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“Friends, what’s a good dupe for that beautiful Khaite cardigan I definitely can’t afford?” one person asked on a thread in biweekly Substack shopping newsletter Magasin’s group chat, which quickly filled with commenters offering affordable alternatives. “How are we styling the High Sport kick flare?” another asked, referencing the trendy cotton pants that retail for $860 on Moda Operandi.
Substack is becoming a destination for fashion insiders and enthusiasts to get shopping and style advice. Where search engines and social media apps are increasingly algorithmically cleansed to the effect of a monotonous trend-driven sameness, Substack accounts such as Magasin, The Cereal Aisle, Are You Wearing That?, Back Row, Add To Wishlist and 5 Things You Should Buy — many of which are run by former fashion editors — have thriving communities providing inspiration and advice from both creators and their audiences, who are willing to pay a monthly fee for better recommendations, access to a like-minded community and a unique POV.
“Creators and audiences alike are feeling fatigued after a decade of visual content ruling online, and negative sentiment towards short-form trend-led content is rising,” says Sasha Mills, creative and digital culture specialist at The Digi Fairy agency. “Creators have to work harder to stand out on platforms that offer increasingly dwindling returns. Substack allows them to diversify their income and content offering and build relationships with their audiences that are centred around their opinions and unique viewpoints, rather than their visual output.”
Affiliate links and brand partnerships on Substack, plus subscription payments, are fueling a new economy of social shopping. But, while part of the platform’s appeal is its lack of overt advertising, this makes it a challenging nut to crack for brands.
Substack launched in 2017 and has hit a peak as mass layoffs roil the media industry, drawing former editors to start their own newsletters. They’re free to launch, though Substack takes a 10 per cent cut of subscription fees. It now counts more than 35 million active subscribers, according to the company. Fashion and beauty has emerged as a strong category on the site: Substack says subscriptions to the category are up 80 per cent year-on-year to over three million paid subscribers, an increase from two million in 2023 and one million in 2021. Capitalising on this growth, Substack has expanded to go beyond the newsletter format, letting hosts run video and podcasting as well as a chat function, which provides a direct line of communication to subscribers and a network of like-minded people.
Allegra Samsen, an active participant in Magasin’s group chat, has a tab with Substack open on her work computer at all times. “Substack holds my attention span more than other social media because it’s where I’m finding the most thoughtful consumer insight,” she says. Allegra will often share Ebay gems that aren’t her size and sell her personal designer pieces there, too. “When it comes to Substack, I think the theory of ‘strength in weak ties’ really holds up,” she says. “This is a chat of people I don’t know, yet am bonded with through a shared interest in each other’s taste. We can be objective due to that degree of separation, which is something I am not afforded on Instagram or even a group chat with friends.”
As with all social platforms, however, Substack is trying to strike a balance between scaling up and appealing to more users, while remaining true to its original proposition. Organic conversations and personalised recommendations are major assets for brands, but figuring out how to make the most of Substack — be it via sponsored partnerships with creators or launching their own — is less clear. With the increase in migration from other social media platforms to Substack largely due how untouched the space feels, it’s important for any brand that wants to engage do so with care.
Laura Reilly, who was a commerce editor at InStyle before launching Magasin in summer 2021, says the chat function specifically is an area that hasn’t been explored by brands yet. “There’s a sort of rawness to it, like Reddit, where brands may be interested, but not really know how to get involved,” says Reilly, who now counts more than 22,000 subscribers on the platform. “It has that authenticity readers trust. It’s peer-provided information and becomes very delicate as a space for brands to enter.”
Making a salary from Substack
Subrina Heyink launched Are You Wearing That? in April 2021. At the time, she ran a vintage store and was spending many unpaid hours each week answering customers’ questions about sourcing, care and styling. Substack offered a solution: a way to share her knowledge and to be paid adequately for that resource and her time.
Unlike many other creators who try to first build their audiences, before converting their newsletters to paid, Heyink launched immediately and exclusively with paid content. For $14 per month, subscribers get a biweekly newsletter that includes style and shopping advice and deep dives on specific items such as brooches and belts, as well as access to a group chat where Heyink will share links to vintage items she’s sourced online. “My mom, who is a businesswoman, gave me the best advice: start out how you want to finish,” she says. Heyink, who doesn’t use affiliates and hasn’t yet partnered with a brand, now makes upwards of $100,000 a year solely through subscriptions.
