AI made content dirt cheap. Anyone can crank out a thousand words in ten seconds now.

And you can feel it, right? Every feed, whether it’s on Medium, LinkedIn or X, is the same flat, tidy ChatGPT voice. And people are getting sick of it. Sick of reading something and realizing… nobody was even there.

That’s one of the reasons Substack shipped an AI detector this week and everybody is losing their minds… and honestly?

Some of them should be because some of them have NO idea what’s actually going on.

You’re about to be the one who knows.

Real quick: this is the recap from our Friday Live.

Every Friday, same time, we get on together: 2 PM Berlin. 1 PM London. 8 AM New York. 5 AM LA.

It’s group coaching where I bring ALL the news and you bring the questions. This week? We talked abou AI and it got spicy….

Want in on the next one with me, award-winning marketer and part-time Substack bestseller?

For the next 24 hours it’s 50% off.

Like… 7 bucks a month. Or 70 for the whole year.

You get the weekly Live, every replay, AND the Substack for Beginners course on demand.

After 24 hours? Gone. Back to full price. I’m not being cute, that’s just how long it runs.

Let me join!

There’s a part of this story hiding in the legal fine print and nobody’s talking about it.

What happened in the week of July 20

July 21st. Substack’s CEO drops a post called “Against Claudefishing.”1

Great title. Here’s what it means.

Claudefishing = catfishing, but with a chatbot.

You read something. You think a human made it. You give it your time, your feelings, maybe your MONEY…

…and there was nobody home. Just a machine.

That’s the thing Substack says it’s fighting.

And notice, the CEO did NOT say “AI is evil.”

His actual point: not everything made with AI is slop, and not everything that’s slop was made with AI.

Want to learn about AI & Substack LIVE

The problem is the mismatch. You expected a human, you got a vending machine.

So they built a button … but they ALSO changed the rulebook the day before.

What the new AI detection button does on Substack

They teamed up with a company called Pangram who makes AI detectors.

• Now there’s a button: “Scan for AI text.”

• It’s a READER tool. Not a cop. Nobody gets auto-scanned and branded. Somebody has to CHOOSE to click it. And only they see it.

• Only stuff published July 21st or later.

• Needs 100+ words. Your little 2-line note is safe.

• Works on posts, notes, replies, AND comments. Yeah. Comments too.

• It’s free.

• Web, iOS, Android. Doesn’t work on video, audio, or custom-domain sites.

• You get a SPLIT, not a verdict. Human / AI-assisted / AI-generated. Percentages.

The Scan for AI text button on Substack

Wanna scan somebody else’s post?

Three dots at the top right. “Scan for AI text.”

Wanna scan your OWN draft before you hit publish?

The 2 new Substack buttons that matter

There are two settings 90% of people don’t know about.

Button one: “How I Make This”

In our LIVE on Friday, no one had a clue but it’s your public statement about how you work and it pops up when anyone scans you.

WHY it matters:

If you already told people how you work… a “40% AI-assisted” score is just… true. You already said it and there’s no gotcha left.

The score only hurts you if it reveals something you were HIDING or says you’re using AI althoigh you don’t (false-positive results are common and one of the reasons on Reddit there are soooo many folks questioning the tool).

Button two: Disable detection

You can turn the scan off: once you publish a post at the bottom click “Disable AI detection”. Readers just see “AI detection unavailable.”

At launch you had to scan your post first before you could turn it off (annoying, right?). People screamed. Substack fixed it. Now you can disable it without scanning at all.

The catch that’s still there: it’s per-post. No master off-switch yet. That’s the #1 complaint. People want one button for their whole publication to simply opt-out and I think that’s fair. What do you think?

Oh and you can dispute a scan you think is wrong. Keep that in your back pocket. It matters more than you think.

How Pengram works

The old AI detectors? Garbage ?!

They played “guess the next word.” Basically: “if I were ChatGPT, what word comes next?”

Problem: that flags the Declaration of Independence as AI. And Frankenstein. And the Bible and so many more classics.

Why is this?

Computer engineer and AI expert , says:

“Because the models read those a million times, so every word looks “predictable,” so the dumb detector goes “AI!””

Pangram doesn’t do that.

It’s a classifier.

“You can picture a giant map of writing styles. Similar writers stand near each other. Human writing clusters over here. AI clusters over there.”

Instead of “what would a bot write next,” it asks “who does this SOUND like?”

Let me join the Club for 50% off today

Two things you care about:

1. No single tell sinks you. Not the em dash. Not “delve.” It looks at hundreds of thousands of signals. So relax about your em dashes. (In theory.)

2. Length matters. More words = more accurate. That’s your 100-word floor.

Now… does it actually work?

The fine print nobody read

Okay here’s the part I’m actually fired up about.

July 20th , the day BEFORE the button launched , Substack quietly updated the Publisher Agreement. Former lawyer brought this up today in our Club Chat.

The changelog literally says: refund tweak… and a “clarification regarding automated content analysis.”

1. You now grant Substack a license to run your content through automated tools, including AI detectors. So yeah, they can feed your writing to Pangram.

2. They say they can’t use your content to train third-party AI models, and Pangram can’t keep your content or use it for anything except the scan. So guardrails are baked in…

3. If a tool slaps a label on you that changes how your work shows up? They have to let you contest it. That’s the legal spine under the “report this scan” button.

Here’s the word I want you to circle: generative.

Their promise says they won’t use your stuff to train GENERATIVE AI.

But Pangram isn’t generative. It’s a classifier.

So the Club’s AI expert Patrick is asking:

“Does that promise cover training the detector (AI tool) itself?”

I want to join the weekly LIVEs

The privacy change on Substack nobody emailed you about

Okay this one bugs me….Thanks to the Club’s legal advisor who pointing this out! today in the Club CHat.

And Substack’s own agreement says they’ll notify creators about subprocessor changes and give you a window to object.

So how do you get notified?

You… email them. To ask. You have to opt in to being told….

Read that twice.

That’s… a great question.

Whatever you think about the scan button, a company sitting on everybody’s email telling you to email in to hear about a contract change? That’s a weird look. Substack should just answer this one.

I could go on for hours… but as always, wanted to wait some days before I’d open the forum to talk about Substack and AI.

Time to FINALLY join the CLub!

Now it’s your turn:

What do you think about this new Pengram x Substack collab?

Have you tried it?

How are you faring with AI-written or AI-assisted posts?

I'm a little giddy about this one.

Last week, a Forbes contributor and LinkedIn marketing manager sent me a DM.

This week, she’s going LIVE with us inside the Club.

And that, right there, is the thing I’ll never stop being obsessed with about building this online writing business on the side: You show up. You put your real self out there. And the universe goes,

“Oh, you’re visible now? Cool. Here’s a door.”

A DM on Wednesday. A LIVE on your calendar by the weekend.

Her name is . And you’re going to meet her tomorrow.

Who’s Alli Kushner

Let me tell you about this woman.

Alli is a mom, writer, speaker, and operator covering the future of work, nonlinear careers, and how ambition is being redefined.

Her writing digs into the structural shifts reshaping how we build careers, lead, and make decisions about work and life… pulling from lived experience and data, research, and expert voices. On Substack, she has built Off the Ladder

We’re talking a Modern Love essay in The New York Times. Bylines in Fast Company and Business Insider. Keynote stages and panels on nonlinear careers, workplace caregiving, and maternal mental health.

Aaaand she’s also a marketing manager at LinkedIn.

Oh and you have to go and read her Forbes column:

• “The Rise Of Portfolio Careers And Lessons For Ambitious Women”

• “Visibility Is The New Currency, Whether You Like It Or Not”

Why I NEED you in this LIVE

Because Alli writes about the exact thing that changes EVERYTHING for online writers like us.

Getting seen.

Her Forbes piece, “Visibility Is The New Currency”, hit me right in the chest. Her argument?

The old deal was: do great quiet work, get noticed, then advance. In that order.

That order is dead.

Now?

You have to be seen FIRST. The being-seen is what creates the opportunity. Not the other way around.

And she has a name for the thing that stops most people cold. She calls it the cringe mountain. The idea that to get to whatever you’re reaching for, you have to be willing to be seen trying, in public, before you’ve got it all figured out, when you might look a little silly.

You know that feeling: You write the post. You stare at it. You close the tab.

THAT is the mountain. And Alli’s whole message is: The wince is the price of admission. She’s climbing it too.

I want to join the LIVE with Alli

The LinkedIn obsession I’ve been quietly building

There’s SO. MUCH. NOISE. about LinkedIn right now.

I’m going to show you my cards, because I don’t trust “get visible!” advice from people who won’t show theirs.

I only started writing on LinkedIn a few months ago.

And the thing that finally made it CLICK was the Substack–LinkedIn Flywheel I built with LinkedIn expert .

Your Substack feeds your LinkedIn.

Your LinkedIn feeds your Substack.

The two grow each other, instead of stealing energy from each other.

(Heads up: the next round with Melanie has a waitlist open for August. Get your name on it.)

What we’re covering tomorrow

• LinkedIn in 2026 — the newest updates, what’s shifting, and what it means for writers and creators

• Portfolio careers — the shift Alli covers in Forbes: consulting, freelancing, creating, founding, and building work that fits the life you actually have

• Getting SEEN online — our shared obsession: how to get your work in front of people without burning out or becoming insufferable

• The cringe mountain — how to keep showing up when it feels like a humiliation ritual

• The Substack + LinkedIn Flywheel — how the two feed each other

• YOUR questions — bring the one you’re a little scared to ask

YAY! I'd love to join the LIVE

One DM turned into this in a WEEK. That’s what BEING SEEN does.

Now go BE SEEN with us… because life was never a ladder.

See you tomorrow!

P.S. Substack now checks via Pengram whether your story is human-written or not. I’ll cover this in an upcoming post. But just fyi.

You can find it when you hit PUBLISH after writing your post at the bottom.

If you missed it, the recording is right here in this post. Grab some of our virtual vanilla cake, watch it with us and join our first ever…

Substack for Authors Summer Camp in August.

Use CELEBRATION to get it for $249 $129.

Let me join for $129 ONLY today

What we’re celebrating?

The Substack Bookstore turned one year old and nothing sells books like a great Substack!

And , the mother of the bestselling newsletter baby Substack Bookstore, showed up with a real vanilla cake, an edible printed cover she designed herself in Canva, and a candle she lit on camera while her son slept on the couch behind her.

