I’ve been getting great feedback about the forthcoming What Really Makes Money service on Substack.

If you were one of those who wrote in – thanks!

As I mentioned last Friday, I’ve been prepping for this major project by diving into a few courses by top Substackers.

After all, there is nothing like getting the inside track on how it all works!

For instance, I enjoyed The Substack System course by Matt Giaro – if you missed my email about that, you can read it here.

One of the things Matt is very clear about is the importance of drawing people into the content organically.

On Friday, I showed you one way of doing this using ‘notes’, which work like public social media posts.

The other is to make long-form posts on Substack have pulling-power too.

These are effectively blog posts that also become email newsletters which are sent directly to the inboxes of your followers.

Some of these can be made ‘free’ so that anyone can read them to get an idea of your service.

Which means they need to attract attention…

Hold that attention…

Then compel the reader to come back for more.

As I explained last Wednesday, you can achieve this by following the R.I.C.H. formula.

• Relevant – it needs to speak to the interest of the target reader.
• Interesting – it needs to have an unusual or unique angle on things.
• Credible – it needs to be backed up with evidence and show that you are a genuine human being.
• Helpful – it needs to be useful and have a tangible benefit for the reader

Naturally, this isn’t by any means confined to Substack.

The RICH principle applies to any content you produce for an online business…

Website content, email newsletters, webinars, social media posts, videos, press releases, sales letters…

These all need to have magnetic qualities that draw and hold attention, giving you time to deliver useful information that builds trust.

One of the most important elements in ALL of these is the headline.

Usually a headline does about 90% of the work in getting a person to notice your content and then read it.

Now, as a trained copywriter I’m a bit of a headline geek – and I’ve written plenty of advice about my own headline formulas.

But I was interested to see how Matt Giaro approached this challenge for Substack.

He splits headlines into 4 types…

1. ‘How To’ Headlines

These are the classic form of direct mail headline because they instantly feel USEFUL to a prospect – suggesting that they’re going to find out something immediately practical.

People click on them because they have a problem and the headline promises a solution.

For example…

• How to Grow Salad Leaves on Your Kitchen Windowsill for Under £5 a Month
• How I Earned £4,000 from a Simple AI Prompt
• How to Test Your Business Idea in 30 Minutes (Before Spending a Penny)
• How to Find a Profitable Niche on Amazon KDP — Even If Nobody Knows Your Name
• How to Dominate Your Niche in 12 Weeks -Even if You Started Last Week
• How to Build a Udemy Course That Earns Money While You Sleep
• Most Substack profiles are forgettable. Here’s how to fix yours in under 10 minutes.
• 12 Ways to Turn a Scrappy Draft Into a Newsletter People Actually Share
• This Is How Ordinary People in the UK Are Building Real Income Online
• How to Book a Month in Bali for Less Than a Week in a UK Holiday Park
• How to Start Investing With £50 a Month — and Why Starting Late Isn’t the Disaster You Think
• How to Get Super Fit In 5 Minutes Per Day Without Leaving Your Home

2. ‘What’ Headlines

These kinds of headline have authority and confidence, as though you have the answer to something your reader needs to know.

They tend to fall into a few patterns…

• The numbered list, eg “7 Small Habits That Could Save You £150 a Month”.
• The insider reveal. eg “What Wealthy Families Teach Their Children About Money That Nobody Else Does”
• The secret system. eg. “The One Money Rule That Changed How I Think About Every Purchase

For example….

• What Never to Eat on an Aeroplane
• These 9 Small Daily Habits That Will Transform Your Home Business
• The AI System That Will Change the Way You Work Forever
• 4 Little-Known Passive Income Ideas That Actually Work
• People Who Consistently Hit Their Goals Live by These 7 Rules
• Ten Traits of the Most Successful Online Creators in Britain
• What Nobody Tells You About Early Retirement in the UK
• 8 Ways to Save 150 a Month Without Feeling the Pinch
• The Lesson About Happiness That Took Me a Decade to Learn
• The Rebranding Disaster That Cost a British Household Name Everything
• 7 Instagram Tricks That Will Get you 1000 Followers In a Month

3. ‘Here’s What I Do’ Headlines

Instead of promising a benefit or making a bold claim, you put your own experience front and centre. The message is, “I’ve actually done this, and so can you”.

For example…

• I Built and Launched a Digital Product in a Single Week – Here’s How
• I Spent £200 on Meta Ads So You Don’t Have To: Here’s what happened — and what I’d do differently
• The £1.43 Mistake That Changed How I Think About Money
• I Took a Solo Trip to Japan With No Itinerary and No Guidebook. Here’s What I Learnt.
• I Tracked Every Penny I Spent for a Year. The Results Shocked Me.
• I Quote Clients £2,000 for Work You Can Get Done for £400 on Fiverr
• I Cut Out Alcohol for Six Months. Here’s What Changed, and What Didn’t.
• The Free Tools I Use to Pull 80,000 Monthly Readers to My Content
• Why I Ditched the Follower Count, and What I Focus on Instead
• These 3 Boring Income Streams Quietly Earn Me £4k a Month
• My Laptop Battery Only Lasts 90 Minutes, and It’s Made Me Far More Productive
• The 3 Tools I Use to Create Content That’s Reached Over a Million People

4. ‘WTF?’ Headlines

These work on the principle of ‘pattern interruption’.

The aim is to surprise a scrolling internet user by saying something that makes their brain do a double-take and think “wait! what?!”

It could be something that shouldn’t be true, but apparently is, eg. “I Published a Book That Hit the Bestseller List and Still Lost Money.”

Or it could be an unexpected angle on a familiar idea, eg “Why Your Brain Doesn’t Want You To be Successful.”

The key is that WTF headlines don’t make a promise. Instead, they create an itch the reader has to scratch.

For example:

• The Spreadsheet That Made Me £11,000 While I Was on Holiday
• Everything Your GP Told You About Cholesterol Might Be Wrong
• I Accidentally Started a Business. It Now Pays My Mortgage.
• 4 Everyday Habits That Are Damaging Your Focus
• Why I Stopped Low-Carb Eating, Even Though It Was Working
• Get Financially Free and Drive a Secondhand Ford Focus
• £300 for 20 Minutes of Dead Simple Work
• 90% of What I Knew How to Do Is Now Worthless
• Why I Turned Down a Promotion — Twice
• Why Boring Investments Beat Exciting Ones — Every Single Time
• I Got 1,000 Subscribers Without Publishing a Single Post
• The Job That Didn’t Exist Five Years Ago Now Pays £80k From a Laptop

Whatever kind of content you are creating – Substack or otherwise – these could be great templates for you to copy and paste.

Just drop in your own specific details to make them your own!

Or feed them into an AI tool like Claude and ask it to generate headlines specific to your content, using these as a structure.

Hope you find this useful!