Repurposing Your Substack Content: The Ultimate Income Cheat Code
Stop Wasting Your Content: Repurpose Once, Profit Forever
Most writers on Substack make the same mistake: they publish once and then move on to their next idea.
But here’s how this mistake limits your growth and income…
A single Substack post isn’t just a piece of writing, it’s an asset. And you’re leaving so much money on the table if you don’t leverage this asset to its full potential.
In fact, if you change your content approach, a single post can fuel your growth across numerous platforms. It can bring in more subscribers, build your audience, and print cash.
After all, the internet doesn’t reward people who work harder. It rewards people who distribute smarter.
Here how to squeeze every drop of value out of your Substack posts and turn them into multiple streams of content and revenue.
1. Talking-Head YouTube Content: My Personal Favorite
Scripting is the most tedious part of making valuable YouTube videos.
Don’t let the gurus out there fool you: plugging a YouTube video idea into ChatGPT won’t produce a script that gets views. You need to put your own personal spin, expertise, and voice into your scripts to stand out from the AI slop that’s out there.
Now here’s the thing: your best Substack posts are YouTube scripts in disguise.
Guys like Dan Koe have popularized this strategy. You basically take your Substack winners, trim them into 3-5 key points, and then create talking-head content on YouTube with somewhat clickbait headlines.
Here’s the reason this is my #1 favorite repurposing method: YouTube still has amazing organic reach, just like Substack.
YouTube is also the platform that let me earn $250,000 by creating talking-head content (between ads, sponsorships, affiliate income, and selling digital products.)
You don’t need high-tech gear or to be a professional video editor either.
Your smartphone or a budget camera works for talking-head content. For editing, you can use tools like Gling AI to remove your bad takes, enhance audio, and even add B-roll footage. And for thumbnails, there’s Canva or Opus Clips’ free thumbnail generator.
It still takes time to film and edit, don’t get me wrong. But 2-3 hours can create a ready-to-post video that has the potential to get search and discover traffic on YouTube that lasts.
Pro Tip: If you sell any high-ticket offer, YouTube is where you should be. Even videos with a few hundred views can have amazing conversion rates, and the brand you build on YouTube is often quite sticky.
💵 Check out my YouTube Freedom Blueprint for a breakdown of how I scaled my niche channel to $250,000+ in revenue, plus how you can do the same thing while working efficiently.
2. Secondary Email Newsletters
I cover this idea in my post on how to make money on Substack without any paid subscribers…
But the idea is that manty creators are missing out by only sending emails via Substack. Plus, if algorithms or subscriber data access ever changes, you might find yourself in trouble.
This is why I use ConvertKit, now known as Kit, to send a separate newsletter to Substack for readers who opt-in to my second email list.
I built this list from YouTube and my network of content sites that talk about personal finance. It’s more affiliate-driven than what I write here on Substack. But, I still take chunks of my Substack posts or concepts and convert them into snappier newsletters by using ChatGPT and some editing.
Here’s what I love about this tactic: you can get way more aggressive with how you collect subscribers, build a larger list, and send more emails than just sticking with Substack.
For example, I built a separate list of about 60,000 subscribers. A lot of this was done with free lead magnets, exit-intent pop-ups on my websites, YouTube description box links, and gated content.
This list lets me send 1 million+ emails a month plus create some powerful automations/sequences for new subscribers.
This is frankly peanuts in the email marketing game, and my Open/Click rates are quite poor still as I’m warming up a sending domain. But it’s very affordable, and it helps diversify from just sending on Substack.
If you’re a content creator or business owner, I’d consider creating a second email list if you can reliably grow one faster than on Substack. You can then repurpose your Substack ideas into this second newsletter without much extra effort, plus send other offers and upsells.
Having another list plus warmed-up sending domain is also valuable. If you ever want to move from Substack for any reason, you’ll be prepared.
You can try Kit for free for 14 days if you’d like to get started. I moved to Kit from Customer IO recently and love it for creators.
3. Pinterest: Quiet Traffic That Compounds
Pinterest is a slept-on traffic source for writers and affiliate marketers.
It might seem like it’s just for vision boards and recipes, but it’s really a search engine in its own right. And the traffic quality is actually very engaged and high-quality in my experience.
Creating Pinterest graphics used to be a pain.
You’d spend hours in Canva, dragging images around onto different templates. Then, you’d manually schedule them to Pinterest or use some third-party tool that kinda worked.
