Have questions about publishing, growing, or going paid on Substack?
The Substack team, and your fellow writers, are here to help!
Today we’re gathering the writer community and members of our Community, Product, and Writer Development teams together in a thread to answer writer questions for an hour.
Need some guidance on going paid? To get started: As part of Substack Grow, we shared a guide through the process of setting personal goals, rooting yourself in a confident mindset, and developing financial expectations for a publication on Substack.
Want to reference or build on other Substack writers’ ideas? Our product team just shipped an update that allows you to "Reply on Substack" — this creates a new post with an embed referring to the post you'd like to reply to.
Drop your questions in the thread and we’ll do our best to supercharge each other.
Our team will be in the thread today from 9 am - 10 am PDT / 12 pm - 1 pm EDT answering questions with you.
I have tried office hours and get no help. Please help me. I deleted all my data and account and started over. My email for Substack is John@LogicallyCorrect.com . I have three posts Open Borders, Moral and Logically Correct Amnesty, and Hacker’s Modus Operandi. If I enter in my browser Substack.com then enter in the search box Voices or Greenwald I get Greenwald’s posts. No matter what I enter in that search box none of my stuff comes up. Please help me.
How can I get my writings to be found by people that have heard about Substack and try to find posts etc.? Any direction would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Jay. When you are writing your content, place your cursor at the beginning of the line where you want the Subscribe Button to appear. Above the content when you are writing your post in substack, you'll see the formatting bar (let's you choose Bold, Italics, etc. On the bar you will also see "Buttons". Click the arrow to the right of Buttons and then click on 'Subscribe Now'. This will place the subscribe button in your post.
Hey Substack team, very dumb question but I tried googling this without any luck. How can I increase the white space in between my paragraphs. They appear quite close together in the emails that get sent out.
Hello from The Wndering Journo in Australia! I produce the Streets of Your Town substack and podcast which I embed in the newsletter. Could you please do one of your workshops at a time that isn’t 2am for us down under types? Really keen to get your perspective on growing my audience in a country with significantly less population than the US.
There was a power shortage and I didn't get this until after the fact. So disappointed that I missed it. Also, I'm getting notifications just 20 minutes before each workshop. Not enough time to plan to be there. Not fair!
Another question that I have is to know if something is a good idea to send by email (multiple email) to my followers asking for que content, how they feel, what they could improve, surveys (you should let attach them)... I mean, interact with the followers to engage them.
I write sans niche. My newsletter, White Noise (https://www.whitenoise.email/), covers books and behavior, psychology and philosophy, fiction and fact. What is the best way to grow and scale something that is so amorphous in its subject matter? I welcome any and all tips, conversations, and questions :). Thank you to Substack for providing this precious space!
Hello everybody. If you have read me in the introduction of all writers you ll know that I am Spanish (also my substack) and my english is not perfect, but I try my best.
First lesson was amazing and charged of very useful tips.
I run a finance substack making deep investment ideas and analysis about public companies and I am followed by thousands of users on twitter and substack. I know that I could start a payments substack just now, but I prefer to wait until I have a bigger audience, something between 5000-10000.
This is my doubt. How could I explain to my followers the change from free to paid and let them know the value of being paid?I want to make them know that the content is really good (I receive tons of emails congratulating my work) and they should pay. This is my biggest doubt, be able to broadcast correctly the message.
How have people gotten over the hump of their first plateau regarding gaining subscribers? I may eventually look to go with paid subscriptions but for the time being I just want to continue to grow my audience. I got about seventy subscribers rather quickly and though a few are added each week or so, it has leveled off considerably. For someone looking to just grow their audience and remain free for a while, what can people recommend for growing their audience once their growth has slowed somewhat? Thanks to anyone who may have some advice on this.
I would like to be able to change the currency and set the minimum amount for a paid tier on Substack as, for someone who lives in Brazil, US$5 minimum is way too much to get it started. Do you have any plans on doing that?
After one year, I finally had a paid subscriber dispute a subscription claiming they did not recognize the charge. I am a local journalist who knows many of my subscribers, and I write a personal thank you to each person who steps up and pays me. I got a notification from Stripe of this Saturday morning, and I provided evidence that the person is an active reader, as well as my correspondence. Unfortunately, I lost the dispute.
I've written to this person once to ask what happened, as they did not respond. They are also continuing to read the newsletter, as I can track their activity. Most of my content is free, but subscribers know that they are paying me to do my work. I'm still waiting to hear from him.
My question to other writers: If this has happened to you, how did you resolve it? Did you ban the person, or revoke their free subscription? I'm trying to figure if I should shrug this off, or some up with a better way to win the disputes.
Yes. I had one dispute, which I won and got refunded by Stripe the charge. The subscriber in question was older and my belief is she has dementia. It was a monthly charge, and she had been billed twice. The first she disputed, and the second was refunded by me before it got to that. I then cancelled her subscription.
I have had 1 dispute in 18 months. The guy meant to cancel but for some reason he raised it with his credit card company. Aggravating. I would have refunded him if he had just asked. Now I had to pay a $20-30 dispute fee in addition to losing his subscription revenue. I chose not to dispute it -- wasn't worth the time or aggravation, and I read I would probably lose anyway. It's very rare. I emailed him and he said he didn't realize that I would have to pay a fee.
I went through the process to see what would happen, and was disappointed to lose but it wasn't unexpected. Now I have to remember to convert his membership back to free. I'm just about to post a premium piece, and he didn't pay for it! :)
To grow your free list, the highest leverage things you can do are publishing good content consistently and making your work easy for potential readers to find.
Here, we list some tactics for doing that:
Make Substack your primary landing page: Linking to your Substack from your social media bios and including Substack's subscribe embed on your website (https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041759232-Can-I-embed-a-signup-form-for-my-publication-) will drive more potential readers to your page. This improves your Substack’s SEO (which is largely based on number of links) and helps ensure that your fans can subscribe to your work directly rather than having to remember to visit your website or see your social media posts.
Write a strong one-line description: Your one-line description should demonstrate the concrete value of reading your newsletter. Ideally, it should imply both the intended audience and intended purpose, so someone can quickly identify themselves as a target reader. Two great examples of one-liners are Technically and Kosmic Cooking Club. Read more tips for your one-liner in our guide here https://on.substack.com/p/how-to-polish-your-publications-about.
Use calls to action in your posts: In every post, you should use buttons and email headers and footers to ask readers to sign up, become a paying subscriber, comment, or forward your emails to their friends. Ted Gioia does a great job of highlighting his subscribe button and publication description here https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/notes-on-my-pandemic-reading.
Celebrate and share testimonials: Collect and re-share quotes when your readers celebrate your newsletter. This might mean asking for permission to use quotes from readers who email you a compliment directly or it may be re-sharing (and saving) public tweets from people talking about your newsletter on Twitter. These testimonials can be shared with readers in the writer's About page and can be highlighted at launch moments, ahead of special offers, and at key milestones in the publication's journey.
Conduct targeted outreach to the press and community leaders. Whether in advance of your publication launch, breaking news, or a big story, you can create your own “press list” of journalists and influencers (in your industry, locality, or community) to reach out to for promotion. This can include both people you know personally and cold outreach. This encourages other influential writers and leaders to share and/or cite your work, as Edwin Dorsey explains here https://on.substack.com/p/going-paid-the-bear-cave. You can even offer to give these people comped paid subscriptions to your newsletter.
Publish interviews or community spotlights to “borrow” other people’s audiences. For example, Delia Cai writes about growing her list by interviewing media figures like Ann Friedman, and Chinese Storytellers published a spotlight interview with reporter Karen Hao. These can be effective because your interviewee is likely to reshare your newsletter post to their audience as well.
Improve your publication tags: For Substack’s current discovery features, broader tags are more useful than specific ones - especially if they fit in our featured categories list on Reader. I might try changing your tags to INSERT TAGS to increase the chance your publication is found.
Comment on other writers’ publications: Substack includes a link to your publication when you comment elsewhere. When you engage with and discuss with other writers (e.g. comments, threads), more of their readers will find your own work as well.
