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 this discussion thread to answer writer questions for an hour.
Just getting started on Substack? Here’s a setup guide to get you started and help make your Substack stand out. If you’ve got questions about starting out, post in the comments below.
Worried about burnout? Fellow writers Emily Atkin and Haley Nahman have written about the constraints they’ve implemented to preserve their energy and write great pieces. Share your strategies to help with burnout in the comments.
You can now personalize the way you invite readers to subscribe. Our product team just shipped an update that allows you to customize the “Subscribe” button with a caption.
Drop your questions in the thread by leaving a comment, and we’ll do our best to share knowledge and tips. Our team will be answering questions and sharing insights with you in the thread today from 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PST / 1 p.m.–2 p.m. EST. We encourage writers to stick around after the hour and continue the conversation together.
Thank you for joining us at Office Hours today. We hope that you were able to connect with fellow writers and Substack team members to get some of your questions answered.
We will be back next week at the normal date and time, Thursday Nov. 18, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PST / 1 p.m.–2 p.m. EST.
In the meantime, we encourage you to continue the conversations with fellow writes in the thread and visit the Resource page: https://substack.com/resources
Talk soon,
Katie + Bailey + Rose + Jasmine + Kelsa + Ben + Jamine + James + Jonathan + Jack + Seth + Kerianne + Becca
I did a cross promotion yesterday with another Substack newsletter and the results were fabulous. We both picked up 50 new subscribers!
I also found that using the feature that customizes where you can put the paywall in a post worked great. I inserted that to a recent post just before the recipe and picked up 8 new paid subscribers.
Love this new Subscribe feature today. Thank you Substack for all you do!
That's great! I'd love to do some cross-promotion, but I haven't yet found anyone who seems to do anything close enough to what I do so that the cross-promotion seems mutually fruitful.
I do think there is something real merit in cross-promoting with someone who does something else. Readers can have multiple interests. I'm delighted to see some of my subs exploring disparate publications
That's incredible! I'm so happy about your success with the cross promotion and about the way that you picked up so many paid subscriptions with the carefully placed paywall!
This is really inspiring to me!
Although, on the carefully placed paywall aspect, I don't publish recipes, so it's not as clear where the paywall would go in my case!
It's fun to choose where to place the paywall. It makes me look at my paragraph breaks, and is much like locating the "inciting incident" (point of no-return) in a piece of fiction. Where is a reader just WANTING to read on... and pop it in there :)
I know right, it sucks how online a lot of people are so unkind to each other, but everyone here is so friendly and positive. Substack also has really good customer service and a nice user interface, so it's a great platform to be a part of.
One way I avoid burnout is by periodically reminding myself that, even though I have a readership, ultimately I write my newsletter for myself. It's a creative project I chose to take on, and if I'm not having fun, why do it?
So allowing myself to experiment and write a goofy / weird / format-breaking post every so often – even if I don't think it'll do well in terms of open rate or click throughs – is how I break out of a "factory" mindset.
That's what I'm hoping for. Right now most people just stop for a moment and move on. Every so often someone tosses me a quarter, but so far, I haven't stopped traffic. One day, though!
Happy to help. As a professional writer, I find myself slipping into a work-type mindset on my creative projects sometimes. So it helps to make that distinction for myself.
I do not use “for free” as I have learned “free” alone is the correct verbiage. No worries the button is customizable.and will appear in the nex zoetic message next week.
I'm out of the loop on the new button! Is that what the buzz is about...the ability to add captions to the button? I will check out your latest pieces and see what the buttons look like and how you're using it! Thanks so much for telling me about this! :)
I am here to help out with marketing, promotions, and ways to get found.
Check to see if Google has indexed your newsletter:
Just type "site:yourblog.substack.com" into google search bar and see which articles are making their way to the first page of Google. Once indexed, Google will organically help your articles reach a top spot IF they are well written, and adhere to Google's policies. But SEO takes time.
Thank you! This is very helpful. I’m writing a Substack about Disney history and pulp culture. There is already a lot of content out there on the internet, and I’m new to Substack. Thanks again
Hello Paul! I grew up in Orlando and my parents took us to the parks often when we were children. I love the magic of Disney storytelling, and their are countless stories behind the movies, parks and attractions. I love research, so I’m pairing my love of Disney with a love of research journalism. Thank you for taking a look, and feel free to suggest a topic in the comments. I love writing for readers. Do you have a favorite Disney character or topic?
If you have a favorite Disney movie you would like to write about, please consider a Guest Post on "moviewise: Life Lessons From Movies" https://moviewise.substack.com/s/-guest-posts
I am once again asking substack to fix the discover feature. When searching my primary keyword, (climb, climbing,) my newsletter consistently ranks below others that have nothing to do with the topic. (basketball, for example.) I'm sure these are lovely newsletters, but I feel like I'm getting boxed out of my own niche.
Yes! I swear someone brings this up every office hours. Also, why not have more pages of results so that everyone with the same tag can be found? I don't show up at all sometimes with some of my tags.
I feel fortunate that I do rank. But substack also seems to recommend dead (no posts in 6+ months) or inactive newsletters over mine. I have to wonder how this best serves viewers. Surely you'd want people to find stuff they actually read.
I want to write for people that really want tot read my words… not to agree or disagree but to see another perspective and learn. If they are not into what I wrote about I don’t want them on my list just to have a high number. I want them interested in my letters. Why would I reward them?! When I do all the work? They should say thank you for this insight. If they don’t, I hope that find something to read that keeps them curious and informed.
I am a super beginner… but if one person says: I like this. I am happy.
While I agree, there are fans and then there are super fans. Super fans are difficult to find and are a valuable treasure. They need to be rewarded with more than a mere thank you, at least in my opinion.