For Reilly, Substack is her primary revenue driver, making up around 80 per cent of her income (the rest is through Instagram partnerships). Most of this comes through affiliate links, in which a person or publication receives a small commission from the purchases driven by their recommendations. Through long, detailed articles that include wedding guest dress edits and the best deals from every online sale happening now, one year in, Reilly was able to quit her day job and go full-time on the platform. Now, she’s making more than she did in-house, even after paying a part-time news editor is taken into account.
“Affiliates are so widespread now that for 75 per cent of the brands I want to cover, there is a way to include them in an affiliate channel,” Reilly explains. “So it’s just taking money that would otherwise be left on the table.” But she cautions that audiences can sniff out when affiliate opportunities are prioritised ahead of the actual recommendations. “You have to make sure you’re serving your readers honestly before you think about making any money.”
As Substack grows into an understood format, the brand partnership side, which Reilly initially exclusively executed through Instagram, is becoming a larger part of her revenue. Brands will often now ask for a split across the two platforms. For bag brand Cuyana, for example, Reilly has included mentions organically in newsletter coverage, done paid placements within newsletter content, posted paid content on her Instagram and hosted a dinner. “What’s great about Substack is that you can tailor it to however brands want to integrate with you, or however it makes sense to present their concept, versus Instagram, where you have set formats of a post, a story, or a reel,” says Reilly. “It’s this amazing blank page. The opportunities are kind of infinite.”
The site’s ability to foster an intimate and engaged audience is highly valuable for brands looking to build deeper connections with their customers. It’s also a way of adapting to today’s digital climate where people are more clued in than ever. “People are very savvy to how the media works. There’s no hiding anymore,” says Amy Odell, former Cosmopolitan editor, who has over 37,000 subscribers to her Substack Back Row — around 5 per cent of which are paying. “People see things for what they are. They know how publicity works, they know how native advertising works, they know how fashion show seating works.” Before Substack, Odell would freelance, and says Substack has been a “much better return” for her.
Brands buying in
Brands are already aware of the opportunity to tap into these engaged communities. Substack says Denim company Still Here, which partnered with five creators for the launch of its Everyday Jean, found that 80 to 90 per cent of click-throughs originated from Substack newsletter emails versus social media. Each creator was given full creative agency over how they spoke about the product and, with an over 75 per cent open rate, the jeans sold out on launch day.
Bodycare brand Kate McLeod’s recent creator campaign with five Substack accounts and five Instagram accounts also found success through the platform, reporting that Substack accounts converted 54 per cent more sales than Instagram.
When London-based journalist Otegha Uwagba launched her newsletter Add To Wishlist in September 2023, she was surprised by how quickly brands reached out. She tries to avoid making every monthly dispatch sponsored and only works with brands she genuinely buys, shops and wears. In January, Matches did a newsletter takeover in which Uwagba chose an item from the site, styled it and wrote about why she liked it. “They were refreshingly hands-off and trusted me with the execution, and were really pleased with the results,” she says. Uwagba charges brands the same as she would on social platforms, but has noticed that some are still more hesitant to pay for Substack than they are for Instagram.
Others are using the space for community building. Founders like Tory Burch and Emily Oberg have also launched Substacks to give their customers, among other things, a behind-the-scenes look at their businesses. After initially launching a static series of cultural recommendations on Instagram during the pandemic, LA-based PR and brand marketing agency Lucky Chalm moved to Substack this year.
“Historically, the role of a PR is to build the community and brand relevance of your client with second thought to your own brand,” says founder Julia Chalmers. “As an agency, we also wanted to create an outlet to cultivate our own community.” Lucky Chalm’s weekly Substack send out has become an integral part of its marketing mix. “We use the channel to promote brands, artists, chefs, directors, designers, films — anything that we feel is culturally relevant — which in turn demonstrates to our clients our on-the-ground knowledge of what’s happening in our market, and helps us to provide local insight into what could be relevant for them.”
Substack, going forward, has to navigate the challenge of remaining a walled garden without shutting brands out entirely. “Trust is a key factor here,” says Christina Loff, Substack’s head of lifestyle partnerships. “What matters most is publishing thoughtful content that people will want to read.”
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