Have questions about publishing, growing, or going paid on Substack?
The Substack team, and your fellow writers, are here to help!
Each week on Thursdays, we’ll gather the writer community and members of our Community, Product, and Writer Development teams together in a thread like this one to answer writer questions for an hour.
How might you get your first 10 subscribers? Or grow to 10,000 subscribers? Some inspiration: In a thoughtful recent post Ali Abouelatta breaks down how they grew their Substack publication to 10,000 subscribers.
Wondering how to structure a going paid launch? To get started, check out our Going Paid guide. Your fellow writers in this thread will have tips, too!
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 PST / 12 pm - 1 pm EST answering questions with you.
Hi. It would be nice to be able to control what content a Free Subscriber sees when viewing a Paid post. If you added a tool to the editing toolbar that allowed us to place a marker in the post that controlled the point at which the content was "hidden" to Free Subscribers, that would be great. Sometimes we want to place a video teaser, an image or a paragraph or two to entice a Free Subscriber to upgrade. Right now there is not way to do that.
The "Stats" page has a "emails" sub-section that shows a list of emails and their individual stats.
Two things:
1) It would be great here if you could click on the top of a column and have it sort in ascending or descending order by that column.. So for example, see which emails got the higher open rate, or signups, etc
2) It would be great if you added a column for "paid signups" per email, rather than just have the free signups stats.
I second #1 -- there's no easy way to see which posts have performed the best over time (unless I am willing to click through each and every post on my Dashboard). Ultimately I am trying to figure out what my audience engages with the most so I can do more of that, so any tools that help to this end would be most welcome.
If you go to the stats tab and click emails, you'll see some of the info you are looking for. It's a sortable table. I don't think you can download as a csv, but if you copy and paste the entire thing into excel or sheets, the formatting should remain, so it's a workaround.
Some free subs that want to go paid are confused because when they click the "subscribe" button, they see the page that says "enter your email" and no other options. They figure they are already subbing, so they don't want to enter their email again, and leave confused.
It's because they aren't logged-in Substack on that particular browser or device.
There should be a clear way for them to figure this out from that page. Maybe some link or button on that page "if you are already a subscriber and want to log-in/upgrade your membership, click here".
I'm sure a better wording exist, but the problem is real that a certain % of logged-out readers will be confused and just can't find the paid options or even know they need to log back in.
Do you recommend pruning subscribers from your list who never open your emails, or haven't in a long time, in order to maintain your open rate? If so, what are best practices for doing this on Substack?
You might want to take into account the unreliability of open tracking. A lot of mobile users won't turn up in your stats, nor will people using various ad-block solutions, or those with images turned off. You don't want to prune your readers due to fuzzy numbers.
What you can do is send out a 'soft reactivation' email (or 3) say once a quarter or twice a year, where you give them a "Hey, just wanted to make sure you're still liking these emails. If so, click here:".
Take the non-clicks on that campaign and shuffle them off to an "inactive" list or segment.
I can't give you many details as I'm not that familiar with Substack's in-house email system.
But for what you're asking, if there's no built-in option for that, you could look into Zapier to set up a bespoke connection to a Google Form or some other solution.
I’ve been looking into it and I can’t find an elegant solution to do what you’re suggesting via Substack. The best I think you can do is create a simple form where the user puts in their email again, so you know not to unsubscribe them. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure it’s not possible with just a button click (like it would be with other email services).
As a follow up question, should you just remove those subscribers or first contact them to give them the option to remain on the list? If the second, do you have any recommended verbiage because I don’t think my version really conveys the right tone.
My version: “I noticed you haven’t opened a single e-mail from me for the past 18 months. Do you want me to remove you from the list or would you like to continue to receive e-mails so you can ignore me yet again?”
This is just my personal preference, of course, but that wording would make me instantly delete that email. I might not even bother to unsubscribe. I'd just throw it away. I think everyone is so overwhelmed with email that sometimes we just don't get to something that we want to read eventually so we don't unsubscribe. The reminder emails that I've responded the most positively to send a "Hey! Did you know you can read the newsletter on the site too?" and includes a link. I click it, I read, I move on. Open rates don't always equal actual support.
Uuu, harsh! I suggest to inform them that they will be removed from your list by this and this date. If they want to remain, ask them to reply to this email with a word like "remain" or similar.
Thank you for asking around! I'd love to know what criteria the team recommends for pruning (hasn't opened emails in X days, etc) and how best to do it (unsubscribe folks and ask them to re-sub, etc).
I would like to know this as well. How do you approach them? If there was a way to segment the free users into Inactive and Active, that would be helpful.
As I understand it (and I'm just learning about this), the lower your open rate, the more likely email providers will mark your messages as spam or promotions. So if you send emails to folks who never read them, it lowers your chances of reaching people's inboxes in general.
I have a high open rate but a relatively small subscriber count - while the former is certainly nice, do you have any tips for getting more subscribers? I'd be definitely ok with the open rate going down if it meant a higher reach.
Our team is always studying what successful writers have done. First off - congrats on having a high open rate. It means your readers really enjoy what you're writing.
In our knowledge, social media ads haven't worked well. Consistently promoting your own writing, however, does. Meaning: tell everyone!
Other best practices to consider:
- Are you *engaging* your existing readers in any way? They can be your biggest advocates. Surveys, community spaces, threads, calls to action. Make explicit asks.
- Collaborations with other writers can help expand your audience.
- Make sure your newsletter a polished presence and a structured format. Land on a topic, style, and schedule that you’re able to maintain.
- Give your newsletter a sharp enough focus, and communicate that, so that a prospective reader will be able to say "this is for me"
"Surveys, community spaces, threads, calls to action. Make explicit asks." -- Could you give examples of how to do this? Just reading "make explicit acts" gives me anxiety. I can't do self promotion, so following guidelines or someone else's words would help me deal with that barrier to growth.
It take a lot of personal canvassing at the beginning. Ask anyone you meet to subscribe so long as it is relevant. Then hopefully the good pieces get shared and drive more subscribers.
I am in the same boat and am constantly, obsessively trying to figure this out. I started an Instagram account for my newsletter with the goal of converting some IG followers to subscribers, which has worked better than I expected but also means a totally separate stream of work and engagement with a slightly different community.
I feel you, Sarah. I have 12,8K Instagram followers and 243 subscribers... haven't quite figured out the trick of converting more followers to subs yet!
Hi Deepa and Sarah, one way you might want to think about encouraging followers from other platforms is to actually offer some of the excellent content you're producing on those platforms there—so readers are getting a real taste of the unique value of your work *before* you ask them to click through somewhere else. A lot of writers tend to say something simple like, "Check out my recent article here [link]." Instead, you might want to consider giving them more of the content in the post, so they're engaged and wanting more, and then click through for that reason. Or even better, use it for a moment of personal storytelling about the story behind the story: you can share in your own voice what drove you to create the piece, why, how it's contributing to the overarching (totally awesome) project you've embarked on. In other words, see it as another small opportunity moment where you can remind readers yet again what your bigger passion and project is all about.
Thanks for your input Hanne! I've started sharing excerpts from my newsletter on my Instagram as text-based carousel posts (like this one: https://www.instagram.com/p/COe18tzjZzI/). Hopefully this gains traction. Will experiment with other ways to share more of my newsletter content in my IG posts. Cheers!
I once had 25k Instagram followers, but couldn't get them to translate to newsletter subscribers. It was just too difficult to get someone who is following pictures, to suddenly follow writing (not to mention, they'd have to physically leave the app to find the link, so it's a challenge). I wound up deleting my Instagram account and switching to Twitter. I'm still figuring it out, but as it's connected to Substack, it seems to be the easiest translation from follower to subscriber.
I tried instagram and it got zero traffic because no links and there’s so few who will take the time to go to bio. I’m back to Facebook where I get almost all my traffic.
Hello! I'm just here say hello and learn about what other writers are doing with their Substacks. I've been writing on Substack of just over a year, sending out a weekly newsletter analyzing the biggest policy developments (foreign and domestic policy) in India. It's been a great experience so far, and always looking to learn how I can grow the newsletter and provide more value to the readership. Thanks so much for doing these weekly office hours!