Meanwhile I couldn’t get into my own live. Network error. Invalid token. Smartphone one, smartphone two. Substack simply would not let me in…

We were also both wearing pink. Nobody planned that. Fleur is in Australia, I’m in Germany, and somehow we’re connected anyway…

I want to join the Summer Camp for $129!

A one-year-old newsletter, and what a year it’s been

As a mom of two, I think about what a human being does in their first 365 days:

They arrive knowing nothing. They wobble. They fall over. They say one word and everyone in the room cries. They take a first step holding onto the furniture, and then one day they let go.

That’s exactly what this year looked like.

Fleur started her Substack in summer 2025. Late, as she’ll happily tell you. She had no idea what the platform even was.

One year later, this “baby” has:

• Nearly 4,000 subscribers and over 20,000 followers

• Close to 300 authors who have listed their books

• Over 400 books listed across 365 days

• Well over 1,000, getting up to 1,500, clicks on those books

• And 12 Amazon category bestsellers. Some of them multiple-category, multiple-country bestsellers.

I need this Summer Camp!

• went triple #1 on Amazon Australia with Happy Habits. I read the whole thing in an afternoon, go get it.

• was the quiet achiever. Fleur didn’t even do a promotional note for Jack’s Train Day. She simply listed it. Two days later it was an Amazon bestseller, in one of the most competitive categories there is.

• ’s Demons to Champions was already ten months old. That Amazon launch magic had long faded. Fleur and the bookstore community revved the algorithm back up anyway. Gary went #1 in three categories and then went kayaking, because he’s still Gary. As he said in the chat tonight:

“You took my year-old memoir and made it a number one bestseller. It’s still selling another year later.”

• And ’s Decode Your Diagnosis became an International Best Seller. In his words: launching through the Substack Bookstore is

“truely Fleurific.”

That’s a one-year-old. Now we’re heading into the toddler phase. And you know what toddlers do? They run.

Here’s what Fleur did while all of this was happening

She lost her mother at the end of April 2026. She took four months off. She’s raising two kids on her own. She’s doing all of this part-time, like me.

And she came back and said: I’m not quitting anytime soon.

“Everywhere else I go, I think I should be on Instagram, I should be on TikTok and it’s just got nothing of the heart that Substack has. There’s so much more of a sense of people cheering each other on.”

I’m doing this part-time too, with two kids in the house, a corporate job I actually love, and a non-native accent. So please hear this from both of us:

🎉 And now… the announcement - Grab your seat for $129 TODAY!

There are around 70,000 books published on Amazon every single week. Standing out is about being SEEN and being SUPPORTED.

Remember when Fleur and I said last year around this time we were writing a book together called Substack for Authors?

I picked up the phone. I said YES. And then life got its hands on us. Her mum got sick. I moved house. The kids, the jobs, everything.

I'm an author, let me join!

So instead of making you wait for a book on Amazon, we’re giving you something better: direct access to both of us for a fair and no-brainer price.

Fleur asked me to co-host the first-ever Substack for Authors SUMMER CAMP and if you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m a big fan of summer camps. (Bootcamp, summer camp, call it what you like. We’re calling it summer camp.)

We cleared our calendars for you!

🏕️ Substack for Authors · 4–6 August · Live

Three live masterclasses. One live Q&A. 14 days together in a brand-new community we actually own.

• Day 1 · Set the foundation — build (or refine) a publication you own, in the right order

• Day 2 · Grow real readers — Notes, recommendations, and your backlist

• Day 3 · Turn readers into buyers — free reader → superfan → paying subscriber → book sale, plus your launch playbook

We’re going deep on Substack and on Amazon KDP, Fleur’s zone of genius.

Remember the 81% statistic?

Definetly NOT because the books are bad but because nobody helped them get SEEN. That’s the whole reason this summer camp exists.

I want to sell and keep selling my book

👉Use the code CELEBRATION

To celebrate the bookstore’s first birthday and every indie author out there with a dream and a manuscript, we’re opening the doors with the code CELEBRATION.

Six people who were on the live with us a few minutes back have already grabbed their seat.

CELEBRATION gets your $129!

With CELEBRATION you get the Summer Camp plus ALL 6 bonuses:

1. Substack for Authors Guide — the must-have guide for 2027 ($49)

2. StackBuddy, 1 month full access — schedule and analyse your Notes ($29)

3. Substack Quick Start Guide — set it up once, set it up right ($19)

4. Amazon Visibility Checklist — 7 quick wins before launch day ($19)

5. Book Description Analyser — turn browsers into buyers ($29)

6. Indie Author Scorecard — know exactly where you stand ($19)

That’s $164 in bonuses, free.

Save my seat with code CELEBRATION →

Split it into 2 × $129 or 3 × $89 if that’s easier. And if you truly want to be there but the money isn’t there right now, just reply to this email. We’ll figure it out. That’s a promise from both of us.

Show us your book baby in the comments, please 👇

Fleur and I are building a list of indie authors on Substack so we can all support each other, buy each other’s books, read them, review them, restack them, cheer each other on. That support is the entire reason twelve authors became bestsellers this year.

I had a conversation recently with a woman who is 75. She told me her kids and grandkids aren’t interested in her stories yet but one day they’ll ask,

“What was grandma’s story?”

So she sits down every morning for an hour and writes her memoir. That’s who this is for. Every single one of you who FINALLY wants to give birth to that book baby inside you.

Happy birthday, Substack Bookstore 🎂

Thank you, , for what you’ve built in 365 days while carrying more than most people could. What you’re doing for the indie publishing community and connections are mind-blowing.

And thank you, all of you, for showing up tonight from every time zone on the planet.

See you live on 4 August and in one of the upcming LIVEs with Fleur and myself leading to the biggest SUMMER CAMP for (indie) authors this year!

P.S. — Still reading? Consider this your loving kick in the pants. Your book has waited long enough and so have you. Code CELEBRATION, all 6 bonuses, doors close before we go live. Save your seat →

Let me snag my spot!

P.P.S. — Tag Fleur and me when you share the summer camp and there’s an extra bonus in it for you. Spread the word! 🎈

I want some cake for $129

My Substack notes for this week are already written, scheduled, and out of my head.

It took me about 7 minutes this Saturday with the kids running around.

I want to walk you through exactly how, because for years I was the other kind of part-time creator. The kind who knew, every single week, that I “should post something this week on social to be seen,” and felt that knowledge sitting on my chest like a small damp dog.

I know, no one will know how good your writing is if you never show them. On Substack Notes it’s the same. Kristina tells everyone to be on Notes to grow.. but it’s hard.

Subscribe now

Carolyn Clark

The other day, Kristina told me about with her Substack publication Clarity and Calm. Carolyn is a 63 year old Welsh power woman, and I think she’s an amzing example.

But before I tell you a little more about Carolyn, let me give you a intro so you know who’s talking: I’m Patrick. I’ve been a software developer for almost 30 years, I teach thousands of developers, and I run my own publication on Substack called the .NetWeb Academy newsletter I also built the friendly buddy StackBuddy, a NEW scheduling buddy for Substack writers, which is the machine behind the ritual I’m about to show you.

Let me test StackBuddy, too!

Here’s the thing I had to learn the hard way.

The daily grind is NOT a discipline problem

Everyone tells you the same two facts about Substack.

• Notes are how you grow.

• And you have to show up every day.

Both are true. And together they quietly ruin the thing we all came here to do, which is write and share our message with the world.

Because “show up every day” in practice means:

• open the app every day.

• Stare at the empty box every day.

• Decide, every day, from zero, what to say.

That’s not one decision. That’s 365 decisions a year, made at your weakest moment, usually before coffee.

And it’s draining! So I feel

Last week, I analyzed 1.3M of the most viral Substack Notes for all Online Writing Club members,

and one thing the top writers have in common is boring:

But nobody’s willpower survives 365 blank boxes. Mine didn’t! Especially not with a full-time job and two kids.

So I stopped treating consistency as a character trait and started treating it as a scheduling problem.

I batch the writing with Stackbuddy.io, the tool I built for Kristina and the Online Writing Club subscribers.

Automate the showing up.

I want my StackBuddy!

Here’s what Carolyn says:

Give me access to StackBuddy!

The 7-minute ritual

Saturday morning. One coffee. Here’s the whole thing.

Minute 1 to 4: fill the queue

I write or generate the week’s notes in one sitting, while my head is already in writing mode. Ten to fifteen notes. Momentum does most of the work: note four is easier than note one, and note ten writes itself.

A quick word on the mix, because it matters more than volume. From that analysis of 1.3M viral notes: the winners are either one punchy thought under 40 words, or a real 300-to-600-word story.

So my week is mostly short thoughts, one personal story, and a couple of small lessons from my actual work. (I also cross-publish to LinkedIn and the impressions which I can watch while working full-time for my corporate job but also being “all in” on Substack and LinkedIn are insane for me as someone doing this part-time!)

No mid-length tip lists. That’s the dead zone!

Minute 5 to 6: drop them into slots

I don’t pick times. I picked them once, based on when readers actually react (early afternoon through evening in Europe, which catches the US workday), and saved them as recurring slots. Now scheduling a week is drag, drop, done. The queue fills like a wine rack.

Minute 7: close the laptop

This is the actual point of the ritual. The notes publish themselves through Substack’s own scheduler all week. My computer can be off. I can be at the pool with the kids.

Then, during the week, I do the one thing that can’t be batched, and shouldn’t be: ten minutes a day of replying, restacking, and being a human. That’s the part of Substack that’s actually fun, and it’s what the batching buys back the energy for.

That’s the entire system.

If you want to try the exact setup I use, StackBuddy is built around this ritual: batch, queue, slots, done.

What changed (the honest version)

The obvious change: I post every day now, without posting every day. My streak stopped depending on my mood.

The less obvious change is the one I’d sell for double. The dread is gone.

Writing became something I do once, on purpose, with coffee, instead of a debt I service daily. And my notes got better, not worse, because I write them all in one warmed-up session instead of squeezing them out cold at 7am between emails.

And a real example from our users, because it’s not just me:

• one writer told us she posted 29 out of 30 days for the first time since she started, and what changed was that the queue meant she never faced the blank box on a bad day.

• Another schedules his entire week in the time it takes his kettle to boil, and says the thing he got back wasn’t time. It was his holidays.

• Another one is now on a 3 months break while still being “all in” on Notes.

