Substack contacted me to discuss joining their platform and monetizing some of my writing.
Having written a blog post for nearly 20 years without missing a day, it makes sense to consider making money off some of my content.
Not everything I write, including this post, is worthy of payment, but perhaps I could take an area of interest or expertise and move it over to the Substack platform in a more considered and thoughtful way.
The question, of course, is what?
I suspect that amusing stories about my children would make for monetizable content. Nor would my angry screeds on the state of US politics or my frustration with my cats.
In case you don’t know, Substack is a platform that allows writers and creators to publish newsletters, podcasts, and video content and build a subscription-based audience. It’s essentially a publishing platform that provides tools for creating, distributing, and monetizing content via subscriptions, allowing creators to connect directly with their audience.
So if I were to write a weekly or biweekly column on Substack, what would it be?
Any ideas?
I wouldn’t write about storytelling or communication, since I already have an entire business centered on that topic and wouldn’t want to cannibalize one to feed another.
Other ideas include:
Personal or creative productivity
Advice and ideas on writing
Advice and ideas on teaching
Advice or ideas on parenting
Advice and ideas on marriage
I’m not implying that I have expertise on all of these topics, but I have advice and ideas on all of them—a nearly endless amount—so I could write on any of these topics for a long time, even if readers think the ideas are hooey.
Of course, the less hooey my thoughts, the more money I could make.
I’ve also considered dedicating my blog to a single story for a month or two—the recounting of a band of anonymous cowards’ attempt to destroy my teaching career 18 years ago in a profound, insidious, and unbelievable way. I have a huge amount of material from those two years of my life, including lots of contemporaneous notes on the subject, and I’ve wanted to write about it for a long, long time.
Rather than dedicating my blog to the topic for a month or two, I could make it the topic of my Substack, though I think I’d rather have that story be as widely distributed as possible.
Then again, giving my blog over to a single story for a month or more sounds a little crazy. I have so many ideas running through my mind that I’m constantly fighting over what to write on a single day. To hold every one of those ideas back for a month or more almost sounds impossible.
So maybe?
And if not that story, maybe a story about another period of my life. Perhaps the time I spent homeless, jailed, awaiting trial for a crime I didn’t commit, living with a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, sharing a room with a goat, falling victim to a violent crime that led me to a lifetime of PTSD, and ultimately being found not guilty in court.
Those were interesting times.
Or maybe the three years I spent after high school living in the Heavy Metal Playhouse — a townhouse in Attleboro, MA, with my friend Bengi. I have plenty of stories, insight, and wisdom from those years, and lots of contemporaneous writing about that time.
Or my childhood?
Or the 26 years I’ve spent teaching?
Maybe wisdom from two decades on the golf course?
I’m not sure.
So… thoughts? Ideas? Criticism?
I’d love to know what you think.