How would you envision this looking? I ask because I'm doing The Sample, but it only works if I put ad-like content into my newsletters and then people sign up for it, and given how low the click-thru rate has been, I don't get my newsletter shown to many other people, so I don't get subscriptions. So that doesn't really serve me.
Sample I am on, gave me a dozen subs or so. But we need something internal that our readers can click for an affiliate link which we can track. So if I share your substack and you get 12 new sign ups, I get a reward or something.
Yeah I like that. I share links to a lot of Substacks in my own Substack because I find them interesting. If I could share an affiliate link that would be cool.
I need an affiliate link that can track who is sharing my substack and how many subscribers it is getting. You can use the dashboard we already have, I think it could really boost growth. I intend to offer some really unique rewards to my superfans who go above and beyond.
No questions this week. Just wanted to say I'm happy to be here and available during Office Hours. This is a great way to connect with other writers.
If anyone wants to connect with me separate from Office Hours I write a newsletter on rediscovering the art of integrity as a real, imperfect, fallible person. Come over and check it out!
Thanks to Substack for linking to some other experiencing burnout. I'm not there (yet?) but I am finding it challenging to keep going at the pace I've set for myself, which I've done in an effort to provide a good balance of free and paid content. I publish twice a week, one free, one paid, with some big extra work (for mostly paid but sometimes also free) thrown in there every six weeks or so, with the seasons. I go through periods where I am so into it, I love it as much as I ever have, and others where I wonder how I can go on.
I'm not really going anywhere with this except to say publicly, if anyone else is in this place, you're not alone.
You need to pace yourself. I write every Monday so I can have the weekly issue ready. Sometimes I can write 2-3 issues in the day, other times it takes me a whole week just to write the one and only issue. Pace yourself and listen to yourself.
I work, on average, 4-5 weeks in advance, which I how I have a managed to pace myself thus far. It saves me completely when I have a super busy month, travel for work, etc. As I'm thinking more deeply about this (right this very moment), I don't get tired of writing, per se, as much as I do hustling for paid subscribers. That's where the burnout-y feeling resides.
I'm going to write "They can chill, trust me" on a Post-It and staple it to my screen. (I meant hustling for free signups to become paid subscribers. My paid folks are relaxed and happy with whatever. My free folks are the hardest to please.)
Oh Sarah, I want to be you when I grow up. I'm impressed that you are writing that far ahead. I stay a couple of days ahead and that is it. I am contemplating what my strategy should be once tax season starts again next year. I'm amazed that you do this with kids and a job and no doubt a zillion other things that you must also be doing. You go girl!
Aw, thanks, Gayla. Your (ongoing) support is so sweet; I truly appreciate it.
I am lucky to have such a rich, full life to balance. To be fully transparent, I pay someone to clean my house every other week; my husband cooks all our dinners; my mom takes my kids for a sleepover nearly once a week -- without those things my newsletter probably would not exist. ("Having it all" is an illusion; don't let anyone tell you otherwise.)
I am a super disciplined person (sometimes that's an asset, sometimes a character flaw) and this is the way I work best. In the beginning I was definitely writing only a few days ahead but I felt too anxious only having a little buffer and realized that "weeks ahead" actually allows me a lot more breathing room -- I can take fairly substantial chunks of time off if I'm very busy or just not feeling it and my subscribers are none the wiser.
I think it's a learning process to figure out what works best, so don't be afraid to experiment and iterate until you find a sustainable (and sane) schedule -- it's worth it!
Thank you Sarah for the comments and the encouragement. I do know that "having it all" is not possible, I've tried it several times in my life and something always suffered while trying to have it all. I wish I was as disciplined as you as I might be able to get more than one newsletter ahead, so maybe I need to focus more on what I could do differently instead of complaining about it where I sit at the moment. I know I would feel better if I could get further ahead, so that is what I'm going to work towards now in advance of tax season next year. I appreciate you, thanks so much.
I was going to do it twice a week. But I was highly advised to do it once a week. And I'm super glad I did. I couldn't imagine doing the entire newsletter process condensed to a couple of days.
Me too. I review movies and you'd think twice a week would be easy. It's not! To write a quality review you have to research the movie beforehand, see it, sometimes more than once, think about it, craft and recraft the review, and I also, thankfully, have a movie-knowledgeable friend who edits me for free just before I publish, to catch glaring errors. Once a week is a marathon. Quality is absolutely uppermost in my mind.
I didn't expand to twice a week until I built up a backlog of posts, and started realizing the new ones I was tacking onto my publishing schedule were no longer timely. The posts I wound up offering on my new days are also a different kind of content. Now I do essays on the outdoors Thursdays, and interviews about the outdoors as a podcast, on Sundays.
Because the type of content is different, I think it's spared me from getting sick of it.
I do a short message on Tuesday and a long one on Wednesday. I think part of my problem is that I have not kept my Tuesday container small enough -- it has grown bigger than I intended (no one's fault but my own) and I need to scale back.
Really happy to see such regular feature drops from the Substack team. I've found that when I need a feature as a writer, more often than not, Substack already has it.
Kudos to the team. 🤗
Please do subscribe to my newsletter for a fun poem every week!
Publishing fiction every day (446 and counting) has almost assured that I will burnout spectacularly at some point. I'm hoping that when I do the wreckage is as entertaining as Hunter S Thompson at his most unhinged, or nonsense words Lewis Carroll would have been jealous of.
I am astounded by this record. You should be very proud of yourself because most people would never be able to maintain a track record like that. (I struggle just to write every day, but I publish only 2-3 times a week!) I need to check out your newsletter so you may have done this, but I would love to read your reflections on what it's like to do this kind of thing.