Include two sentences about the publication at the top of posts: You might consider publishing a few sentences about your publication at the top of free posts. It can be short and include a subscribe button. This way, new readers who find and love one post will know that your newsletter publishes more content. Here are examples: Byrne Hobart, The Diff example https://diff.substack.com/p/surfing-the-right-s-curve; Isaac Saul, Tangle example https://www.readtangle.com/p/new-rules-for-the-debate.
It would also be great to be able to set up a collective, where you pay one price and get access to multiple newsletters, and the money is split automatically between the creators involved.
I run my newsletter of LA Jewish news and features on two platforms, Substack and Mailchimp, and the issue with getting readers to become paid subscribers is largely the same: readers have grown accustomed to free content, and are extremely reluctant to pay for it. It seems that this core issue needs to be addressed editorially by the host both in their contacts with media and on the home site as well. Address this issue: Why is it important to support creators of content?
Writing is hard work. 20 years ago, the mainstream media of which I was a long and proud member believed the false meme, "information wants to be free." They gave away their content, and that was the end of the newspaper and magazine businesses. Gathering and reporting accurate, interesting, entertaining information is still necessary, and that costs money. I am still working on the very delicate wording I will use when I start to ask for some subscribers to pay after Labor Day. Until then, I try to write well enough often enough so that my subscribers get used to the great value being provided.
Thanks for these Bailey. I especially like the truehoop, and starting with real tributes from people who are fans. Remember to get approval form anyone quoted for these testimonials.
Our existence bets on the belief that people are willing to pay for writing! And that making a living as an independent writer is do-able through a subscription driven model. Unlike ads, you only need ~1000 people to pay you to make a full time living as a writer. Most of our comms and investments are aimed at helping change this narrative. Here's a good place to start - https://on.substack.com/p/breaking-off-the-engagement
I'm trying to figure out how to manage multiple publications on Substack and it's been a little hit and miss. Is there a resource that covers this? I didn't want to create separate accounts and emails for each one so I created another publication under my existing account. But it seems very hard to switch between them and manage it. Maybe this isn't how you're supposed to do it? I just want to follow best practices here.
What I've found easiest Kris is to skip trying to switch in the Writer's Dashboard or My Account at all; just go straight to the URL of the publication you want to work on as if you were going to read it. Then when you click on the Dashboard button at the top you should always be working on the right publication. At least that's been my experience so far.
I hear you Kris. I don't think we make managing two dramatically different publications easy. If you'd like to learn more about sections in the interim, however, here's some info: https://on.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-publication-sections
I'd like to know more about the options, too. I'm getting ready to launch my second newsletter. It's completely different from the 1st one. Now I'm wondering if I should add it under my same email and existing account, or use a separate email/account. Would love to get advice from Bailey and the team.
The high level summary is: writers own their content and their mailing lists. It's free to sign up and start publishing. If you turn on paid subscriptions, Substack's fee is 10%.
I just signed up for Scott Snyder's list and got an email that said "Confirm your Subscription". That is the double opt in I am talking about. It was separate from the welcome message.
Big question that has been popping up a lot lately: How do you explain substack to prospective followers? (Authors please also weigh in if you have an answer to this.)
I love substack. I get the idea behind substack. I've found a lot of people are confused when they click the link I give them to my newsletter, and land on the welcome page. "What is this? Do I need to subscribe? Is it BETTER to subscribe? etc.
I think this one will go away as this model continues to gain prominence. But meantime; I feel like I'm finding myself having to explain the platform as a whole to a lot of prospective readers.
I also wrote an essay about the democratization of the art space via Substack and Patreon, which might seed some thoughts. Art for the People, By the People is why I love it here: https://ashasanaker.substack.com/p/cooperatively-yours
I make my Substack link available in my bio of all my social platforms, my email signature, and on my main website as "follow me at storycauldron.substack.com" and leave it at that. If someone asks, I tell them my free newsletter is about storytelling and I also have my newest fiction available for a paid subscription. That seems to be sufficient.
I just signed up for a paid subscription to The Common Place. I think she does a great job in her About essay explaining subscriptions, both free and paid, and why someone might choose paid. Check it out! https://thecommon.place/about
^That's certainly true. I see that Facebook and Twitter are trying to do this, but I would never trust either of those companies holding the keys to my business. Substack's transparency, independent spirit, and care for its writers is what brought me here.
Hi! 👋🏼 Its the email that goes in your RSS feed that apps like Spotify use to confirm who owns the feed. It defaults to your publication's email, but you'll want to update to a personal one it if you choose to disallow people from contacting you at your Substack email. Let me know if that helps clear things up!
A few Q's (would love advice from other writers too!):
--What is the best way to encourage readers to comment? I can tell a healthy percentage of my readers are opening my email, but I would love to get them engaged!
--Is there any easy find other Substack writers in my same area? I write book reviews, so I imagine there are plenty of other people with similar substacks. I've found a few reading through threads like this, but I'm eager to read more!
Unfortunately I don't think there's any easy way to find similar newsletters - you can try searching key words on the Substack home page, or in Google search *your key words* +substack.com - and you can join the Substack Discord channel and find people in there: https://discord.gg/3NG4DjzG
I touched on this in another question, but is there a way to improve your positioning in the results when you search substack for newsletters? Or is this planned for the future still?
Since I see this wasn't answered, I will ask again. Are you working on the ability to embed a pdf that can't be downloaded? I have a library of books I would like to make available, but I don't want them to be able to have them on their device.
Here's my current suggestion of the week for developers. I'd love to have an option to "view" my paid posts as a free subscriber. Where exactly does the line fall for what they can see and what they can't? I often post links in mine that I want to be exclusively for paid subscribers, so I try to add verbiage at the top to push those links below the free preview line. But I'm not really sure exactly how many lines of text I need to get below that line.
Also, I've seen someone post in the past but would suggest again, it would be great to be able to specifically set the line between what free readers can view and what is for paid subscribers only. I think that would address someone's comment on here about having a truncated post for free subscribers and a full post for paid subscribers within the same post.
Right now, the free preview of a paid post is a certain number of lines, like 6 or 8? I haven't counted. But it's not really that many, and not enough to really get any true content. What I'm talking about would allow you to set how much the free subscriber sees of a paid post. Could they see 25% of the post? 50% of the post? The writer gets to decide, not Substack.
(I know this is late in the day so you may not see this, but I wanted to add...) If you enable the author to set the line for what part of a post the free subscribers see vs. what paid subscribers see, then my need for viewing the post as a free subscriber goes away. And having more control over what a free vs. paid subscriber sees would have much greater functionality than viewing the post as a free subscriber.
Also, I would add that the writer should be able to place specifically on the post where that line would be (rather than just setting a percentage, which might be hard to write to specifically).
Hi Karen! I believe if you log out, or open your publication link in an "incognito" browser tab (one where you aren't logged into Substack) you would see the posts the way a free writer sees them. Have you tried that?
That might work if it's already published, but I'm wanting to view posts before they are published so I know how much "before" content to add in the preview vs. the part I want to be paid.
Just remembered I had another question/request - it would be great if we could push content to paid subscribers so they get it, say, a day or two before free subscribers do - I think that would be a great asset for us fiction writers
Could you use the scheduling option for this? Make a post for paid subscribers only, schedule it to go out on Monday. Once it is published, change the settings to everyone and set it to update/send an email to everyone on Wednesday. Maybe that would work? Not sure if paid subscribers would get two emails though...
Once a newsletter is published I don't believe you can send it out as second email. I ran into this problem because I had set up my paid newsletter wrong, so no one was getting my posts, and there was no way I could resend them - I had to create a whole new section with the correct settings and then republish them.
So I just went into my settings for a paid post, and it looks like you can't schedule a second email of the same post that has already had an email sent. So maybe my idea wouldn't work so well. Sigh. Maybe a good feature to add? Allow additional emails to be send for a post.
Along those lines, a way to better explain to potential subscribers how hitting free means “signing up” and that’s great. Like separate out paid subscribers and signing up for newsletter. The free sign ups will get a gazillion asks for be paid subscribers later but would help get just the emails better if they didn’t think they hit a pay wall and leave the page.
