The Creator Who Traded YouTube for Substack

Carla Lalli Music tripled her income writing a newsletter

Lia Haberman

Mar 07, 2025

⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY

I talked to Carla Lalli Music about the brutally honest newsletter she wrote last week describing how she traded YouTube for Substack — and the backlash she’s gotten
Alexis Ohanian is a busy guy with a potential TikTok acquisition and engineering the return of Digg
YouTube is redesigning its app experience to look more like a TV streaming service
Instagram may prioritize “Made with Edits” videos once it launches its new app
Eventbrite launched It-Lists: collections of local experiences curated by “cultural tastemakers”
e.l.f. Beauty created a telenovela-inspired campaign on Instagram and TikTok
Report: 25% of US adults consider Facebook the most influential social media platform for purchasing decisions
SXSW 2025: Find the best panels and events in Austin
Case Study: How Kiswe supercharged this brand’s livestream revenue by 60% YOY*

💻 ROADMAP

📲 TikTok Updates

Alexis Ohanian announced he’s officially one of the people trying to buy TikTok US along with Frank McCourt — and bring it on-chain.

TikTok released a step by step guide to photo posts with 9 popular photo themes.

TikTok is considering offering local services in the US, according to Axios. The program, which was tested in Singapore and Indonesia, lets creators give users vouchers for restaurants, hotels, etc.

📲 YouTube Updates

YouTube is expected to release a redesign of its app for TVs with an on-screen guide that looks more like Netflix, Disney+ and other major streaming services, with rows of shows, reports The Information.
Spotted: A new Google feature allows advertisers to discover and promote YouTube Shorts featuring their brand
YouTube announced Premium Lite, an ad-free experience for $7.99 per month.
YouTube updated its shopping tips for eligible creators selling their own products or products from participating brands.
YouTube released a Healthy Video Viewing guide for parents of teens.

📲 Meta Updates

A new description of Instagram’s upcoming Edits app suggests that Reels edited in the Meta app could have an advantage over videos edited in other apps.
Spotted: Some Threads users are being prompted to “Add interests” to their profile.

📲 Patreon Updates

Patreon announced it’s testing and releasing improvements to the home feed, recommendations, and overall discovery experience to help creators reach and keep new fans on the platform.

📲 Reddit Updates

Reddit announced a set of new tools to make it easier for users to find relevant communities and post on its platform.

▶️ Streaming Case Study

A word from this week’s sponsor

Being a die-hard Bravo fan is my go-to fun fact at meetings. That, and my obsession with Watch What Crappens, where Ben Mandelker and Ronnie Karam hilariously dissect Real Housewives, Below Deck, and beyond.

So when I heard they were streaming the 2025 Golden Crappies Award Show? Immediate yes.

Enter my friends at Kiswe, the tech behind the stream, who gave me the inside scoop on how they pulled it off.

The Challenge

With over 3M monthly listeners, Watch What Crappens wanted new ways to engage fans and boost revenue. The live Crappies show was a hit — but tickets sold out fast, leaving many fans out. They needed a streaming solution that felt as fun and interactive as the live event.

The Solution

Kiswe helped the Crappies:
✅ Build a branded streaming experience true to Watch What Crappen’s fan-driven vibe
✅ Enable global ticket sales for live and on-demand viewing
✅ Add interactive features like chat, polls, and fan reaction videos

The Results

🔥 60% revenue growth from the previous year’s stream
🌎 Fans tuned in from 33+ countries
💬 21% of live viewers engaged in real-time

GET THE FULL CASE STUDY!

📰 Carla Lalli Music Traded YouTube for Substack — And Tripled Her Income

James Beard Award-winning cookbook author and former Bon Appetit food director Carla Lalli Music had 230,000 YouTube subscribers — but behind the scenes, she was losing $10,000 every single month making her cooking videos.

In a brutally honest newsletter, she broke down exactly how much she spent to build her channel and why she pulled the plug.

The vulnerability clearly resonated: Compared to her most popular post in the past three months, that newsletter drove nearly 15x more free subscribers, almost 4x more paid subscriptions, 7x more comments, nearly 9x more likes, 13x more restacks, 16x more shares, and 3.5x more views.

Now, she’s set to earn in one year on Substack what took her three-plus years on YouTube.

We talked about the internet’s reaction to her radical transparency, the biggest misconceptions about creator earnings, and where she’s placing her next big bet.

ICYMI: Congratulations on that newsletter. It was really brave to share and leave yourself open for criticism from everyone who says they could have done it better.

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, it's been overwhelmingly positive. But maybe being on YouTube and social media for as long as I have has numbed that scariness. I mean, it's still scary. But people have said, ‘I hate your voice.’ Well, I can't… I can't help you. It's just my voice.

