10 Niches That Could Make You $100K a Year on Substack (And How to Do It)
You don’t need millions of readers to make six figures. Here are 10 profitable niches and the exact steps to get there.
You don’t need millions of readers to make six figures. You don’t even need to “go viral.”
When I was 12, I won an essay contest at Beaver Creek School in Rimrock, Arizona. It was through the Kiwanis Club, called the Citizenship Award. I was competing against older kids (7th and 8th graders) and I beat them, too. The prize was a brand-new bike, which for a sixth grader in the 1990s was basically the Pulitzer. I wrote that essay in WordPerfect on a Macintosh Quadra, no AI in sight.
That experience taught me something early: good writing doesn’t have to reach everyone, it just has to connect with the right people. That’s true in contests, in journalism, and now on Substack.
Here’s the real math today:
$10/month subscription × 833 subscribers = $100K a year
$5/month subscription × 1,667 subscribers = $100K a year
That’s not “millions of views.” That’s not “fame.” That’s a few hundred die-hard readers willing to pay for real value.
The secret? Pick a niche and serve the hell out of it.
Here are 10 niches where that’s possible plus the steps to actually make it happen.