Hello all. I do have a question about going paid: my long term goal is to make a living from my freelance writing one way or another and hope to rely heavily on Substack for that income; however, I would love (and kinda need) to earn some short-term money, however small, from my Substack. Keep in mind that I have not sent out a newsletter yet, but intend to start publishing within the next month. I'm holding off just a bit because I want to make sure I am in a good position to write regularly and not miss any of my own publishing deadlines, plus I want to learn more. So what I have done so far is to activate my Stripe acount so that anyone who wants to support my work at any time can do so, but all of my content will remain free until such time as I build an eager readership. Just wondered what the Substack team and anyone else here thought of that approach. Thanks!
I think you're on the right track. You might explain in your first newsletter and your "About" page what your intentions are moving forward - e.g. you plan to publish a weekly free newsletter and then after X time start offering a paid option that offers additional content. You will then be transparent about your intentions to your new subscribers and set expectations (and anticipation!) for your fans. :)
Have all of the subscriptions in one screen, be able to send push notifications to people who have free/paid depending on what they have when new content is available, be able to search through archives.
I especially want to be able to have all of my books and attachments in one place for people to easily access instead of having to scroll through or search.
Thanks for everything you do, Substack! I would like to suggest a better breakdown in the Stats section. It's so general right now I can't get a handle on which pieces work better than others and get better readership. Or which days of the week draw more readers, etc.
I know it would be a big job but the more info we can draw about our stories, the better. Thanks.
Awesome. I can share this information with our team if you share some of the exact problems you would like the stats page to help with. Please feel free to spell as many of those out in this thread as you have in your mind and I'll pass them along!
If you have access to a Medium Stats page I can't think of a better example. If not, I'd be willing to share mine privately. You can write me at ramonagriggwriter at gmail dot com.
Time of day open would help to figure out when is the best time to send it. Also some way to see why the visit numbers are sometimes five times the subscribers. Figure out what they are doing and how that happens
Yes. This is so odd. I have literally seen my mom listed as opening my email nearly 200 times. And though my mom loves me, she doesn't love me that much. ;) I'd love to know how those things happen.
I would love an average of percentage of opens that's constantly updating. I copied and pasted all of my stats into a Google spreadsheet to do the math as of right now, but that's cumbersome. It was a higher average than I was expecting, though, so woot!
Yes, exactly! I find it's easier to think about moving my average up than worrying about the open rate for every single post. Reducing anxiety; it's a thing.
Hello everyone, I'm Rachel, I write The Links which is a soap opera - serialised fiction in 3 minutes, 3 times a week. I'm interested in doing cross-promotion/guest posts etc at the moment - my readers lean female/urban and interested in books/TV/podcasts/pop culture - if anyone has a newsletter they think would be a good fit for cross-promotion or a guest post, please let me know! I'm setting up a series of guests posts for The Links so if anyone's interested, again, let me know! email: thelinks@substack.com
My question for Office Hours is that I've seen some Substacks where hyperlinks are coloured to match the theme colour - but I don't seem to have that option, is it some kind of hack?
Under Publication Details (the gray box toward the bottom) there is a checkbox for Enable Colored Links. Click that to be on and you should have colored hyperlinks.
I just tried that and it doesn't seem to give me the option - I can change the background and accent colours but there's no option for hyperlink colour.
We write about end of life and caregiving conundrums, if this interests anyone. Our focus is on courageous conversations and we are wondering……Instagram or Twitter?
Does Substack offer any help for writers who don't have a social media following? Are there any tools to help your posts reach an audience? If I were to post an article for free, how would that get any traction potentially if I didn't already have a following somewhere else? Thank you!
There is word going around that twitter helps in the largest conversions. But now the question is, what is your reader demographics and do they engage a regularly in twitter?
Good to hear. I have a small following on Twitter that I have been building since March. I use the hashtag, #CrimeandPunishment with my Tweets when appropriate, and both my Twitter account and my Substack are linked to my Twitter account.
You certainly may ask, and thank you for doing so! My Substack is about the intersection of poverty ( and those clinging to the middle class), race and the environment. There is a good case to be made that the combination of both our culture and our laws have been strong forces in creating the unsustainable economic disparity we now have in our country. If you have a minute, take a look at my landing page and about page and let me know what you think…Thanks!
It sounds like a brilliant substack newsletter Joan. The landing page also look neat. I wish I could read a few pieces before I decide to subscribe. I see all your posts are paid?
I'm a content development consultant for a high profile non-profit related to the future of work/education space. I'm new to Substack and wondering where to get started. This non-profit has a large list of contacts from website and social media traffic.
Am I seriously limiting how many paid subscribers I will get by only posting once every two weeks and by keeping most of my content free? Should I reconsider these if I hope to make an income from my Substack?
I don't think it's an absolute rule, no! Cheryl Strayed only posted 4x a year for a while, and was very transparent about it. That said, the more you write the more likely your work is to be shared, as a general rule. If you are worried about writing frequently enough, consider varying the types of posts that you publish. For example, you can publish one essay per week and supplement it with a discussion thread, podcast, or link roundup for paid subscribers.
When I heard about her success—I read her bio on Substack and elsewhere. She may not have been a famoua journalist, but she has a hefty educational background and is currently a history prof at Boston College, I believe. That helps!
The audio episode feature is excellent, thanks for reminding me of it. I seem to recall an announcement, but didn't look into it. My newsletter is a blog of poems, one a week, and often I'd rather be speaking the poems out (to help readers), I will definitely go back to some of my older posts and publish them as audio recordings.
One question I have regards specific formats when styling. Since the only real content on my posts is a poem with line breaks, I'm stuck having to deal with paragraph breaks instead: the line height spacing is egregious. I've gotten around this by taking screenshots of a finished poem and uploading it as an image. Is there anything in development to tackle custom CSS in the email formatting?
Sweet! That's excellent. I would still love to have a little more control of the line height: preserve whitespace is may a little too close. Still, it's really good to have that option. Thanks, Elizabeth!
I love the new embed post feature. But it is so big that a reader doesn’t know to keep scrolling on a phone to see there’s more text after it. Can it be made smaller or a rectangle instead of a square ? Also is the text inside the box the beginning of the post or can that be adjusted to maybe just be controlled the way we want it like the social media box ?
Another UX problem. When a free subscriber opens a promotion link, the list of benefits doesn't appear. (This is when the Founding member plan is off). I believe the benefits should always be there.
I just finished and recorded a Zoom interview with a well-known musician for my Substack. I am thinking about using some selected video/audio from the interview, though I don't plan to podcast it. My Substack is about writing first. But looking for suggestions from the team for tools to integrate some video into the article when it runs. Thanks!
Hi Wayne! We don't have native video uploads now (maybe someday soon :) so the best option is to post embeds to YouTube/ Vimeo, and upload your videos there for now.
Thanks Bailey, that sounds doable if I decide to do that. At least I've got some good pictures and musical links to post, and again, for me, Substack is a writing medium first and foremost.
A have spotted an UX problem. When a free subscriber clicks on a .........../subscribe link they should go to the page with the paying options (Choose a subscription plan). But very often the free subscriber isn't logged in their account and is therefore redirected to the welcome page. This also happens with promotion links, too. It would be better if for logged out free subscribers these links go to the page with the paying options (Choose a subscription plan) with an additional "Enter your email" field.
I've had this issue with multiple subscribers too. I've reported it a few times to substack, so I'm hoping it's on their list of things to improve.
Your biggest fans will contact you and try again and again and figure it out, but people who are a little more marginal and want to subscribe, but not at all cost may just be confused by this, turn around and just not sub at all, which is a shame.
If a reader has decided to turn paid, they will find the way. It is only problematic for those who want simply to check out the prices and the benefits.
I include a *LOT* of links in my posts--especially to performances of music. The click rate is very low. How accurate are the numbers provided in the Substack dashboard? If the numbers are a lot lower than I expect, what does that mean?
Hyperlinks. The links are to performances of music repertoire, which is the whole point of Drop the Needle. I am encouraging readers to listen to the music. If the click rate is accurate, then my content is failing miserably.