I write about startups, tech, and history which is relevant today. I have faced one issue: Some emails reach the primary folder while some reach the promotion folder - hence the open rates stagger a lot. How to solve this?
Additionally, are there any tools to interact with readers through polls in the newsletter?
We don't have any native tools right now that conduct polls, but this has been flagged to our product team before and I can re-emphasize it! Tell me more about what you'd want that for?
I conduct a reader survey every year to find out what readers like about my newsletter, which informs my writing. Right now I use Google Survey, but it'd be rad to have polls built into Substack, which I imagine would increase engagement.
Geoff, if you'd be interested, I'm actually planning on conducting a set of user interviews with newsletter writers about their best practices for creating newsletters, as part of a prototype mobile app I'm developing. Would you be interested in this at all? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Yes, polls! We've been using our Substack to tell our subscribers about upcoming Los Angeles history webinars, and now that people are out in the world again, we want to poll them for times that work better than noon on Saturdays.
Hey there! We take a lot steps on our end to try to ensure Substack emails reach the reader's main inbox, but over time the reputation that your newsletter builds up with readers is the most important input.
Ask your readers to drag the emails back to the inbox helps. Also you can encourage them to write to you at your @substack.com address, which helps Gmail recognize your emails.
I read some substack newsletters very regularly. I found those also reaching my promotions tab. So I am not sure if reputation is the only aspect here.
If you would provide more insights to the users on how to manage this, it would be very helpful in improving the open rate and hence your user retention too.
Here's one that will make everybody happy: Crypto needs its own category.
It's taking over at least 3 others (tech, finance, business), and there's relatively little overlap between readers in crypto and those categories (ie. It is truly its own separate thing).
I know you don't want category sprawl, but the downsides are bigger to keeping it spread all around other categories than giving it its own (and crypto readers and writers will love knowing where to go to find it and see rankings).
Hey Liberty! Thank you for this. Our team has discussed how Crypto feels separate. We've been wary of sprawling the categories, as you noted, but I'll re-surface the idea to them and we'll look at the numbers.
Thank you. I truly believe that with the current setup, nobody is happy, and that with one more category, you'd make writers in at least 4 different categories happy, so that seems like a good tradeoff.
I would love to hear subscriber growth case studies (and tips) from writers who share more personal work that doesn't necessarily fit into a clearly defined (or booming) niche like tech or politics, e.g. "Tiny Revolutions" type newsletters. Thank you!
Hi there Deepa! Our resources page has a few case studies like that (and lots of tips—link following), but we're excited to do even more. Keep an eye out for more of that being featured to our community soon! https://substack.com/resources
Hi Shubham! Congrats on starting your publication.
The first place to start is telling friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. Consider other places people find you online and link there. Add your Substack URL to your email signature, personal website, and bio on Twitter, Instagram, etc. Post on Twitter (or Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc).
I'd really love more resources guides for things on the business side of Substack that is shown to work for marketing, PR, click open the email, leave a comment, get more subscribers, shift them to paid. It seems the individuals are in a guessing game while the successful and established ones have figured out things that work and could help others. Just as an example, many put a photo at the top of the email before the text-- have they seen that makes people read more? What email subject lines work best to get people to open? What length of email is ideal for someone to read and absorb? What style of PR/marketing wording speaks to people who dont know substack? I have a lot of these type of questions and I assume Substack has seen the backend numbers from the big newsletters and could share with us. Thanks!
How would you define the niche for my newsletter, White Noise (www.whitenoise.email)? Currently I describe it as "A weekly missive in which I write about books, behavior, and the brain." Would love any input!
One thing I think about is the "hand-raiser" rule. If I was a reader, and I read your "About" description, would I be able to "raise my hand" and say it's for me based off of that description?
Thoughts on how to deal with an institutional subscription? I have a library interested in purchasing a subscription, but I am not sure how to go about it.
Hi Amy, the group subscription will be priced per person at the same price you set as your standard yearly subscription plan. If you're setting up paid subscriptions for the first time, here are some additional resources: https://on.substack.com/p/your-guide-to-going-paid
Big SEO question. With almost 100k subscribers, and daily content going back to 2019, if you google my name (Bill Murphy Jr.), you only get the home page for Understandably.com, and no individual posts. (There are 300+ posts, some with tons of engagement). I should rank for a lot of things, I think. Am I doing something wrong in terms of SEO? Is there a way to fix this?
I JUST googled you. As you know MY Google results will be VERY different than your Google results. So I am happy to say that Understandably.com came up #5 on the first page.
Thanks! It's funny... I'm sitting here like, "E. Jean Carroll." Why is that name so familiar? Is this someone I went to school with, or a neighbor or ... Google Google Google ... Oh, THAT E. Jean Carroll!
Yes why doesn’t our substack show up at all in Google searches ? I’m wondering if it matters that I take the time to look at Google trends for my headline and sub if it’s not tracking.
It's great to see your readership steadily growing. We're eager to continue improving on discoverability of awesome writers outside of the platform, and a lot of this stuff is out of our hands as well.
I am hoping to go paid June 1, and really am wondering about it. Thinking $6/month. It's a site about writing (I've just left teaching in an MFA program for 14 too long years...) But am not sure whether to have a sliding scale--so many apprenticing writers are so broke! Or... various scenarios in my head. I have just over 70 signed up for free since April 21 when I started.
I just added my paid level. My advice is to take advantage of the founding membership level. But don't make it crazy high, maybe 2-3x your regular annual fee (but with option to include anything above the regular annual fee). I was pleasantly surprised how many people took the opportunity to do that.
Bill, I have to admit, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Founding membership level? 2-3X reg annual fee? I've been thinking $6/month and $60 for a year, and then as per Sarah's thoughts below... OR having a sliding scale between $3-10, according to what people can afford.
Sure, when you "turn on paid" you can add monthly, yearly, and founding member levels. If you check out my subscription page you'll see what I mean: http://understandably.com/subscribe. I just went with $5/$50 (might raise it down the road), plus you can be a "founding member" at $150. (But it's really a "founding member at $51+, since I allow people to chip in however much they want.)
I too have some free subscribers for whom the paid fee, no matter the price, will be a barrier. I've decided to approach this in two ways: 1) offer to work out a deal with anyone who lets me know they can't pay (what this really means is that I will give them a free paid subscription, no questions asked); and 2) offer free paid subscriptions to those for whom my newsletter is most impactful (it's about children's books, so it makes sense for me to comp any teachers and librarians). I have carefully crafted the language around these offers so that the people who are able and willing to pay don't feel cheated, but I do feel it's important to accommodate folks in difficult financial situations, if I can.
Most of my teaching has focused on writing for young people...so you know what I am talking about :) And most of my pub'd books are for children. I appreciate your suggestions, and the note about "carefully crafted," yes. Thank you, Sarah!
The question I've had is: Is there a way to email my subscribers through Substack without publishing a post? Sometimes I just have an announcement or something, but it's not really content for a post.
Sure! Check out the "Subscribers" tab at the top of your publication dashboard and on that page, you should be able to filter and select a group of your subscribers. Once you've done that, you should find an "Email" button on the top right of your subscriber list, and you can use that to email the selected subscribers.
Hi Karen, I'm curious, but would you be interested in conducting a half-hour interview about your experience writing and managing your newsletter.
I'm working to build out a prototype mobile app that would help writers manage their newsletter from their smartphone, and I'd like to hear more about your experience.
Sure! I'm pretty new to this, and I don't have much experience or a very big following yet, but I'd be happy to share my experiences to this point. I have often thought that an app would be a good option, but I don't have the technical know-how to do that myself.
Is there a trick to encouraging comments on the newsletter? I brought my list over my mailchimp and most of my readers are used to that sort of static format. If they have a comment, they respons to the email and me directly -- so there's no community engagement. Does anyone have suggestions on how I can let people know that they can heart and comment on posts now?
Also, do they need a substack account in order to comment on the post?
Thanks, that's super helpful. I think the trick is that I need to convert more of my readers to "Substack readers" so that I can push that kind of engagement. Otherwise, they will remain static readers.
Side note: I absolutely love Substack and wish all of the newsletters I read would convert to it! It's so much easier to navigate as both a reader and a writer.
