A small number of writers earn very large amounts of money on Substack. The 2026 roster — who clears seven figures, who clears six, and what the top of the pyramid actually looks like.
Three platforms run the newsletter economy: Substack (10% of revenue), Ghost (zero, self-hosted), and beehiiv (zero plus tiered pricing). The economics, the trade-offs, and which platform fits which operator.
The newsletter platform that pulled Bari Weiss, Casey Newton, Heather Cox Richardson, and Lenny Rachitsky out of legacy media — and rebuilt independent publishing around an 87-percent revenue split and the highest-margin operating model in U.S. media.