My friend Brad Stabler, who happens to be Michigan Secondary English teacher of the Year, is looking for a YA substack for his students. I'm gonna point him to Story Cauldron.
Wow, thanks. I'd be open to giving him a comp subscription if he'd like to read more than my 3 free chapters. Maybe share my email (jackie@jackiedana.com) with him so we can chat more?
The few nonfiction pieces I have added to my newsletter are memoir.
Maybe I should add a third section that addresses writing, the process, and the borderline insanity of daily publishing ( as opposed to daily writing, which can be edited many times before public viewing )
A new section would be great if it's something you plan to do regularly. I added a section that is tangentially related to my other two (it only has one article but I have PLANS!). I created it as a separate section because I think some of the people who want to read that content may not be as interested in the other stuff (and eventually I may split it off as its own newsletter, but that feels premature right now).
But if you are only going to write this kind of content occasionally, I think it could fit into your overall newsletter content. It really depends on how you imagine your audience shaping up.
Of course, I think you know that prolific writing will not lead to burnout. It will only prompt you to write more. The well does not become exhausted. You seem like a bright guy. Please subscribe to my newsletter -- I welcome your bright comments which will, hopefully, not direct too many sarcastic barbs at me.
I launched my bookstack on Tuesday. It was a great success. It launched with 39 subscribers. I also comped all my prelaunch subscribers the paid version for life. Half the subscribers are friends and family, and the other half was my IG followers.
What I did was create a short message about my bookstack, then I texted it to my friends and family on both text and Facebook messages. Then I also messaged every one of my 400 followers on IG the same message. I got to about 300 before IG stopped me from being able to do it.
Any feedback on how I handled things? Any advice on how to get more followers? How often do you use the "share" buttons? I used the "Leave a comment" button" after each section of my email because I wanted to encourage engagement.
You had me at "I refused rehab for my book-buying addiction." Subscribed! I write a 'stack about children's books, raising readers, and building a culture of reading in your home and am, unsurprisingly, a bookaholic myself. I look forward to seeing you in my inbox!
I have gotten the highest conversion rate by making business cards on vistaprint and handing them out to people I meet on the trail and in the climbing gym.
That's a great idea. I was thinking of doing something similar. Since I am a book stacker, I was going to put them in library books and maybe books at B&N. LOL. Not sure the ethics involved in that. I was thinking I can make them a little bigger and they'll be bookmarks.
If you have a local, independent bookstore they might put bookmark-shaped ones on their counter. Local independents tend to be more amenable to helping out local authors. (Former GM of an independent here)
In the town where I live, a lot of coffee shops have some kind of community bulletin board where people can put some of their own business cards. This might be an avenue worth pursuing.
Youtopian, I intend to forward more questions to you. I am putting my questions together. Some of my questions are in a post that should be on this thread -- that post was placed about five minutes ago. In addition to the three questions I posted, I have a fourth question: I would like someone to assist me in registering for google console so I can be indexed on google console.
I agree and thank you. But now I'm out of people. lol. I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I was thinking of adding a "share this" section in my next issue. Perhaps I can get my 39 to expand that way.
Thank you. I prefer to read physical books. Something about the physical book just makes me happy. Plus I take pictures of the books for bookstagram. I don’t even use a kindle. So for now I would have to say no.
Question for you guys, about changing prices: Substack makes it easy to change our subscription prices in Settings. However, any changes we make only affect people who pay to subscribe *after* you make the change.
Is there a way to, say, reduce the price of my paid subscription from $50 a year to $35 a year that will also reduce it for everyone who already has a paid subscription? (And do I need to do that in my Stripe dashboard?)
On burnout. I know I can't commit to posting certain days. I post a monthly piece on the first, and one that will remain "free" on the 15th. Other than that, I give myself permission to post 6-8 other pieces. I keep a number of growing pieces in "drafts" and work at them. In this way, I always have something to add to, to grow. And at points through the month I check to see how many pieces I've posted, to review reader questions, to note what is inspiring me. Something of an "unscheduled" schedule. Much like any writing, it's coming to know and work with HOW you work. Then honouring that. Sometimes, those pieces that come out when dead tired are those that most resonate.
When you refer to "burnout", do you mean that you're too busy with a day job to post on certain days? Or do you mean that you lack enthusiasm for your Substack?
The former makes total sense to me, but the latter is totally foreign to me.
I can't imagine not being hyped to write a Substack piece; if I wasn't hyped then there's no way I would ever choose to write the piece.
Burnout from working on a novel and dealing with all the "stuff" of a writer's life--an agent, selling, editing manuscripts... I still actively produce manuscripts, and feel I need to if I'm going to have a useful newsletter for writers. (I've come out of teaching in an MFA program, and non-producing writers who turn around and teach writing... well, let's just say it's not something I want to do :) It's finding balance. There are topics and issues in writing that I want to explore in my newsletter, and they are not easy topics. It's not a lack of enthusiasm; it's about finding the right door into the topic. To return in my mind to being an apprenticing writer and finding what might speak now to others... takes a certain type of energy.
Yeah I feel the same way as Andrew. There are days when I just can't manage another piece of writing (in which case I publish the following day or as soon as I can get it done, hoping my subscribers understand) but I love writing my Substack. It's one of my favorite activities and if anything, I wish I had more time to devote to it because I have so many ideas and only so many hours in a day, and I have to do other stuff because right now Substack doesn't pay the rent!
