Hey buddy,

In September 2025, a food writer named Alison Roman moved her newsletter off Substack.

She took 343,000 subscribers with her. She landed on Ghost. And the first thing she needed when she got there — before she wrote a single word — was a theme that made her publication look like her.

She's not alone. Creators are leaving Substack in droves right now, and the majority of them are landing on Ghost. The reasons are simple: Substack takes 10% of every dollar you make forever. Ghost takes zero. Substack owns your brand. Ghost gives it back to you.

Every single one of those migrants arrives on Ghost and immediately faces the same problem: the theme marketplace is tiny.

That's the gap. That's the idea.

Why I'm Handing This To You

I run a newsletter. I think about this stuff constantly.

Ghost is where the serious creators are going. The ones with real audiences, real revenue, real standards for how their publication looks. These aren't people who'll settle for a free template that looks like every other blog on the internet. They'll pay for something that looks sharp, loads fast, and matches the level of their content.

I can't design or code themes. But if I could, I'd be building Ghost themes right now instead of writing this. The market is growing, the competition is thin, and the buyers have money.

So here it is.

The Blueprint

Ghost themes are built with Handlebars — Ghost's templating language — layered over standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. If you can build websites, you can build Ghost themes. If you can't, you can learn the basics in a few weeks, or hire a developer and handle the design and marketing yourself.

Here's how the money works.

One-time theme sales are the entry point. Pre-made themes on Ghost's official marketplace and on Gumroad sell for $39–$199. Build five solid themes, price them at $79 each, sell ten copies a month across all five — that's $3,950/month from products you built once.

Niche themes are where you win. The Ghost marketplace has general-purpose themes everywhere. What it doesn't have is themes built for specific creator types — a theme designed specifically for podcast publishers, one for financial newsletters, one for independent journalists, one for coaches with membership tiers. These buyers don't want to adapt a generic theme. They want something that was built for them. Charge $149–$199 for niche themes and you'll barely get any pushback.

Custom theme work is the natural upsell. A creator lands on your marketplace page, loves your aesthetic but wants something bespoke — you offer custom builds at $500–$2,000 depending on complexity. Your existing themes are essentially your portfolio. The leads come to you.

Theme bundles and updates add recurring revenue. Sell a bundle of all your themes for a higher one-time price. Offer a yearly update subscription for $29/year per theme — Ghost updates regularly, themes need to stay compatible, and creators who've already bought from you will pay for peace of mind.

Why Right Now

The migration wave is happening right now, not in two years.

Substack had a data breach earlier this year that exposed hundreds of thousands of user records. They shut down their desktop reader app. They still take 10% of everything you earn. The serious creators — the ones building real publications with real revenue — are doing the math and leaving.

Ghost is where they go. And Ghost's theme marketplace is genuinely underdeveloped compared to what WordPress had at the same stage of its growth. WordPress themes became a multi-million dollar industry. Ghost is at the beginning of that same curve.

The other tailwind: AI makes theme building faster than ever. What used to take a developer two weeks can now be scaffolded in days. The barrier to building a polished, professional theme has dropped significantly. The barrier to selling one hasn't changed — you still need good design, good documentation, and a presence in the right places.

The One Thing That Makes It Work

Build for a specific type of creator, not for everyone.

The Ghost marketplace already has enough generic "clean minimal blog" themes. What it doesn't have is a theme that a finance newsletter creator looks at and thinks "this was made for me." Or a podcaster. Or a membership community. Or a local news publication.

When a buyer sees a theme built for their exact use case, they don't shop around. They buy. Niche is the whole game here.

Go Build It

Learn Handlebars. Pick one niche. Build one theme. List it. Then do it again.

Go.

Talk soon, Kris

P.S. — The WordPress theme economy took years to mature. Ghost is earlier than that right now. The people who sell Ghost themes in 2026 are the people who built WordPress themes in 2010. You know how that story ended.