Carolyn Clark’s Notes strategy and posting rhythm

Coming back to Online Writing Club member and Substack for Beginners participant Carolyn Clarke, when I checked her Notes feed I saw:

• lots of personal anecdotes

• personal pictures of her dog, husband, on vacay, at home

• yoga and mindfulness classes

• life lessons (the good, bad, ugly)

StackBuddy access HERE

These are just handful of examples but they show, it’s worthwhile:

• adding a personal picture to your stories

• daring to show your human and vulnerable side

• share your real life lessons

AND most importantly be on Notes.. now, 3 hours ago, 13 hours, 19 hours, 1d, 2d…

that’s how the algorithm sees Carolyn builds momentum.

She adds and talk about the value of following her and her Clarity and Calm Substack Publication.

Try StackBuddy this Saturday!

You can do a manual version of this with any tool, or none: write your week in one sitting, schedule what you can, and protect ten minutes a day for replies. Even that alone will change your relationship with the platform.

If you want the version with the machinery included, the slots, the queue, the analytics that tell you what’s landing, that’s what I built StackBuddy for.

Every new account starts with 14 days of full Pro, free, no credit card. One Saturday is enough to know whether the ritual fits you.

Either way: stop making 365 decisions a year.

Make one, on Saturday, with coffee.

Upcoming Substack Lives! Mark your calendars

• Live with Kristina 7/17 at 8 AM ET, 5 AM PT, 1PM London

  • Join and add to your calendar here.

• Live with 7/21 at to celebrate 1 year of the Substack Bookstore!

  • Add to your calendar here.

  Upcoming Substack Classes

• Substack for Authors Bootcamp with - July 2026

  • will be announced today!

• LinkedIn-Substack Flywheel Bootcamp with - August 2026: Join the waitlist here.

There’s a question I get in my inbox more than any other, and it usually arrives late at night, phrased about six different ways:

Do I go all in or do I keep my job?

Tomorrow I’m going live with someone who is standing exactly on that line. And she’s not standing there as a hopeful beginner. She’s standing there as a published cookbook author with a YouTube channel that has already out-earned her salary.

Her name is .

You’re invited!

Monday, July 13, 9:00 AM ET / 6:00 AM PT / 3:00 PM Berlin / 2:00 PM London

“This cookbook author made $1M cooking $20 dinners on YouTube - writers, steal her playbook”

Jen and I are inviting you to join our live chat!

Let me jojn the LIVE!

Who’s Jen Chapin

Table of contents for you:

• You’re invited!

• Who’s Jen Chapin

• Why I want you in the LIVE chat with Jen Chapin

• Jen Chapin is 43, needs to work for 17 more years and wonders: for what?!

• The psychological horror of the creator dashboard

• Go full-time and quit your job?

• What we’ll cover in our LIVE Chat on Monday, July 13

• Hang out with Jen and me: Food & Drink

Jen has been a nurse for 21 years. Master’s in nursing administration. Her day job is hospital consulting, which means heavy travel, sometimes three weeks out of the month.

And since 2017, she has also been building a YouTube channel about budget cooking. Real food, real grocery prices, real families. She started it for the least glamorous and most correct reason in the world:

“I started my channel because I could not find any other working moms on YouTube.”

“It was kind of one of those things where I thought, well, if there’s like a gap in the market, why don’t I just create, like, why don’t I just do it?”

That’s the whole business, right there. She wanted something. It didn’t exist. She built it.

Since then: a published cookbook. A line of physical meal planners she created herself, she bought a commercial laser printer and a binding machine and set them up in her home office. Her husband, an engineer, came home to a printing press in the house and said:

“How much money did you spend on all this?”

And she said:

“You don’t want to know.”

Then her daughter helped her tape and box the orders, and the stacks went out the door.

She hates the phrase “side hustle,” by the way. She’s right to. This is a media company.

Subscribe now

Why I want you in the LIVE chat with Jen Chapin

I sat down with Jen for a 1:1 coaching session recently, because Jen wants her Dinner Done Club

to be a bestseller and because she’s now bringing everything to Substack.

She’s a rising Substack rockstar in the category Food & Drink

with an already-massive head start: a loyal YouTube audience that has watched her for years on her channel welcoming 141,000 (!) subscriber with “let’s make dinner”:

On her channel she’s showing you something genuinely useful and genuinely rare: how, for a few bucks, you can feed a family of always-hungry kids without Door Dash quietly eating your paycheck.

“You can waste so much money eating out and Door Dash and pizza delivery and all that stuff... I love giving people a road map — like, okay, you got 50 bucks, this is what you can make for the week.”

Jen Chapin is 43, needs to work for 17 more years and wonders: for what?!

As a little intro, I watched Jen’s hour-long coaching session with Mandy Kuo, a career coach, on YouTube. It’s called “Should I Go Full Time?” and I couldn’t stop nodding.

Because Jen said out loud the thing most of us only think:

“I’ve made a lot of money online before. Like I know I can do it. And so I kind of just want to explore like... what’s my issue? If I know I can make money and not have a traditional job, why is that so hard for me to imagine myself doing that?”

That’s the pain point. Not “can I make money online.” She already has.

The block is the identity.

“I’ve always like done the thing that I was supposed to do... I got out of high school and I went to college and then I graduated and then I got married and then I had kids and then I got a house.”

“I’m 43 this year and that means I have to work for 17 more years and I’m like…17 more years for what?”

She even took a career-values quiz and found that safety, stability and purpose ranked highest for her. Lowest? Creativity and freedom. Which is a fascinating thing to discover about yourself when you have spent seven years building a creative business in your evenings.

And then the fear underneath the fear …the one I hear constantly:

“If I do need or want to return... let’s say I’m gone from the workforce proper for 5 years and then I want to come back. How is that going to look to a recruiter?... which I realize at some level is like an irrational fear.”

She knows it’s irrational. It still runs the show. That’s how these things work.

The psychological horror of the creator dashboard

Jen also described the specific psychological horror of the creator dashboard better than anyone I’ve heard:

“If I sit down every morning and log into my YouTube dashboard and the last video I posted yesterday is like..you’re 10 out of 10... YouTube’s like, you suck, you better post another video, the views are down 17%.”

“When I log into work in the morning... no one’s telling me like, you were 17% less productive yesterday.”

And on the guilt of not publishing:

"I really do feel this sense of guilt when I'm not publishing. Like I know that's probably pretty messed up too."

If you have ever refreshed your Substack stats before you’ve had coffee, you already know she’s talking about you.

Subscribe now

Go full-time and quit your job?

I’ll be transparent about my own seat at this table, because I don’t think you should take “go all in!” advice from anyone who won’t show their hand.

I run this newsletter part-time which I’m pretty proud of as I’m #14 #International as a non-native. I also have a job as a marketing and brand manager.

My husband has a full-time job , he’s a software developer, and he builds the .NET Web Academy, StackBuddy, his Substack and his YouTube channel on top of it.

Two kids. Two corporate jobs.

Neither of us has quit, and here’s the part people don’t expect: we like our jobs. We’re not plotting our escape at 11pm. We’re building something alongside the thing we already care about.

Which is why I’m not going to sell you a dream, and Jen is not going to sell you one either. We’re going to talk about the math, the health insurance, the identity, the notice period, and the fear.

But I’ll say the other half too, because it’s the half that changed my mind:

In my opinion that’s no longer a quirky hobby number! That’s a car payment, a mortgage cushion, a runway.

And in a year where AI has made a lot of very competent people feel suddenly replaceable, the thing you build on the side stops being a hustle and starts being an asset. An audience is an asset. A product line is an asset. A newsletter list is an asset. Nobody can restructure you out of those.

It even helps the boring version of your life: showing up in an interview as someone who built and shipped something outside the corporate bubble is not a red flag anymore. It’s the whole point.

So the question tomorrow isn’t really quit or stay. It’s what are you building that belongs to you and how big does it have to get before “quit or stay” is even your decision to make?

What I did tell Jen is this: Substack could be a huge driver for her. Bigger than she thinks. She has the audience, the product, the recipes, the voice and she loves writing, even though she has “never considered myself a writer.”

What we’ll cover in our LIVE Chat on Monday, July 13

• How Jen built a real income ($1M) from cooking content

• How to use video (on Substack) to grow your online business

• How to write a script for your videos

• Turning a video YouTube audience into a text-based Substack that pays

• Full-time vs. keeping the job: the honest ledger, insurance, 401k, identity, and the “can I ever go back?” fear

….and of course: Making peace with the dashboard and the budget meal-plan system: what $50 a week actually buys and how she maps it

Let me join the LIVE!

Hang out with Jen and me: Food & Drink

Still on the hunt for actionable tips and insights in regard to making videos on the internet, using video content, being successful in the food and drinks category and go all-in on the internet? Inside the Club membership we gonna talk about exactly this with Jen:

Monday, July 13, 9:00 AM ET / 6:00 AM PT / 3:00 PM Berlin / 2:00 PM London /

👉 Join the live stream

Bring your questions. Bring the one you’re embarrassed to ask.

Because the through-line of Jen’s whole story is a phrase she lives by, and one I want tattooed on every writer in this community:

“Done is better than perfect.”

See you tomorrow!

You don't need the perfect setup to start writing your newsletter on the internet streets. Just the itch to write and a bit of curiosity.

And now with Substack’s new features things got even better. These new features is something we gonna talk about tomorrow in our LIVE this time for ALL paid subscribers.

You’re invited to talk with me about….

• paid perks on Substack

• making money on Substack

• all the latest new and shiny Substack features.

#1 Text color: stop the scroll

If you’ve been following me for a while already, you know I introduces you to text highlighting already. This new feature lives together with the new text colours right in the formatting toolbar when you create a new post.

• Select any stretch of text and you can now change the color of the words themselves, the kind of small touch that makes a key line actually stop the scroll instead of blending into the wall of gray.

• My take: Used sparingly, they're great for emphasis, pull-quotes, or steering the eye to the one sentence you really want people to read. Used everywhere, they'll make your post look like a ransom note, so go easy.

• Here’s how to access: yoursubdomain.substack.com/publish/post (see what I did here?!)

#2 Templates: stop retyping the same stuff

If you find yourself typing the same things over and over, a preamble, a disclaimer, a call-to-action, a section intro, a signature block, an affiliate disclosure, Templates might become your new favorite feature.

• Templates are reusable blocks of content you can drop into any draft in a couple of clicks.

• You build the block once by clicking on Template in the formatting toolbar in your post editor:

  

• Click on New template

• save it, give it a name,

  

• and then pull it into future posts whenever you need it.