Hi there, Substack newbie and just wanted to give my appreciation to this platform. I am a teacher, my newsletter For the Love of Words (oliviamardwig.substack.com) has already been a fantastic way for me to share my educational materials, and of course my love of reading and writing to families. I am hoping to have a feature where I can have folks donate a subscription to a low income students. I know you can gift a subscription, which I LOVE, but is a donation possible? Thanks!
I like your subject. You can create a custom button anywhere in an article, and have it link to any other website. Example to a low income charity. Hope that works for you.
I'm confused about burnout. Branding is stressful. Promotion is stressful. Burnout has never even crossed my mind, though.
One scientist told me this:
13) What are the most exciting projects that you’re currently working on and why are these projects exciting?
You shouldn’t work on any projects that don’t excite you—every project you’re working on should be exciting.
And you should do bold things, but at the same time you need to do normal things in order to eat and pay your rent and pay your health insurance—it would be irresponsible to do only bold things.
I like good challenges, ones that get your out of your comfort zone and force you to find your voice but not too taxing as to be a burden. My recent essay series took a fair bit of research but was very rewarding once done.
There is work and pleasure. Some projects are work and others are just joy. We can survive on one and not the other. Take the bites you can handle and build to greater little by little.
I have been falling down some history rabbit holes and doing the research has taken a ridiculous amount of time. I am slowly working on a series of historical articles (that are currently on the back burner due to NaNoWriMo) but I am eager to get back to them. They are hella time-consuming but also a bit of an obsession. I almost wish I didn't have NaNoWriMo because I want to work on them so badly! But I can imagine that if I HAD to write them every week, it would be a bit overwhelming. It's nice to be able to work on them as I have time, and in the meantime publish other things that are shorter and easier to fit into my very full November schedule. (I can't wait until December though!)
Customizing the 'Subscribe' button with a caption is a great way of inviting readers to subscribe. Hope it is going to have an impact on my newsletter's number of subscribers.
How can I improve search engine optimization? It would be nice if my posts could be found by title or author name. (There seems to be a significant delay before the posts are searchable.)
From what I heard the substack is not very SEO friendly. But it's not really meant to be. It's meant to be an email, with an archived copy online. I would say put your evergreen content on your website and link to it from your substack.
I'm so iffy on Medium. That is where I was going to write before I found substack. The top medium writers all write articles complaining about medium, so that scared me away.
I wouldn't make medium my home. I just set it up as a catch funnel for SEO. Curious to hear if anyone else has gone the "custom domain" route, and whether that's helped at all.
In my first paid month on Substack, I made more than I had on 15 ms. on Medium. I now use Medium to draw people to my newsletter here, and to my published books. I've made good contacts and even friends on Medium, but the experience here in superior in all ways! I also feel like my subscribers here are not having to put up with a lot of garbage on their screens as they do on Medium. Here, some of my subs are happily discovering other newsletters. It feels very win-win :)
Just a note: if you cross-publish Substack posts elsewhere, it could affect SEO for your main Substack. That's totally fine if that's the tradeoff you want to make but just a heads up! We know our own SEO isn't great, and our engineers are running several ongoing experiments to improve it.
We also would also recommend linking your Substack in your Medium bio and at the top/bottom of your Medium posts if you do go that route.
You can optimize your posts with on page SEO techniques. Easy to do as you are writing your articles. (Shameless link: https://pau1.substack.com/p/6-steps-for-more-substack-subscribers). Under the best circumstances, it may take up to 6 months for Google to start to rank an article high up the list.
Thank you to Substack this week for making office hours available for us. I started Feb of this year writing personal stories and thoughts about what it is like for a traditional healthcare provider to incorporate eastern healing and meditation and how I have journeyed in this culturescape of fear and not enoughness to lead a life of increased conscious awareness and tools I use to stay present and grateful. Shout out to YouTopian Journey for awesome graphics and writing. And, just found Sol Report—so good. Thank you Substack!!!
This is a big question, but is there any discussion happening about what it would mean to help writers monetize or generate subscriptions through high-performing articles "after the fact?" An article I wrote early on continues to accrue a lot of views, but I'm not converting those to subscriptions.
This is a great question. My "top" editions are mostly really early in the newsletter, way before I went paid. I'd love to bring them back around to get more use out of them.
The model doesn't really allow for that. You can have a "buy me a coffee" link that can help but otherwise, it's a challenge. For me, I just hope that if someone finds one of my articles through social that they may then see another later, and as any marketer will tell you, people need several "touches" before they buy. So if they liked one article and then see another they like, they might say, hey this is a great publication, I want to follow it. And then maybe later they will decide to pay for a paid subscription.
1) cross promotions with other writers - this is a mixed bag, depending on the reach of the collaborator, your content's resonance with their audience, etc. All in all, this is something that continues to not deliver until it does so handsomely
2) try submitting your content to recommendation services. Some examples would be
I do. I add it as a CTA at the bottom of all my posts.
The way it works is that when you sign up, you get sent a newsletter each day w/ the option to subscribe. You give them a rough idea of your interests, but it's algorithm-driven. You can also rate each one you receive and leave feedback. the more you do that, the better it gets at sending you what it thinks you want.
The more people that signup/click through from my page, the more my own newsletter gets shared by The Sample.
As a newsletter owner, I like that it expands my reach, and gets my work in front of people that might not ever see it otherwise. As a reader, I like that they send me stuff that I might love, or that I might not.
Thanks for the awesome tips. I've submitted to newsletter curators before but hadn't noticed a huge difference. I'll give this a try though. I do agree about cross promotions. They really do depend on audience overlap
I find my long-standing FB platform has been the most fruitful. I've also had a few jump-overs from Instagram. And more than a few from other Substack newsletters that I subscribe to and comment on regularly. I know other folks find Twitter fruitful, but it's a counterintuitive platform for me, so I have not.
