Is Substack actually worth it?
Smarter Substack | Jun 11, 2026
After two years and 50,000 subscribers, one of Substack’s most-watched publications just dropped a no-spin verdict on whether the platform is actually worth it.
🧠 Strategy
2 Years on Substack: A Brutally Honest Review — Two years and nearly 50,000 subscribers in, this review cuts against most of the advice being sold right now. It lays out what actually works on Substack today, what’s genuinely hard, and exactly who the platform rewards.
📈 Growth
The 5 Types of Notes That Earned Me $457 and 753 Subscribers Last Month — Most writers post the same kind of Note over and over, then wonder why the feed scrolls right past them. This breaks down five distinct Note types — each doing a different job — that pulled in 753 new subscribers in a single month.
🎯 Case Study
The Substack Renaissance: How Write • Build • Scale Engineered a $50K/Month Ecosystem — A publication pulling in over $50K a month makes less than 10% of it from Substack subscriptions — the rest comes from a backend most creators never build. This breakdown reverse-engineers how free content becomes trust, and trust becomes the engine that does the real earning.
🎟️ Free Live Masterclass
How to Become a Substack Bestseller in Less Than 12 Months — The three shifts behind reaching Bestseller status and your first 100 paid subscribers, taught live by the Write • Build • Scale team. Seats are limited and it’s completely free.








Love the insider POV’s here.