In my own newsletter, I've noticed that text hyperlinks don't get clicked as often as embedded YouTube videos. I have to admit that as a reader, I don't often click links either... Is there a way to embed spotify player links or such in your newsletter? My stats are showing embeds are the only reliable clicks.
Thanks. Perhaps I should clarify since I'm being a little sloppy with the terminology. I have lots of both embedded *AND* hyperlinks in the content. I'd agree with you that links to the shiny Spotify and YouTube content gets clicked on much more than the underlined, hyperlinked text.
When I click on my own articles when logged into my Substack account, I wish Substack would recognize me as author and not count my views among the total views.
Also, any SEO tips other than creating a good title, good URL, and other such basics?
Plus one on not counting author among total views! Also, Substack counts author in "email list" but calls the list without author, which is one fewer, "total email list" which is confusing.
As for SEO - here is the copy/pasted cheat sheet we have developed! It's long so please forgive any typos :)
Though SEO and reputation management are ongoing processes which require data analysis to guide optimization, there are a number of best practices when attempting to get a given page to rank for a given search term. This area is referred to as on-page optimization. Each of the elements below contributes to a pages on-page optimization.
Title Tag
One of the most important parts of on-page optimization is the page’s <title> tag, found in the <head> section of the HTML code. This field communicates the topic of the page in question to Google and other search engines. As such, if the Substack team wants certain pages to show up when a user searches for “Substack Newsletters”, “Create a newsletter”, or “Newsletter platform”, these words must be included in the title tag.
Of course, the exact text can be customized to ensure it reads well. Five Blocks can provide proposed texts for the Substack team to review as part of a larger program when the pages are closer to launch.
It is important to remember that even when the text is cut off, Google is still reading it and evaluating the content the same way. Therefore, wherever possible, we recommend placing the full organizations name in the title, even at the end of the story title where it will get cut off.
On-Page Text
Since search terms use text and it is difficult for machines to clearly understand images and videos, Google’s algorithm is based primarily on the quantity, quality, originality, and relevance of the text content on each page. To give pages the best chance of showing up for branded and unbranded terms, the targeted words must be used wherever possible in the text that users see on the page.
Please note that user experience comes first, so these tweaks should not be made if the resultant text reads unnaturally. Changes should only be implemented if the new text flows naturally.
Header Tags
In addition to regular on-page text, text found in prioritized header tags such as <h1>, <h2>, etc. are given a higher weight in Google’s algorithm. Descriptive headers should be used to separate sections of text, and the terms targeted should be part of these headers where possible.
Optimized Images
Google’s algorithm is much better at interpreting text than it is at interpreting images and videos. In order to increase the relevance of PR articles, any included images should be optimized for your focus keywords to ensure that Google fully understands their content. To do that, various aspects of the image should include these keywords:
• Image filename (not visible on page)
• Image “alt” text (not visible on page)
• Image “title” text (not visible on page)
• Image caption (where possible given page formatting – visible on page)
Here too, image optimization is not all or nothing. Each piece optimized in another advantage for the page.
1
Page URL
Though this is only a minor ranking factor, Google does give some preference to URLs that use the search term over those that do not. For example, assuming that all else is equal:
Meta Description
Like the title tag, the meta description appears in search results to let users know what to expect when they click. This field does not directly impact rankings, however an effective meta description can increase the number of clicks which these articles get. A good “click through rate” (CTR) sends a signal to Google that this result is of a higher quality than the results around it, and can lead the algorithm to place this result higher in the long run. Pages should have custom meta descriptions with compelling calls to action while staying under the approximately 155-character limit, above which the text may get cut off. Since this is not a direct ranking factor, this is an area that Substack can forgo the target keywords and focus on engaging content.
I've noticed that Substack articles don't seem to rank particularly well on Google (especially compared to Medium). I was wondering if your team has had any contact with Google to see if they can help boost our content.
I have tried office hours and get no help. Please help me. I deleted all my data and account and started over. My email for Substack is John@LogicallyCorrect.com . I have three posts Open Borders, Moral and Logically Correct Amnesty, and Hacker’s Modus Operandi. If I enter in my browser Substack.com then enter in the search box Voices or Greenwald I get Greenwald’s posts. No matter what I enter in that search box none of my stuff comes up. Please help me.
How can I get my writings to be found by people that have heard about Substack and try to find posts etc.? Any direction would be greatly appreciated.
John Piccolo
How do I place the subscribe button in a post?
Hi Jay. When you are writing your content, place your cursor at the beginning of the line where you want the Subscribe Button to appear. Above the content when you are writing your post in substack, you'll see the formatting bar (let's you choose Bold, Italics, etc. On the bar you will also see "Buttons". Click the arrow to the right of Buttons and then click on 'Subscribe Now'. This will place the subscribe button in your post.
ใช่ฉันต้องการเงินอย่างมากในตอนนี้ฉันเบื่อชีวิตลำบากแบบนี้เต็มทนแล้วชีวิตลูกจ้างทำงานไปวันแบบไร้อนาคต และไม่มีจุดหมายปลายทางเลย ทำไมคนที่จ่ายเงินฉันถึงได้ล่าช้านักรอมาหลายปีแล้วยังไม่เห็นวี่แววจะรีบจ่ายเงินให้ผมไวๆเลย
Hi Substack team, another one from me. Our number of email opens is way higher than our subscriber list. Could you also explain that metric?
Hey Substack team, very dumb question but I tried googling this without any luck. How can I increase the white space in between my paragraphs. They appear quite close together in the emails that get sent out.
Hello from The Wndering Journo in Australia! I produce the Streets of Your Town substack and podcast which I embed in the newsletter. Could you please do one of your workshops at a time that isn’t 2am for us down under types? Really keen to get your perspective on growing my audience in a country with significantly less population than the US.
There was a power shortage and I didn't get this until after the fact. So disappointed that I missed it. Also, I'm getting notifications just 20 minutes before each workshop. Not enough time to plan to be there. Not fair!
Hello again!
Another question that I have is to know if something is a good idea to send by email (multiple email) to my followers asking for que content, how they feel, what they could improve, surveys (you should let attach them)... I mean, interact with the followers to engage them.
Thanks
I write sans niche. My newsletter, White Noise (https://www.whitenoise.email/), covers books and behavior, psychology and philosophy, fiction and fact. What is the best way to grow and scale something that is so amorphous in its subject matter? I welcome any and all tips, conversations, and questions :). Thank you to Substack for providing this precious space!
Hello everybody. If you have read me in the introduction of all writers you ll know that I am Spanish (also my substack) and my english is not perfect, but I try my best.
First lesson was amazing and charged of very useful tips.
I run a finance substack making deep investment ideas and analysis about public companies and I am followed by thousands of users on twitter and substack. I know that I could start a payments substack just now, but I prefer to wait until I have a bigger audience, something between 5000-10000.
This is my doubt. How could I explain to my followers the change from free to paid and let them know the value of being paid?I want to make them know that the content is really good (I receive tons of emails congratulating my work) and they should pay. This is my biggest doubt, be able to broadcast correctly the message.
Thank you everybody from Spain.
How have people gotten over the hump of their first plateau regarding gaining subscribers? I may eventually look to go with paid subscriptions but for the time being I just want to continue to grow my audience. I got about seventy subscribers rather quickly and though a few are added each week or so, it has leveled off considerably. For someone looking to just grow their audience and remain free for a while, what can people recommend for growing their audience once their growth has slowed somewhat? Thanks to anyone who may have some advice on this.
I would like to be able to change the currency and set the minimum amount for a paid tier on Substack as, for someone who lives in Brazil, US$5 minimum is way too much to get it started. Do you have any plans on doing that?
Thank you for coming to Office Hours today!
It's so rad to see you jumping in and sharing insights with one another. And, many of you who keep showing up.
We'll be back. Same time, same place next week! In the meantime, our resources are here for you: https://substack.com/resources and support for more technical questions: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us
Happy writing,
Katie + Bailey
Yeahhhhhhhhhh
I would like to add an audio feed, I have a pretty good voice etc. How do I do that??
Scroll down to close to the end of this thread - there's a discussion on how to add a podcast, which is basically what you want.
