“I’ve found it quite easy to grow on Substack with followers coming from notes or discoverability on Substack. I’m a month in and getting at least 10 free subscribers a day.”
“Another thing I did was search for serial fiction (novels in your case) on Substack to study how others were doing this. Most follow the structure in the link to some extent, but it’s not a cookie cutter world.”
“I feel like I see less action on notes than posts across the board, even for people with moderate subscriber numbers. I'm not really clear on the intended function of notes. My best guess is they're to dampen funneling onto other social media by giving a low stakes outlet for people who want to keep their subscriber content more curated.”
“You could create a section instead of a second Substack. That way, your readers can decide for themselves if they want to get both and opt in or out each section, and you don’t double your work and have to promote two stacks.”
“But starting a second publication when you’re only a few months in is a lot of work, and both Substack and your readers are going to get confused about which one is which.”
“I brought my subscriber base to Substack but over time began losing as I changed, but strangely have gained no significant new numbers although there for years now. Something seems to be happening across the social media space in general though, it’s like people are low key exhausted”
“And Substack is for long form essays, articles and stories. If you just want a lot of eyes then stick with Reddit which is not suited to long form anything.”
“But ironically it’s the notes that get attention, not the long form writing which is the original point of substack. I post notes about 5 days a week but an article only once a week.”
“I've posted probably 1000+ comments to Substack, and have gathered maybe 40 followers there. My notes all get like 1-5 likes. Perhaps I am stupid and boring--but I did get the "top 1% commenter" award for this subreddit once.”
“I just realized that this need for Substack papers could be me showing up curiously for myself instead of subconsciously 'waiting around' while trying to get my life back together anyway. Not to fix it and not to create a certain outcome related to her, but to explore what is currently unseen within myself - and within others as well.”
“Not really. Substack can be useful for growing a newsletter, but converting readers on one blog platform to a personal blog almost never work unless you're big enough you can have exclusives that actually entice readers.”
“I’ve come to appreciate my silent notes off on its own corner of the Substack sphere 😅I may only get 1 like for a note but the way I see it is most people don’t see things in my perspective so if someone likes or comments then it means they really get me. I don’t think what I have to say is suppose to reach the masses anyways.”
“It’s also a volume game with notes. You won’t hear from many of them, but you should get some responses and subscribers in you comment on other similar substacks.”
“I tend to avoid substack because they’ll lure me in and hit me with a paywall 2/3 through the article. One time this happened on a billionaires blog.”
“New users coming in and joining substack to see what this community is about their first exposure they get is..."Ohh this is just everyone fishing for follows, well that's lame."”
“Substack is a good platform in some ways but absolutely horrible in others. The UI is objectively horrible and it has various toxic patterns some of which could be considered benefitting the blogger.”
“I hate substack. The only substack I read is Scott's, and that's just inertia from reading his original blog. The idea of homogenizing blogging is just not for me.”
“I uploaded a couple of videos but now I kind of feel like videos defeat the purpose of substack? After that day I never watched a video there again. I feel like if I want videos I will open TikTok or a podcast.”
“Substack helps people find an audience in an unbelievable way. By making it much easier to engage with content, writers get much better feedback and have an easier time finding their niche.”
“Without making it private, a Substack is a public website. You can’t just “hide it” from someone. People don’t have to log in to view Substacks or anything.”
“Yes, but they’ve mostly built a following elsewhere and use Substack to monetize it. They usually validate topics by producing short-form content and then bring the audience to Substack.”