• Here’s how to access: yoursubdomain.substack.com/publish/post

#3 Drop Caps: that big first letter

Want your posts to open with a large decorative capital, like an old novel? That’s a drop cap, and Substack now supports it.

It’s a global setting rather than a per-post one.

• Head to your Dashboard_Settings_Website editor tab,..

• flip the Drop caps toggle on, and save.

• From then on, every post, past and future, opens with that oversized first letter on the web!

#4 Translate a note: meet readers in their own language

Substack now lets you publish the same post on Notes in multiple languages, and readers automatically see the version that matches their device's language setting.

#5 Publish a post in multiple languages

Substack now lets you publish the same post in multiple languages, and readers automatically see the version that matches their device’s language setting.

• To turn it on, go to your publication Dashboard_Settings_Basics.

• Switch on both Additional post languages and Allow automatic translation.

  

• Then, when you’re drafting, the editor detects your post’s language and gives you a Languages menu above the title. Pick from the 18 supported languages and write a custom translation for each one you want to offer.

One limit: on the web, custom translated posts only appear in the Substack reader (when someone opens a post from their inbox or a note), not on your standalone site!

#6 Country leaderboards - rising bestseller in your country to get discovered locally

Not everything new is about how your post looks …some of it is about who finds it. Substack’s leaderboards rank publications by category to help readers discover new voices. There are now country-specific leaderboards too. Here you can see my friend . (Psst! Join our Substack for Authors Bootcamp in 2 weeks!)

A quick refresher on how the rankings work: each category (sports, business, fiction, and so on) has two views.

• Rising highlights the fastest-growing publications by paid-subscription growth and refreshes every few hours

• Top Bestsellers ranks the highest earners by annual recurring revenue and updates daily. It’s all automated, you don’t apply, and you’ll get a notification if your publication lands on one.

The new part is geography. Right now, readers and creators located in the UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain see leaderboards for the country they’re physically in, 50 spots each on the Rising and Top Bestseller lists.

So someone reading in Madrid sees the Spain lists. Which country you’re eligible for is tied to your Stripe account’s country, and your country rank shows on your profile whenever it beats your category rank.

And if you just want to browse, Substack Around the World (substack.com/globe) lets you pick from 50+ countries and see the top publications and trending posts in each!

#7 Scheduling and analyzing Substack Notes

Here you can access StackBuddy for FREE: stackbuddy.io

#8 Sponsorship Program

#9 Paid perks visualized

#10 Highlighting of paragraphs

#11 Substack’s new 31 categories

#12 Substack tags and segmentation

🫵🏻Have you tried any of these yet? Tell me which one surprised you most and any hidden Substack feature I should cover next time.

Okay, writer, grab your coffee, open a fresh doc, and get comfy, because today I’m handing you something that sounds a little too good to be true.

Five creative writing courses. Taught by working authors, playwrights, and poets. And every single one of them is… completely FREE. Yes, you heard me right and I’m not kidding.

All you need is what you already have: the itch to write and a bit of curiosity.

These come from The Open University’s OpenLearn, the same people who’ve been quietly making genuinely good education free for 20 years, and they cover nearly every corner of the craft. Fiction. Poetry. Essays. Writing for stage, print, TV, and radio.

Whether you’re staring down the first blank page of your first story or polishing a draft you’ve rewritten nine times, there’s something here with your name on it.

So here’s the plan. I’ve pulled the five good ones, told you exactly what each covers, and dropped a direct link so you can jump straight in. Bookmark this post, pick one, and actually start today, your future writer self will thank you.

Let’s get into it:

Creative writing

An invaluable insight into a wide range of techniques and practices surrounding Creative Writing. Writers as diverse as Alan Ayckbourn, Ian McMillan and Tanika Gupta talk openly about their approaches and attitudes to all aspects of writing from original concept to final drafts and productions. Writing for stage, print, television and radio is discussed in engaging and articulate detail.

Let me enter the course!

Writing what you know

Do you want to improve your descriptive writing? This free course, Writing what you know, will help you to develop your perception of the world about you and enable you to see the familiar things in everyday life in a new light. You will also learn how authors use their own personal histories to form the basis of their work.

Let me enter the course!

Start writing essays

Many students are frightened of writing essays, but it’s a craft that can be learnt. This album will help you to build confidence in all areas of essay writing. A student discusses with two tutors her writing methods and how she adapts her techniques for exams and assignments. With tips shared from Professor Richard Dawkins, TV personality Matthew Kelly, former MP Brian Walden, Baroness Helena Kennedy, journalist John Pilgner and radio presenters John Humphrys and Peter White.

Let me enter the course!

Start writing fiction

Have you always wanted to write, but never quite had the courage to start? This free course, Start writing fiction, will give you an insight into how authors create their characters and settings. You will also be able to look at the different genres for fiction.

Let me enter the course!

Writing poetry

Poetry is a delicate and intricate art form, practised by many people but rarely mastered. In this album, poets Jackie Kay, Paul Muldoon, W.N. Herbert and Jean Breeze talk about their respective approaches and attitudes to poetry. They explore many aspects of their craft, from the initial spark of inspiration and rewriting to more technical matters such as rhyme, using real speech and narrative poetry.

Let me enter the course!

Loved these? Here’s your natural next step

My Substack for Beginners class, the one that walks you from “I have no idea what I’m doing” all the way to publishing, growing, and actually landing paid subscribers, is FREE for all paid annual subscribers of the Online Writing Club.

👉🏻Are there any other FREE writing courses on the internet you can recommend? Let us know!

Last week I sat down and analyzed 1.3 million Substack notes. 1.3 million (!).

No human reads 1.3 million notes. So I don’t pretend to.

Here’s how I could even do this. As a full-time fullstack software developer and part-time YouTuber and owner of the I build StackBuddy, a scheduling tool for Substack writers.

StackBuddy was built for a part-time Substack bestseller and busy mom

I built this for my wife, last summer when we went on a 3 months sabbatical to travel through Europe with our two small kids before school starts. Kristina could be all-in on Substack Notes while jumping in the pool with the kids, climbing the Monte Baldo at the Lake Garda or enjoying some ice creme in Venice while talking with a globetrotter.

It started in summer 2025 as a tool for my wife and Subsatck bestseller Kristina. Then it became a tool we offered bootcampers and Kristina’s coaching clients.

I want to schedule my summer break!

StackBuddy analyzes which Substack Notes perform well

Fast forward to summer 2026, and part of what it does is watch which Notes perform across a network of Substack publications.

Its database currently holds 1,320,475 notes from 3,742 writers, each with its reaction, restack, and comment counts.

I connected Claude, one of my personal AI assistants, directly to StackBuddy’s database and had it filter the whole set down to the viral outliers: the roughly 135 highest-engagement notes across 31 Substack categories, from writing and personal growth to grief, parenting, and mental health.

Sit with that ratio for a second. 1.3 million notes in, about 135 out. Roughly one note in ten thousand reaches this tier. That is the first finding before any analysis has even started:

Those 135 I actually read, one by one, and sorted into patterns. AI did the digging. I did the reading and the judgment calls. More on the limits of that at the end.

I expected the usual answers: post consistently, be authentic, engage with others.

What I found instead was more specific, and honestly a little uncomfortable, because it disagrees with half the advice I see every day and Kristina said I, as the Chief Technical and Data Officer at home and for the Club, needed to share this with the writing community to make these insights available for everyone and also StackBuddy.

Let me test StackBuddy for FRE!!

Here’s what the data actually says:

#1 There’s a dead zone, and most of us write in it

Read more

“SEO is dead. GEO is the future. AI killed search, better learn the new rules or get left behind.”

If you write anything online, a blog, a Medium post, a Substack, a LinkedIn update, a YouTube script, you’ve heard some version of that the last couple of months. Probably ten versions. And if you’re honest, it made your stomach drop a little.

So let me say the quiet part out loud: most of us just want to write. We don’t want to decode five new acronyms a quarter (SEO, GEO, AEO, LLM SEO, enough). We don’t want a brand-new “system” something changes. We want the thing we wrote to get found by a human who needs it. And lately it feels like the robots changed the locks. I feel you!

So here’s the question:

Is SEO dead? Is GEO the next big thing in 2026/2027? Do you have to throw everything out and start over?

Short answer: no, kind of, and thank goodness no. The longer answer is the most reassuring thing you’ll read all week and the best proof of it comes from a man who answered this exact question three decades before anyone thought to ask it. We lost him a few weeks ago.

Let me tell you about a man you’ve probably never heard of, who shaped almost every word you’ve ever typed into a search box.

His name was Bruce Clay, and the industry called him the Father of SEO. That’s not a cute nickname. He has even coined the term “search engine optimization (SEO),” back in 1996, before Google even existed.

Bruce was a mainframe programmer who started his company at his dining room table, treated Google like a puzzle to solve instead of a slot machine to game, and then spent three decades teaching the rest of us how to do it honestly.

He passed away in late May 2026.1 The news rippled through the SEO world a few days ago, and I’ve been sitting with it, because Bruce is part of my story too.

I learned this craft in my early twenties, journalism degree, media and communications, then being a TalentEd at the biggest CommsMarketing agency in the world, Edelman, where I watched words move markets in real time.

Later I did my MBA in marketing and dialogue marketing. Somewhere in all of that, Bruce Clay’s checklists and guides were quietly teaching me the fundamentals nobody else bothered to explain in plain English. I owe him more than I realized until this week.

His entire philosophy fit in one line from one of his checklists:

“Your website must be technically sound and the content must be useful and trustworthy.”

So this issue is a tribute. But it’s also the most tactical SEO lesson I can hand you right now and the timing of it is almost spooky.

Table of Contents

• The Bruce Clay eulogy Google didn’t know it was writing

• What are SEO and GEO?

• 3 tricks that make AI quote you (not your competitors)

• Platform playbook: how to get cited on each one

• The stuff Google says to STOP doing in 2026/2027

• What this means for you and me

• Rest easy, Bruce

Read more

We see the shiny headline (“Signed with Hachette!” “Out March 2027!”) and assume it happened the way lightning happens: random, rare, and definitely not coming for you.

But nobody shows you the boring, beautiful, page-a-day middle. Which is exactly the part you need.

So I sat down with who’s driven by the desire to make the American dream a reality for millions of underserved families and made him show his work.

Who is Jeremy Ney?

Jeremy is a Columbia Business School professor, a former Federal Reserve numbers person, and the human behind the Substack American Inequality, yep, the one with those weirdly addictive maps you’ve definitely seen and definitely sent to one friend with the caption “look at our state.”

