Substack Subscriptions vs Selling Courses: Which Makes You More Money?

Every newsletter writer eventually faces the same question: should you keep growing your Substack subscriptions, or would you make more money selling courses? The debate between Substack vs selling courses isn't just philosophical. It comes down to specific numbers, and the maths often surprises people.

Let's run the real comparison.

The Substack Subscription Revenue Model

Substack's model is straightforward. You publish a newsletter, convert some free subscribers to paid, and earn monthly or annual recurring revenue. Substack takes 10%, and Stripe takes an additional ~3%.

Here's what typical Substack economics look like:

• Free subscribers: 5,000
• Free-to-paid conversion rate: 5% (industry average)
• Paid subscribers: 250
• Monthly price: £7
• Monthly gross revenue: £1,750
• After Substack (10%) and Stripe (~3%): ~£1,522/month
• Annual net revenue: ~£18,270

That's solid income. But there are hidden costs in this model.

The Churn Problem

Paid newsletter subscribers churn at 5-10% per month. At 7% monthly churn, you lose about 17-18 subscribers per month from your 250 base. To stay flat, you need to convert 17-18 new paid subscribers every month. To grow, you need even more.

This creates a treadmill. You're constantly producing premium content to justify the subscription while simultaneously marketing to replace churned subscribers. Miss a month of strong content and the erosion accelerates.

The Ceiling Problem

There's a natural ceiling on what you can charge for a newsletter. Most successful Substack writers charge £5-12/month. Push higher and conversion rates drop sharply. Your revenue is capped by (subscribers x price), and both variables have practical limits.

The Course Revenue Model

Selling courses works differently. You create a product once (or, more accurately, you structure existing content into a product once) and sell it at a one-time price. There's no ongoing subscription, no churn, and no obligation to keep producing content for paying customers.

Here's what course economics look like for a newsletter writer:

• Existing audience: 5,000 free subscribers
• Course price: £69 (one-time)
• Conversion rate: 3% (lower than subscription, but realistic for a higher price point)
• Initial sales: 150
• Revenue from launch: £10,350
• Ongoing sales (10-20/month from continued newsletter growth): £690-1,380/month

In this scenario, the launch alone generates more than six months of subscription revenue. And ongoing sales continue without the churn treadmill.

Substack vs Selling Courses: Direct Comparison

The subscription model provides steady, predictable income but demands constant content production and fights churn. The course model provides higher per-customer revenue with no churn, but requires a strong launch and ongoing marketing.

The Hybrid Approach: Why You Don't Have to Choose

The most profitable approach combines both models. Use your free Substack newsletter as the audience-building engine and sell courses as the primary monetisation strategy.

Here's how the hybrid model works:

Free newsletter publishes weekly, builds trust, grows the audience. This is your marketing channel, not your product.

Paid courses are the product. Built from your best newsletter content, structured into learning paths, and sold at a one-time price. This is where the real revenue lives.

Optional paid subscription continues for readers who want ongoing premium content above and beyond your courses. This becomes supplementary income, not your primary revenue stream.

With this model, a writer with 5,000 free subscribers, one course at £69, and a paid tier at £7/month could generate:

• Course sales (150 initial + 15/month ongoing): £10,350 launch + £1,035/month
• Subscription revenue (100 paid subscribers): £609/month after fees
• Total first-year revenue: ~£30,000+

That's significantly more than either model alone.

Why Course Revenue Scales Better

Subscription revenue scales linearly. Double your paid subscribers, double your revenue. But you also double your churn problem and your content obligation.

Course revenue scales differently. Once a course exists, every new free subscriber is a potential course buyer. And you can create multiple courses, each targeting a different segment of your audience. A writer with three courses at £49-99 each can generate multiple sales from the same subscriber base.

The real leverage: courses built from existing content require minimal incremental effort. You've already written the material. You're just structuring it. Lesso's Substack import feature makes this particularly efficient. Import your archive, organise it into modules, and publish. No starting from zero.

For a detailed walkthrough of the import process, read how to import your Substack archive and sell it as a course.

When Subscriptions Make More Sense

To be fair, there are scenarios where paid subscriptions are the better fit:

• Your content is time-sensitive. If you write about markets, politics, or breaking industry news, the value is in timeliness. Courses work better for evergreen knowledge.
• You love the writing treadmill. Some writers genuinely enjoy the cadence of weekly premium posts. If the production schedule energises rather than drains you, subscriptions can work.
• Your audience is small but highly engaged. With fewer than 1,000 free subscribers, a course launch may not generate enough initial sales to justify the effort. Build the audience first, then course-ify.

When Courses Make More Sense

Courses are the stronger play when:

• You have 2,000+ free subscribers and enough audience to generate meaningful course sales
• Your content is evergreen and teaches skills, frameworks, or knowledge that stays relevant
• You're tired of the content treadmill and want revenue that doesn't require weekly production
• You want higher per-customer revenue without raising subscription prices
• You've written 30+ posts on a focused topic, giving you enough material for a structured course

Making the Shift

If the numbers make sense for your situation, the transition is simpler than you might expect. You don't need to abandon Substack or stop writing your newsletter. You need to add a course product alongside it.

Start by identifying your strongest content cluster, the topic where you have the most posts, the deepest expertise, and the highest reader engagement. Structure those posts into a course, price it, and launch it to your existing audience.

For a complete guide on making this transition, read our pillar guide on Substack alternatives for courses. If you're ready to build your first course from your newsletter archive, Lesso lets you import directly from Substack and start selling the same day.