Everything You Need to Know About Substack Pledges

How they work and one urgent action you need to do immediately

You’ve got to admire the guys at Substack; they churn out new features like a veritable sausage factory.

This week it’s Pledges.

In this post I explain what the Pledges feature is on Substack and why you urgently need to review it and — perhaps — take action to prevent it from trashing your newsletter.

What are Substack Pledges?

A ‘pledge’ is a promise. The Substack Pledge feature is a way for you, as a newsletter writer, to see if your free readers are willing to pay for your work, without turning on paid subscriptions.

With pledges, your readers promise to become paying subscribers in the future, by committing to a monthly or yearly subscription and entering their credit card number.

How do Substack Pledges work?

Pledges are an automatic feature that are now active on all free Substack newsletters.

Wait what?! I’m asking for pledges right now, without doing anything?!

Yup that’s right, Substack turned on Pledges yesterday. So, starting yesterday (31st January 2023), every new reader of your newsletter is being asked to pledge money, as soon as they sign up.