He’s also the author of The Opportunity Map (Hachette, March 2027). That’s a deal with one of the Big Five, the publishing equivalent of getting seated at the grown-ups’ table.

And here’s what’s so important for you:

He started exactly where you’re sitting right now

Jeremy launched American Inequality in 2021 for the least glamorous reason imaginable: he had a pile of cool maps and data just sitting there, and figured someone might enjoy them. That was the entire master plan.

“For the first probably two, maybe even three years, I was really just writing for friends and family. My mom was one of my biggest commenters on my posts…”

I love this so much. Because right now somebody reading this is sitting on their version of the maps, the memoir, the niche obsession, the thing they know cold, waiting for permission to hit publish.

Maps became his “thing” and thumbprint

As I always say, every writer who breaks through has a thing, the signature move you can spot from across the room. Jeremy’s was turning intimidating government data (EPA, FBI, HUD… basically the alphabet) into county-level maps that actually make you feel something.

“People love the maps. They know where they were born, where their parents live, where they went to college…”

Jeremey wasn’t trying to write a book at all

“Strangely enough, I was not planning to write a book. Like when I started the Substack, I did not intend for it to turn into a book deal.”

So how’d it happen? An old college friend (who was writing his own book) opened a door. A few weeks later, Jeremy had an agent, Dan Greenberg.

Three months after that, he had a book deal.

That’s what Jeremy called in his guest post increasing your surface of luck, a phrase he borrowed from poker champ-turned-founder Cate Hall:

“The more times you interact with the outside world, the more chances you have to get lucky, to find collaborators, friends, and projects that, together, provide the right soil for you to bloom in.”

In other words: luck is gardening. You plant a lot of stuff, you water it weekly, and eventually something pops up.

The “I’m too small” excuse is sneaky

This is the part I want tattooed on the inside of your eyelids.

When Jeremy pitched his book, here’s the audience he had:

“I had… 12,000, I think.”

Twelve. Thousand. That’s not “famous influencer” numbers. That’s “respectable turnout at a regional event with decent parking” numbers. And it was enough.

Meanwhile, half the internet swears you need 50,000 subscribers and an orange or purple checkmark before you’re allowed to dream. You don’t. 10,000 is genuinely impressive.

• Online Writing Club member signed with Penguin Random House at ZERO and gre her list to 5,000 later.

Why your Substack is secretly your best negotiator

“What I realized is that Substack turned my writing into a market test.”

Publishing houses are, in their hearts, venture capitalists in cardigans. They place a bunch of small bets praying one becomes Harry Potter. Every bet is risky.

So when you stroll in with open rates, comments, and an audience that actually shows up, you’re not a gamble anymore, you’re closer to a sure thing. Your stats do the convincing while you sit there looking modest.

Jeremy’s best moves for you

1. Treat your Substack like proof

Those stats and comments? That’s your evidence locker. It’s literally how Jeremy ended up in TIME, Business Insider, and Harvard Magazine.

2. Hold your best stuff back

Plot armor for your book. Every story in it is brand-new on purpose, so readers can’t just Google their way out of buying it.

“I kept the big picture in mind and held some stories back so that way when someone read it in my book, it would be the first time that insight was out in the world.”

3. Write one boring, unsexy page a day

“I wrote a page every single day basically for a little over a year.”

4. Give first. Ask later (way later)

The #1 thing that grew his newsletter was recommending other writers in the dashboard and being recommended back. He linked, quoted, hyped, and cold-emailed generously before he ever needed anything. Karma with a recommendation button.

Want to plant your own writing garden of luck?

Jeremy’s whole story is living proof that Substack is where the stories, the collaborations, and yes, the actual book deals, tend to start.

And you put yourself in luck’s path the moment you stop reading from the sidelines and start publishing.

If you want to learn Substack the fun, fast, hand-held, “wait, that wasn’t scary at all” way, come join the Substack for Beginners Course 2026 inside your annual Club membership:

✅ On-demand lessons + weekly live sessions (hop in anytime!)

✅ Masterclasses + Q&As with people building real newsletters right now

✅ Every future update, automatically yours

👉 YAY, let me join — just upgrade to an annual Club membership. That’s the whole checkout process.

You’re in!

Let me sign up!

Keep going (more from the Club)

• Jeremy’s guest post: How to Become a Published Author With Substack (and Increase Your Surface of Luck)

• Running superstar : What Raz Did With 0 Readers That Changed Everything

• who listened to her publisher Penguin Random House and started an email list on Substack and grew it from zero to 5,000

• went from unemployed to book deal.

Especially when you see the publishing industry shifting under our feet faster than ever.

For most of us on the outside, what happens at a big industry event feels like one giant mystery:

• What are publishers ACTUALLY talking about right now?

• Is AI really coming for our writing?

• Where are readers even hiding these days?

• How do authors find an audience when nobody seems to read for fun anymore?

And maybe the biggest question of all:

That’s exactly why I loved today’s conversation with podcast guest copywriter, former insider at the hybrid publisher Scribe Media in Austin, and the writer behind Substack.

Because while I was sitting in Germany (I would have had to fly to New York City for this one!), Jen was walking the floor of the U.S. Book Show, the Publishers Weekly industry event where hybrid and traditional publishers come together to talk about what’s actually happening inside the industry today.

Subscribe now

And she came back with GOLD.

☀️ Limited-time only: Join the Club as an annual member + get FREE access to the Substack for Beginners Course this summer!

Commit yourself, learn and grow together!

On-demand trainings + live classes. Our next LIVE class is on Friday.

• Friday, June 19

2pm CEST · 1pm BST · 8am ET · 5am PT

I want to join!

You can meet Jen for our upcoming Author Summer Summit in July 2026. Stay tuned and be the first to grab your ticket.

Subscribe now

Jen said it best:

“Book people are great people, so I just want to say that, too.”

Passionate about books, passionate about reading, and they actually like the people in the halls, that was the energy she walked into.

But underneath this, there were two huge conversations rumbling through every panel and once you see them, you can’t unsee them.

So in our conversation Jen peels back the curtain on the 7 things that stuck with her the most.

7 Things I Learned at the U.S. Book Show

1. Reading is becoming SOCIAL again (the analog renaissance is real)

This was the one that genuinely excited me. Because of all the AI noise, people are quietly craving analog. As Jen put it:

“We’re in the age of the newsletter right now, the art of the newsletter.”

Reading communities and reading events are having a MOMENT. Jen met someone who runs a company called Reading Rhymes, he’d just gathered something like 1,500–2,000 people in Bryant Park in New York, where everyone showed up with whatever book they wanted, sat on the grass, read together, and then talked about it afterward.

And the second she got home to Austin? An ad popped up for a brand-new spot called The Analog Room. You walk in, they take your phone and lock it in a box, hand you the key, and you read for an hour, then there’s wine and cheese and conversation.

This event is happening today! Some people would call this retro. I don’t. I call it a renaissance.

As Jen said, it all comes back to a very basic human need:

“We all need a sense of belonging and our sense of belonging has been kind of shattered in the last five years since COVID.”

2. The power is shifting, toward YOU, the writer

For decades, a small group of tastemakers in New York and the Big Five publishers decided what books we read. That’s changing fast.

“The power and influence is shifting quite a bit from having sort of tastemakers in New York with the big five publishing companies deciding what books we read… to now authors thinking more like entrepreneurs, because they have all these tools that will help them have a direct relationship with their readers.”

And then the line I keep coming back to:

“So that can either be overwhelming to you or that can be exciting to you.”

I choose exciting. And the people who do this best? Romance writers. As Jen said:

“Romance writers are amazing writers at… building a brand.”

You know the book from the cover, you know the characters, and you have readers who are completely dialed in and waiting for the next one. We could ALL learn from them, which is exactly why building your own community (on Substack), your own garden, matters so much.

Let me build my garden!

3. There are actually TWO AI conversations (don’t confuse them)

This was such a clarifying takeaway. Jen said she walked away from the show realizing:

“There’s really two big conversations happening.”

1. AI in the creative process (writing and editing the actual books). Everyone basically tiptoed around this.

2. AI on the back end of publishing (search, discoverability, operations). Here, people are leaning ALL the way in, because there are so many genuinely useful cases.

So when you hear “publishers are using AI,” ask which AI conversation they mean. They’re not the same thing.

4. Stop being data-driven” Start being “data-informed”

Data-driven treats your readers like consumers of a product. Data-informed is the opposite:

“Data informed is really looking at people’s behaviors, what they buy, what they read, what they tell their friends about.”

For us as online writers, this is everything.

• Are people replying to your emails?

• Leaving comments?

• Jumping into your chat?

That behavior is telling you who your readers are and what they actually want from you.

5. SEO is becoming GEO, learn to write for AI search

One of the most technical (and most important) panels was about the shift from SEO to GEO, from optimizing for Google to optimizing for how people search inside ChatGPT and Claude.

The big lesson: don’t keyword-STUFF anymore (as in my 20s for Edelman where the Edelman Digital team handed me a keyoword list and said: “we need these keywords 5-10x in this post”. Instead, find the phrases that capture who you are and your work and use them consistently in every single place: your author website, your Substack description, your Amazon page.

As Jen explained it, you want to make sure those phrases…

“…shows up the same in each place, because now AI will track that.”

When your message is consistent everywhere, AI picks it up and serves the right you to the right readers. (Funny enough, I learned a version of this three years ago from a Google expert who told me my Knowledge Panel worked the same way. He was just early.)

6. We have a literacy problem and it’s partly our job to fix it

This one made me a little sad as I have two kids in the house.

“Reading for pleasure is down 40% in the last 20 years.”

Add in book banning in schools, and there’s a lot going on with literacy. Publishers feel it too. Hachette was handing out tips and tools for reading WITH kids, basically asking parents to help raise the next generation of readers.

Because here’s the hard math for every author and marketer:

7. Polished and corporate is OUT. Personal is IN

Reading is social again, and the same thing is happening with content everywhere. People don’t want to be sold to all the time, we’re all over that. They want to feel like your newsletter is a letter to a friend. Which leads me straight into Jen’s tips…

Jen’s top 3 copywriting tips you can use THIS week

Because Jen is an actual copywriter (she even knows the legendary Laura Belgray who you can use in October inside the Club for a LIVE conversation), I asked her for tips we can use immediately to make our newsletters and promo emails stronger.

1. Lead with a personal story

“Your personal stories are always the biggest hug.”

