How to make $100k in one month on Substack
It's the most wonderful time of the year (gift guide season).
If you’ve been spared from gift guide mania on Substack thus far, count your lucky stars. A lot of people are suggesting a lot of stuff — newsletters have quickly become ground zero for shopping recommendations.
This week on Puck’s Fashion People,
and Lauren Sherman discussed the state of gift guides (Petrarca called them “sacred… a great way to discover things”). I interviewed last year about why she dedicates so much care to creating gift guides, and she told me that the real art is finding people who know about obscure and special things, “people's parents have the best recommendations”.In my opinion, there are two ways to win at gift guides: you make a lot of money, or you successfully flex how interesting you are. I am not in the business of shopping recommendations and affiliate links, so if Feed Me does make a gift guide, you won’t be able to buy your way into it. But you can pay me to make one.
Some writers are cashing in on the business of gift guides in serious ways, like
. I spoke to Jess, one of the most influential fashion writers on Substack, about her business plan this holiday season. We discussed how her editorial strategy around the holidays has changed from last year, how much money she’ll make from brand placements, and her advice for gift guide fatigue.+ breaking news from Jess: “ We are bringing on the legend as our Menswear Editor, effective immediately.”
First of all, how are you treating your gift guide editorial strategy this year vs. last year? What did you know you wanted to start and stop doing?
“My editorial strategy has mostly stayed the same. We cut a few gift guide categories that fell flat last year, but other than that, we have a format I like. We'd be writing about the same products and brands regardless of advertisers. I value my credibility with readers above all else, and I'm not going to let an advertiser sway or micro-manage what I know is the content they want from The Love List.
Last year, our Black Friday roundup was an impulse decision for me. I wasn't going to do it at all because I didn't want to crowd people's inboxes. But I got enough reader requests that I caved, and it ended up performing really well. So, that was definitely something I planned for better this year.”
“The interest in Substack has been crescendoing since the beginning of the year, and the brands are starting to wise up.”
How do you work with brands on Black Friday? Is there a menu of options you gave them or one standard move? Would love to hear about your team’s effort here.
“Sophie Krakoff, my manager, plays a considerable role. Not only is she the buffer between the brands and I, she negotiates fair prices I probably would never have the balls to ask for myself. We don't really provide a menu of set options, I tailor it to the brand and only take on projects with brands I already use and endorse. Most of the people we've worked with I've been writing about for free for years. Sophie bringing flat-fee ad deals to the table has been the difference in my ability to do this newsletter full-time vs. part-time.
For Black Friday, brands are paying for inclusion in our send but also paying for their rank — like if they want something above the fold with a product edit, that costs more than 2-3 sentences of copy below the fold.”