Almost all my content goes to my entire free subscriber base of nearly 100k. However, the default in posts for me is “This post is only for paid subscribers." Let's just say that's ... um, a smaller group. Can I change the default setting (for the inevitable time I’ll forget) to: "This post is for Everyone?”
I would love to see updated/expanded information in the "Resources for Writers" section -- I have read every link multiple times and while I've absorbed the lessons from each as best I can, I find myself wanting more examples. Newsletters vary so much depending on the writer, the topic, the audience -- you name it and there's someone out there doing something different than the next person. I think Substack does a good job of trying to share the work of this community, especially in weekly emails to writers, but updating resources to offer variety once in awhile would go a long way to keeping things fresh for those of us who have been here for more than year, who publish consistently and are always looking for new ideas.
Hi Sarah! Excellent point and we totally agree. I recently joined to lead Writer Development here at Substack and that's absolutely one of our core missions: to provide the right information to writers, at the right time. We'll be rolling out lots more ways of doing this, soon.
Is there a way to change the amount of money subscribers pay per month? Was wondering if there’s an option to put subscriptions on tiers the way Patreon does?
You can also add a special Founding Member tier for readers who’d like to pay a different price point than the regular plan. This will appear on your Subscribe page next to your annual and monthly plans. You can enable it from your Settings page.
Hi Fembot! Great question. What's more important than how many posts you do a week is consistency. Pick a regular writing schedule and stick to it. Whether daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually--stick to it. As new visitors come across your publication, they’re more likely to sign up when they see that you’re active.
Hi Bailey, I have a question about paid subscription tiers. I have some subscribers who have already paid for an annual subscription, but they've asked if there's way to upgrade to the Founder level. It's made me think I'd like to offer something value-added at the Founder level and promote an upgrade for already-paid annual members. How would that work -- it seems the only way paid subscribers can upgrade is to go into their account settings? Or am I missing something? Thanks!
Thank you for the Ali Abouelatta post (and link) - I've been writing on Substack for a year now and (like Ali) always on the look out for new ideas to get new subscribers (free and paid). Although I prefer to be writing all the time, I get that I have to work hard at the promotion / awareness-raising aspect...
In the Dashboard, in the Subscribers section. When I want to filter the Subscriber list to send a targeted email to a subset of Subscribers and I need to have more than one filter, it would be very helpful to have the option to choose between "AND", "OR" and "NOT". The standard Boolean Logic operators.
For example: If I want to filter to create a list of "Paid" and "Founding" subscribers, I would need the filter to be "Where Subscription Type is Paid OR Subscription Type is Founding". With only the option of "AND", the filter produces no results. As it is, I have to send two emails out, filtering once for "Paid" and then separately for "Founding".
I realize that in more complex filtering situations, you would need to also provide for nesting of filters but, this kind of basic boolean logic in filtering would be much more useful.
Hey Julie -- One thing you might try to do what you're describing is to use the "Is In" option for filtering, so it'd be "where Subscription Type is in [Founding, Paid]"
I have a few specific questions so I’ll add them here separately!
I’ve thought of splitting my daily newsletter into 5 weekly newsletters (more focused themes, people can sign up for some, or all). Q: On the Account page, is there a way we could include the description of each Section on that page? Right now I think it’s just the name, so I think I'd have to make the name itself describe what it’s about.
How are categories assigned to the various Substacks? Is it based off of chosen keywords or is there some poor soul who has to review every single Substack and decide how best to categorize it?
Hi John! These categories are actually set by each individual Substack. Adding your Substack to a category is done by adding specific tags in the Settings page.
I'm confused by this. I emailed Substack specifically when I started my newsletter to see how I can get my newsletter (Grounded in the Bible) listed in the Faith section, since it didn't appear to show up their naturally even though I added the Faith tag to my newsletter. I was told this was an editorial decision and I had no control over it. Is there a way I can help my newsletter show up in the Faith section?
Hi Hanne, thanks for the reply. If the tags are the determining factor, then am I correct in assuming that the tags we use should be an exact match to the ones available on the Subtack.com/home page? For example, one of the tags on that page is Illustration, but a user might enter something more specific like watercolor or oil painting. Should they use Illustration to make sure the system gets everything linked up correctly? Thanks!
Hi John :) They don't need to be the exact tags - we will aggregate lesser known tags into the larger ones. Though if you want to control which category you're in (e.g. "culture" not "politics") that is a helpful tactics.
My traffic is about 90% from Facebook and then 10% Twitter -- miniscule from the emails -- so why isn't Substack more helpful with Facebook to get new subscribers? I only see Substack use twitter and encourage us to use it too for growing an audience, but I don't see it as a way to get new subscribers or readers. Is there a reason Substack focuses on Twitter over Facebook? I'd love to get away from both but I haven't found a way to do that yet.
Beginner here. Do people ever use Substack for shorter posts? I want to be able to share brief reflections on things. Or is this platform more for Medium-type posts/articles?
I do a combination of the two -- I send short messages on Tuesdays, longform on Wednesdays. Interestingly, my open rate is about the same for both (and actually goes up when I do an even longer longform once a quarter or so).
I write about geopolitics, business and media - i know Substack is creating/fostering lists of writers to recommend if you already read someone’s newsletter - any tips ?
Hi, I'd really like to email an email list with an _invite_ to my substack publication. In other words, I'd like to opt them in, not out by auto-subscribing them. How do I email a list of folks with an invite to my substack publication short of creating a separate list on another service like Mailchimp or something? Or am I missing something obvious in the setup tools?
Hi Tarikh! If you want to give people the option to "opt-in" again to your mailing list in moving over to Substack, the best way to do that is with your previous mailing service. The other option would important your mailing list to Substack and offering an "opt-out" option in your first post.
To clarify, do you have a list of people you've sent emails to before? Or just want to send an invite to friends/family/etc and invite them to subscribe?
Hi Gary, at the moment there's no way to do that, but appreciate the suggestion. The goal is that some of your great free posts will lure people into becoming paid subscribers to read more!
I have banned them. But they had already posted dozens of comments, and apparently I have to go in manually and delete the old ones, one at a time. I'd like to delete all their old comments when banned.
love every thing in writing magazine and thing honest working for good lies I hate lie through editing love seeing my work on shelve helping infotech and many more not an expert but learning isn't a crime true true go to school though online school book shelves truth truth truth on 100 truth
It may be because I'm a beginner, but I am thoroughly confused about several aspects of Substack. I don't even understand if the idea is to email the newsletters myself or through Substack, or to email them at all. I also seem to have managed to register twice, and without a password; afterwards when I was asked to sign in and indicated I didn't have one, I was told more than once that Substack would email me a link to create a password, but that never happened. After I posted installment #1, I posted #2 and #3, but those two seem to have vanished. It seems to me that IF Substack is a serious enterprise, it should have a live Help desk, whether by phone or email-chat. And finally: Is anybody in charge of Substack's spell-checker? I'm asking because every time I type the word Substack in this query, it is flagged.
Hi there Wim! It sounds like you may have a few issue.
One is that you registered with two accounts. You can reach our support team via http://support.substack.com/ to resolve this issue for you by merging your two accounts.
Second - it sounds like emails from Substack aren't reaching you. I'm guessing that's because they are going to your email's spam folder. Have you checked that?
Moreover, when I go to the support page, all it offers are lists of cookie-cutter categories which do not fit my issues; and there seems to be no way of contacting a live person.
As I understand it, spell checkers are browser-based. Substack has no control over them. When it flags the word as an error tell your browser to learn the word. The exact terminology depends on the browser you’re using, but the basic idea is that you want to teach your browser to learn that word. Once you succeed in teaching it the word will no longer be flagged.
The best approach would be to do a Google search How can I add words to the spellchecker for Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, or whatever browser you’re using. That’ll provide you with a series of articles with step by step instructions or even videos if you prefer.
I need no reward no recognition or no fame no name. I have more than everything that I need.
I want to write about the path to resolution and how the entire human species just needs to be in order and harmony just like all other species before the same.
That can only happen by understanding and the infinite power of aspirations and evaluation power of thoughts give every individual liberty and free will to understand as he wants to .