Don’t run to ChatGPT or Claude and say “write me a promo email.”

“You do the thinking. You are the person and that’s what people connect with.”

Tell a real story that pulls people in, then make a natural segue to the thing you’re sharing or selling. (Yes, the Laura Belgray “tuna sandwich” method.)

2. Obsess over your subject lines

“Your subject lines really matter.”

Our inboxes are crowded, and the subject line is what stands out. If you’re going to use AI here, use it well: run your headlines through a free headline analyzer.

People can’t love your writing if they never open the email.

3. Develop a consistent voice and sign-off.

Jen described hers as a “down-to-earth, writer-to-writer friend.” And on the sign-off:

“Having a nice, consistent sign off and something that’s personal really makes it feel like a letter to a friend.”

One bonus mindset shift on AI that I adored. Jen’s whole philosophy when authors finally embrace it:

“If we’re going to do it, let’s get the paid version, use it well, make it a thought partner and train it on your body of work.”

Most people now ask AI “what kind of writer am I?” The real power is to flip it and tell AI who you are. But for that… you have to actually write.

The new Substack tools

Because Jen and I are both deep in Substack, we also nerded out over the new community features rolling out, reply rules (set the house rules for your space, with automatic moderation that learns your boundaries over time), beefed-up tiers and subscriber perks, the chat, direct messages, and the email templates at the bottom of your posts.

My one big nudge:

• turn on your chat button from day one, the same way I tell everyone to turn on the paid button from day one.

• On a recent live, about 80% of people said they DIDN’T have their chat on.

• You want an actual conversation with your people, the chat is your living room, the DMs are a walk in the garden, and that’s where the real connection (and real feedback) happens.

👉🏻Visit my YouTube channel for all the tutorials. Make sure to subscribe to stay on top of things.

I’d LOVE to hear from YOU:

• Which of these 7 shifts surprised you the most?

• Are you building a reader community yet — or still shouting into the void?

• Have you turned on your chat button?

• And what’s your writing dream for 2026?

Aloha, online writer!

Welcome to edition #2 of the Substack Guest Post Spring — today’s spotlight goes to founding member picking up right where #1 left off.

Hot & New: As a new perk, every paid subscriber can contribute and get in front of 18,000 subscribers and 34,000 readers. If you’re a member and want your turn in the spotlight, let me know in the comments and I’ll share the direct link.

If you want to upgrade, to make the JUMP easier, get 30% off the today:

Subscribe now

I missed the U.S. Book Show. And the Tribeca Film Festival. Germany is wonderful, but it’s a long way to New York…so I’m sitting those out. I know Steve would love a Substack event in NYC too, and I can’t make that one either. But honestly? That’s the beauty of this community: while I’m cheering from my desk across the ocean, I’ve got members as sharing live from the floor.

Now let’s hear from Steve.

Subscribe now

I was not planning to go to Tribeca this year.

Two days before it started, I asked my digital twin if it was worth it. The answer changed my week, and maybe my career. Here is what I brought home.

1. AI did not kill storytelling at Tribeca. It saved one

Dreams of Violets is a 75-minute docudrama about Iranian civilian resistance. It was made entirely with AI, no actors, no cameras, no sets.

It became the first fully AI generated film accepted into the official lineup of a major film festival. The director, Ash Koosha, is Iranian. He could not get into Iran. He could not afford a crew. AI was not a shortcut. It was the only way the story could exist.

Jane Rosenthal, co-founder of Tribeca, said it best:

this was not just a technological achievement. It was emotional immediacy. It was urgency. The tool served the story.

The film cost two thousand dollars to make.

It is hard to wrap my head around that price tag.

Subscribe now

2. The NonDē movement is real and you are probably already living it

Ted Hope, one of the most important independent producers of the last thirty years, launched a movement called NonDē at Tribeca this year. The idea: rebuild independent filmmaking from the ground up. Direct audience relationships. Filmmaker ownership. No gatekeepers. New financing models.

I realized halfway through his talk that I have been doing this for twenty years without knowing it had a name. Posting excerpts of my screenplay and novel in Brooklyn nostalgia Facebook groups. Building a direct audience one post at a time. Getting tens of thousands of impressions with no marketing budget and no studio.

If you are a creator building your own audience right now, you are NonDē. Ted Hope just gave it a name.

Ted Hope is prolific on Substack, check out his great work here

3. Period pieces are no longer cost prohibitive

For twenty three years I have been developing a limited series set in 1969 Brighton Beach Brooklyn. New Line and Showtime passed because it was a period piece. Too expensive. Too much of a gamble.

Ten days before Tribeca started I finished a sizzle reel using Runway AI. I recreated Brighton Beach 1969 from archival photographs on my laptop. The scenes that would have cost a hundred thousand dollars to build on a set, I built at home.

Cristobal Valenzuela, CEO of Runway, introduced me to a sold out Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center for three minutes. He talked about my story to an audience that included Ron Howard, Lionsgate, Nvidia, and UCLA Film School.

AI did not replace my story. It finally let me tell it.

Read my full story here

Try This At Home

Turning 65 and Running Out of Runway. Luckily I Ran Into Runway.

25 years ago, I started the first full-time day job I had ever had. I was turning 40, getting married for the first time, and was offered a position as Associate Commissioner and Media Director for t…

Read more

2 months ago · 7 likes · Steve Stein

4. The gatekeepers are still there. But the doors are multiplying

I met producers, showrunners, casting directors, distribution executives, and AI filmmakers this week. HBO drama programming. Open Cities, Jason Kliot’s new AI accelerator for independent filmmakers. Christie Marchese, founder of Kinema, who has built a global screening tour infrastructure that any independent filmmaker can now access.

Subscribe now

The old system is not dead. But there are more ways around it than ever before. The creators who are going to win are the ones who show up prepared, tell their story clearly, and are not waiting for permission.

5. AI is the new laptop. And nobody knows what comes next

The honest truth from every panel at Tribeca this year was this: nobody has the answers. The uncertainty in those rooms was real. There was a tinge of fear alongside the excitement. AI is disrupting every corner of storytelling, from how films get made to who gets to make them.

But here is what I kept hearing underneath all of it:

• Learning how to use AI as a creative tool right now is as important as learning to use a laptop was for writers twenty five years ago. The ones who figure it out are not replacing their voice. They are amplifying it.

The first fully AI generated film ever accepted into a major festival screened at Tribeca this year. It cost two thousand dollars to make. It was about Iranian civilians resisting tyranny. The director could not get into Iran. Could not afford a crew. AI was not a shortcut. It was the only way the story could exist.

Subscribe now

For me, Runway helped me put scenes on a sizzle reel that have been taking up space in my brain for 24 years. So cathartic to share them visually and not just text on a page.

👉🏻Watch the reel at flipsidenyc.substack.com

Want to meet the incredible Steve?

Sure thing. He’s part of this year’ Substack for Beginners Class 2026 (on-demand course + LIVE sessions). Our LIVE session is happening this Friday. You can bring ALL your questions!

NEW: Monthly subscribers can attend the LIVE events, too, and can ask for a ticket!

If you’ve been following me for a while you knew sponsorships would be coming. I predicted they’d come in Q1/Q2 and here we are. It’s the end of quarter two and Substack just announced its brand-new native sponsorships program.

This wasn't a lucky guess. It had been leaked in an article I found in 2026. But that’s another story…

Substack’s native sponsorships program

Months later, Substack is rolling out the next phase of its native sponsorships program.

They’re stepping in to play matchmaker between creators and (big) brands.We’re talking an inaugural cohort that includes names like

• Granola,

• Whatnot,

• T-Mobile,

• Uber,

• Balenciaga,

• Polymarket, and

• Yahoo Scout

Who are collectively putting millions of dollars into creators on the platform.

The pitch is basically:

• you keep the editorial control,

• you choose the partners,

• you set the creative direction

• and Substack handles the boring stuff: outreach. The contracts. The logistics. The matchmaking.

The Substack Creator Kit

The thing they shipped today to kick it off is called a Creator Kit, a built-in media kit you publish to signal “hey, I’m open for brand deals.” It’s the front door to a forthcoming partnership platform that connects you directly with brands.

Right now it’s only open to Substack bestsellers (with 100 paid subscribers), like me, to give it a try.

And just so the scale is clear. Substack says…

• tens of millions of people read, watch, and listen there every week,

• more than 2 million posts get discovered in the app every single day, and

• 100K+ publishers are already making money on the platform.

That’s the audience brands are paying to reach, through you.

The sponsorship deals on Substack

I bet you want to know how these deals look like, am I righ?!

This is the part I was most curious about, so let me save you the digging. The new sponsorship page lays out four ways brands can work with creators:

And if none of those fit? They’ll build a bespoke deal around your goals.

Not as a “slap an ad on it.” These are structured collaborations, which in my opinion is exactly how sponsorship should work if you care about your readers.

Is Substack still an anti-platform?

Many sent me emails asking me about this. And I get it. You’re smart and notice the shift.

Maybe you’re going like: “wait, didn’t they say they’d NEVER do this?”…

Well, Chris Best’s whole initial essay frames Substack as the anti-platform.

The hero in a world of villains who say “we’ll give you reach if you give us your audience.” No algorithm or ad games, paying to be seen. Just you, your readers, and the people who believe in you, open their wallets and pay you.

And… mostly? I think that’s still true. That’s why I love the platform so much. Subscriptions remain the heartbeat here.

But I want you to keep your eyes open, this might be exactly the moment to remember where every other platform was right before it changed.

Have you heard about Instagram? I attended an event on Saturday and recommended the sports startup this: You now literally pay $3.99 to keep a post visible for 48 hours instead of 24. Pay-to-be-seen, dressed up as a feature. It’s definetly better than only be seen by less than 1%, am I right? But that’s a feature insider Brian also shared wth us in 2025 would be coming sooner or later, we’ll see.

Every platform starts with “we’re different.” The question is never do they mean it today. It’s will they still mean it in three years when the incentives shift? At the same time in an “AI age” it’s hard to stay relevant. Substack finds always new (old) ways to do, so we really only need to use Substack as our go-to tool…

Sponsorships are a window of opportunity

I’m not saying Substack is Instagram. I’m saying: trust the model, watch the meter.

I do trust the model and I think adding native sponsorships will be an incredible window of opportunity for many bigstackers (bigger Substack writers with 25,000+ subscribers). Depending on the ideas form the brands, I also see a huge opoortunity for small- and midstackers with a teeny tiny niche audience or growing and rising audience. There are more and more earning some additional income through sponsorhips already.