Sure! It's under "stickers" and should appear on the first page as "links." I've been trying to put out high quality instagram stories that get people to click through.
I've done cross-promotions with other writers, submitted to every recommendation service, started an Instagram account for my newsletter, added a link to sign up in my email signature, printed business cards that I hand out to people (with context, I'm not just shoving these things in strangers' faces), and taken out a couple ads in Ann Friedman's newsletter (that have been worth every dollar).
Yeah, I'd love to hear about the ROI from Ann's newsletter. I'm advertising outside of Substack right now. It's driving traffic, but not subscriptions or sign-ups so far, so I'd love to consider other options.
I believe it. I had (well, have) an Instagram account just for my newsletter, which is highly visual, and while it was effective at pulling in new people and getting free signups (and even a few paid subscriptions), it quickly became obvious that to do it well I'd have to cultivate two separate, albeit somewhat overlapping, communities. I write my newsletter for the love of it, on the side of my full-time career, so while an IG account was worthwhile to a certain degree, I just don't have the extra time and energy to do both.
I was contemplating the same thing. Cause right now I'm doing FB, IG, Twitter, and Pinterest and I'm trying to make YoutTube videos. And I'm like this is just too much. I am going to cut it down to just IG because I actuallly enjoy it and make friends. But I am going to continue to message my new followers to join my bookstack.
The first time I paid for the cheaper of her two ad options and it ended up costing me, iirc, about a dollar a subscriber. Most were free signups but a couple were paid. I'm still at less than 200 subscribers after 18 months of doing this so getting 20-30 new pairs of eyeballs is a big deal to me.
Not big at all haha, only like 50. Fortunately some people with bigger accounts like what I wrote and retweeted it. So I think they key is just to write good quality content and the rest will follow.
Hi, I also wanna say how much I enjoy substack. I originally started my newsletter on squarespace (which still hosts my website) but the tools and analytics and resources here are just so good. I'm a dad of a 3 and 5 year old and sharing the humor behind being a dad as well as the stories that shaped me growing up has been super fun (https://dadstories.substack.com/). One of my biggest obstacles to growing my newsletter is feeling "spammy" -- like I'm plugging it too much on social media. Any advice to overcome this would be greatly appreciated!
Everyone shares their new content on social - that's totally normal and no one will likely even give it a second thought if they see it, so I wouldn't worry about it (unless you are tweeting about it every 20 minutes!).
That's a great piece! Wanted to leave a comment...but couldn't find the comment bar. Also--you might want to leave a "share" or "subscribe" somewhere in the text. But I thoroughly enjoyed the humour and the pics! Very good :) Brought back a LOT of memories of traveling with my sons... oh my!
I have comments disabled! I don't know why -- I should turn those back on. And I definitely need to work on the share / subscribe call to action. Appreciate you reading!
I’m a full steam ahead type of gal so I launched my Substack, The FLARE, heedless of any real advice. It seems that’s a point of trepidation for some but for me, that’s a strength. My questions are, though: How do you plan a launch? What are your strategies? What are offering and how much are you scheduling ahead of time?
I want to launch serial short stories and maybe even commissions in the future.
Congrats! Launching a publication is a big moment in any writer’s journey. We encourage you to treat it as such. The best launches are not just one moment or one day, but a series of efforts that drive a wave of excitement, attention, and subscriptions to your work.
Tom White from www.whitenoise.email here! I write a semi-weekly newsletter on books, behavior, and the brain.
Are there plans to make Substack more SEO friendly? I find that my posts seldom rank even after solid traction and traffic from different sources. I welcome any and all tips on this front!
Thank you! I know a lot of people have been asking about it. The example I gave elsewhere is that When I search "Climbing" on substack, my newsletter about climbing ranks below several that are about basketball.
Another vote for an app. When I go to Substack on my phone (outside of reading the email versions) I frequently have to get a sign-in link first. An app would make reading so much easier - especially when you subscribe to as many Substacks as I do! :)
Is there anyone on Substack that is writing about a product, how to use it, tips/tricks, ideas and soliciting their users/customers feedback by say adding a survey in each issue? If so, could you make and intro so that I could learn best practices/ideas from their experience? I'm trying to craft a substack that our customers would want share with others.
Does anyone have any recommendations for making welcome emails after people sign up? I'm trying to keep it simple but make sure people get an idea of what the newsletter is about.
When people buy a paid subscription, they get this:
"Thank you for supporting hyperlocal journalism!
"You will start receiving the weekly newsletter right here in your inbox. You can also log in to CoppellChronicle.Substack.com to read the full archives and other posts as they are published.
"If you don’t mind me asking, how did you hear about the Coppell Chronicle?"
"Thanks for your interest in the Coppell Chronicle. You won’t receive all of the content that I send to my paid subscribers, so I hope you’ll consider joining their ranks soon.
"If you don’t mind me asking, how did you hear about this newsletter?"
Thanks to Carol Sill's PersonalPapers blog - (found reading this office hours yesterday) I think it was a great way to thank me for subscribing. The title is: "OMG thanks!"
I'd recommend keeping it concise, but writing something in your voice to introduce yourself and what they can expect (topic/frequency). I've also seen writers link a few of their favorite posts in Welcome emails or ask readers to introduce themselves personally!
How do I expand readers? I don't want to start charging for my publications until I have a decent amount of folks reading. My plan is to always generate free content and have the more elaborate content be paid. Thanks.
Totally agree with the strategy to make sure you're always doing some free content with special paid features for your biggest fans/supporters. Here's a resource we made with some tips to grow a free audience: https://on.substack.com/p/grow-4
I am having issues with my substack going to spam, and I mean my personal email spam! This started two weeks ago on my Yahoo account. Any fixes? I also think this is causing a vast amount of my subscribers not to see my substack.
