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I have been getting this question a lot lately… In my DMs, in my inbox, on Threads and I figured it was time to just sit down and talk about it properly.

Should you start a Substack or build your own email list?

I get why Substack feels appealing.

It is already built, it has a community inside it, you just sign up and start writing and there are already people there who might stumble across you. For someone who is just starting out and wants the simplest possible way to begin, that sounds pretty perfect.

And for some people it is.

A few of my own students use Substack and I have encouraged them to stay there because it made sense for where they were in their journey. So this is not me telling you Substack is terrible, because it is not.

But there is something that does not get talked about enough… ⬇️

What Substack Actually Is

When you publish on Substack, you are sitting inside a platform with thousands of other writers.

All writing about similar things, all trying to get discovered in the same place, all competing for attention inside the same feed. Whether your writing gets seen depends on their algorithm, their rules, their decisions, not yours.

What Your Own Email List Actually Is

Your own email list works completely differently.

The women on my list did not find me through a platform. They found me through my blog, through my Threads posts, through reading something I wrote that made them think yes, I want more of this.

And then they chose, on purpose, to invite me into their inbox.

That is such a different relationship than a passive Substack follow. One is a subscription. The other feels like someone knocking on your door and asking to come in.

What My Own Email List Has Done For Me

I built my entire list through my blog content and Threads, without spending a single penny.

Close to 200 women have invested in my resources in one year. During launches I have made thousands in a single week. And I have automations running in the background aka welcome sequences going out to new subscribers, follow up emails sending themselves, while I am off somewhere living my life.

None of that would have been possible in the same way on Substack.

Because Substack was built for writing and community, which it does beautifully. But your own email list is built for whatever you want to build.

You want to sell your own product? You can. You want automations bringing in passive income while you sleep? You can. You want your emails to look exactly the way you want them to look, completely on brand, completely yours? You can do all of it.

The Money Part

Substack takes 10% of your paid subscription revenue as standard. Which means the more you grow, the more you hand over to them just for existing on their platform.

With your own email list your costs can actually be really minimal when you are starting out. Kit has a generous free plan, Thinkific has a free plan for hosting your products and you only start paying for things as your business actually grows.

My only monthly cost right now is my website hosting. During launches I upgrade my email and course platforms temporarily when I need payment plans and extra features, then I scale back down again.

And the difference is that you are completely in control of what you sell and how. A course, an ebook, a workshop, a bundle, whatever makes sense for your audience.

You set the price, you create the offer and you keep the vast majority of what you earn. 🎉

Your email list is the engine that drives all of it.

Substack is the engine and the platform at the same time, which means you are always building inside someone else’s walls.

So Which One Should You Choose?

If you are just starting out and Substack is what gets you actually writing and building, start there. Done is better than perfect and getting words out into the world matters more than the platform they live on.

But if you are thinking about the bigger picture like creating your own product one day, building something that makes money in a way that scales, owning an asset that nobody can ever take away from you… your own email list is where you want to be.

Think of Substack as renting, but your own email list is owning.

And when it comes to building something that actually lasts, owning always wins. 💌