Setting Up Your Substack Account

In this comprehensive guide, I’ll be showing you how to set up a Substack account, create your first publication and share your first post or newsletter.

Watch the video for a full visual walk-through or check out the written guide below which covers the basics.

Creating a Substack account

You can set up an account on desktop or in the Substack app. I recommend doing it on desktop (especially if you want to create a new publication) as it’s easier to see all the settings.

To get started, head to the Substack Home page and click the ‘Create Account’ button in the top right corner.

Setting up your account is easy. In fact, you might already have one. If you’ve ever subscribed to a newsletter that’s hosted on Substack, an account will have been created automatically. If this is the case, you’ll get a message when you input your email address:

Don’t panic if this happens. Just click the ‘sign in to continue’ link and you’ll be emailed a code. Enter the code and you’ll be taken back to the home page, but this time you’ll be logged in. You can change your name and handle in the settings (skip the next two paragraphs).

If you don’t already have an account attached to your email address, you’ll be sent a verification link to your email and then you’ll be asked to enter some details about yourself.

If you choose a handle that has already been taken, it will ask you to choose another. Don’t worry too much as you can always change this later if you think of something better. You can also change your profile pic and bio later, so if you haven’t got anything prepared, just leave these blank.

Once you’ve completed the sign-up process, you’ll be back on the Substack Home page, but the will look a bit different. You should now see your profile picture (if you added one) or a placeholder as shown below.

When you click on this, you’ll get a dropdown menu. Head to the ‘Settings’ option towards the bottom.

This is where you can change or add your profile picture and change your handle. You can also choose all your notification preferences.

Create a publication

If you can’t see an option to create a publication in your settings, click the ‘start writing’ option next to your profile picture in the top right corner. Now click the back arrow (next to the word draft at the top left of the page).

This will take you back to your profile settings. Scroll down and you should now see a publications section with two options - ‘Create a Publication’ or ‘Customize your Substack’.

The Customize your Substack option allows you to share posts on your writer page, whereas the Create a Publication option allows you to create a separate publication (think of it like an online magazine). You can have multiple publications.

When you select Create a Publication, you’ll be asked to choose your publication URL. It makes sense to choose the name of your publication for the URL. So, for example, one of my publications is called Write With Lisa, so I chose writewithlisa.substack.com as the URL.

The .substack.com is added for you as standard so you only need to add the first part of your URL. You can use a custom domain if you prefer (simply choose a temporary URL for now and add the custom domain in the settings). There is a one-off fee to use a custom domain.

If you choose a URL that is already in use, you’ll be asked to choose another, so it’s worth having a back-up name just in case.

Once you’ve chosen your URL, you’ll be taken to another ‘Home’ page showing a checklist.

Don’t worry about the checklist - you can do all these things as you go through the set up. Instead, select the ‘settings’ option (highlighted on the image below). This is where you can customise your publication.

Publication settings overview

It’s worth mentioning that once you have a publication, you’ll have two lots of settings on Substack. Your profile and account settings (where you set your profile image and handle etc). You’ll find these in the dropdown under your profile picture in the top right corner.

You’ll also have your publication settings (the ones I’ve highlighted above). You can get back to these by clicking the ‘Dashboard’ button that should now be displayed next to your profile pic.

The publication settings are where you can customise and make changes to your publication.

Basics

These are the basic settings such as publication logo, publication name and a short description of your publication.

Payments and Pledges

If you want to offer a paid subscription, you can connect your Substack account to Stripe and then set the fees for your monthly and annual subscription. There is also a founding member option which allows people to pay more than the normal subscription fee if they want to show you extra support (you can also offer them something extra if you want to).

I wouldn’t recommend turning on the paid option until you have finished setting up your publication. You might even want to wait until you have built up a few free subscribers before offering a paid option.

There is also an option to accept pledges. This allows people to commit to becoming a paid subscriber if you ever turn on paid subs in the future. This can be a good way of finding out whether there is interest in your paid subscription before you launch it.

If your paid subscription involves you doing a lot of extra work, you might want to use pledges as a way to build up enough paying subscribers to make it worth your while before launching. When someone pledges, they are committing to payment, but no payments will be taken until you switch on the paid subscriber option.

Branding

This is where you can change the look and layout of your publication. Clicking ‘Edit Theme’ will take you to a new page where you’ll be able to play around with colours and fonts for your publication. You can also customise the layout of your home page.