ICYMI: You made the YouTube math so simple: $14k going out. $4k coming in. Net loss, month over month: ten thousand dollars. What’s been the overall reception to this information?

CLM: Overall, it has been incredibly positive. Most of the feedback is along the lines of, ‘Thank you for sharing, thank you for being transparent.’

A very small percentage of people have said the same thing, which is, ‘Oh, sorry to see you go but you're spending way too much money. Here's how to do it. Set up a tripod, use AI for editing and bingo, bango. We don’t care about the quality.’

I care about the quality.

When I started making videos after Bon Appetit, I was on Patreon. We were shooting on two iPhones and it was fine because it was the middle of the pandemic and I was figuring stuff out. But it didn't look good enough, and I didn't like it. I wanted the food to look better.

So, that comment is so funny to me for two reasons. One is that people assume that in order to be on YouTube, you have to be a one-person operation where you shoot, edit, cook, style, clean. That is a business model. I looked at ways to cut costs. I don't want to be a full time, day-in, day-out YouTuber.

The other part that is amusing to me is this assumption that I could lower the quality and that would be fine. That's like saying to me, a cookbook author, ‘Oh, just cut the publisher out of it. Make a pamphlet.’ I don't want to make a pamphlet. I wanted to make really good looking cooking videos.

lallimusic

A post shared by @lallimusic

ICYMI: I posted that I’d be talking to you and got a bunch of questions, including about the cost of your videos. In your newsletter you said at one point: ‘My longer-term goal was to sell a cooking show.’ Do you think that required a certain level of production, which played a part in this?

CLM: Yes. I want to present myself in the best possible way. And I also want to be proud of my work. I've been in food media for 16 years. I've been making videos for eight. I won a James Beard award. I have a New York Times best-selling cookbook. People are used to seeing my videos at a very high quality. And I want to continue that.

It's hard enough to watch yourself on TV. It's hard enough to listen to your own voice. It would be a lot harder if I also was noticing that the lighting wasn't good, that the sound is scratchy, that we didn't get close enough to the food, that you can't see what I'm doing.

ICYMI: Coincidentally, we just learned YouTube is redesigning its app experience to be more like TV.

CLM: And we were shooting in 4K. It looked good. When I watch it on my actual TV, the quality holds up.

ICYMI: If you could do it all over again would you still have started the YouTube channel?

CLM: Yes, I would have, especially since that first year my views were better than they were on year three.

I don't think I would change anything about the way I produced the videos. There was a period after Shorts rolled out that we felt, ‘OK, it's all about super short, maybe the videos should also be shorter.’ So we went from 18 to 22 minute episodes to 10 to 12 minutes, which actually is harder to cut, right?

And then a few months after we were doing that, YouTube came back to creators and said, ‘Never mind. We figured out how people consume Shorts. Now they want to scroll on their phone. They're looking at Shorts on the go, but in the evening, they want to come home and lean back and watch a longer show. So you can go back to making longer episodes.’

I wish we had just stuck to what we were doing and not tried to chase that thing... So that was frustrating to go through all those months of getting it down to 10 minutes and making hard cuts.

ICYMI: Fast forward five years, what do you think the pie chart of your earnings will look like?

CLM: I think the pie chart is going to be 50% of my income is going to come from Substack, and maybe 25% is going to come from the remainder of my book advance, and I get some royalties on my first book, and the other 25% is going to come from continuing to do brand deals and appearances.

Going forward. I would love that part of the pie chart that is branded deals and appearances to be less about chasing paid partnerships, and more about in person appearances, talks, panels. I really love talking to students or people who are figuring stuff out. Writers conferences, that kind of thing.

I am coming back with the next season of my podcast, Worst Day Of Your Life So Far. We're gonna rethink the way we did the marketing for that. Instead of the dream being a TV show, the dream for me now is to make real money podcasting. I really love that.

ICYMI: Everything I've heard about podcasting is that it is just as hard, if not harder, to make money there.

CLM: Lower operational costs. I make my podcast sitting on my bedroom floor with one producer, and it sounds as good as the podcast I made for Pineapple Street that had a team of six people working on it. So yes, that is true, but wouldn't it be so great if I could figure it out?

ICYMI: Let’s switch to Substack. How long did it take you to write that particular newsletter?

CLM: There was one day when it was in the back of my head and I had my notebook out and I just sketched out the goal, the metrics, you know, the way that I broke it out into those four parts. I had that in my notebook as an outline for a couple weeks, so when I sat down to write it, I already had a map of where I wanted to go.

