, you need to focus on writing in a way that makes you stand out as the go-to person for solving your audience’s problems so they will give you money to solve them.

Here are some of the biggest mistakes I see Substack writers make:

1. Random and Scattered Focus

Most newsletters that struggle to make money and get engagement are all over the place. There’s no clear theme. If I can’t immediately tell how you can help me when I visit your newsletter, I won’t become a subscriber, let alone a buyer.

If your bio looks like this:

Art | Poetry | Travel | 1960’s Black History | Musings

...you’re probably not targeting a specific problem or solution people want to pay for. This is fine for a hobby, but it’s not a profitable strategy on Substack.

The four categories that consistently make money are:

• Health

• Wealth

• Relationships

• Self-Improvement

From there, you can narrow down to a sub-category and then a niche:

• Health → Nutrition → Emotional eating (this is a money printer niche by the way)

• Wealth → Career Advice → Career coaching for data scientists

• Relationships → Marriage → Revive sexless marriages

• Self-Improvement → Peak Performance → Peak performance for entrepreneurs

  The riches are in the niches. The more specific you get, the more your audience will feel that your solution is just for them, which makes them more willing to pay.

2. Poor Packaging and Positioning

You can write an amazing post that nobody reads if you don’t know how to package it properly. Pay special attention to these key areas:

• Headlines: According to legendary copywriter David Ogilvy, five times as many people read the headline as the body of the post. Spend time crafting headlines that make people want to click.

• Introduction: Your opening sentence should hook attention immediately. I have a friend

  Michael Thompson
  who sometimes spends a week thinking about the first sentence of an essay because it sets the tone for the entire post.

• Conclusion: End your posts on a high note and give your readers a clear call to action (CTA)—tell them what to do next.

• Subheadings: Use subheadings to keep people reading. They should spark curiosity and give readers a reason to keep going.

• First Sentence of Each Section: Re-hook your readers at the start of each new point. Treat each section like its own mini-post.

• Last Sentence of Each Section: Provide a preview of what’s next to keep readers engaged.
  

3. Writing for Peers Instead of Clients

If you want likes and validation, write for your peers. If you want to make money, write for potential clients and customers.

I see health coaches, doctors, nutritionists, and other experts writing posts on Substack about "how to grow on Substack" or offering writing tips.

If your product or service isn’t related to Substack growth or writing advice, these posts won’t help you make money.

If you want to make money, write for the people who want to buy what you're selling.

Here’s how to write posts that attract future clients and customers

1. Identify their fears, frustrations, hopes, and aspirations.

2. Write 15 answers for each category using the word “I” to step into their shoes and understand their challenges.

For example:

• “I’m afraid my spouse is thinking about divorcing me.”

• “I’m frustrated because I keep wasting hours writing newsletters nobody reads.”

• “I hope I can get the confidence to start putting myself out there more in social situations.”

• “I want to reach the top of my field and get paid well for it.”

Turn these answers into specific, actionable headlines:

• How to Rebuild a Marriage That Feels Like It’s Falling Apart

• The 3-Step Formula to Create Newsletters People Actually Read

• How to Be More Outgoing (Even If You're Naturally Quiet)

• The Career Blueprint High Earners Follow That No One Talks About

Writing posts like these makes someone in your audience feel like you’re reading their mind, like you have all the answers the need to solve their problems, like you’re THE person they should pay to fix it.

Now that you have all the pieces:

• An offer you can sell for $3,000

• A newsletter strategy that attracts future clients and customers

• A way to reach out to them and have conversations that turn into cash

You’re now playing a different, more profitable, and easier game than 99 percent of writers on substack

Take the Fast Lane

Imagine for the next 12 months each newsletter you write targets a specific fear, frustration, hope, or aspiration of your ideal client and has a clear call to action to subscribe or book a call.

You turn every note into a client-attracting tool that leads to more conversations, more sales, and more profit.

You’d make more money. And your newsletter would grow faster, too. Best of both worlds. Instead of making $5 at a time you make $3,000 to $5,000 at a time instead.

Cash comes into your business faster, which means you can reinvest it into more growth if you’re full time or stack savings to quit your job if you’re doing it on the side.

My client, Becky, said that this high-ticket model helped her accomplish in months what would’ve taken her years.

It’s true. High ticket offers + client attracting writing + the sell by chat method = One of the few ways creators have a REAL chance at making their full-time business dreams come true.

And I have the receipts to prove it, like this client who made $7,500. Not in months, but in four hours.

You don’t have to wait years to hit $10,000 per month. You can do it in 12 months or less, pretty much guaranteed, if you just follow the strategy I laid out.

Take the fast lane. You make a hell of a lot more money and the ride is a hell of a lot more fun.

Want to take the fast lane?

It’s a new month, which means I’m opening up 10 spots, first come first service, to join Words to Dollars.

It’s not a course, a coaching program, or a community.

It’s a step by step customized game plan and a built-in accountability system to help you add $5,000 to $10,000 per month in six months or less.

Even better, if you don’t at least double your investment working with me I will refund the entire investment in full.

If you want the full details of the offer, book your ‘$10K game plan session’ here:

We will walk through your current newsletter and business strategy to find the easiest areas for growth and ‘profit levers’ we can pull to get you to $10K months. If it’s a good fit for both of us, I will invite you to work together to implement the plan.