Thanks Jackie!
After one year, I finally had a paid subscriber dispute a subscription claiming they did not recognize the charge. I am a local journalist who knows many of my subscribers, and I write a personal thank you to each person who steps up and pays me. I got a notification from Stripe of this Saturday morning, and I provided evidence that the person is an active reader, as well as my correspondence. Unfortunately, I lost the dispute.
I've written to this person once to ask what happened, as they did not respond. They are also continuing to read the newsletter, as I can track their activity. Most of my content is free, but subscribers know that they are paying me to do my work. I'm still waiting to hear from him.
My question to other writers: If this has happened to you, how did you resolve it? Did you ban the person, or revoke their free subscription? I'm trying to figure if I should shrug this off, or some up with a better way to win the disputes.
Yes. I had one dispute, which I won and got refunded by Stripe the charge. The subscriber in question was older and my belief is she has dementia. It was a monthly charge, and she had been billed twice. The first she disputed, and the second was refunded by me before it got to that. I then cancelled her subscription.
That's disturbing. Wonder if Substack will address this rather than leave us to resolve it individually?
I have had 1 dispute in 18 months. The guy meant to cancel but for some reason he raised it with his credit card company. Aggravating. I would have refunded him if he had just asked. Now I had to pay a $20-30 dispute fee in addition to losing his subscription revenue. I chose not to dispute it -- wasn't worth the time or aggravation, and I read I would probably lose anyway. It's very rare. I emailed him and he said he didn't realize that I would have to pay a fee.
I went through the process to see what would happen, and was disappointed to lose but it wasn't unexpected. Now I have to remember to convert his membership back to free. I'm just about to post a premium piece, and he didn't pay for it! :)
What are the best tactics to growing subscribers lists?
To grow your free list, the highest leverage things you can do are publishing good content consistently and making your work easy for potential readers to find.
Here, we list some tactics for doing that:
Make Substack your primary landing page: Linking to your Substack from your social media bios and including Substack's subscribe embed on your website (https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041759232-Can-I-embed-a-signup-form-for-my-publication-) will drive more potential readers to your page. This improves your Substack’s SEO (which is largely based on number of links) and helps ensure that your fans can subscribe to your work directly rather than having to remember to visit your website or see your social media posts.
Write a strong one-line description: Your one-line description should demonstrate the concrete value of reading your newsletter. Ideally, it should imply both the intended audience and intended purpose, so someone can quickly identify themselves as a target reader. Two great examples of one-liners are Technically and Kosmic Cooking Club. Read more tips for your one-liner in our guide here https://on.substack.com/p/how-to-polish-your-publications-about.
Use calls to action in your posts: In every post, you should use buttons and email headers and footers to ask readers to sign up, become a paying subscriber, comment, or forward your emails to their friends. Ted Gioia does a great job of highlighting his subscribe button and publication description here https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/notes-on-my-pandemic-reading.
Celebrate and share testimonials: Collect and re-share quotes when your readers celebrate your newsletter. This might mean asking for permission to use quotes from readers who email you a compliment directly or it may be re-sharing (and saving) public tweets from people talking about your newsletter on Twitter. These testimonials can be shared with readers in the writer's About page and can be highlighted at launch moments, ahead of special offers, and at key milestones in the publication's journey.
Conduct targeted outreach to the press and community leaders. Whether in advance of your publication launch, breaking news, or a big story, you can create your own “press list” of journalists and influencers (in your industry, locality, or community) to reach out to for promotion. This can include both people you know personally and cold outreach. This encourages other influential writers and leaders to share and/or cite your work, as Edwin Dorsey explains here https://on.substack.com/p/going-paid-the-bear-cave. You can even offer to give these people comped paid subscriptions to your newsletter.
Publish interviews or community spotlights to “borrow” other people’s audiences. For example, Delia Cai writes about growing her list by interviewing media figures like Ann Friedman, and Chinese Storytellers published a spotlight interview with reporter Karen Hao. These can be effective because your interviewee is likely to reshare your newsletter post to their audience as well.
Improve your publication tags: For Substack’s current discovery features, broader tags are more useful than specific ones - especially if they fit in our featured categories list on Reader. I might try changing your tags to INSERT TAGS to increase the chance your publication is found.
Comment on other writers’ publications: Substack includes a link to your publication when you comment elsewhere. When you engage with and discuss with other writers (e.g. comments, threads), more of their readers will find your own work as well.
Include two sentences about the publication at the top of posts: You might consider publishing a few sentences about your publication at the top of free posts. It can be short and include a subscribe button. This way, new readers who find and love one post will know that your newsletter publishes more content. Here are examples: Byrne Hobart, The Diff example https://diff.substack.com/p/surfing-the-right-s-curve; Isaac Saul, Tangle example https://www.readtangle.com/p/new-rules-for-the-debate.
Super helpful! Thanks Bailey!
Yes, very helpful—thank you.
It would also be great to be able to set up a collective, where you pay one price and get access to multiple newsletters, and the money is split automatically between the creators involved.
Are you working on any workflows that allow creators to send a series of emails to their new subscribers?
I believe you are describing "drip" emails? We don't have that functionality now, but it isn't off the table for the future, as far as I am aware!
I run my newsletter of LA Jewish news and features on two platforms, Substack and Mailchimp, and the issue with getting readers to become paid subscribers is largely the same: readers have grown accustomed to free content, and are extremely reluctant to pay for it. It seems that this core issue needs to be addressed editorially by the host both in their contacts with media and on the home site as well. Address this issue: Why is it important to support creators of content?
Writing is hard work. 20 years ago, the mainstream media of which I was a long and proud member believed the false meme, "information wants to be free." They gave away their content, and that was the end of the newspaper and magazine businesses. Gathering and reporting accurate, interesting, entertaining information is still necessary, and that costs money. I am still working on the very delicate wording I will use when I start to ask for some subscribers to pay after Labor Day. Until then, I try to write well enough often enough so that my subscribers get used to the great value being provided.
A lot of our most successful writers make explicit why subscribing matters to them, and why they are writing independent of ads. Here are some awesome examples - https://www.truehoop.com/about & https://virginiasolesmith.substack.com/about
Thanks for these Bailey. I especially like the truehoop, and starting with real tributes from people who are fans. Remember to get approval form anyone quoted for these testimonials.
Ok...but don’t dodge the question: what is Substack doing to address this issue?
Our existence bets on the belief that people are willing to pay for writing! And that making a living as an independent writer is do-able through a subscription driven model. Unlike ads, you only need ~1000 people to pay you to make a full time living as a writer. Most of our comms and investments are aimed at helping change this narrative. Here's a good place to start - https://on.substack.com/p/breaking-off-the-engagement
I'm trying to figure out how to manage multiple publications on Substack and it's been a little hit and miss. Is there a resource that covers this? I didn't want to create separate accounts and emails for each one so I created another publication under my existing account. But it seems very hard to switch between them and manage it. Maybe this isn't how you're supposed to do it? I just want to follow best practices here.
What I've found easiest Kris is to skip trying to switch in the Writer's Dashboard or My Account at all; just go straight to the URL of the publication you want to work on as if you were going to read it. Then when you click on the Dashboard button at the top you should always be working on the right publication. At least that's been my experience so far.
Your best bet is using Sections - I think there's an article on the Resources page about how to use them
I hear you Kris. I don't think we make managing two dramatically different publications easy. If you'd like to learn more about sections in the interim, however, here's some info: https://on.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-publication-sections
I'd like to know more about the options, too. I'm getting ready to launch my second newsletter. It's completely different from the 1st one. Now I'm wondering if I should add it under my same email and existing account, or use a separate email/account. Would love to get advice from Bailey and the team.
Thanks for the log in invitation.
Question. How does Substack work and what are the rules and obligations for each side of the agreement?
Or, hoe does one get this information?
The manifesto and other writings from our founders are a great way to learn more about us. https://on.substack.com/p/a-better-future-for-news
The high level summary is: writers own their content and their mailing lists. It's free to sign up and start publishing. If you turn on paid subscriptions, Substack's fee is 10%.
I have a 20,000 person mailing list. If I move this to substack will every one get a double opt in confirmation, or can I stop this from happening?