The reality of the form and the formless existing together is the same for all of us.
Instead of getting divided we need to unite and understand that either we all will live happily or we all will get annihilated as a species together by damaging the ecosystem.
The body is not the complete us and with out the body also we are not complete. Need some people with intelligent questions who are better with words to spread this all around knowledge holistically adding up all sciences learnt till now.
Is anyone else experiencing a glitch where your current draft and all previous draft histories appear blank? This has happened to me twice now and I've switched to Google Docs for my drafts as a workaround.
Thanks Scot! I was really excited about the draft history enhancement that Substack rolled out recently, but so far, it's been more trouble than it's worth for me. Hard to describe the feeling of spending hours writing a post and then waking up one day and seeing that it's completely blank along with all previous saved versions.
Hi Bailey, I use Google Chrome and opened a case on May 5th for the following draft post but it remains unresolved. I moved on, obviously, because I still love the platform and love to write, but this problem makes me very reluctant to use Substack for draft writing if they can just disappear like that - https://apocalypsenow.substack.com/publish/post/33697287
Hi Vivek! You should be able to move old posts to new sections by changing the section selection in the post editor. Let us know if you can't find it or it doesn't work!
I’m a member of a group of four people that wants to create a new Substack publication. It’s a progressive non-hierarchical cooperative venture and we feel strongly that one person should not be listed as the “master” above others. We would like to set up an LLC so that any funds go to the coop, not to one person. Do we have to set up one person as the “owner”? Can we set up the LLC as the “owner”?
Hi Joe, yes you can set up the LLC as the owner and account name. Under the Publication Details in your settings, modify the email sender and copyright owner.
What is your response to the NY Times article that just came out about Substack? Are we to understand that Substack's policy is to allow anyone on it? Including someone who has been banned from FB or twitter?
I've been banned from Facebook for sharing news about China holding water back from the Mekong River. Do you think I shouldn't have the opportunity to write a newsletter?
My newsletter Wine Wanderings has both paid and free subscribers (6 months running now. )What has been the experience of those who have converted to all paid? How did they approach it? What was the conversion rate?
Hi there Tricia! There are so many different ways to think about free versus paid strategies (and your readers' experience of it), depending on each writer's strategy and content. There's a lot of good info in our Guide to Going Paid (https://on.substack.com/p/your-guide-to-going-paid). But Bailey actually answered a similar question in our office hours last week, so I'll just paste her relevant and helpful info here: "The value of your writer-reader relationship can be measured along two major axes: your reach (the size of your audience) and your engagement (how much they’re paying attention).
In order to benchmark those, however, you’ll first need to figure out what your financial goals are for going paid. If you’re going full-time, your financial needs might be different from a writer who wants a part-time side project. Be honest with yourself! It’s okay to dream big, and it’s just as okay to say you don’t want to invest time in a full-time project.
Got a number in mind? Great. Now it’s time to do a bit of napkin math:
In the best of circumstances, we typically see conversion rates of 5-10% for writers who are going paid. You can use your email open rates to help approximate whether to use a high or low conversion rate. If your email open rates are typically less than 30%, use a 3% conversion rate. If your email open rates are typically 30-50%, use a 5% conversion rate. If your email open rates are greater than 50%, use a 10% conversion rate."
Hanne, Great guidelines. I will keep this in mind. I probably will wait until the end of the year. But with 42 newsletter this first half of 2021, I probably can do some planning going forward.
Hi everyone, I'm looking to interview writers about their experience creating and managing email newsletters as part of a UX project. Any help or insight you could provide would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you everyone for these great questions! And for answering each other's questions.
We are wrapping this week's thread but will be back next week with more.
In the meantime, we have lots of great resources for you here: https://substack.com/resources and in our own "Library" archive.
Happy writing,
Katie + Bailey + Kristen + Hanne + Lisa + Rishi
Hi. It would be nice to be able to control what content a Free Subscriber sees when viewing a Paid post. If you added a tool to the editing toolbar that allowed us to place a marker in the post that controlled the point at which the content was "hidden" to Free Subscribers, that would be great. Sometimes we want to place a video teaser, an image or a paragraph or two to entice a Free Subscriber to upgrade. Right now there is not way to do that.
Hi Julie! Thanks for this feedback. I see where this could be very varaible. I'm sharing with our product team.
Yes, please--great idea! Our paid posts could look a lot more enticing if we had more control over what shows above the fold.
The "Stats" page has a "emails" sub-section that shows a list of emails and their individual stats.
Two things:
1) It would be great here if you could click on the top of a column and have it sort in ascending or descending order by that column.. So for example, see which emails got the higher open rate, or signups, etc
2) It would be great if you added a column for "paid signups" per email, rather than just have the free signups stats.
I second #1 -- there's no easy way to see which posts have performed the best over time (unless I am willing to click through each and every post on my Dashboard). Ultimately I am trying to figure out what my audience engages with the most so I can do more of that, so any tools that help to this end would be most welcome.
If you go to the stats tab and click emails, you'll see some of the info you are looking for. It's a sortable table. I don't think you can download as a csv, but if you copy and paste the entire thing into excel or sheets, the formatting should remain, so it's a workaround.
Thanks for jumping in Bill!
Thanks for doing these. Hope I don't come across as overzealous, I have big plans! :)
Ah, a great idea. Thanks!
Solid feedback Liberty! I can make sure our product team sees this.
Some free subs that want to go paid are confused because when they click the "subscribe" button, they see the page that says "enter your email" and no other options. They figure they are already subbing, so they don't want to enter their email again, and leave confused.
It's because they aren't logged-in Substack on that particular browser or device.
There should be a clear way for them to figure this out from that page. Maybe some link or button on that page "if you are already a subscriber and want to log-in/upgrade your membership, click here".
I'm sure a better wording exist, but the problem is real that a certain % of logged-out readers will be confused and just can't find the paid options or even know they need to log back in.
Thanks for the product feedback, Liberty!
Do you recommend pruning subscribers from your list who never open your emails, or haven't in a long time, in order to maintain your open rate? If so, what are best practices for doing this on Substack?
You might want to take into account the unreliability of open tracking. A lot of mobile users won't turn up in your stats, nor will people using various ad-block solutions, or those with images turned off. You don't want to prune your readers due to fuzzy numbers.
What you can do is send out a 'soft reactivation' email (or 3) say once a quarter or twice a year, where you give them a "Hey, just wanted to make sure you're still liking these emails. If so, click here:".
Take the non-clicks on that campaign and shuffle them off to an "inactive" list or segment.
Thank you, I like this tactic! How would the button work in Substack? For example, can you make a button that sends an email address to a Google form?
I can't give you many details as I'm not that familiar with Substack's in-house email system.
But for what you're asking, if there's no built-in option for that, you could look into Zapier to set up a bespoke connection to a Google Form or some other solution.
I’ve been looking into it and I can’t find an elegant solution to do what you’re suggesting via Substack. The best I think you can do is create a simple form where the user puts in their email again, so you know not to unsubscribe them. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure it’s not possible with just a button click (like it would be with other email services).
As a follow up question, should you just remove those subscribers or first contact them to give them the option to remain on the list? If the second, do you have any recommended verbiage because I don’t think my version really conveys the right tone.
My version: “I noticed you haven’t opened a single e-mail from me for the past 18 months. Do you want me to remove you from the list or would you like to continue to receive e-mails so you can ignore me yet again?”
This is just my personal preference, of course, but that wording would make me instantly delete that email. I might not even bother to unsubscribe. I'd just throw it away. I think everyone is so overwhelmed with email that sometimes we just don't get to something that we want to read eventually so we don't unsubscribe. The reminder emails that I've responded the most positively to send a "Hey! Did you know you can read the newsletter on the site too?" and includes a link. I click it, I read, I move on. Open rates don't always equal actual support.
I was being facetious to make a point. The point being that I couldn’t think of a way to phrase well. Your suggestion is much better. Thanks.
Uuu, harsh! I suggest to inform them that they will be removed from your list by this and this date. If they want to remain, ask them to reply to this email with a word like "remain" or similar.
Ultimately it's your decision of course, but we have created the analytics for this so that you can prune your subscribers if you so choose. (https://blog.substack.com/p/new-better-analytics-for-your-subscribers).