I'm in the middle of writing my book, which is due really soon. And then writing the YouTube piece took over the better part of a week or 10 days. I had really late nights being up till two or three. And I had to go back and read it as a copy editor. I had to go back and read it as a top editor. I had to go back and line edit myself. I had to make sure the writing was tight.

ICYMI: Did the essay boost your newsletter subscriber count?

CLM: I think I had 125 new paid subs, which is great because a lot of people do the annual and that adds up to several thousands of dollars over the year.

The engagement was insane. It’s been extremely gratifying. To put a lot of work into something and put it out there and have it be received in a way that eclipsed any of my expectations. That was so validating, because I did work really hard on this. And to be seen was extremely rewarding. It made me feel really good about the way that I want to talk about work and being creative.

ICYMI: Did you have paid Substack subscriptions turned on from the beginning? Would you recommend it to others?

CLM: Yeah, I had it on from the beginning. Grant Crilly, who works at Chef Steps and Breville, said they've always pay-walled their recipes. He and I were talking one day and he explained it as, ‘We put a ton of work into those recipes. That is our highest value offering. And fuck yeah, I'm gonna charge for it, people should pay for it.’ And I kept going back to this one conversation with him, and I agree.

ICYMI: How does Substack compare to your YouTube revenue?

CLM: I mean, I made $183,000 gross on YouTube in three-plus years, and that's what I'm on track to make in one year of Substack, without spending $14,000 a month.

ICYMI: Is Substack the best place for authors?

CLM: It's the best place for me to be. I started on Patreon because when I started making videos in 2020, Substack did not support video like and Patreon did. That made that decision pretty easy. I think it's great that it now supports podcast publishing. I have found a great audience there. I think the way referrals work and recommendations and discovery is very, very strong.

With this introduction of all these video tools, I see all these comments from people who are writers, who are the bread and butter of the platform for so many years, being like, ‘Hey, I don't want to make videos. Am I now going to get dinged and does this represent a shift on this platform where now it's going to become a video platform?’ So, if you ask me, is it the best place for authors in general? It depends on the author for sure.

ICYMI: One thing that came through while reading your newsletter is that while YouTube didn’t work for you, it might for another creator.

CLM: This platform that was all about food videos is now all about not that. So what is it about? And where do food creators go? Because we're not getting show deals either.

When Stanley Tucci lost his show deal, I was so upset. I had been pitching shows. Every meeting you go into, ‘Oh my god, that's a great idea. We love it.’ And then nothing happens, you know.

Then Stanley Tucci’s show got canceled, and I was like, ‘Carla, if the Tuch can't get a show, then it's not you. You don't have to feel bad anymore about not having a show deal, something else is going on. So I don't have a show deal. Well, neither does Stanley Tucci. That's a club I'm happy to be a part of.

ICYMI: Last question, what are you making for dinner today?

CLM: That is a great question. I'll be with my 15 year old son. He is a very enthusiastic meat eater, so I'll probably, at some point today, pick up pork chops or a steak, and we almost always have rice. We're in a bok choy, baby bok choy phase. The little ones and I just cut them in half and get a really good sear on the cut side, they get all like caramelized.

So it sounds like a great dinner, steak, bok choy, rice in the Zojirushi (rice cooker) and Sriracha.

*this interview was edited for length, we yapped for an hour and the whole interview would have filled a book!

25% of US adults consider Facebook the most influential social media platform for purchasing decisions, putting it just ahead of TikTok (21%) and Instagram (20%)

-according to eMarketer’s chart on the most influential social media platforms on US consumers purchase decision

👀 ICYMI: JUST THE HEADLINES

e.l.f. Beauty created a telenovela-inspired campaign on Instagram and TikTok for its Mexico-based community -Business Wire
How to create connection-driven content -LinkedIn Guide to Creating
Got plans? As part of a rebrand, Eventbrite introduced It-Lists: collections of local experiences curated by cultural tastemakers -Eventbrite
Digg, an old-school news aggregator site, is bringing “good vibes” with its relaunch -THR
Instagram has launched over 20 new DM features in recent months. This chart breaks them all down -Business Insider
How YouTubers are adapting their businesses to cash on a TV gold rush -Business Insider - Business Insider
Streamer Valkyrae opens up about her stalker incident -Passionfruit
TW: Passes, a direct-to-fan monetization platform for creators has been sued for allegedly distributing Child Sexual Abuse Material (also known as CSAM) -TechCrunch

🌵🌮 SXSW 2025 Panels and Events Listings

Paid subscribers: keep an eye out for a special issue on Monday as I talk to Linktree’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Partnerships, and Business Development Lara Cohen about their OOH x creators strategy in Times Square!