NOW you can genuinely throw your Substack post URL into ChatGPT, Grok, or some other leading AI tool and tell it to make you an eye-catching Pinterest graphic.
Here’s what it made for my post on making money on Substack with a single prompt:
This isn’t amazing, but it’s pretty decent for Pinterest. It also took me 25 seconds to do and then post to one of my Pinterest boards.
Depending on your niche, Pinterest can be a goldmine.
It takes a few months to warm up accounts in my experience. But I’d add Pinterest to your repurposing routine, especially if you cover health, fitness, finance, or fashion/culture.
Extra Reading - How To Actually Market Your One-Person Business.
4. Twitter/X: Turn Substack Posts Into Viral Threads
This repurposing strategy is quite simple, but it’s basically to repost your Substack Notes on X/Twitter.
Again, guys like Dan Koe have really taken advantage of this repurposing strategy. Twitter can also provide viral organic reach if you play the game.
You don’t have to link back to your Substack posts in every Tweet either. Instead, use your profile page and link-in-bio to direct traffic to your most valuable content.
Personally, I use Pillar.io for my link-in-bio tool. But there’s so many of them on the market these days that work well.
If you need help here, you can also shamelessly post your Substack content into ChatGPT and ask it for short-form content ideas. Ask it to break your post into snappy bits that do well on social media, and you’ll get something workable that you can edit and post quickly.
5. LinkedIn Posts: If You’d Like To…
Same strategy as Twitter, really. You can chop your Substack posts into short-form content and then blast LinkedIn.
I don’t think you need a personal brand to make money online. And LinkedIn writing deserves its own circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno. But if this traffic source works for your niche and offering, you can try it out.
I’m abstaining from this repurposing tactic so I don’t jump off my balcony. Probably leaving money on the table doing so, but make your own choice here!
6. Podcast Episodes: Branch Into Audio
Substack has podcast capabilities that not many people use. This also includes distributing to Apple and Spotify which is quite cool. So, you can consider turning your Substack articles into solo-podcasts if you’re looking for another repurposing strategy.
I think repurposing via YouTube is superior here for most creators, but maybe podcasting is your thing! And if you interview people as part of your content, I think this is a no-brainer.
Extra Reading - How To Vibe Code A New Income Stream.
7. eBooks & Digital Downloads: Create A New Revenue Stream
If some of your Substack content goes viral, this is a sign you’ve struck a chord with your audience and the algorithm.
AND if this content solves a specific problem, it’s an excellent opportunity to repurpose your content and ideas into a paid digital download.
I’ve done this with both freelance writing and my new YouTube Freedom Blueprint. I packaged the free ideas I’ve shared into more streamlined guides and sell affordable eBooks people can buy.
If you’re already researching and communicating ideas on Substack, you’ve done most of the hard work already. Repackaging everything as a paid offer doesn’t take much extra effort.
Of course, creating a premium offer like a video course with multiple modules takes more time. But don’t be afraid to sell the information you’re providing outside of just asking for paid Substack subscribers.
8. Syndicated Content: An Easy Traffic Freebie
One final Substack repurposing strategy you can try is to simply syndicate/republish your content on other platforms without making any changes.
I do this occasionally on Medium. Just set the canonical tag properly so search engines know your Substack piece is the original source.
I’m currently receiving under 1,000 monthly views on Medium, so it’s not much of a lift. But republishing here takes about 1 minute of formatting time, so I think it’s worth it.
Extra Reading - The Normal Person Guide To Stacking Extra Cash.
Final Thoughts
Chances are, you’re publishing high-value content here on Substack. This content probably takes a lot of time, effort, and thinking to produce. So, don’t sell yourself short by hitting publish once and then walking away!
With AI tools, repurposing content in an impactful way is also easier than ever. This is how efficient creators are growing quickly and earning more. And you don’t need to pump out slop to use these strategies either.
In reality, one decent Substack post can become:
A YouTube video
A second email newsletter
A week’s worth of LinkedIn posts
A viral Twitter thread
A set of Pinterest graphics
A podcast episode
5–10 Substack Notes
A paid eBook or digital download
This is how you get leverage.
This is how you build an audience without burning out.
This is how you print cash from words you’ve already written.
Hopefully, at least one of these strategies works out well for you! And you can let me know if you agree, disagree, or have other suggestions for Substack creators out there.
Personally, I’m going to ramp up my new test YouTube channel and start working on X/Twitter alongside the other repurposing strategies I’m using. I’ll update this guide with some results later on.
Thanks for reading as always.
Tom from WiFi Wealth.
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