Let me ask to see if we have shared our perspective on this. My hunch is... yes we do encourage pruning, but give me a minute to confirm that.
Thank you for asking around! I'd love to know what criteria the team recommends for pruning (hasn't opened emails in X days, etc) and how best to do it (unsubscribe folks and ask them to re-sub, etc).
I would like to know this as well. How do you approach them? If there was a way to segment the free users into Inactive and Active, that would be helpful.
Interesting topic. What are the implications of not pruning a list in this way?
As I understand it (and I'm just learning about this), the lower your open rate, the more likely email providers will mark your messages as spam or promotions. So if you send emails to folks who never read them, it lowers your chances of reaching people's inboxes in general.
I have a high open rate but a relatively small subscriber count - while the former is certainly nice, do you have any tips for getting more subscribers? I'd be definitely ok with the open rate going down if it meant a higher reach.
This is a big and important topic!
Our team is always studying what successful writers have done. First off - congrats on having a high open rate. It means your readers really enjoy what you're writing.
In our knowledge, social media ads haven't worked well. Consistently promoting your own writing, however, does. Meaning: tell everyone!
Other best practices to consider:
- Are you *engaging* your existing readers in any way? They can be your biggest advocates. Surveys, community spaces, threads, calls to action. Make explicit asks.
- Collaborations with other writers can help expand your audience.
- Make sure your newsletter a polished presence and a structured format. Land on a topic, style, and schedule that you’re able to maintain.
- Give your newsletter a sharp enough focus, and communicate that, so that a prospective reader will be able to say "this is for me"
Some additional writer advice is here:
https://on.substack.com/p/getting-your-first-100-signups
https://on.substack.com/p/how-delia-cai-grew-deez-links-from
https://on.substack.com/p/how-scott-hines-got-his-first-1000
https://on.substack.com/p/zero-to-
https://library.substack.com/p/what-writers-can-do-for-readers-casey-newton
https://library.substack.com/p/how-abigail-koffler-grew-her-email
https://library.substack.com/p/how-petition-grew-their-newsletter
These are VERY helpful. Thank you Bailey!
"Surveys, community spaces, threads, calls to action. Make explicit asks." -- Could you give examples of how to do this? Just reading "make explicit acts" gives me anxiety. I can't do self promotion, so following guidelines or someone else's words would help me deal with that barrier to growth.
It take a lot of personal canvassing at the beginning. Ask anyone you meet to subscribe so long as it is relevant. Then hopefully the good pieces get shared and drive more subscribers.
Same here, Luke!
I am in the same boat and am constantly, obsessively trying to figure this out. I started an Instagram account for my newsletter with the goal of converting some IG followers to subscribers, which has worked better than I expected but also means a totally separate stream of work and engagement with a slightly different community.
I feel you, Sarah. I have 12,8K Instagram followers and 243 subscribers... haven't quite figured out the trick of converting more followers to subs yet!
Hi Deepa and Sarah, one way you might want to think about encouraging followers from other platforms is to actually offer some of the excellent content you're producing on those platforms there—so readers are getting a real taste of the unique value of your work *before* you ask them to click through somewhere else. A lot of writers tend to say something simple like, "Check out my recent article here [link]." Instead, you might want to consider giving them more of the content in the post, so they're engaged and wanting more, and then click through for that reason. Or even better, use it for a moment of personal storytelling about the story behind the story: you can share in your own voice what drove you to create the piece, why, how it's contributing to the overarching (totally awesome) project you've embarked on. In other words, see it as another small opportunity moment where you can remind readers yet again what your bigger passion and project is all about.
Thanks for your input Hanne! I've started sharing excerpts from my newsletter on my Instagram as text-based carousel posts (like this one: https://www.instagram.com/p/COe18tzjZzI/). Hopefully this gains traction. Will experiment with other ways to share more of my newsletter content in my IG posts. Cheers!
This is awesome, thank you for the suggestion!
I once had 25k Instagram followers, but couldn't get them to translate to newsletter subscribers. It was just too difficult to get someone who is following pictures, to suddenly follow writing (not to mention, they'd have to physically leave the app to find the link, so it's a challenge). I wound up deleting my Instagram account and switching to Twitter. I'm still figuring it out, but as it's connected to Substack, it seems to be the easiest translation from follower to subscriber.
I tried instagram and it got zero traffic because no links and there’s so few who will take the time to go to bio. I’m back to Facebook where I get almost all my traffic.
Hello! I'm just here say hello and learn about what other writers are doing with their Substacks. I've been writing on Substack of just over a year, sending out a weekly newsletter analyzing the biggest policy developments (foreign and domestic policy) in India. It's been a great experience so far, and always looking to learn how I can grow the newsletter and provide more value to the readership. Thanks so much for doing these weekly office hours!
Thanks for joining us Aman, and for writing on Substack!
I write about startups, tech, and history which is relevant today. I have faced one issue: Some emails reach the primary folder while some reach the promotion folder - hence the open rates stagger a lot. How to solve this?
Additionally, are there any tools to interact with readers through polls in the newsletter?
We don't have any native tools right now that conduct polls, but this has been flagged to our product team before and I can re-emphasize it! Tell me more about what you'd want that for?
Polls would be amazing!
We all know polls encourage engagement.... stickiness!
I conduct a reader survey every year to find out what readers like about my newsletter, which informs my writing. Right now I use Google Survey, but it'd be rad to have polls built into Substack, which I imagine would increase engagement.
Geoff, if you'd be interested, I'm actually planning on conducting a set of user interviews with newsletter writers about their best practices for creating newsletters, as part of a prototype mobile app I'm developing. Would you be interested in this at all? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Sure thing, I'd be happy to! My contact info is at the bottom of my website: https://www.geoffreygolden.com/
Geoff, thank you! I'll send an email over to you with the details.
I'd like to see polls too! I'm toying with letting readers decide some aspects of where the stories go
Love that idea!
Yes, polls! We've been using our Substack to tell our subscribers about upcoming Los Angeles history webinars, and now that people are out in the world again, we want to poll them for times that work better than noon on Saturdays.
I would love to have polls available. Obviously, many of us use them in Zoom presentations.
Hey there! We take a lot steps on our end to try to ensure Substack emails reach the reader's main inbox, but over time the reputation that your newsletter builds up with readers is the most important input.
Ask your readers to drag the emails back to the inbox helps. Also you can encourage them to write to you at your @substack.com address, which helps Gmail recognize your emails.
I read some substack newsletters very regularly. I found those also reaching my promotions tab. So I am not sure if reputation is the only aspect here.
If you would provide more insights to the users on how to manage this, it would be very helpful in improving the open rate and hence your user retention too.
Here's one that will make everybody happy: Crypto needs its own category.
It's taking over at least 3 others (tech, finance, business), and there's relatively little overlap between readers in crypto and those categories (ie. It is truly its own separate thing).
I know you don't want category sprawl, but the downsides are bigger to keeping it spread all around other categories than giving it its own (and crypto readers and writers will love knowing where to go to find it and see rankings).
Hey Liberty! Thank you for this. Our team has discussed how Crypto feels separate. We've been wary of sprawling the categories, as you noted, but I'll re-surface the idea to them and we'll look at the numbers.
Thank you. I truly believe that with the current setup, nobody is happy, and that with one more category, you'd make writers in at least 4 different categories happy, so that seems like a good tradeoff.
I would love to hear subscriber growth case studies (and tips) from writers who share more personal work that doesn't necessarily fit into a clearly defined (or booming) niche like tech or politics, e.g. "Tiny Revolutions" type newsletters. Thank you!
Hi there Deepa! Our resources page has a few case studies like that (and lots of tips—link following), but we're excited to do even more. Keep an eye out for more of that being featured to our community soon! https://substack.com/resources
How should I go around finding subscribers for a newsletter I am just starting?
What timelines and methods have worked for you?
Hi Shubham! Congrats on starting your publication.
The first place to start is telling friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. Consider other places people find you online and link there. Add your Substack URL to your email signature, personal website, and bio on Twitter, Instagram, etc. Post on Twitter (or Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc).