I'd be curious to see what the Substack team has to say in this situation, but I know I've seen them recommend culling non-openers in previous open threads.
The problem with this is that some people show as never opening the newsletter but may actually be reading it. I have a friend who showed up as ever having opened it, but then she commented about one of the newsletters on Facebook. So she was reading but Substack wasn't showing her reads, maybe because of her email platform or something. SO before you remove people it might be worth reaching out to them (which could creep them out if they think you're paying attention to who reads what, but...)
I just set up paid subscriptions and was wondering if in the future you will add a separate benefits bullet for Annual subscribers? I am going to offer an added benefit to annual subscribers but just plan on explaining that in the welcome email and paid subscriptions launch post. Thanks!
You can filter/customize your email list and only send stuff out to your annual subscription folks. Would that answer your need, or am I misunderstanding what you're looking for?
Oh didn't realize I could do that, that's helpful. What I'm looking for is a separate line item for annual subscribers on the subscription page to show them what they get (I'll be mailing them physical art prints). There are only fields for monthly and founder tiers.
I’d recommend that you list it in your subscriber benefits, but specify “(Annual Only)” or similar.
You can use the subscriber dashboard to filter for Annual subs and send them an email to request any relevant info (addresses, etc.) to send the art prints. https://on.substack.com/p/subscriber-dashboard-guide
I have questions! I see that some folks have made their main page more of a "home" page with other links, customized colors, etc. - I cannot figure out how to do this but I want to in my holiday week off upcoming. Suggestions? I am also planning to add some kind of subscription option.
It's all under settings on your dashboard. For example, if you go to settings and scroll right down to a grey box called "Publication details" you can add in recommended links. These will appear on the right hand side of your main page. It's worth poking around in the settings to see how they work. Also I think that there are some instructions on your "posts" page in the dashboard - right hand side under resources.
I have expressed my alienation and exasperation about our digitalized world. I fear I probably sound like some antique relic of a bygone age. Although I may be older than most of you (I am 64), believe me, my generation knew what COOL was and nothing was as cool as charging down the street, throwing rocks, while someone is blasting "Street Fighting Man," by the Stones, on a boombox.
In any event, this is a quatrain I wrote which tries to articulate my dismay at the itty bitty world of bits and bytes.
The tyranny of binaric thought
The stilling of the nuanced voice
The menu selection that misses the point
That never gives me one true choice
David Gottfried, Copyright, 2019
PS. I write a lot more than this sort of poetry. Try my pungent and provocative essays
A quick question for the substack dev team . . . is there a way to italicize text in my post titles? I reference the names of books, films, and paintings every once in a while, and I would like to use italics instead of quote marks if I could! Thanks for any help you (or anyone else) can give!
Not at the moment (since email subject lines can't be formatted) — but I see how that could be useful for the site experience & appreciate the feedback!
I struggled mightily with italics when blogging, but I never found a solution. I write everything in Word, then paste the content into emails, blogs, etc. When I pasted italics into my blog, they always wanted to “stick” to the next word. I finally gave up and started using *stars* instead of italics. It irritates me, because I like italics for emphasis. They were good enough for Hunter Thompson fifty-years ago…However, even old dogs of 79-years need to learn new tricks if they want to get *fed*(and scratched behind the ears), so I’ve been trying to *accept* that fact and move on with my life.
I have slots open for cross promotions. All that I ask is that you have 100+ subscribers and your newsletter is a fit for what I write about. https://youtopianjourney.substack.com/
I write about technology themes, companies and strategies. I have two questions:
1. Have you noticed a difference in open rates when the newsletter goes from "[Publication Name" vs "XYZ from [Publication Name]" vs just the author name?
2. This week I made a makeshift referral program using Google Forms. Initial results have been great. Is the product team working on something like this?
Also, I would love to cross-promotions. If you're writing about technology and are interested, hit me up!
The whole thing is kinda scrappy but this is what I did - I sent out an email to my top 25 readers with their respective referral codes and a link to a Google Form that they can forward to others. The forms asks for an email id and the referral code. Then I take the responses and add them to my subscriber list. The reward is a t-shirt that you get after 15 signups.
Thanks for sharing. How many new subs did you get? There is something called Viral Loops that does this process but waiting for Substack to create their own version.
Shobhit, just getting around to this office hours (was heads down writing my November piece). Would love to cross-promote - am all about strategies. Ping me via email gabthinking (at) gmail (dot) com.
1. We haven't specifically tested this, but you can test it out! My guess is that it might be useful to use your name to make it feel more personal if you're the main writer.
2. Great to hear about your experience with a referral system! We've piloted a couple versions of referrals in the past, and it's one of the growth tools we're exploring for writers, but want to make sure we get it right.
You may be thinking about the new updates to Substack Profiles? They display the publications you write, as well as the Substacks you read and a feed of posts you’ve written. You can edit your profile information at any time to select which publications you want to appear on your profile. More about that here: https://on.substack.com/p/new-tools-paywall-embeds
What other discoverability features are you curious to learn more about?
I was asking more about ways to increase visibility for a smaller newsletter like mine. If someone's looking for a good read on music, I want to make sure they can find my signal out there.
Guest posts are a great way to get in front of new readers. You might consider reaching out to other music writers or culture writers that have a potential audience overlap.
We see writers have success when writers do guests posts with writers who have a slightly larger audience than you currently have. You might start by reaching out to some of the writers in the music category on the discover page https://substack.com/discover
Here's a product-improvement recommendation for the Substack team:
I like the new option to put a paywall "line" in a post, withe very thing below the line for paid users only.