Setting up the colours and fonts is something you can do straight away. Changing the layouts before you have any content won’t really do much (if you want to see what the different layout options look like, skip to 37:40 in the video at the top of this article).

Your publication wordmark sits at the top of your publication. If you don’t have one, don’t worry. The title of your publication will be displayed as plain text.

Website

The first setting in this section is your About page. If you click through to this you’ll see there is some copy in place already that has been automatically added by Substack. If you haven’t written anything yet, you can use this until you have something to replace it with. I would recommend customising this page as soon as possible as it tells visitors to your Substack what your publication is about.

You also have the option to add some links to your home page. These are exactly what they sound like - links that appear on your homepage. When you add links, you need to add a group. The group will display as the title above the links.

Another notable setting in the website section is the navigation bar links. You will have three pages as standard, and you can change the visibility of these to on or off. If you turn them off, they won’t show in the navigation on your publication.

You can also add custom pages - the option to do this is just below the navigation bar links. Once you have added a custom page, you need to add it to the navigation bar (if you want it there).

Custom tags allow you to add tags to your posts so you can categorise them. You can use tags to organise posts on your home page (if you want to).

The final section under website is the welcome page settings where you can add a different image (if you leave it blank, it will use the publication logo). you can also customise the ‘skip button’.

Growth Features

Here you’ll find an option to set up a referral scheme. You can offer different rewards based on how many subscribers you get from someone who recommends your publication.

For example, you might offer a free ebook to someone who brings you 5 new subscribers. Or if you offer a paid subscription, you might offer a free month in return for 3 subs. You don’t need to worry about setting this up to begin with - you can always go back to it later.

The embeddable subscribe button allows you to add a sign up button to an existing website.

Emails

This is where you can change what is shown in the ‘from’ field when you send emails from your Substack publication. You can also customise your header and footer and set up your welcome email.

Community, Chat, Notes, Podcasts

These settings are pretty self-explanatory and you can edit these based on your preferences.

Sections

Sections are like newsletters within your newsletters and you can use sections in different ways. On my New Brew Thursday Substack, I’ve used them to categorise content and I’ve added sections to my navigation.

When I add a post, I allocate it to a ‘section’ and it will show in that section. For example, I have a section for Top 5s and all my top 5 posts are listed there.

On Write With Lisa, I have a section for my member only content.

You don’t have to add sections to your navigation. You can add them as sections on your home page. Or you can keep them hidden and just share the link with certain people.

Other settings

The other settings are all pretty self-explanatory. You can change your notifications, add a custom domain and import an email list as well as various other things. The final section is the danger zone. This is where you can delete your publication or all your content and do other things you wouldn’t want to accidentally do.

Sharing content

Once you have a publication, you’ll want to share some content. Head to the ‘Posts’ section on your dashboard and click the ‘New Post’ button.

Now you can write your post. You can add images, headings, buttons and so on.

Once you’ve written your post, click continue and you’ll be able to edit the publishing settings.

Choose who can see it and who can comment on it. Then allocate it to a section (if you have created any), add tags (if you have created any), and upload an image (or choose one from the post).

The delivery setting allows you to decide whether you want to send your post as an email and publish it on your Substack. If you untick this box, it will be shared online only. If you tick the box, it will also go out as an email to your subscribers.

You can also schedule your post to go out at a specific time if you don’t want to publish immediately. Once you post is live, you’ll be able to share the link on your socials and anywhere else you choose.

And you’re off

That’s it. That’s the basics. There are plenty of features and options to explore, but hopefully, this article has given you the very basics so you can get started.

If you are starting a Substack publication, why not subscribe to Write With Lisa, where I share all kinds of writing tips and advice.

On April 1st, I’m also launching a paid membership where you’ll get access to my chat, monthly write-alongs, member only content and quarterly Q&As. And if you pledge to subscribe before April 1st, you’ll get half price membership. Find out more here.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve found this guide useful.

Check out my other publications:

Write With Lisa - A publication and membership for anyone who writes. Whether you write for money, business, or pleasure, I want to help you write with purpose and confidence.

The Freelance Fairytale Newsletter - A publication dedicated to freelancers and small business owners who just want to make decent money doing what they love for people they like.

New Brew Thursday UK - a publication all about beer.