As a starving freelance writer, I always look for ways to turn craft into coin. Enter Substack.

Think of it as a personal online publishing platform with which you build a paying readership. Setup is free, intuitive, and quick. Fill it with previously published work, new articles, OpEds, short stories…whatever tickles your fancy. Create subsections, the content and purpose of which are only limited by your imagination. Insert graphics to make your written word pop (free tutorials for your account help you find royalty-free images).

I launched The Island Intelligencer Substack on Independence Day 2023; it took four hours. The core of the written material comes from a monthly newspaper column that I write for a local rag and focuses on espionage and national security. With my editor’s blessing, newly released pieces post on the Substack the same day they come off the press and are sent to the email inbox of my subscribers, including those with free accounts. To draw subscribers, I include free access for everyone to a Flipboard magazine (another free tool at www.flipboard.com) that I stock weekly with news clippings about the global cloak-and-dagger world.

Paid subscribers can access more features related to the subject of the writing (intelligence). Especially popular are regularly updated lists of movies about real intelligence operations, online spy museums around the globe, and podcasts and video channels catering to spy buffs. For the professional and academic crowd, there is a regularly updated list of international intelligence-focused publications and organizations. I plan to offer paying subscribers occasional unique articles that can only be found on the Substack. You can bend this model to almost any subject matter or collection of writing.

Building a subscriber list is easy. Gift seven-day free subscriptions to everyone you know, relevant FaceBook and LinkedIn and Reddit groups, and people in organizations that would be interested in the content, asking them to spread the word. Keep some content free for all subscribers, but have some unique offerings that will compel some followers to throw money your way. (I only ask $30 for an annual subscription that unlocks all features.) Group discounts are a built-in optional feature. (I offer half price subscriptions for members of groups that request a discount.)

Will this make you rich? There are stories of writers who have grown their Substack into their main income source. As for mine, it netted $500 in its first month. In the weeks thereafter, as the platform helped spread my written products, it led to other unexpected opportunities. A professor at a prestigious university invited me to deliver a paid lecture for one course ($250 for a one-hour talk). Another member of the academy suggested a joint research paper. A publisher of another product asked permission to reprint one of my pieces in a new venue. Then came the public speaking engagements.

Unpaid talks have proven to be an excellent way to build readership, garner invitations for more speaking gigs, and—for me—even a job offer as a community college lecturer. (They have all thrown in a free lunch, one asked me to select a charity to receive a $25 donation tied to my talk, and another invited me back for an encore.) Local libraries and philanthropic organizations—Rotarians, Elks—are open to having guest speakers on many topics. Special interest groups—military retirees, Daughters of the American Revolution, etc.—have a narrower scope of interest. Public library speakers series can be tapped. Did you know that cruise lines will give you a free cruise and plane tickets to/from the point of departure to offer lectures onboard? Check out www.cruiseshipenrichment.net and www.compassspeakers.com.

Give Substack a look over at www.substack.com. A little cash and new opportunities may await you. Explore mine for free at https://islandintelligencer.substack.com.

Bio:  John Atwell is the editor of Weekly Intelligence Notes (the online news magazine of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers), the author of the Hawaii Tribune Herald’s The Island Intelligencer (a monthly column on espionage issues), and a lecturer on national security matters at Hawaii Community College. His writing on media literacy, homeschooling, homesteading, teaching personal finance to children, and health and diet have been published in various magazines. In his early freelance writer days, he also dabbled in copy mill work. John, a federal retiree, lives with his wife of 29 years in a jungle-ensconced off-grid yurt on the slopes of an active remote-Pacific-island volcano, where he tends free-range chickens and turkeys, tropical fruit trees, and some gardens with the help of three feral-pig-chasing hounds and two feline muroid hunters. You can connect with John at https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpaulatwell.

Blog: www.sojournchronicle.wordpress.com

Blog/articles: www.motherearthnews.com/contributors/John+Atwell/

Published newspaper articles: https://islandintelligencer.substack.com