As for a timeline, consistency goes a long way. More here in our guide to getting your first 100 signups https://on.substack.com/p/getting-your-first-100-signups
I'd really love more resources guides for things on the business side of Substack that is shown to work for marketing, PR, click open the email, leave a comment, get more subscribers, shift them to paid. It seems the individuals are in a guessing game while the successful and established ones have figured out things that work and could help others. Just as an example, many put a photo at the top of the email before the text-- have they seen that makes people read more? What email subject lines work best to get people to open? What length of email is ideal for someone to read and absorb? What style of PR/marketing wording speaks to people who dont know substack? I have a lot of these type of questions and I assume Substack has seen the backend numbers from the big newsletters and could share with us. Thanks!
Adding it would be helpful to know what day of week and time of day gets people to open and read best.
Is it possible to upload a PDF file to insert into a post that readers can click and download? Thanks.
Good news coming soon on this front from our team!
Thank you. The more formats are supported, the better. I also wish I could embed TikTok videos (the way Youtube Videos are embedded automatically).
Wonderful thanks. Have been using a workaround to date, uploading it to a website then it ting a link in the Substack draft. Will be a big help.
So glad to hear about this. Would be highly useful.
A reader emailed me to ask if he could do exactly this, and I couldn't find an answer. I'll email back this thread.
How would you define the niche for my newsletter, White Noise (www.whitenoise.email)? Currently I describe it as "A weekly missive in which I write about books, behavior, and the brain." Would love any input!
One thing I think about is the "hand-raiser" rule. If I was a reader, and I read your "About" description, would I be able to "raise my hand" and say it's for me based off of that description?
Thoughts on how to deal with an institutional subscription? I have a library interested in purchasing a subscription, but I am not sure how to go about it.
Hi Amy! How cool :)
Group subscriptions are available via https://your.substack.com/subscribe?group=true. An administrator can sign up, add the email addresses for the subscribers in the group, and pay with a single credit card. More info here: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037465732-How-do-I-offer-group-subscriptions-
I'm not sure if that exactly meets your use case?
Oh wow! Ok. I will check it out. I just launched last week so I am still fumbling about. Thank you, Katie!
Hi Katie! Quick question, can I edit the group subscription parameters at all? Like price and number of people? I cannot see where this is.
Hi Amy, the group subscription will be priced per person at the same price you set as your standard yearly subscription plan. If you're setting up paid subscriptions for the first time, here are some additional resources: https://on.substack.com/p/your-guide-to-going-paid
Hi, just want to thank Substack support, helped me sort through email delivery snafu last week (it was my fault, 😂)
Hi Jolene, thanks so much! As a member of the Substack support team, I really appreciate hearing this. :)
:)
Big SEO question. With almost 100k subscribers, and daily content going back to 2019, if you google my name (Bill Murphy Jr.), you only get the home page for Understandably.com, and no individual posts. (There are 300+ posts, some with tons of engagement). I should rank for a lot of things, I think. Am I doing something wrong in terms of SEO? Is there a way to fix this?
SEO! IS THE BIG QUESTION!
I JUST googled you. As you know MY Google results will be VERY different than your Google results. So I am happy to say that Understandably.com came up #5 on the first page.
Thanks! It's funny... I'm sitting here like, "E. Jean Carroll." Why is that name so familiar? Is this someone I went to school with, or a neighbor or ... Google Google Google ... Oh, THAT E. Jean Carroll!
Yes why doesn’t our substack show up at all in Google searches ? I’m wondering if it matters that I take the time to look at Google trends for my headline and sub if it’s not tracking.
It's great to see your readership steadily growing. We're eager to continue improving on discoverability of awesome writers outside of the platform, and a lot of this stuff is out of our hands as well.
There's no silver bullet answer for now, but here are some details on how Google indexes pages: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-indexing
I am hoping to go paid June 1, and really am wondering about it. Thinking $6/month. It's a site about writing (I've just left teaching in an MFA program for 14 too long years...) But am not sure whether to have a sliding scale--so many apprenticing writers are so broke! Or... various scenarios in my head. I have just over 70 signed up for free since April 21 when I started.
I just added my paid level. My advice is to take advantage of the founding membership level. But don't make it crazy high, maybe 2-3x your regular annual fee (but with option to include anything above the regular annual fee). I was pleasantly surprised how many people took the opportunity to do that.
Bill, I have to admit, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Founding membership level? 2-3X reg annual fee? I've been thinking $6/month and $60 for a year, and then as per Sarah's thoughts below... OR having a sliding scale between $3-10, according to what people can afford.
Sure, when you "turn on paid" you can add monthly, yearly, and founding member levels. If you check out my subscription page you'll see what I mean: http://understandably.com/subscribe. I just went with $5/$50 (might raise it down the road), plus you can be a "founding member" at $150. (But it's really a "founding member at $51+, since I allow people to chip in however much they want.)
Ah! Thank you, Bill!
I too have some free subscribers for whom the paid fee, no matter the price, will be a barrier. I've decided to approach this in two ways: 1) offer to work out a deal with anyone who lets me know they can't pay (what this really means is that I will give them a free paid subscription, no questions asked); and 2) offer free paid subscriptions to those for whom my newsletter is most impactful (it's about children's books, so it makes sense for me to comp any teachers and librarians). I have carefully crafted the language around these offers so that the people who are able and willing to pay don't feel cheated, but I do feel it's important to accommodate folks in difficult financial situations, if I can.
Most of my teaching has focused on writing for young people...so you know what I am talking about :) And most of my pub'd books are for children. I appreciate your suggestions, and the note about "carefully crafted," yes. Thank you, Sarah!
An option for writers who can't afford your paid tiers are -
Writer-Reader complimentary subscriptions: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037465612-How-do-I-offer-a-complimentary-subscription-to-a-reader-
Reader-Reader gift subscriptions: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037489632-How-do-I-give-a-subscription-as-a-gift-
Thank you, Bailey!
The question I've had is: Is there a way to email my subscribers through Substack without publishing a post? Sometimes I just have an announcement or something, but it's not really content for a post.
Sure! Check out the "Subscribers" tab at the top of your publication dashboard and on that page, you should be able to filter and select a group of your subscribers. Once you've done that, you should find an "Email" button on the top right of your subscriber list, and you can use that to email the selected subscribers.
Perfect! Thanks! I figured there was a way, I just hadn't figured it out yet. :)
Hi Karen, I'm curious, but would you be interested in conducting a half-hour interview about your experience writing and managing your newsletter.
I'm working to build out a prototype mobile app that would help writers manage their newsletter from their smartphone, and I'd like to hear more about your experience.
Sure! I'm pretty new to this, and I don't have much experience or a very big following yet, but I'd be happy to share my experiences to this point. I have often thought that an app would be a good option, but I don't have the technical know-how to do that myself.
Karen, excellent! Here's a copy of the Calendly link for you to book an appointment. https://calendly.com/nicholson-david830/15min
Ideally, I'd like to have the conversation tomorrow.
Is there a trick to encouraging comments on the newsletter? I brought my list over my mailchimp and most of my readers are used to that sort of static format. If they have a comment, they respons to the email and me directly -- so there's no community engagement. Does anyone have suggestions on how I can let people know that they can heart and comment on posts now?
Also, do they need a substack account in order to comment on the post?
Hi Ava! Here (https://gettogether.world/resources#get-people-talking) is some inspiration for you for some communities that have gotten people talking online. One Substack writer that has done a great job of speaking conversation with writers is Valerie Monroe (https://valeriemonroe.substack.com/people/13244739-valerie-monroe).
People need to be a subscriber to leave a comment.
Thanks, that's super helpful. I think the trick is that I need to convert more of my readers to "Substack readers" so that I can push that kind of engagement. Otherwise, they will remain static readers.
Side note: I absolutely love Substack and wish all of the newsletters I read would convert to it! It's so much easier to navigate as both a reader and a writer.
Glad that it's helpful! Thanks for your support Ava :)
Almost all my content goes to my entire free subscriber base of nearly 100k. However, the default in posts for me is “This post is only for paid subscribers." Let's just say that's ... um, a smaller group. Can I change the default setting (for the inevitable time I’ll forget) to: "This post is for Everyone?”
