Why Substack Is The Winning Place To Be In 2026 & Beyond For Creators
today we're yapping about owned audiences in a time where finding your target audience (and keeping them) is entirely algorithm & platform dependent. substack, FYI, changes the game entirely.
Hi everyone!
Welcome back to DBT/Dead, But Trending, where I yap about culture, the creator economy, my journey growing badass women in history to 50k subscribers this past year, and much much more.
Today we’re talking about why Substack is so life-changing for creators (and brands) alike in 2026 and beyond — and what joining this platform could mean for you while it’s still “early on.” (I.e., there’s still room to break out, go “viral,” and plenty of niches that are still undersaturated!)
Today, we’re going to dive right in.
Reason #1 Substack Is Undeniably Perf For Seasoned Creators & Wanna-Be Influencers Alike in 2026
For my seasoned creators reading this, (and, TBH, even those just working for brands in the marketing realm right now!) — you’ve probably all heard from your manager or other friends in the industry that the time is ‘nigh for getting on Substack.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me “why” lately — so I thought I’d break it all down.
The key is this:
Substack directly gives you access to an audience that you own — while also still letting you continue to organically grow on and through the platform itself.
And this, my friends, is the biggest factor that differentiates Substack from all the other social platforms right now — and it’s also where it puts even YouTube to shame.
The thing is, Substack operates in 2 ways. And those two ways are exactly what makes Substack so powerful in the first place.
It’s basically like if a newsletter platform (such as Ghost or BeeHive) and the OG Twitter had a baby.
And so, with that in mind, just like any typical newsletter platform — you have the ability to bring in your own audience from elsewhere and create a new subscriber list.
And, same with social media platforms, you also have the ability to utilize (and/or fight against — either works in this case☠️) an algorithm to help push your content out further, attract new followers/subscribers, and ensure it gets seen.
The thing about Substack is that it does go both ways. If you already have built up an external audience — great! Bring them in. But if you haven’t yet, then tht’s okay too! Start your newsletter, treat it like a full-time job for the first several months (by engaging with others and using the “notes” feature, just as you would on any other social platform) — and in time, if you’ve played your cards right, you’ll very quickly realize you never needed an outside audience to bring in anyways: it’s easy enough to amass one here.
And I’m so serious about that — I’m even going to say it again, in simpler terms: all the organic growth you need can happen right here, right now, if you just put the work into it.
And this is just like any other social platform right now you might want to go viral or build an audience on, my friends.
So, Now That That’s Established… Let’s talk about WHERE Substack Gives All The Other Platforms A Run For Their Money…💰👀🏃♂️
For those who are unfamiliar with other newsletter platforms, most of them operate by you bringing in emails and curating your list from there. In this scenario, you have to do a lot of outside work and marketing to continue to get new ones. And that’s about all there is to it. Because, again, there’s not a lot of other sites like Substack right now that have figured out how to hybridize social media + it’s organic growth potential alongside an audience that you own yourself.
And subscribers are owned audience.
Substack, mind you, does have followers — let me be clear — but these people matter a bit less than Subscribers in the “$$$” category. A follower on Substack is basically the equivalent to a follower on a platform like Twitter/X, Threads, or even Instagram. They’re going to occasionally see your feed posts and get your updates and new blog posts in-app, but they’re not receiving it directly in-email like your subscribers are — and that’s a key piece to know.
It’s also what makes subscribers so powerful.
Basically, a “subscriber” is someone who’s signing up for your emails. Which means they’re literally giving you a piece of information — their email address — and this is happening in a day and age where emails are one of the only direct ways to 100% get in front of a customer every single time. (We all have emails, and they don’t depend on algorithms. What matters for an email is a fantastic title that gets the potential reader to open it. But more on that another time!)
With TikTok, Insta, Threads, and beyond — you don’t own your audience at all:
If your account gets deleted? You lose that following. If you switch niches and the algorithm punishes you for it? Your audience isn’t guaranteed to continue to see you in their algorithms — unless they actively seek you out. If a platform gets banned in a country? You lose access to that account, and therefore all of your followers by association.
Point is, you’re always up against an app and its algorithm — and this is something that brands are keenly aware of when seeking creators out for their own campaigns, too — because they know they’re playing with a borrowed audience and the viewership that is never actually guaranteed.
Substack is superb because if something happens to it or if you need to flee for whatever reason, you can literally download your full list of subscribers at any given time and bring them with you.
This, for context, is an insane amount of power to have in the digital age where apps run the world and algorithms run you.
And so, in this sense, Substack is not only allowing you to have an audience that you can take anywhere with you for free — but they’re also letting you use their platform to continue to grow it organically while you’re here. And then you can take all of those people with you, too.
That is exactly what is so life-changing about it — and it’s exactly why I’m telling you it’s time to start today if you have not already. Do not waste your chance!
Thanks for reading! Until next time.
xoxo,
emma hughes 🩷
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Want to connect with the author?
you can connect with Emma Hughes through DMs, LinkedIn, or via email at emma@bawcollective.com 💌.