Writing for Substack

Launch your Substack newsletter and engage new readers in this four-week course.

Substack is an amazing platform for writers because it requires no design skills, it keeps you motivated to write, and it helps you grow your audience organically over time. Whether you want to share personal stories, share your expertise, serialize a novel, create an author newsletter, or simply provide a glimpse into the things you love, Substack can help you find readers and create community around your passion. If you want to earn money for your writing, Substack provides tools to do that too.

Course dates: This course is self-paced. You will get your first set of lessons the moment you enroll, followed by a new set of lessons each week. There are no live sessions. You have access to the materials for six months.

What you get: 3 hours of video lessons, 18 written lessons, ongoing discussion forums

When you enroll in the full version of the course, you will also get instructor feedback on your posts.

In this course, you will:

• choose a subject for your substack
• Come up with a title and URL
• create your profile and logline
• determine your intended audience and theme
• set a writing and publishing schedule
• write one to two posts per week
• get feedback on your posts (1,000 words per week)
• learn how to make the Substack growth engine work for you

At the end of the course, you will have a professional-looking Substack with several completed posts, and you will be on your way to building an engaged audience.

What students are saying:

Michelle Richmond's "Writing for Substack" course is superb. I had tons of ideas but zero structure in my head, and Michelle was an excellent guide...The lessons are very well structured, informative, easy to follow, and packed with excellent advice (that you don't get anywhere else) on writing in general and writing for Substack specifically. Plus, I have found Michelle to be extremely supportive, kind, welcoming, and inspiring. I can't recommend this course enough! Andres Celati, creator of The Vinyl Room

In WRITING FOR SUBSTACK, you will get weekly video and written lessons, weekly assignments, ongoing discussions, and feedback on your posts. Although it's easy to write on Substack once you get going, setup can be tricky. In my series of videos, I take you into the Substack settings and show you how to set up every part of your Substack.

Please note: There are no live sessions. You can add one-on-one video coaching by selecting Writing for Substack Plus at checkout.

This course is for you if:

• You are a regular Substack reader and have been meaning to start your own or
• You started a Substack but rarely post or
• You are a blogger who hasn't yet used Substack or
• You created a newsletter elsewhere and want to migrate to Substack and
• You want to create audience and community around your expertise or your passion.

Here are a few Substacks created in the first iteration this course in February, 2023:

• Dear Fiction by Brooke Lea Foster
• Alma Genetrix by Alexander Lowe McAdams
• The Vinyl Room by Andres Celati

And more created in the second iteration, a live-session course I taught for Litcamp that was geared toward authors:

• Oops, My Brain by Natalie Mead
• 1,017 Acres: Life in the Park by Susan Freinkel:

Why I'm teaching this course:

I've been writing The Caffeinated Writer newsletter for a decade, in addition to my author newsletter. For years, I paid over a thousand dollars per year to send out my newsletters on Mailchimp. At the end of 2022, I realized the pricing model just didn't make sense, and I migrated both my author newsletter and my writing and publishing newsletter to Substack. I also created a new publication, The Wandering Writer, to share stories about writing and travel. I have been surprised and delighted by the motivation the Substack system provides, and by the way my audience grows organically without the use of time-consuming "lead magnets" and "marketing funnels." With Substack, it's all about the writing.

Among my audience, I notice a lot of subscribers have a "coming soon" page but haven't yet started their newsletter. I imagine these writers have many reasons why they haven't yet started their Substacks, from time management to lack of confidence in their writing and the fear of clicking "publish."

I created this course to inspire you to start writing and hit the publish button.