What I'd like to see is the ability to have a *beginning* and an *end* to that line.
Sone newsletters have multiple sections, and sometimes you don't want to put *everything* below the line behind a paywall, so if you could just pick a section and have the rest stay unlocked, that'd be very flexible and fantastic.
Thanks again for hosting this Substack, was dope! As always, I am open for cross promotions (if it makes sense), inviting writers to our Twitter hype group for Substack writers, and generally helping each other grow. Rock on.
As far as I can figure out, it's not possible to edit the group labels or site titles in Recommended Links. So changing or updating means starting all over again. Am I missing something? And if not--is there a plan to improve usability for this feature?
Yes. I've tried to get this on Substack's radar before. I decided to add little emoticons on my home page. I had to tear down all the sections and re-do them.
Thank you for joining us at Office Hours today. We hope that you were able to connect with fellow writers and Substack team members to get some of your questions answered.
We will be back next week at the normal date and time, Thursday Nov. 18, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PST / 1 p.m.–2 p.m. EST.
In the meantime, we encourage you to continue the conversations with fellow writes in the thread and visit the Resource page: https://substack.com/resources
Talk soon,
Katie + Bailey + Rose + Jasmine + Kelsa + Ben + Jamine + James + Jonathan + Jack + Seth + Kerianne + Becca
I did a cross promotion yesterday with another Substack newsletter and the results were fabulous. We both picked up 50 new subscribers!
I also found that using the feature that customizes where you can put the paywall in a post worked great. I inserted that to a recent post just before the recipe and picked up 8 new paid subscribers.
Love this new Subscribe feature today. Thank you Substack for all you do!
That's great! I'd love to do some cross-promotion, but I haven't yet found anyone who seems to do anything close enough to what I do so that the cross-promotion seems mutually fruitful.
I do think there is something real merit in cross-promoting with someone who does something else. Readers can have multiple interests. I'm delighted to see some of my subs exploring disparate publications
Totally understand that! In this case, she did cake and I did pie. Our reader/subscriber base is pretty similar.
Check mine and see if you think there's synergy
I will! Thanks!
That's incredible! I'm so happy about your success with the cross promotion and about the way that you picked up so many paid subscriptions with the carefully placed paywall!
This is really inspiring to me!
Although, on the carefully placed paywall aspect, I don't publish recipes, so it's not as clear where the paywall would go in my case!
It's fun to choose where to place the paywall. It makes me look at my paragraph breaks, and is much like locating the "inciting incident" (point of no-return) in a piece of fiction. Where is a reader just WANTING to read on... and pop it in there :)
Nice! Let me know if you want to try to find some common ground to do another :)
That might be fun.
I'm writing something about a fried chicken tour I did back in 2019 right now, just in case you're worried there's no overlap ;) haha
Good job! It's really satisfying when you wake up in the morning and see a load of new subscribers :)
Heck yes! And a couple opted for the paid option, too!
How do you add PayPal? 🤷🏻♀️ Just add as a link?
Super dope!
Anyone willing to cross promote with a newbie?
I know right, it sucks how online a lot of people are so unkind to each other, but everyone here is so friendly and positive. Substack also has really good customer service and a nice user interface, so it's a great platform to be a part of.
One way I avoid burnout is by periodically reminding myself that, even though I have a readership, ultimately I write my newsletter for myself. It's a creative project I chose to take on, and if I'm not having fun, why do it?
So allowing myself to experiment and write a goofy / weird / format-breaking post every so often – even if I don't think it'll do well in terms of open rate or click throughs – is how I break out of a "factory" mindset.
Yes! Very true. Keep painting on that canvas in public. Eventually a crowd forms around you.
That's what I'm hoping for. Right now most people just stop for a moment and move on. Every so often someone tosses me a quarter, but so far, I haven't stopped traffic. One day, though!
Geoffrey, that's great! Thank you for sharing. No writer should put themselves into a factory mindset.
Happy to help. As a professional writer, I find myself slipping into a work-type mindset on my creative projects sometimes. So it helps to make that distinction for myself.
I totally love that - we aren't writing machines! I'd lose my small but dedicated audience if I tried that formula stuff.
Bleep bloop! Oh, I mean, agreed. We are not machines. 😬
Very good! Yes!
The "subscribe" button with a caption is a wonderful feature -- thank you for adding it!
We're so glad!!
Yes, it is a good feature! Will revise mine today.
I do not use “for free” as I have learned “free” alone is the correct verbiage. No worries the button is customizable.and will appear in the nex zoetic message next week.
I'm out of the loop on the new button! Is that what the buzz is about...the ability to add captions to the button? I will check out your latest pieces and see what the buttons look like and how you're using it! Thanks so much for telling me about this! :)
I am here to help out with marketing, promotions, and ways to get found.
Check to see if Google has indexed your newsletter:
Just type "site:yourblog.substack.com" into google search bar and see which articles are making their way to the first page of Google. Once indexed, Google will organically help your articles reach a top spot IF they are well written, and adhere to Google's policies. But SEO takes time.
Read "StackHacks - 6 Steps for More SubStack Subscribers with SEO" in my marketing section at https://pau1.substack.com/p/6-steps-for-more-substack-subscribers
to help Google searchers find your articles. Best of Luck to all!
Thank you! This is very helpful. I’m writing a Substack about Disney history and pulp culture. There is already a lot of content out there on the internet, and I’m new to Substack. Thanks again
Your Substack sounds cool. Checking it out!
Thanks Jackie! Better wear sunglasses though...
I'll check out your newsletter. It seems like a cool subject. Why is Disney important to you?
