When craft business owners think about email marketing, platforms like Mailchimp or Constant Contact often come to mind. But a growing number are turning to Substack—not just as a newsletter tool, but as a way to build community, publish long-form content, and even generate recurring revenue. With features like built-in subscriptions, comment threads, and a blog-style interface, Substack is helping creative entrepreneurs connect with their audiences in deeper, more flexible ways.

Jennifer Perkins of The Glue Gun Gazette says yes. The crafter turned to Substack around the first of the year, when she decided to offer classes. Perkins is a crafter – by her own admission.

“I tell people that there’s quilters and crafters, and I’m definitely, like, a crafter. I’m that person that, like, I’m going to look at a picture and go ‘Okay, I got it, but if I have to follow a pattern? I’m out.’”

Like the title of her newsletter The Glue Gun Gazette, she “glues” lots of things together to make her living. She travels the country and teaches classes. She’s written books. She’s hosted TV shows. When she wanted to pull everything together, she turned to Substack. She says she wanted to offer online classes, and Substack made that easier than other sites that required modules, for example.

“I’m good with a hot glue gun. Programming? Not so much. Substack makes uploading video really simple and, when you’re done, it adds subtitles, generates a transcript, and makes sharing clips super easy.”

So I was like, well, I could either try to market this whole class, or if I had paying subscribers on Substack, I could intermittently just post freak classes and content on their phone. And I would put that behind the paywall.”

Claudia Martinez of the Snuggly Monkey ecommerce hand stitching shop, switched some emphasis from Instagram to her Substack, One Stitch at a Time, because it was more “user friendly and more small business owner friendly.” She recently has been enjoying the live video function Substack offers.

“I really appreciate that Substack automatically sends out an email notification in addition to the in-app notification to all subscribers and followers when I go live. Due to this feature alone, my first Substack Live had almost double the viewers than even my most popular Instagram Live ever had,“ she says.

Community Size Doesn’t Matter – Engagement Does

Like many successful Substack creators, Perkins came to Substack with assets she’d already developed. She has a robust mailing list, and a weekly newsletter. That meant she wasn’t building a following from scratch.

That type of community is a strength, according to Kyu Hwang Cho, who writes under the pen name, Denik DeBro. His Substack, Aeolian Hourglass is “about sky nomads touring midair Silk Road.” But his advice on transitioning from free to paid is very down-to-earth.

“It’s not about the size of the crowd. It’s about the depth of the connection…” Cho writes. He says there’s no magic number of subscribers that signal it’s time to switch from free to paid posts. Instead, look at engagement, he urges.

“If you’re seeing: 40–50% open rates, consistent replies or shares, a few readers saying ‘I’d pay for this,’ then you’re in the zone. Remember: paid subscriptions aren’t about locking people out. They’re about inviting the most committed ones in.”

Substack also suggests creators look at email open rates when considering going to paid content. Substack estimates a 30 to 50% open rate leads to a 3 to 5% conversion rate from free to paid subscribers. Lower than that, and the platform recommends working on engagement to make subscriber conversion more profitable.

But Perkins didn’t look at open rates. “Since I still do a weekly free newsletter that often links to paid content I figured it evened out,” she says. She used another strategy. She made everything free for the first couple months. so potential paid subscribers could get a feel for her style.

“There is enough of a backlog where people can get a sense of my writing style and like what I’m about,” she says, adding she wouldn’t want subscribers to pay for content from the beginning, and then realize they don’t care for her topics.

Martinez especially like Substack Live for engagement with her community. Several automatic features mean she can share live videos to her YouTube channel for even more engagement. “You can set up your account so that the recording automatically uploads to your YouTube channel with no extra work. Substack automatically adds captions to your entire video and even creates mini 1-minute clips that are easy to share as reels or shorts to cross promote the video on other social media platforms afterwards,” she says.

Offer More Perks

The strategy for getting and keeping those committed followers is straightforward, post strong content on a regular basis. Substack suggests a regular publication for both paid and free subscribers. In Perkins’ case, the free content comes out monthly; other Substackers send weekly or occasional newsletters as freebies.

Consider the freebies as part of a funnel. Perkins’ free publication targets potential subscribers by emailing excerpts from the paid newsletter. Those teasers include a button where the reader can upgrade to finish the post. And in Perkins’ case, upgrading includes subscriber-only posts and access to interviews.  Everyday Knitter offers members-only posts, and yarn swaps to paying subscribers.

But a look at non-crafters show a range of perks for paid subscribers. For example, former Washington Post opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin left the paper and launched the Contrarirans on Substack. Her paid subscribers get three to four pieces of content each day, a live video, along with the ability to comment and engage. Superstar writer Austin Kleon, of “Steal Like An Artist” fame, offers paid subscribers a weekly newsletter and access to his community. In fact, the ability to comment and engage are some of the strongest selling points on Substack.

As more craft business owners explore alternatives to traditional email platforms, Substack is proving to be a powerful tool—not just for sending newsletters, but for building lasting connections and sustainable income through storytelling and community.