🥳YAY! The Substack for Beginners Class 2026 Is Here
From inbox to income. Write your way to your first $100, $1,000 or $10,000
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.”
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.
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 Fleur Hull and the The Substack Bookstore) 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,
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.
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
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!














Freue mich auch über Teilnehmer aus Deutschland!! 😘😘 Wir starten die erste Runde in 40 min. Kommt doch einfach vorbei. Also annual member bekommt ihr einen Link und meldet euch an. Direkter Zugang und wir sehen uns in Zoom Raum. Bis gleich! Traut euch