Your Substack - A Business Or A Hobby?
Let's fix that right now.
Most Substack advice is a pyramid scheme of hope. You read articles about how to ‘find your voice’ and ‘build a community’ from people who are only famous for telling you how to get famous.
Meanwhile, your bank account is bleeding red.
You have 400 subscribers. You have a logo you paid $200 for. You have a content calendar. But if you stop typing for two weeks, your income drops to zero. You don’t have a business; you have a demanding hobby that is slowly eating your savings.
‘Treat your business like a business and it'll PAY you like a business.
Treat your business like a hobby and it'll COST you like a hobby.’
Welcome to The Banana Stand
I am not here to teach you how to write poetry.
I am not here to help you ‘go viral’ on X.
I am the janitor and the mechanic.
I am here to fix things, and clean up the mess behind the scenes so you can actually pay your rent.
The philosophy: cash flow over clout
The internet tells you to chase Growth. The Banana Stand tells you to chase Solvency.
Growth is a vanity metric. You can’t buy groceries with ‘impressions.’ You can’t pay taxes with ‘engagement.’ The only thing that matters is the delta between the cash hitting your income account and the cash leaving your transaction account.
If you want to know how to gain 10,000 subscribers in a week, go read the other guys. If you want to know how to organise your PNL so the tax man doesn’t destroy you, stay here.
What you will get
I write about the unsexy, mechanical plumbing of the Creator Economy.
The metrics that matter: How to calculate your ‘Month of Death’ (the month you run out of money).
The systems: How to publish when you feel dead inside.
The assets: How to turn your archives into digital products that sell while you sleep.
The truth: Forensic audits of where creators lose money.
The business model (read this, it’s important)
I will never charge you for a subscription
There is no ‘paywall.’ There is no ‘premium tier.’ There are no ‘secret sections.’
I believe that gating information behind a monthly fee creates a perverse incentive to churn out filler content just to look busy.
Everything I write on The Banana Stand is free. Always will be.
How I make money
I sell tools. Checklists, spreadsheets, guides, processes, and audit protocols.
If you read an article and want to fix the problem immediately, you can buy the tool. If you want to build it yourself, you can do that too.
I give you the recipe; I sell you the Aogami knife.
Who is The Banana Stand for?
The panic-stricken: You quit your job to write, and now the reality of health insurance is setting in.
The accidental mogul: You have an audience, but you are still managing your finances in the Notes app on your phone.
The realist: You know ‘there’s always money in the banana stand,’ but only if you know where to look.
Subscribe. It’s free. You get good useful stuff in your inbox, once a week.
And it might just save your dream from the financial dumpster bin.