They won't get a double opt in! You get to decide if readers will get a "welcome" message or not. Here is more: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037829931-How-do-I-import-my-mailing-list-from-another-platform-such-as-TinyLetter-or-Mailchimp-
I just signed up for Scott Snyder's list and got an email that said "Confirm your Subscription". That is the double opt in I am talking about. It was separate from the welcome message.
If you like Scott Snyder, check out my substack as I was doing comics here on Substack before any of those guys made the jump.
I'm here to ask questions, not get marketed to.
Of course, rock on!
The double opt in is a setting you can change in your Settings/Publication Details page. If you don't want that, then just turn it off.
I believe that is because you are a new subscriber to his list. When you import existing subscribers, the flow is different.
I also have found for me that Instagram works somewhat for subscribers. A few here, a few there. @youtopianjourney. What is yours?
Big question that has been popping up a lot lately: How do you explain substack to prospective followers? (Authors please also weigh in if you have an answer to this.)
I love substack. I get the idea behind substack. I've found a lot of people are confused when they click the link I give them to my newsletter, and land on the welcome page. "What is this? Do I need to subscribe? Is it BETTER to subscribe? etc.
I think this one will go away as this model continues to gain prominence. But meantime; I feel like I'm finding myself having to explain the platform as a whole to a lot of prospective readers.
I also wrote an essay about the democratization of the art space via Substack and Patreon, which might seed some thoughts. Art for the People, By the People is why I love it here: https://ashasanaker.substack.com/p/cooperatively-yours
It's a beautiful piece of writing Asha, I happen to write a piece on art too - more about women and art. https://berkana.cc/p/check-out-todays-intense-discourse
Thanks—I just book marked your piece for later reading.
Thanks for checking it out! I hope it's helpful.
I make my Substack link available in my bio of all my social platforms, my email signature, and on my main website as "follow me at storycauldron.substack.com" and leave it at that. If someone asks, I tell them my free newsletter is about storytelling and I also have my newest fiction available for a paid subscription. That seems to be sufficient.
I just signed up for a paid subscription to The Common Place. I think she does a great job in her About essay explaining subscriptions, both free and paid, and why someone might choose paid. Check it out! https://thecommon.place/about
P.S. I think I followed your newsletter after a previous session and never got the chance to say I like your writing =)
Thank you!
Hi, I'm your newest subscriber. I just read "Sh*t To Help You Show Up" and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thank you so much, on both counts!
This is an argument unto itself that my about page probably needs some fine tuning. Thanks for the reccomendation!
I tell people Substack invented something that other giants are now attempted to replicate. It’s true. 🙌🏼
^That's certainly true. I see that Facebook and Twitter are trying to do this, but I would never trust either of those companies holding the keys to my business. Substack's transparency, independent spirit, and care for its writers is what brought me here.
I certainly agree!
Wow, thank you Cole. Sharing this with our team! You've described us the way we would dream to be described.
Happy to hear it - big thanks to you and the team for providing this space. Feel free to quote me on that if Substack ever needs testimonials :-)
This is why it’s the future
I find this as well, people don't get it.
One of my favorite ways to explain Substack is "A blog and a newsletter, all in one."
That's a great one!
I don't try to explain the platform. I just tell prospective readers that I write a newsletter on (subject), here's a link to check it out.
I've been shifting to try to do this more. I mostly get questions from people after they DO go check it out and run into the subscribe section
What does "RSS Email" mean in the settings and what could be done with it?
I still don't understand what this means exactly and had a blog for seven years and have also looked it up... duh on my part.
Hahaha, I tried doing some digging myself but I got nothing. However, I think the other comments are helpful
Hi! 👋🏼 Its the email that goes in your RSS feed that apps like Spotify use to confirm who owns the feed. It defaults to your publication's email, but you'll want to update to a personal one it if you choose to disallow people from contacting you at your Substack email. Let me know if that helps clear things up!
Yes, it helps thank you. But how do I access the email? The domain is @substack.com so how would I know if someone contacts me? Thanks
We forward any emails sent to that address to the email connected to your publication, so you'd see the email there
Oh great, thanks!
That's the newsletter feed. I use it on my Amazon author profile as my blog - so if you go to my page, you will see my Substack feed.
Oh wow, thank you.
A few Q's (would love advice from other writers too!):
--What is the best way to encourage readers to comment? I can tell a healthy percentage of my readers are opening my email, but I would love to get them engaged!
--Is there any easy find other Substack writers in my same area? I write book reviews, so I imagine there are plenty of other people with similar substacks. I've found a few reading through threads like this, but I'm eager to read more!
PS. I LOVE reply on Substack. Great idea!
Here at Stacksearch we quite enjoy our Similar Posts feature. For Book Notes, it looks like totebag.substack.com, eelreport.substack.com and simonsweetman.substack.com may be in your space! Check it out here: https://stacksear.ch/for/@booknotesblog
In terms of writers finding other writers, we don't have *great* tools for that now. One option is to use COMMAND + F and search through our shoutout threads - https://on.substack.com/p/shoutout-3/comments. And to also look at the reader profiles of writers you do know in this space, for example - https://substack.com/profile/807146-books-on-gif?utm_source=author-profile
Unfortunately I don't think there's any easy way to find similar newsletters - you can try searching key words on the Substack home page, or in Google search *your key words* +substack.com - and you can join the Substack Discord channel and find people in there: https://discord.gg/3NG4DjzG
Please cross check this discord link, unless I fat fingered it, it doesn’t work….
It seems to be working for me! Maybe try going to Discord and 'join a server' and then enter just the end part of the link (3NG4DjzG)?
I would love a discovery feature to help me - and the rest of the world! - find more newsletters.
+1 !
I touched on this in another question, but is there a way to improve your positioning in the results when you search substack for newsletters? Or is this planned for the future still?
I love how Valerie Monroe asks for comments/replies in her posts at the bottom - https://valeriemonroe.substack.com/p/mean-girl
Is this only a chat or Zoom too?
Only a "chat" - we are using the threads feature on Substack which is available to all writers, too!
Essentially Substack hosted by Substack. Nice touch.
We try to create as many inception experiences as possible
Since I see this wasn't answered, I will ask again. Are you working on the ability to embed a pdf that can't be downloaded? I have a library of books I would like to make available, but I don't want them to be able to have them on their device.
Hi there! Our team is aware of this feature request and has it on their roadmap. I'm hoping it will be out soon, though I can't give a firm date
Here's my current suggestion of the week for developers. I'd love to have an option to "view" my paid posts as a free subscriber. Where exactly does the line fall for what they can see and what they can't? I often post links in mine that I want to be exclusively for paid subscribers, so I try to add verbiage at the top to push those links below the free preview line. But I'm not really sure exactly how many lines of text I need to get below that line.
Also, I've seen someone post in the past but would suggest again, it would be great to be able to specifically set the line between what free readers can view and what is for paid subscribers only. I think that would address someone's comment on here about having a truncated post for free subscribers and a full post for paid subscribers within the same post.
In terms of "set the line" - could you tell me more there about what you'd want that's different than what exists now?
Right now, the free preview of a paid post is a certain number of lines, like 6 or 8? I haven't counted. But it's not really that many, and not enough to really get any true content. What I'm talking about would allow you to set how much the free subscriber sees of a paid post. Could they see 25% of the post? 50% of the post? The writer gets to decide, not Substack.
Aha I understand! This is an interesting piece of feedback. I will share it with the team.
(I know this is late in the day so you may not see this, but I wanted to add...) If you enable the author to set the line for what part of a post the free subscribers see vs. what paid subscribers see, then my need for viewing the post as a free subscriber goes away. And having more control over what a free vs. paid subscriber sees would have much greater functionality than viewing the post as a free subscriber.
Also, I would add that the writer should be able to place specifically on the post where that line would be (rather than just setting a percentage, which might be hard to write to specifically).
Hi Karen! I believe if you log out, or open your publication link in an "incognito" browser tab (one where you aren't logged into Substack) you would see the posts the way a free writer sees them. Have you tried that?
