Welcome (back) to the Mind Body Brand community!

Why I decided to move to Substack and what I'm focusing on moving forward

Hey friend!

I mentioned in my latest newsletter that after a lot of going back and forth, I decided to move my weekly newsletter from Mailerlite to Substack. This change ultimately came from me deciding to simplify my business and focus more on my writing.

For years, I mean literal DECADES! I have wanted to focus on writing. Of course I’ve written books and maintained a blog for years but I was always afraid of it becoming my main gig because I wasn’t sure how it would consistently pay the bills.

Well here I am, taking the leap.

Before I could create a real strategy for how all of this would work, I knew that I needed to move to a platform that would allow me to do 3 things:

1. Make it easy for my audience to pay for my content in exchange for perks.

2. Allow me to build community and increase engagement around the newsletters.

3. Make it easy to share my weekly newsletters across other platforms.

Before making my choice, I researched a ton of other platforms. I considered staying on Mailerlite and hacking together what I needed using 3rd party apps. I looked into Beehiiv, who was a top contender because of their built in referral system. And I also looked into Ghost which would allow me to build a content based business on my own website.

But ultimately Substack won. Let’s dig into why:

MONETIZATION

Every single day we consume some type of content. From scrolling through Instagram, watching our favorite vloggers on Youtube or getting sucked into Tiktok.

While consuming the content is easy, for the actual creator it often means time spent away from family, pushing themselves to be vulnerable and working their ass off to make a career out of doing what they love.

Because of that I believe that all writers and creators should be paid for their work. PERIOD.

Substack makes it easy for writers and creators to make a living from their work.

Currently I have two subscription options available for my readers.

Free subscribers get access to the weekly newsletter as normal.

And for $10/mo, paid subscribers get access to:

• The weekly newsletter

• Monthly self-care toolkits

• Paid Subscriber only chat

• And a monthly article where I share the BTS of how Im building Mind Body Brand.

While both Beehiiv and Ghost offered these options, I felt like Substack made monetizing my content easy for both me and my readers.

EASY TO SHARE

I have a really bad habit of creating content, posting it once and then never sharing it again. So it was important for me to find a tool that made it easy for me to share my content across other platforms and also for my readers to be able to share my content as well.

Again, Substack makes it easy. There are in-post call to actions and the share buttons are easy for readers to find. Also the Substack platform thrives off of recommendations, so it’s ability to recommend your newsletter to your target audience is undefeated. While I loved using Mailerlite, the ability for your readers to share your content wasn’t as clear as it is on Substack.

Let me not forget to mention that Substack automatically creates graphics for you to share your content. Automatically! Like as soon as you hit publish on a newsletter, you get an email with graphics to choose from. Mind…blown! 🤯

THE POWER OF COMMUNITY

Lastly, Substack has built in community features which I NEEDED as I am wanting to build more engagement around my writing. There is the option for readers to leave comments under each newsletter. Substack has a chat option where I can start random convos with readers (a paid subscriber perk) and they also just launched Notes; A Twitter-like interface that allows writers to share short form content.

More ways for readers and writers to actually build community around their content instead of it just being transactional. None of the other platforms that I considered offered this. And as I am simplifying and closing my Circle community, these community features were a necessity!

I’ve only been on Substack for a short time but I can already see how I can use it to not only become a better writer but also make writing one of my main streams of income.

If you haven’t already, make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss out on the next issue!

xoxo, Alisha

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