Stuck On Substack? Stop Writing. Start Designing.
If you have big dreams for your Substack — dedicated readers, eventually turning on your paid tier — read this before you publish another post.
Substack is just a writing platform, right?
Wrong. And the reason you’re stuck is hiding in that exact misunderstanding.
When you Google “what is Substack,” you get the technical answer: a publishing platform that lets creators send newsletters and build subscriptions.
True, but mostly useless. It’s what you already know.
It tells you what the container is and absolutely nothing about how to fill it.
So you seek advice, and the experts tell you to “write posts, do Notes for discovery, start a podcast, go Live, record video.”
They may tell you to “do a reader/customer avatar exercise” or some other generic advice that doesn’t end up connecting the dots for you.
And all of it ends up feeling like you’re spinning your wheels, because now you have a bigger menu and still no idea what you’re actually building.
Here’s the reframe I want to give you, because once it clicks, the whole picture comes together.
Substack is an online magazine.
I don’t mean that literally for everyone, though some people are absolutely building gorgeous digital magazines on the platform. Have you seen Feeling! Magazine? Go look. It’s a design and art publication that’s completely breaking the mold of what people think Substack has to be.
But I mean it as a frame. Because magazines have something most Substacks don’t: a clear plan.
What a magazine actually is
Think about a magazine you used to read. I’ll use Cosmo, because I subscribed to it back in the day.
Cosmo is for women between roughly 18 and 35. That’s the audience. Love, Style, Beauty, Culture — those are the topic buckets, listed right at the top of the home page.
And the outcome a reader gets from picking it up is something like: I’m in touch with what’s happening in fashion, I have my finger on the pulse of pop culture, I’m getting real advice about love and friendship.
Underneath all of that is a feeling — confidence in the parts of life Cosmo covers.
Audience. Buckets. Outcome. Feeling.
Every magazine has those four things, and they’re decided before a single article gets written.
Now look at your Substack. Do you know yours?
This is what “You are the niche” actually means
This is the part people get wrong, and it’s why so many smart writers feel scattered.
Most advice tells you to “niche down,” which sends you into a spiral trying to pick one slice of yourself to perform online.
But you contain multitudes, and slicing yourself into one slim category feels like a costume. So you resist, and your Substack ends up vague because you couldn’t commit to the costume.
The magazine frame solves this — but not the way you might think. The fix isn’t that you are the magazine. The fix is that you are the point of view.
Look at Cosmo again.
Cosmo is for women 18-35 who care about being current and trend-forward. That’s the audience.
The buckets are fashion, beauty, pop culture, love, astrology.
But here’s the thing: a punk rock magazine could be for the exact same audience and cover the exact same buckets — fashion, beauty, culture, love — and look like a completely different publication. Why? Because the point of view is different.
Cosmo’s POV is polished, trend-forward, modern femme.
The punk magazine’s POV is rebellion, edge, counterculture. Could even be the same age range of audience, but differentiated. Same buckets. Different editorial lens. Different magazine.
The POV is the umbrella. It’s what decides what gets in and what stays out. Cosmo doesn’t cover homesteading or fly fishing, even though some women 18-35 are into those things, because they don’t fit the POV. The POV is the filter.
When you’re a solo creator, you are the POV.
Your taste.
Your hot takes.
Your style.
The way you see the world.
That’s the editorial lens. You’re a one-person masthead deciding what’s “you enough” to include and what isn’t.
So when people say “you are the niche,” I think they mean: your point of view is the filter that makes the whole thing coherent.
Two writers could share the same audience and the same buckets and still produce wildly different Substacks, because their POVs are different.
That’s the unfair advantage you already have. Nobody else has your exact lens.
Here’s how it lays out:
Audience — who you’re writing for
POV — your editorial lens (this is the “you” part)
Buckets — the territories you cover, filtered through your POV
Topics — the actual posts that live inside each bucket
Outcome / feeling — what a reader walks away with
Here’s mine:
The Second Act Strategist
Audience: people in their 40s, 50s and beyond bringing their real expertise online to build an online presence and income on their own terms
POV: bespoke, real, tangible — built for who you actually are, not for the masses; no generic guru advice, no performative coach-speak
Buckets: writing Notes, writing long-form, branding, online creator business, lifestyle, mindset
Sample topics (under “writing long-form”): post formats by Creator Type, how to write a title that delivers, why your posts aren’t getting read
Outcome: building it for real, the right way for who you actually are
Feeling: powerful, real, tangible
Notice that “you are the niche” doesn’t mean throwing everything at the wall. My POV filters out parenting posts and French horn posts even though both are real parts of my life — they don’t usually pass the lens. They might make it in as details, but The POV is what makes the cut, not just the topic.
So before writing anything else, write down your five:
Who is this for?
What’s my POV — my editorial lens?
What are my buckets?
What are some sample topics inside those buckets?
What’s the outcome and feeling?
If you can’t answer those, you don’t have a cohesive Substack yet.
Format is the creative layer (and the fun one)
Here’s where most people get tripped up next.
Most Substack creators jump straight to medium when they’re trying to figure out their Substack — “should I make a podcast, should I do video, should I go Live, should I post short-form three times a day plus long-form twice a week?”
Medium decisions are the easy default because they’re concrete. You can buy a mic. You can say you’re going to hit record.
But I think medium is the secondary decision.
The primary creative work — the thing nobody really teaches you and the part that’s actually fun — is format.
Format is the kind of post.
Magazines have departments: the feature essay, the back-of-book quick hits, the recurring advice column, the listicle, the interview.
Open any magazine and you’ll see the same structural variety issue after issue. The topics change. The departments stay.
Your Substack can work the same way. A few formats to put on your shelf:
The Q&A or interview — same questions, different people, or a conversation with one person. Other people bring half the energy.
The Dear Abbey / advice column — reader questions answered in a recurring shape. Ask A Girl does this beautifully.
The 5-Bullet Friday-style curation — a recurring digest of what you’re reading, watching, noticing. Tim Ferriss built a media empire on his version.
The listicle — sorted, skimmable, useful. Easy to write, easy to read.
The deep-dive — one idea, one tool, one experience, taken all the way down.
Why does this matter?
Because when every post you write is a deep-dive narrative teaching script, you burn out and your reader gets one type and one layer. And that makes you feel like you’ve “niched down” too much.
When you mix formats, the magazine has texture.
You get range without losing the umbrella.
And — this is the best part — you get to put more of you into the publication, because different formats bring out different parts of you.
The Dear Abbey version of me is different from the deep-dive version. Both are real. Both belong.
Buckets and all of that stuff FIRST. Next is format. THEN Medium.
The format decides what kind of post you’re making. The medium decides how you deliver it.
What’s behind the paywall
Once you have your umbrella, buckets, outcome, feeling, and a small mix of formats, the next question is design. Specifically: how should your magazine be designed based on who you really are?
I can’t wait until you read this! If your mind was blown by the results of your quiz, you have to read the next part!!!