That might work if it's already published, but I'm wanting to view posts before they are published so I know how much "before" content to add in the preview vs. the part I want to be paid.
Just remembered I had another question/request - it would be great if we could push content to paid subscribers so they get it, say, a day or two before free subscribers do - I think that would be a great asset for us fiction writers
Could you use the scheduling option for this? Make a post for paid subscribers only, schedule it to go out on Monday. Once it is published, change the settings to everyone and set it to update/send an email to everyone on Wednesday. Maybe that would work? Not sure if paid subscribers would get two emails though...
Once a newsletter is published I don't believe you can send it out as second email. I ran into this problem because I had set up my paid newsletter wrong, so no one was getting my posts, and there was no way I could resend them - I had to create a whole new section with the correct settings and then republish them.
Thank you, that might work, I'll have to test it
So I just went into my settings for a paid post, and it looks like you can't schedule a second email of the same post that has already had an email sent. So maybe my idea wouldn't work so well. Sigh. Maybe a good feature to add? Allow additional emails to be send for a post.
Please change the free subcribe option from "None" to "Free." "None" is confusing in my opinion. "Free" is easy to understand. Thanks.
Along those lines, a way to better explain to potential subscribers how hitting free means “signing up” and that’s great. Like separate out paid subscribers and signing up for newsletter. The free sign ups will get a gazillion asks for be paid subscribers later but would help get just the emails better if they didn’t think they hit a pay wall and leave the page.
+1
Solid feedback! I'll share with the team.
Thanks.
Hello all. I do have a question about going paid: my long term goal is to make a living from my freelance writing one way or another and hope to rely heavily on Substack for that income; however, I would love (and kinda need) to earn some short-term money, however small, from my Substack. Keep in mind that I have not sent out a newsletter yet, but intend to start publishing within the next month. I'm holding off just a bit because I want to make sure I am in a good position to write regularly and not miss any of my own publishing deadlines, plus I want to learn more. So what I have done so far is to activate my Stripe acount so that anyone who wants to support my work at any time can do so, but all of my content will remain free until such time as I build an eager readership. Just wondered what the Substack team and anyone else here thought of that approach. Thanks!
Any thoughts on this question from the Substack team? Thanks!
I think you're on the right track. You might explain in your first newsletter and your "About" page what your intentions are moving forward - e.g. you plan to publish a weekly free newsletter and then after X time start offering a paid option that offers additional content. You will then be transparent about your intentions to your new subscribers and set expectations (and anticipation!) for your fans. :)
Thanks for that advice!
Are you developing an ios/android app?
Tell me more: what would you want to see it do?
Hey Bailey! Atleast a handy app for writers with basic metrics and analytics would be great!
Have all of the subscriptions in one screen, be able to send push notifications to people who have free/paid depending on what they have when new content is available, be able to search through archives.
I especially want to be able to have all of my books and attachments in one place for people to easily access instead of having to scroll through or search.
Thanks for everything you do, Substack! I would like to suggest a better breakdown in the Stats section. It's so general right now I can't get a handle on which pieces work better than others and get better readership. Or which days of the week draw more readers, etc.
I know it would be a big job but the more info we can draw about our stories, the better. Thanks.
Awesome. I can share this information with our team if you share some of the exact problems you would like the stats page to help with. Please feel free to spell as many of those out in this thread as you have in your mind and I'll pass them along!
If you have access to a Medium Stats page I can't think of a better example. If not, I'd be willing to share mine privately. You can write me at ramonagriggwriter at gmail dot com.
Time of day open would help to figure out when is the best time to send it. Also some way to see why the visit numbers are sometimes five times the subscribers. Figure out what they are doing and how that happens
Yes. This is so odd. I have literally seen my mom listed as opening my email nearly 200 times. And though my mom loves me, she doesn't love me that much. ;) I'd love to know how those things happen.
I would love an average of percentage of opens that's constantly updating. I copied and pasted all of my stats into a Google spreadsheet to do the math as of right now, but that's cumbersome. It was a higher average than I was expecting, though, so woot!
Meaning a single number that demonstrates your average open rate across posts?
Yes, exactly! I find it's easier to think about moving my average up than worrying about the open rate for every single post. Reducing anxiety; it's a thing.
Hello everyone, I'm Rachel, I write The Links which is a soap opera - serialised fiction in 3 minutes, 3 times a week. I'm interested in doing cross-promotion/guest posts etc at the moment - my readers lean female/urban and interested in books/TV/podcasts/pop culture - if anyone has a newsletter they think would be a good fit for cross-promotion or a guest post, please let me know! I'm setting up a series of guests posts for The Links so if anyone's interested, again, let me know! email: thelinks@substack.com
My question for Office Hours is that I've seen some Substacks where hyperlinks are coloured to match the theme colour - but I don't seem to have that option, is it some kind of hack?
Under Publication Details (the gray box toward the bottom) there is a checkbox for Enable Colored Links. Click that to be on and you should have colored hyperlinks.
Thank you - you're solving all my problems today 😀
Tell me more. I write YouTopian Journey.
Hi! Go to Settings, then scrolls down to "editor your publication theme" and you can make choices there!
Thank you Meredith :)
I just tried that and it doesn't seem to give me the option - I can change the background and accent colours but there's no option for hyperlink colour.
Oh thank you!
We write about end of life and caregiving conundrums, if this interests anyone. Our focus is on courageous conversations and we are wondering……Instagram or Twitter?
Does Substack offer any help for writers who don't have a social media following? Are there any tools to help your posts reach an audience? If I were to post an article for free, how would that get any traction potentially if I didn't already have a following somewhere else? Thank you!
There is word going around that twitter helps in the largest conversions. But now the question is, what is your reader demographics and do they engage a regularly in twitter?
We do have a lot of interviews and resources available from writers who have succeeded on Substack without having a pre-existing following. I recommend reading through those: https://on.substack.com/p/going-paid-the-bear-cave, https://on.substack.com/p/how-petition-grew-their-newsletter, https://on.substack.com/p/how-lenny-rachitsky-earned-65000
(Many of our top writers didn't come in with a pre-existing following!!)
Thanks much for the info
Thank you! I'll check it out!
Good to hear. I have a small following on Twitter that I have been building since March. I use the hashtag, #CrimeandPunishment with my Tweets when appropriate, and both my Twitter account and my Substack are linked to my Twitter account.
And is your base growing using this strategy!?
Sounds amazing Joan, what is your substack about if I may ask?
You certainly may ask, and thank you for doing so! My Substack is about the intersection of poverty ( and those clinging to the middle class), race and the environment. There is a good case to be made that the combination of both our culture and our laws have been strong forces in creating the unsustainable economic disparity we now have in our country. If you have a minute, take a look at my landing page and about page and let me know what you think…Thanks!
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It sounds like a brilliant substack newsletter Joan. The landing page also look neat. I wish I could read a few pieces before I decide to subscribe. I see all your posts are paid?
I am very glad that the share icon has been changed. Good job 👍
I'm a content development consultant for a high profile non-profit related to the future of work/education space. I'm new to Substack and wondering where to get started. This non-profit has a large list of contacts from website and social media traffic.
Here are two foundational resources for you: https://on.substack.com/p/setting-up-your-substack-for-the + https://on.substack.com/p/getting-your-first-100-signups
Am I seriously limiting how many paid subscribers I will get by only posting once every two weeks and by keeping most of my content free? Should I reconsider these if I hope to make an income from my Substack?
I don't think it's an absolute rule, no! Cheryl Strayed only posted 4x a year for a while, and was very transparent about it. That said, the more you write the more likely your work is to be shared, as a general rule. If you are worried about writing frequently enough, consider varying the types of posts that you publish. For example, you can publish one essay per week and supplement it with a discussion thread, podcast, or link roundup for paid subscribers.
Thanks, Bailey! I'm trying to figure out way to foster more of a 'community' around my newsletter so it's less one-sided. This really helps!
My non-educated guess is that developing that community is pretty darn important...and I believe I read that somewhere on Substack, too.