I can let the product team know about this and see if our default settings can be smarter.
Reversing it would help because we would all like to make that mistake the opposite way.
I just read some of your issues and love it -- great storytelling. Just subscribed!
I would love to see updated/expanded information in the "Resources for Writers" section -- I have read every link multiple times and while I've absorbed the lessons from each as best I can, I find myself wanting more examples. Newsletters vary so much depending on the writer, the topic, the audience -- you name it and there's someone out there doing something different than the next person. I think Substack does a good job of trying to share the work of this community, especially in weekly emails to writers, but updating resources to offer variety once in awhile would go a long way to keeping things fresh for those of us who have been here for more than year, who publish consistently and are always looking for new ideas.
Hi Sarah! Excellent point and we totally agree. I recently joined to lead Writer Development here at Substack and that's absolutely one of our core missions: to provide the right information to writers, at the right time. We'll be rolling out lots more ways of doing this, soon.
Is there a way to change the amount of money subscribers pay per month? Was wondering if there’s an option to put subscriptions on tiers the way Patreon does?
Hi Jack!
You can also add a special Founding Member tier for readers who’d like to pay a different price point than the regular plan. This will appear on your Subscribe page next to your annual and monthly plans. You can enable it from your Settings page.
Another option would be to offer a discount. More on that here: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037835291-How-do-I-offer-a-discount-to-my-publication-
thank you for this!
I second the request for pricing tiers!! The Founding Member tier isn't enough.
How many newsletters should I realistically post a week? I want to get more subscribers but I don't want to spam my currently following!
Hi Fembot! Great question. What's more important than how many posts you do a week is consistency. Pick a regular writing schedule and stick to it. Whether daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually--stick to it. As new visitors come across your publication, they’re more likely to sign up when they see that you’re active.
Hi Bailey, I have a question about paid subscription tiers. I have some subscribers who have already paid for an annual subscription, but they've asked if there's way to upgrade to the Founder level. It's made me think I'd like to offer something value-added at the Founder level and promote an upgrade for already-paid annual members. How would that work -- it seems the only way paid subscribers can upgrade is to go into their account settings? Or am I missing something? Thanks!
Oh! Mr. Wilson! I have the same question!
Thank you for the Ali Abouelatta post (and link) - I've been writing on Substack for a year now and (like Ali) always on the look out for new ideas to get new subscribers (free and paid). Although I prefer to be writing all the time, I get that I have to work hard at the promotion / awareness-raising aspect...
In the Dashboard, in the Subscribers section. When I want to filter the Subscriber list to send a targeted email to a subset of Subscribers and I need to have more than one filter, it would be very helpful to have the option to choose between "AND", "OR" and "NOT". The standard Boolean Logic operators.
For example: If I want to filter to create a list of "Paid" and "Founding" subscribers, I would need the filter to be "Where Subscription Type is Paid OR Subscription Type is Founding". With only the option of "AND", the filter produces no results. As it is, I have to send two emails out, filtering once for "Paid" and then separately for "Founding".
I realize that in more complex filtering situations, you would need to also provide for nesting of filters but, this kind of basic boolean logic in filtering would be much more useful.
I will share this with our product team, Julie!
P.S. Love how you've customized your publication
Hey Julie -- One thing you might try to do what you're describing is to use the "Is In" option for filtering, so it'd be "where Subscription Type is in [Founding, Paid]"
Thank you! I had not noticed how that worked.
I have a few specific questions so I’ll add them here separately!
I’ve thought of splitting my daily newsletter into 5 weekly newsletters (more focused themes, people can sign up for some, or all). Q: On the Account page, is there a way we could include the description of each Section on that page? Right now I think it’s just the name, so I think I'd have to make the name itself describe what it’s about.
Hi there Bill! Our eng team is working on some further customization for the sections. I'll make sure they hear this feedback.
I am following Understandably and this idea sounds very good. I am looking forward not see the themes.
Q: Is there a way to publish an article on the website, but not have it send by email to subscribers? Thanks.
Yes! This is possible. When you click "publish" there's a check box in settings that says "send to everyone" and you can simply uncheck the box.
I can't believe I'm just now discovering this option.
How are categories assigned to the various Substacks? Is it based off of chosen keywords or is there some poor soul who has to review every single Substack and decide how best to categorize it?
Hi John! These categories are actually set by each individual Substack. Adding your Substack to a category is done by adding specific tags in the Settings page.
I'm confused by this. I emailed Substack specifically when I started my newsletter to see how I can get my newsletter (Grounded in the Bible) listed in the Faith section, since it didn't appear to show up their naturally even though I added the Faith tag to my newsletter. I was told this was an editorial decision and I had no control over it. Is there a way I can help my newsletter show up in the Faith section?
Hi Hanne, thanks for the reply. If the tags are the determining factor, then am I correct in assuming that the tags we use should be an exact match to the ones available on the Subtack.com/home page? For example, one of the tags on that page is Illustration, but a user might enter something more specific like watercolor or oil painting. Should they use Illustration to make sure the system gets everything linked up correctly? Thanks!
Hi John :) They don't need to be the exact tags - we will aggregate lesser known tags into the larger ones. Though if you want to control which category you're in (e.g. "culture" not "politics") that is a helpful tactics.
So, it seems the best strategy would be to change all three tags to the word “Featured”, right? That’s a joke.
Psyched
My traffic is about 90% from Facebook and then 10% Twitter -- miniscule from the emails -- so why isn't Substack more helpful with Facebook to get new subscribers? I only see Substack use twitter and encourage us to use it too for growing an audience, but I don't see it as a way to get new subscribers or readers. Is there a reason Substack focuses on Twitter over Facebook? I'd love to get away from both but I haven't found a way to do that yet.
Beginner here. Do people ever use Substack for shorter posts? I want to be able to share brief reflections on things. Or is this platform more for Medium-type posts/articles?
They absolutely do! Some examples: https://somethingisaw.substack.com/, https://www.nobodyreadspoetry.com/ And there are a lot of round ups.
That said, longform writing does very well on Substack.
I do a combination of the two -- I send short messages on Tuesdays, longform on Wednesdays. Interestingly, my open rate is about the same for both (and actually goes up when I do an even longer longform once a quarter or so).
But then open rate doesn’t mean read. I guess read by comments because then I assume they got through it. I wish there was tracking for time read
Agreed -- tracking for time read would be so useful.
If someone reads your posts via the Substack Reader is that counted as an ‘open’ in your stats?
Hi John! It would appear as a "view" in your dahsboard.
I write about geopolitics, business and media - i know Substack is creating/fostering lists of writers to recommend if you already read someone’s newsletter - any tips ?
Encourage people who love your publication to add it to the list of what they read on their new profiles :)
Thanks - I’ll give that a try
Hi, I'd really like to email an email list with an _invite_ to my substack publication. In other words, I'd like to opt them in, not out by auto-subscribing them. How do I email a list of folks with an invite to my substack publication short of creating a separate list on another service like Mailchimp or something? Or am I missing something obvious in the setup tools?
Hi Tarikh! If you want to give people the option to "opt-in" again to your mailing list in moving over to Substack, the best way to do that is with your previous mailing service. The other option would important your mailing list to Substack and offering an "opt-out" option in your first post.
Here is how you can upload your list from another service: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037829931-How-do-I-import-my-mailing-list-from-another-platform-such-as-TinyLetter-or-Mailchimp-
Thanks Katie! I don't actually have another service but I'll go ahead and set one up. Might be a nice feature to build for new users like me!
To clarify, do you have a list of people you've sent emails to before? Or just want to send an invite to friends/family/etc and invite them to subscribe?
If the later, you might consider sending a personal email. More inspiration here on getting your email list stated: https://on.substack.com/p/getting-your-first-100-signups
Can we eliminate the "free" option on our subscription button?
We all know we can add subscribers if we want for free...
but our aim is to encourage paying subscribers - right?
Hi Gary, at the moment there's no way to do that, but appreciate the suggestion. The goal is that some of your great free posts will lure people into becoming paid subscribers to read more!
