55 Comments

I'd like any workshop on this to cover more about special promotions. Discounts, time-limited offers, interesting CTAs around this I believe may be important to boost conversion especially at time of launch. How to create urgency, impulse conversions and FOMO when differentiation has been achieved.

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Also simply to show people how to send a segmented campaign to their MOST engaged subscribers. In the UI this is not intuitive to many non Email marketing folk. That you can segment based on Emails opened, activity and Web views and re-send a Campaign similar to your Paid launch post, to your most fanatic free readers on a regular basis should be common knowledge.

Substack could have pre-made segmented "top audience" lists for campaigns, to facilitate this that automatically excludes paid subscribers. Simply sending Emails without segmentation for those of us who have worked in Email marketing is the fastest way to increase churn in you audience.

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Our next workshop is all about conversion, covering the topics you mentioned in your comment.

​Reid DeRamus, the founder of Yem who's now on Substack's growth team, will guide us through strategic best practices for conversation—including key messaging for targeted outreach, utilizing special offers, and paywalling posts.

You can RSVP here: https://lu.ma/download-conversion

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Wow that sounds perfect Katie! I'm thrilled at all these extra classes and events.

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Not sure if I'll ever go paid but this was definitely a helpful guide. Any tips on increasing your audience for paid when you don't have a huge following?

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Saving this for later

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Loved this resource. Though I don't plan to go paid anytime soon, it's definitely informative to learn what’s possible.

Share your Substacks. I'm open to subscribing to reed something new. 😊🚀

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I write sonnets and generally post one with a detailed explanation every Monday. I've recently added a Sunday song exploration that's usually accompanied by a little vignette related to the song.

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Vritant, you may enjoy what I write about. Feel free to have a look around my SubStack. Thank you.

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Check me out Roland’s Travels rolandmillward.com

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I was re-reading this post again and saw my year old comment... kinda wholesome that I still love Substack as a platform ❤️

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Will the video of the event go up after or some kind of article on what advice was given? I gotta work during the call so I can't make it, but would love to learn from it

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Great question! I'll put in an ask to get this recorded and posted to our YouTube.

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Can you send out a link?

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Is this link still available?

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Huge thanks...this is extremely helpful - saves me a bunch of time!

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Dear Substack members,

I'm inviting you all to take a look at my page, the last review I have published https://jaroslavnovosyolov.substack.com/p/-?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F99309116--&utm_medium=reader2

I am going to publish more reviews on a regular basis. Thank you in advace!

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Can Substack make money from my presence? It may need to find a way because I prefer to remain free from reader payments. For a decade my readers have been seeing my work free of charge, on Facebook, Twitter and Discord. I cannot bring myself to slip behind a paywall now. That would be so disrespectful to the loyal followers I have who followed me here.

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Frances, I think that the whole model of SM is the users *are* their assets. So yeah, Ss *is* making money off all of us, newsletter writers and only-commenters alike. They are data-mining at the very least.

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Hey there. We aren't in the attention economy here. No ads. We only make money when writers make money and decide to turn on paid subscriptions.

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So you are not data mining for profit?

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I started paid subscriptions this week because of two reasons: 1) Someone offered to pay for posts 2) I got laid off with only 48 hours notice. I have been writing my newsletter for over three years, so it's time.

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I love the embedded PDF guide - is it possible for writers to easily create a similar PDF version of their post (with the Substack symbol in the top left corner)?

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You can simply drag a PDF into any post and share with readers. More on what files are supported and how to do that here: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408381643156-How-can-I-attach-a-file-to-my-Substack-post-

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Thank you Katie! I guess my question is kind of the reverse of that - What is needed to turn existing Substack articles into PDFs (with Substack header) to save and share with friends and family?

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The best way to do that would be to copy and paste into a document application (like Google Docs or Word Docs) and save as a PDF.

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Thanks. Didn’t know that

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Great to read and plenty to work on.

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Some good suggestions in here, didn't know we could send targeted emails to specific readers. Will use this the next time I give away subscriptions so I can engage those most likely to want one.

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Helpful. Thanks

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In my experience, it takes one good viral post. Everything rolls from there. It might happen in the first year, or the next year, and your chances increase with consistent postings, ... but ultimately you write for sheer Substack luck.

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How about SUBSTACK promoting us? It's the same with all the marketplace sales platforms. Take the money and do very little to market its clients.

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We're building features that are helping writers grow their audiences from within Substack, most notably recommendations. Today, more than 30% of all new free subscriptions and around 10% of paid subscriptions to Substacks come from within our network. https://on.substack.com/p/substack-generates-1-in-3-new-subscriptions

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deletedAug 8, 2022·edited Aug 8, 2022
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I agree about the censorship. It's not fair and it's not right.

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deletedAug 8, 2022·edited Aug 8, 2022
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Propaganda is not new (of course you know that), but the means for distributing it have reached a *whole new level* of psychological manipulation, especially to the wider audience which is severely dumbed down and obedient.

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I realize that you can't comment here now because substack has banned you from the thread but this is not really Substack's problem, it's a problem of the wider society that we've built. Pharma is the elephant in the room and it also has a significant share of other media (TV, newspapers) advertising. If Substack tried to shut that down they'd probably be out of business pretty quickly. We just have to work with it in the meantime while trying to work to a better society which does actually focus on health instead of its opposite.

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I think it *is* Ss's problem at least in part, because the platform allows and even supports the *artificial elevation* of fraudulent ideas and practices, which of course equate to violence and a violation of our Divine Rights. Yes, I am saying that proffering fraudulence — even in writing or as a platform for it — is an act of violence because it is psychological manipulation. I consider the whole being as a physical *and* psycho-spiritual.

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Scoring them I'd give

Substack - 5 or 6 depending on how much use they are to the military industrial complex of Eisenhower's

Facebook - minus 10 because they are very useful to the same.

Twitter - minus 7 because they're also very useful to the same, just not quite so integrated.

I don't know about reddit, tumblr.

Tiktok is interesting (probably a minus 20 score). Someone on the radio was calling it Chinese software on the radio yesterday. They should have a closer look at it.

Not sure how you get to an 8 or 9 let alone a 10 score. Nothing around currently it seems, maybe Signal is the best but somewhat limited feature & public platform wise.

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And hi Sharine. Nice trip that you've been on.

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Hi, Rich, and thanks. It's currently day 26 of 45, with many more adventures to come.

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