Heather Cox Richardson, the top writer on Substack, offers only community threads to paid subscribers as a value add. They are a huge hit. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/?sort=community
When I heard about her success—I read her bio on Substack and elsewhere. She may not have been a famoua journalist, but she has a hefty educational background and is currently a history prof at Boston College, I believe. That helps!
The audio episode feature is excellent, thanks for reminding me of it. I seem to recall an announcement, but didn't look into it. My newsletter is a blog of poems, one a week, and often I'd rather be speaking the poems out (to help readers), I will definitely go back to some of my older posts and publish them as audio recordings.
One question I have regards specific formats when styling. Since the only real content on my posts is a poem with line breaks, I'm stuck having to deal with paragraph breaks instead: the line height spacing is egregious. I've gotten around this by taking screenshots of a finished poem and uploading it as an image. Is there anything in development to tackle custom CSS in the email formatting?
If you use the Style -> Preserve whitespace option, you can format your linebreaks the way you want them.
Sweet! That's excellent. I would still love to have a little more control of the line height: preserve whitespace is may a little too close. Still, it's really good to have that option. Thanks, Elizabeth!
You're welcome! I was running into the same problem.
I love the new embed post feature. But it is so big that a reader doesn’t know to keep scrolling on a phone to see there’s more text after it. Can it be made smaller or a rectangle instead of a square ? Also is the text inside the box the beginning of the post or can that be adjusted to maybe just be controlled the way we want it like the social media box ?
Great feedback. I'll share this with our designers.
If your post starts with an image and the image has a caption, the caption goes into the embed. Perhaps, you can make it to skip captions?
Another UX problem. When a free subscriber opens a promotion link, the list of benefits doesn't appear. (This is when the Founding member plan is off). I believe the benefits should always be there.
I just finished and recorded a Zoom interview with a well-known musician for my Substack. I am thinking about using some selected video/audio from the interview, though I don't plan to podcast it. My Substack is about writing first. But looking for suggestions from the team for tools to integrate some video into the article when it runs. Thanks!
Hi Wayne! We don't have native video uploads now (maybe someday soon :) so the best option is to post embeds to YouTube/ Vimeo, and upload your videos there for now.
Thanks Bailey, that sounds doable if I decide to do that. At least I've got some good pictures and musical links to post, and again, for me, Substack is a writing medium first and foremost.
Are unsubscribed list only the ones who leave a comment or all off them? Sometimes I see a small dip in that revenue chart but can’t figure out why.
The open rate vs the views makes no sense to me. Open rate could be like 40% and then views are five times the subscribers. How does that happen?
It can happen if people have visited your post by using the direct link!
A have spotted an UX problem. When a free subscriber clicks on a .........../subscribe link they should go to the page with the paying options (Choose a subscription plan). But very often the free subscriber isn't logged in their account and is therefore redirected to the welcome page. This also happens with promotion links, too. It would be better if for logged out free subscribers these links go to the page with the paying options (Choose a subscription plan) with an additional "Enter your email" field.
I've had this issue with multiple subscribers too. I've reported it a few times to substack, so I'm hoping it's on their list of things to improve.
Your biggest fans will contact you and try again and again and figure it out, but people who are a little more marginal and want to subscribe, but not at all cost may just be confused by this, turn around and just not sub at all, which is a shame.
If a reader has decided to turn paid, they will find the way. It is only problematic for those who want simply to check out the prices and the benefits.
I'll share this with our team. Our logged in / logged out stages can be problematic, sorry!
Is it common to have lower open rates if you write a daily newsletter vs. once a week, or should it not matter?
That seems intuitive to me. Let me see if we can get you any additional insight on this from our data team.
That would be great, thanks!
Wondering this as well
I include a *LOT* of links in my posts--especially to performances of music. The click rate is very low. How accurate are the numbers provided in the Substack dashboard? If the numbers are a lot lower than I expect, what does that mean?
Hey David! What I do is I shorten the links using bit.ly so that I have better idea of links that I have to track or do analysis
Thanks. Links to YouTube and Spotify are pretty obvious. Or perhaps I don't understand?
If you use bit.ly they provide their own stats, which are very accurate.
Great question. How do you do these links? Embeds? Hyperlinks of text? And: what are your goals with click throughs?
Hyperlinks. The links are to performances of music repertoire, which is the whole point of Drop the Needle. I am encouraging readers to listen to the music. If the click rate is accurate, then my content is failing miserably.
In my own newsletter, I've noticed that text hyperlinks don't get clicked as often as embedded YouTube videos. I have to admit that as a reader, I don't often click links either... Is there a way to embed spotify player links or such in your newsletter? My stats are showing embeds are the only reliable clicks.
Thanks. Perhaps I should clarify since I'm being a little sloppy with the terminology. I have lots of both embedded *AND* hyperlinks in the content. I'd agree with you that links to the shiny Spotify and YouTube content gets clicked on much more than the underlined, hyperlinked text.
When I click on my own articles when logged into my Substack account, I wish Substack would recognize me as author and not count my views among the total views.
Also, any SEO tips other than creating a good title, good URL, and other such basics?
Plus one on not counting author among total views! Also, Substack counts author in "email list" but calls the list without author, which is one fewer, "total email list" which is confusing.
As for SEO - here is the copy/pasted cheat sheet we have developed! It's long so please forgive any typos :)
Though SEO and reputation management are ongoing processes which require data analysis to guide optimization, there are a number of best practices when attempting to get a given page to rank for a given search term. This area is referred to as on-page optimization. Each of the elements below contributes to a pages on-page optimization.
Title Tag
One of the most important parts of on-page optimization is the page’s <title> tag, found in the <head> section of the HTML code. This field communicates the topic of the page in question to Google and other search engines. As such, if the Substack team wants certain pages to show up when a user searches for “Substack Newsletters”, “Create a newsletter”, or “Newsletter platform”, these words must be included in the title tag.
Of course, the exact text can be customized to ensure it reads well. Five Blocks can provide proposed texts for the Substack team to review as part of a larger program when the pages are closer to launch.
It is important to remember that even when the text is cut off, Google is still reading it and evaluating the content the same way. Therefore, wherever possible, we recommend placing the full organizations name in the title, even at the end of the story title where it will get cut off.
On-Page Text
Since search terms use text and it is difficult for machines to clearly understand images and videos, Google’s algorithm is based primarily on the quantity, quality, originality, and relevance of the text content on each page. To give pages the best chance of showing up for branded and unbranded terms, the targeted words must be used wherever possible in the text that users see on the page.
Please note that user experience comes first, so these tweaks should not be made if the resultant text reads unnaturally. Changes should only be implemented if the new text flows naturally.
Header Tags
In addition to regular on-page text, text found in prioritized header tags such as <h1>, <h2>, etc. are given a higher weight in Google’s algorithm. Descriptive headers should be used to separate sections of text, and the terms targeted should be part of these headers where possible.
Optimized Images
Google’s algorithm is much better at interpreting text than it is at interpreting images and videos. In order to increase the relevance of PR articles, any included images should be optimized for your focus keywords to ensure that Google fully understands their content. To do that, various aspects of the image should include these keywords:
• Image filename (not visible on page)
• Image “alt” text (not visible on page)
• Image “title” text (not visible on page)
• Image caption (where possible given page formatting – visible on page)
Here too, image optimization is not all or nothing. Each piece optimized in another advantage for the page.
1
Page URL
Though this is only a minor ranking factor, Google does give some preference to URLs that use the search term over those that do not. For example, assuming that all else is equal:
Meta Description
Like the title tag, the meta description appears in search results to let users know what to expect when they click. This field does not directly impact rankings, however an effective meta description can increase the number of clicks which these articles get. A good “click through rate” (CTR) sends a signal to Google that this result is of a higher quality than the results around it, and can lead the algorithm to place this result higher in the long run. Pages should have custom meta descriptions with compelling calls to action while staying under the approximately 155-character limit, above which the text may get cut off. Since this is not a direct ranking factor, this is an area that Substack can forgo the target keywords and focus on engaging content.
I've noticed that Substack articles don't seem to rank particularly well on Google (especially compared to Medium). I was wondering if your team has had any contact with Google to see if they can help boost our content.
I'll give that feedback to our dev team re: stats!
Agree on the stats one!