Can I ask.... How was this accomplished:
https://musicjournalism.substack.com/subscribe?next=https%3A%2F%2Fmusicjournalism.substack.com%2F&later=true&just_signed_up=true&requires_confirmation=&email=garyvillapiano%40yahoo.com
And, I’m starting to get spam comments. Is there a way to delete all past comments from a specific user? Here’s an example. https://www.understandably.com/p/oxygen-is-a-hell-of-a-drug
It sounds like you should probably ban this commenter? https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041688471-How-do-I-ban-or-un-ban-someone-from-commenting-on-my-publication-
I have banned them. But they had already posted dozens of comments, and apparently I have to go in manually and delete the old ones, one at a time. I'd like to delete all their old comments when banned.
Ah I thought that their old comments should have been deleted if you banned them. Let me follow up on this.
love every thing in writing magazine and thing honest working for good lies I hate lie through editing love seeing my work on shelve helping infotech and many more not an expert but learning isn't a crime true true go to school though online school book shelves truth truth truth on 100 truth
It may be because I'm a beginner, but I am thoroughly confused about several aspects of Substack. I don't even understand if the idea is to email the newsletters myself or through Substack, or to email them at all. I also seem to have managed to register twice, and without a password; afterwards when I was asked to sign in and indicated I didn't have one, I was told more than once that Substack would email me a link to create a password, but that never happened. After I posted installment #1, I posted #2 and #3, but those two seem to have vanished. It seems to me that IF Substack is a serious enterprise, it should have a live Help desk, whether by phone or email-chat. And finally: Is anybody in charge of Substack's spell-checker? I'm asking because every time I type the word Substack in this query, it is flagged.
Hi there Wim! It sounds like you may have a few issue.
One is that you registered with two accounts. You can reach our support team via http://support.substack.com/ to resolve this issue for you by merging your two accounts.
Second - it sounds like emails from Substack aren't reaching you. I'm guessing that's because they are going to your email's spam folder. Have you checked that?
Oh yes that. The support page just hangs up everytime I try to login. Have not managed it in the last year. https://twitter.com/viveksrn/status/1385835924425113600
Moreover, when I go to the support page, all it offers are lists of cookie-cutter categories which do not fit my issues; and there seems to be no way of contacting a live person.
Nope, they are not in my Junk Mail folder.
Give support@substack.com an email and see if they can help you directly!
As I understand it, spell checkers are browser-based. Substack has no control over them. When it flags the word as an error tell your browser to learn the word. The exact terminology depends on the browser you’re using, but the basic idea is that you want to teach your browser to learn that word. Once you succeed in teaching it the word will no longer be flagged.
Well, I tried right-clicking it to add it to the Spell Checker's dictionary (as I'm used to doing in Word), but that was impossible.
The best approach would be to do a Google search How can I add words to the spellchecker for Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, or whatever browser you’re using. That’ll provide you with a series of articles with step by step instructions or even videos if you prefer.
I need no reward no recognition or no fame no name. I have more than everything that I need.
I want to write about the path to resolution and how the entire human species just needs to be in order and harmony just like all other species before the same.
That can only happen by understanding and the infinite power of aspirations and evaluation power of thoughts give every individual liberty and free will to understand as he wants to .
The reality of the form and the formless existing together is the same for all of us.
Instead of getting divided we need to unite and understand that either we all will live happily or we all will get annihilated as a species together by damaging the ecosystem.
The body is not the complete us and with out the body also we are not complete. Need some people with intelligent questions who are better with words to spread this all around knowledge holistically adding up all sciences learnt till now.
www.howtogivemore.com.
is my small attempt and I can help clarify and give information to anyone who wants to present it in his way to spread the knowledge.
Sorry if I sound like ranting or not connecting my dots properly.
Substack can be a great medium for the same.
Thank you for sharing and for your contribution to the world's understanding!
Is anyone else experiencing a glitch where your current draft and all previous draft histories appear blank? This has happened to me twice now and I've switched to Google Docs for my drafts as a workaround.
No but I did have some draft and scheduled posts disappear then reappear the next day 🤷🏼♀️
I always draft offline and then cut and paste to Substack - been doing that way for years to the blogs I help maintain.
Thanks Scot! I was really excited about the draft history enhancement that Substack rolled out recently, but so far, it's been more trouble than it's worth for me. Hard to describe the feeling of spending hours writing a post and then waking up one day and seeing that it's completely blank along with all previous saved versions.
Hi there Carson. I'm so sorry to hear this. Has this been happening consistently, and for how long? What browser are you using?
Hi Bailey, I use Google Chrome and opened a case on May 5th for the following draft post but it remains unresolved. I moved on, obviously, because I still love the platform and love to write, but this problem makes me very reluctant to use Substack for draft writing if they can just disappear like that - https://apocalypsenow.substack.com/publish/post/33697287
I don’t know how to use sections. When I try to move old posts to the sections. They do not reflect in the appropriate section.
Hi Vivek! You should be able to move old posts to new sections by changing the section selection in the post editor. Let us know if you can't find it or it doesn't work!
Hi, I did try doing the same but was unsuccessful. I have a blog and a podcast and wanted to move the podcast to a separate section.
I’m a member of a group of four people that wants to create a new Substack publication. It’s a progressive non-hierarchical cooperative venture and we feel strongly that one person should not be listed as the “master” above others. We would like to set up an LLC so that any funds go to the coop, not to one person. Do we have to set up one person as the “owner”? Can we set up the LLC as the “owner”?
Hi Joe, yes you can set up the LLC as the owner and account name. Under the Publication Details in your settings, modify the email sender and copyright owner.
What is your response to the NY Times article that just came out about Substack? Are we to understand that Substack's policy is to allow anyone on it? Including someone who has been banned from FB or twitter?
I've been banned from Facebook for sharing news about China holding water back from the Mekong River. Do you think I shouldn't have the opportunity to write a newsletter?
no
no, I mean you should not be banned from writing a newsletter. I am talking about the man who fomented an insurrection, frankly.
Hi there! Our founders wrote a post that explains our moderation policy in some more detail here. Hopefully this will help give you more of a sense of how Substack approaches this issue: https://blog.substack.com/p/how-we-approach-moderation-decisions
My newsletter Wine Wanderings has both paid and free subscribers (6 months running now. )What has been the experience of those who have converted to all paid? How did they approach it? What was the conversion rate?
Hi there Tricia! There are so many different ways to think about free versus paid strategies (and your readers' experience of it), depending on each writer's strategy and content. There's a lot of good info in our Guide to Going Paid (https://on.substack.com/p/your-guide-to-going-paid). But Bailey actually answered a similar question in our office hours last week, so I'll just paste her relevant and helpful info here: "The value of your writer-reader relationship can be measured along two major axes: your reach (the size of your audience) and your engagement (how much they’re paying attention).
In order to benchmark those, however, you’ll first need to figure out what your financial goals are for going paid. If you’re going full-time, your financial needs might be different from a writer who wants a part-time side project. Be honest with yourself! It’s okay to dream big, and it’s just as okay to say you don’t want to invest time in a full-time project.
Got a number in mind? Great. Now it’s time to do a bit of napkin math:
In the best of circumstances, we typically see conversion rates of 5-10% for writers who are going paid. You can use your email open rates to help approximate whether to use a high or low conversion rate. If your email open rates are typically less than 30%, use a 3% conversion rate. If your email open rates are typically 30-50%, use a 5% conversion rate. If your email open rates are greater than 50%, use a 10% conversion rate."
I am also giving 10% of paid to Feed America. I've been told that was an incentive to people who signed up for Premium.
Hanne, Great guidelines. I will keep this in mind. I probably will wait until the end of the year. But with 42 newsletter this first half of 2021, I probably can do some planning going forward.
Hi
I am very new to this platform. Just want to know that after creating the account here, how to go ahead ? From where to get subscribers ?
Hi everyone, I'm looking to interview writers about their experience creating and managing email newsletters as part of a UX project. Any help or insight you could provide would be greatly appreciated!
The Calendly link is below: https://calendly.com/nicholson-david830/15min
After confirmation, I'll set up a Zoom link.
Also... Is there any reason not to republish on, for example, medium.com?
Hi. I have a very low open rate (30%). Does this suggest emails are not getting through? Anything I can do about it? Thanks.