The platform is telling creators:

“Your audience has value beyond subscriptions.”

For years it was:

Readers = Revenue

Now it’s becoming:

Readers + Sponsors + Products + Services = Revenue

The strongest creator businesses will have multiple income streams!

Substack just took a big swing at their entire pitch

I'm not threatened. I'm thrilled. It means the manual, gatekept thing I do for my husband via Passionfroot by hand is becoming available to everyone.

And it makes Substack a genuine heavyweight against Kit (and all its new shiny features like live, signals etc.) and Beehiiv.

Publish your Creator Kit today

If you’re a Substack bestseller (100 paying subscribers):

Subsatck recommends to publish your Creator Kit today to signal you’re open to brand collaborations and get first access to the partnership platform when it launches.

What’s a Creator Kit?

“Creator Kits let you build a shareable media kit to attract brand partners through Substack's native sponsorships program.” Substack

When I started my career at Edelman, we called them Press Kits. Folders that inlcuded ALL information a journalist would need. In this case it’s the brand that wants to know who you are and what you do.

I created such a Kit for pitching my Online Writing Club Show to my podcast guests to get Laura Belgray or Jay Schwedelson this year. YAY!

So these kits REALLY work.

How to access?

If you’re eligible, you’ll see the Sponsorships tab in the Dashboard. Heer’s the direct access link:

your.substack.com/publish/sponsorships

If you haven’t built your paid base yet (most of us are here, no shame): Start with the foundation and connect your Stripe. If you need help, that’s the whole point of what we do together in the Club. 👇🏻👇🏻

If you’re a brand or agency reading this, you can learn more and connect about partnering with creators here: substack.com/sponsorships

My homework

I asked you whether you’d like me to share the latest news, you said YES,

so here I am. But it’s suuuper late. Past midnight in Germany. So I’m gonna create my Kit tomorrow and share it with you.

But here’s already a quikc overview of my homework:

Header:

About:

Audience

Brand Partnerships:

Testimonials:

Sponsorship formats

What to avoid:

Tell me in the comments

Excited? Frustrated? How are you feeling?

Would you take a sponsorship on your newsletter — yes or never?

And who's your dream brand?

Someone from The Online Writing Club informed me about this today, and I was so excited.

Then I checked the stats in my Substack app and saw that I apparently added $3,000 to my recurring revenue in the last 30 days.

I’m now rising in my specific category on Substack’s bestseller list which is, of course, amazing.

$3,000. $3,000!

The Online Writing Club is read in 169 countries and all 50 US states by dreamers, builders, writing fans and doers - we’re the #14 International Bestseller.

Members have created a genuinely global community here,

all brought together by a love for writing, habit building, expressing yourself, finding your own voice, sharing your stories, quitting your job one day and starting your own business (part-time) and I’m totally here for that.

I share new posts each week on all things writing, (indie) book publishing, bring you inspiring voices in my Show and everything newsletter and Substack-related - basically all the ways of online writing.

Now I also have the Substack for Beginners class (value $499) with weekly lives and coaching included!

Do please come and join us!

Yes, please. I'd love to join!

And I know there are so many moms out there thinking,

“Oh, Kristina, I would so much love to earn my first 100 bucks on the internet.”

So this post is definitely for you.

Because I still can’t believe it. I sat there asking myself:

Okay, Kristina, what did you do differently in the last 30 days?

Usually I add $1,000, maybe $500 in a month but not $3,000.

How could I add $3,000 to my Substack income when I’m already earning about $4,000 per month in recurring income, as a mom of two, working part-time?

My kids are 2 and 6. Both under 7. Both very much in the “Mommy, watch this!” phase. And in a few seconds, I have to pick them up, too.

“Be realistic” What other moms told me for years

So many people told me I couldn’t do this. Over the years, I’ve heard it all:

“You can’t do this. Be realistic. You have a well-paid corporate job, why would you do that? And what about the baby? Is this even good for your health? Come join us for a drink…the mommy wine club! Come watch a movie with us. Hang out for three hours and do nothing while the kids run around.”

Sure, I’m doing all of this with my kids, well, not the wine and not the movie-watching. The mommy wine club was never my thing.

And here’s the funny part: the same people would say, in the same breath,

“One day... one day I’ll start my own business. Write my book. Write online. Do my own thing. One day.”

This is why you see all those ads about writing your own book — “Pay me $5,000 (or $1,000) and I’ll help you write it.”

I personally know exactly one person who actually started and kept going. She built a life coaching business. The others? Still waiting for “one day” to come.

I didn’t wait. I did it anyway, for six years now. I started writing on the internet, and you can do it too.

First: What even is Substack?

If you’re new here, let me explain, because this matters.

Substack is a free platform where you can write posts. It’s like a blog, and people subscribe to get your posts in their inbox like a newsletter. The cool part: you can turn on paid subscriptions with one click, and readers who love your work pay you monthly or yearly to support it and unlock extras.

What makes it special:

• You can start for free. Go to substack.com, create an account, and you have access to everything. No paywall to get started.

• You own it. You always own your intellectual property, your mailing list, and your subscriber payments. If you ever leave, your email list goes with you.

• Substack only takes 10%. Some people call it the “Substack tax” in a very negative way, but it simply means: the moment you earn money, Substack takes a 10% cut (plus standard Stripe payment fees). Tell me another platform that takes just 10%.

• No headaches. You don’t need to know how a website works. No WordPress, no hosting, no ads to run. You write, you publish, you grow.

“But what can a mom even blog about?”

Whatever you’re already living! Some ideas:

• Motherhood itself — the honest, funny, messy version nobody posts on Instagram

• Your before-kids career — teaching, nursing, marketing, finance, organizing

• A hobby or obsession — meal planning, budgeting, decluttering, fitness after baby

• Your journey — postpartum, homeschooling, earning money online, paying off debt, building something while raising littles

• Gardening, fishing, you name it — put it out there!

You only need to be one chapter ahead of your readers.

My story: from nada, zilch ZERO to 18,000 subs

Read more

Last week I attended THE biggest event for events and I’m still buzzing.

And today? I’m spilling the tea.

Because I learned ONE thing that I cannot stop thinking about. I’m literally jumping out of my skin excited to share it with you.

It came from the one and only storyteller Ann Handley, who was presenting on stage as keynote speaker. And friends... she’s INCREDIBLE. On buzzword was “the humanization of marketing” which is sooo important in this AI era and trust recession. “AI just increaed the stakes of how critical human connection is.”

Wait, who is Ann Handley? (You NEED to know her)

If you write anything online and you do, that’s why you’re here, Ann is your new best friend:

• She’s the author of Everybody Writes , THE go-to guide to creating ridiculously good content. A Wall Street Journal bestseller, translated into 19 languages. Seth Godin literally said: “who better to teach you the craft of writing than Ann.”

• One of the most sought-after keynote speakers in the world.

• Named a “Top Thought Leader” by Forbes and “One of the 7 People Shaping Modern Marketing” by IBM.

• Founder of MarketingProfs with 600K+ subscribers.

• A Bostonian, a Swiftie, a tiny-house studio owner, and obsessed with her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Augie. (Same energy, Ann. Same energy.)

So to get to know your audience there’s one specific metric I didn’t really know existed. And it’s so elementary in 2026… especially in a zero click and AI world.

Read more

Let’s get right into it, because tomorrow morning is a big one.

🎙️ Tomorrow: straight from the floor of the US Book Show

Tomorrow, June 9th, 10 a.m. ET / 7 a.m. PT, I’m going live with Copy Queen and she’s bringing back everything she learned at the U.S. Book Show in New York.

It’s live, so come with questions! You can also hit reply and let us know.

Leave a comment

Let me register!

And I’m not stopping there

Two more guests I can barely sit still about:

• Jay Schwedelson, the email marketing genius behind some of the smartest send strategies out there and #1 marketing podcast!

• Laura Belgray, the copywriter from Marie Forleo who turned “write like you talk” into a movement.

I’m bringing both into the Club soon for you to meet and ask questions LIVE.

If your emails get opened but not read, or you freeze every time you face a blank subject line, want to make your writing and copy immediately better, mark these on your calendar.

👉🏻See everything that’s coming up HERE.

Friday: the $15 question

This Friday I’m going live to break down two things: the new paid perks and Reply Rules (see videos below).

You’ve got two ways in:

• Become an annual or founding member 👉🏻 you get the full Substack for Beginners course, free.

• Just want Friday’s LIVE session? 👉🏻 grab it for $15 only, I’m not kidding!

Let me join!

One more reason to jump in now

Here’s the best part about joining Substack for Beginners right now: for the next 6 to 8 weeks, we’re doing this LIVE, together.

That means accountability buddies, real-time feedback, and a room full of writers building alongside you. No more publishing into the void and hoping.

This is the difference between “I’ll start my Substack someday” and “I published three posts this month and people are actually replying and paying me, Kristina.”

I want to grow + earn!

The pool is open: Substack Guest Post Summer

Okay, my favorite part.

I’m opening the doors again. Or should I say… the pool. 😎

This summer I’m running the Substack Guest Post Summer, and every paid subscriber, monthly, annual, or founding, is invited to grab a lounger.

You write a guest post, and I put you in front of my 18,000 Substack subscribers and 34,000 readers, completely free.

You get it as a thank-you for being a paid member.

So grab your snacks, meet me at the pool bar, and let’s get you seen.

👉🏻Paid subscribers: check out the sign-up below or just hit reply and I’ll send it your way.

Let me be SEEN!

And one more thing…

Quick tease: I just got back from the biggest event for events (yes, that’s a real thing, and yes, it was wild). I’m saving the full report for an upcoming post, because a few things genuinely changed how I think about showing up live. More soon.

So here’s your week: register for tomorrow with Jen, watch the Substack TV videos before Friday, and if you’re a paid subscriber, meet me at the pool.

See you in the live on Friday or inside our Chat,

P.S. I didn’t want to blow up your inbox explaining all of it here, so I dropped the details into my Substack TV videos instead. Watch when you’ve got a coffee in hand.

Quick question before you go…

OMG. Stop everything.

Substack just shipped something that, in my opinion, is a massive shift for paid newsletters. 🤯

Now, let me be precise, because you know I test and get back to Substack before I drop a story: perks themselves aren’t new. You’ve always been able to list subscriber benefits in your settings, extras like Q&As, courses, or community access. The problem? They were buried. A few lines of text on your checkout page that most readers scrolled right past.

Like this boooooring page here at onlinewritingclub.com/subscribe

Let me subscribe!!

What just changed

Read more

The journalists are hungry right now.

I've been monitoring my inbox all week, and there's a wave of legitimate media outlets such as Bored Panda and The Cut actively seeking experts writing on Substack like you. Real publications where your name, your Substack link, and your credibility actually matter.

These deadlines are tight. Most close between June 3-8. So if you've been sitting on that expert status thinking "someday I'll pitch," someday is literally this week.

🟠LIVE session: You’re invited when we kick-off the “Substack’s NEW Post Editor - Every (NEW) Feature EXPLAINED!” on Friday, June 5, as part of the Substack for Beginners Course (on-demand + LIVE sessions, 6 weeks of coaching and connecting).🟠

👉🏻Grab your seat for only $10! (NEW)

👉🏻Join the whole series as part of Substack for Beginners.

Read more

You've met Zach before. I've featured him here more than once, and honestly, it's about time again.

That sign is the whole point. Substack as a platform is listening and this week we got proof.

UPDATE: Here’s the video

Table of Contents

• Ask, and ye shall receive

• First, where’s the Substack Post Editor?

• How highlighting in the Substack Post Editor works

• So from how many colors can you choose from?

• Bonus: the new gray callout box

Ask, and ye shall receive

Here’s what happened. A smallstacker called with around 500 subscribers made a simple request:

Please give us the ability to highlight a segment of text. We have Bold, underline and strikethrough. Why not highlight?

Reasonable, right? Some have wanted it at some point. And then Zach replied:

Good feedback. We went ahead and built highlighting for you. It is now available in the editor.

That’s the part I want you to sit with. Not “we’ll pass it along to the product team.” Not “great idea, we’ll consider it.” A writer asked on a Thursday and the feature showed up in the editor on Friday. When someone literally walks around with a sign saying ask me anything, this is what they mean.

So let’s talk about what you can actually do with it.

First, where’s the Substack Post Editor?

Quick orientation in case you’re newer here. From your publication Dashboard click Create and select Article.

That drops you straight into the writing editor, and the formatting toolbar sits across the top.

You already have a solid kit up there: a Style dropdown for headings, Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, code, links, images, audio, video, block quotes, and bulleted and numbered lists.

Now there’s one more tool in that row since yesterday…

How highlighting in the Substack Post Editor works

1. Select the text you want to highlight, a word, a phrase, a whole sentence.

2. Click the highlighter icon in the formatting toolbar (the little pen/marker).

3. A color palette opens up.

4. Pick your color.

Today’s post was brought to you by the Substack for Beginners Course!

On Friday, July 5, you can meet us LIVE and talk about the new feature/s and how to master the Substack post editor.

WOW! Let me register

I teach in English but also can do a session in German for everyone interested!

So from how many colors can you choose from?

The palette is a full grid organized by hue, grays, reds, oranges, yellows, greens, teals, blues, and purples/magentas, each available in several shades from deep and saturated to soft and pale. That’s 60 swatches to choose from.

On top of that you get two extras:

• A Theme row at the bottom that pulls in your publication’s own brand colors, so your highlights can match your look automatically.

• A None option at the top to remove a highlight whenever you want.

In the screenshot above I gave “colored background” a lour magenta.

Bonus: the new gray callout box

While we’re here, there’s a second, new way to make text stand out that pairs beautifully with highlighting: the callout block.

This is the gray box you may have seen popping up in my posts lately. It’s a visually distinct, formatted container that lifts a chunk of text out of the flow of your writing so it can’t be skimmed past.

To add one:

• select a paragraph,

• then open the quote icon in the formatting toolbar (more advanced blocks live under the More menu),

• and choose Callout block.

One small thing to know: once a callout block is placed, you can’t drag it to a new spot. If you want it elsewhere, delete it and add a fresh one where you want it.

What’s the difference between inline highlighting and a callout box?

Inline highlighting is for a word or phrase.

The callout box is for a whole idea you want boxed off.

Use them together and your posts get real visual rhythm.

How writers can actually use inline highlighting

You often see this on websites. It’s a style form.

A few ideas:

• Guiding the eye. Long essay? Highlight the one sentence that’s the actual thesis so skimmers still get it.

• Color-coding. Use one color for definitions, another for action steps, another for quotes, a quiet system your readers learn to read.

• Promos and CTAs. Highlight the discount, the deadline, the link you don’t want missed.

BONUS tip: Callout boxes for the big stuff. Box off a key takeaway, a reader question, or a quote from another writer.

How will you use highlighting on Substack?

Tell me in the comments.

Leave a comment

Zach’s sign said it best:

“I work at Substack. I can make yours better. Ask me anything.”

The highlighting story proves that asking works. So let’s ask.

What feature do you want Substack to ship next?

I’ll go first:

• I want monthly and annual subscriptions to be properly separated , managed independently, with more control over how each is offered. That’s my top one.

Drop yours below. Worst case, nothing happens.

Oh and one nice anecdote, Karena now wants to call highlighting “Karena feature”. So if you also want to see your name on a feature..

Best case? Someone with a sign goes and builds it.

Shoot your shot!

Leave a comment

P.S. Need a FREE Substack for Beginners course? Sooo much too learn… not so miuch time. Learn from someone who has gone before you and helped 700+ Substack writers kickstart their journey.

Have you seen Substack’s new website yet?

Go look. Because the line sitting right at the heart of it stopped me mid-scroll today when I was recording my 👉🏻👉🏻Substack for Beginners course starting tomorrow:

“You deserve to make money doing the work you love.”

Let me join the class of 2026!

I just sat there and stared at it for a second. Maybe two.

Because that has been my whole motto since the day I started earning money on the online writing in 2021: get paid to be YOU.

So today I’m doing what I always do: pulling the latest Substack news together so you don’t have to dig, and adding my two cents from coaching hundreds of writers to their first 1,000 subscribers, their first $1,000, and well beyond.

Let me join the FREE class!

What the new website actually says

The new site reads almost like a manifesto, and honestly? It’s bold.

The argument goes like this: the old media models are broken. For decades, gatekeepers decided who got paid, who got seen, and who got left out. Substack is building a different model, one that puts writers, creators, and subscribers in charge instead. This s something I recently talked with CNN about when they asked me for an interview.

Here’s what they’re putting on the table:

• Free to start, free to leave. No platform fees. No tiers. No contracts.

• You earn from day one. 90% goes straight to you. The rest keeps the lights on.

• A real audience waiting. More than 5 million paid subscriptions, and climbing.

• Built-in growth. Over half of new subscribers come through Substack’s own network. More than 30% of paid subscriptions start inside it. Over a million posts get discovered in the app every single day.

• Reach. Tens of millions of people read, watch, and listen on Substack every week.

And you don’t need to be techy for any of it. The editor, the podcasts, live video, subscriber chat, payments, analytics, win-back campaigns, it’s all under one roof.

But here’s the part that actually got me

The stats are great. The writers are the real headline.

You might remember I found screenwriter and cultural critic Hunter Harris a while back — her publication Hung Up was one of my favorite examples when I was explaining the new Film & TV category on Substack.

Well, she’s on the new site now, and what the screenwriter says is exactly why this platform is different:

“As long as I’ve been on the internet, I feel like I’ve never had this kind of one-to-one relationship with someone who is reading my work.”

Because that’s the whole thing, isn’t it? Social media gives you followers. Substack gives you a relationship. With Chat, Notes and DMs you can build a flourishing community of humans you know.

Author Melinda Wenner Moyer, whose book came out back in 2021, says it still sells steadily every week;

“(…) it continues to sell steadily every week. My editor credits my Substack for helping to drive continued sales.”

This is exactly what I help people build, too, including indie authors (with and the ) who want to sell their books and keep selling them, reader by reader.

Which is why the timing of this couldn’t be more perfect

Substack is out there telling the whole world how good this platform is for solos and indies. For people exactly like us.

• The part-time moms.

• The folks adding a few real dollars on top of their social security.

• The ones with something to say and no big media machine behind them.

It’s spring, but summer is in the air.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m not coasting into it. We’re crushing our goals on the way in!

👇 Substack for Beginners opens its doors in 13 hours 👇

This Friday, my Substack for Beginners Class 2026 kicks off with a LIVE session.

Now, yes, you can join later, the doors don’t slam shut. But hear me on this: you want to be in the very first live. You want to be in the room from Day 1. The people who show up at the start are the ones who build momentum, make the friends, and look back in three months thinking,

“Thank GOD I didn’t wait.”

Here’s a little sneak peak into what we’ll cover together, on-demand and in live workshops:

• All the collab features — because growth on Substack isn’t a solo sport. I’ll show you how to plug into the network and rise together.

• Stats — how to actually read your numbers instead of guessing in the dark.

• Branding & visuals — how to look like the real deal from your very first post (yes, even if you’re “not a design person”).

• Mastering the editor — turning newsletter writing from agony into your favorite part of the week.

• Make money while you sleep — the kind of newsletter that earns whether you’re at your laptop or at the beach this summer :))

And there’s a big community piece this round: live classes in an exclusive circle small enough that we’ll actually become friends, an overview of every student in the room, and hot seats where we put your newsletter on the table and figure out your next move together.

We’re also covering the Substack status quo in 2026, the real role categories play in getting discovered, and I’ll be sharing my ranked categories list so you can see which are saturated, which are crowded, and where the real untapped potential is hiding.

Two ways to join the Class of 2026

🎁 Free as a thank-you when you join the annual membership of the Club.

Let me join!

Or standalone if you just want the class itself ($499).

Plus 6 weeks of live coaching, all the things I wish someone had told me when I started, part-time, with a kid and then a baby in the house.

Either way, if you’re serious about Substack in 2026, this is the class you want to be in.

👉 Save your seat for Friday’s live session

Let me save my seat!

You deserve…

You really do deserve to make money doing the work you love. You deserve to get paid to be you.

The platform believes it. I believe it. The only person left to convince is you.

See you inside,

Kristina

If this helped, do me a tiny favor ♻️restack it ♻️ so another writer trying to figure this out can find it too. That’s how we lift each other up here. Thanks!

P.S. If you’re an annual subscriber and you want to join the Substack for Beginner Course, check your emails. I sent you an email with the invite.

👉🏻You can also hit reply or email me: kristina@onlinewritingclub.com

Everyone who already added his email and name to the form is ALL set!