Hello Paul! I grew up in Orlando and my parents took us to the parks often when we were children. I love the magic of Disney storytelling, and their are countless stories behind the movies, parks and attractions. I love research, so I’m pairing my love of Disney with a love of research journalism. Thank you for taking a look, and feel free to suggest a topic in the comments. I love writing for readers. Do you have a favorite Disney character or topic?
Great reply! I've been called Goofy, but never been to the parks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Haha! Goofy’s personality is that of klutzy southern gentleman. He is very polite and endearing. Sound like you?
To a tee! I'm a 75 y/o female - former professional dancer. (kidding :)
If you have a favorite Disney movie you would like to write about, please consider a Guest Post on "moviewise: Life Lessons From Movies" https://moviewise.substack.com/s/-guest-posts
(e-mail: moviewise@icloud.com if interested)
I love this idea for reader engagement! Thank you
Me too
Thank you!!
thanks - just checked and mine is indexed! Next I'll check into your stackhacks
Thanks Carol!
Thank you. This is just what I was looking for.
Nice tip. Thank you!
Thanks Chevanne. Nice name!
Appreciate the tips … “Dimeless” then & now
Oh Thank you too much!!!
I noticed some posts come up more frequently than others. Any idea why that happens?
In Search you mean? Google looks for certain things. Those things were included more than the other articles which were not optimized.
Here's the thing. If you keep the 6 things you can do checklist (https://pau1.substack.com/p/6-steps-for-more-substack-subscribers) nearby while you are writing your post, then you have a better chance of being indexed for that specific article.
That is a terrific new 'subscribe' button! Thanks for the update, team.
Yes, I appreciate it too!
I am once again asking substack to fix the discover feature. When searching my primary keyword, (climb, climbing,) my newsletter consistently ranks below others that have nothing to do with the topic. (basketball, for example.) I'm sure these are lovely newsletters, but I feel like I'm getting boxed out of my own niche.
Yes! I swear someone brings this up every office hours. Also, why not have more pages of results so that everyone with the same tag can be found? I don't show up at all sometimes with some of my tags.
I feel fortunate that I do rank. But substack also seems to recommend dead (no posts in 6+ months) or inactive newsletters over mine. I have to wonder how this best serves viewers. Surely you'd want people to find stuff they actually read.
Yes, this is terrible. We need much better discovery.
Agreed.
I appreciate it!
Substack we could use a referral program to help not only grow our lists, but reward the true fans of our work.
I think your work is their reward.
I want to write for people that really want tot read my words… not to agree or disagree but to see another perspective and learn. If they are not into what I wrote about I don’t want them on my list just to have a high number. I want them interested in my letters. Why would I reward them?! When I do all the work? They should say thank you for this insight. If they don’t, I hope that find something to read that keeps them curious and informed.
I am a super beginner… but if one person says: I like this. I am happy.
While I agree, there are fans and then there are super fans. Super fans are difficult to find and are a valuable treasure. They need to be rewarded with more than a mere thank you, at least in my opinion.
Hm… give them free subscriptions for a limited time or a discount.
I am not a paid publication, not until a certain threshold is hit, which should be a few months away.
Yes!
How would you envision this looking? I ask because I'm doing The Sample, but it only works if I put ad-like content into my newsletters and then people sign up for it, and given how low the click-thru rate has been, I don't get my newsletter shown to many other people, so I don't get subscriptions. So that doesn't really serve me.
Sample I am on, gave me a dozen subs or so. But we need something internal that our readers can click for an affiliate link which we can track. So if I share your substack and you get 12 new sign ups, I get a reward or something.
Yep we need something like at the end of Morning Brew, they have the "share with your friends to win prizes". But we need the tackable shares data in order to award the prizes... ie https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/refer-a-friend?access_token=enroikYRpWqCwVcQ6qr48Fyk&utm_source=share_section&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=mb
Yeah I like that. I share links to a lot of Substacks in my own Substack because I find them interesting. If I could share an affiliate link that would be cool.
I need an affiliate link that can track who is sharing my substack and how many subscribers it is getting. You can use the dashboard we already have, I think it could really boost growth. I intend to offer some really unique rewards to my superfans who go above and beyond.
I need this too - was there any luck with this?
Love that we can now customize the subscribe button. Thank you product team!
What do you like about the customization? Should I look at your most recent pieces to see how you're making use of the new possibilities?
New subscribe button is great! Thanks team!
Thanks for the kindness! I let our team know. They are always excited to hear we've helped writers succeed :)
No questions this week. Just wanted to say I'm happy to be here and available during Office Hours. This is a great way to connect with other writers.
If anyone wants to connect with me separate from Office Hours I write a newsletter on rediscovering the art of integrity as a real, imperfect, fallible person. Come over and check it out!
Sounds dope!
Love the idea of customized subscribe button, Thanks!
Thanks to Substack for linking to some other experiencing burnout. I'm not there (yet?) but I am finding it challenging to keep going at the pace I've set for myself, which I've done in an effort to provide a good balance of free and paid content. I publish twice a week, one free, one paid, with some big extra work (for mostly paid but sometimes also free) thrown in there every six weeks or so, with the seasons. I go through periods where I am so into it, I love it as much as I ever have, and others where I wonder how I can go on.
I'm not really going anywhere with this except to say publicly, if anyone else is in this place, you're not alone.
You need to pace yourself. I write every Monday so I can have the weekly issue ready. Sometimes I can write 2-3 issues in the day, other times it takes me a whole week just to write the one and only issue. Pace yourself and listen to yourself.
I work, on average, 4-5 weeks in advance, which I how I have a managed to pace myself thus far. It saves me completely when I have a super busy month, travel for work, etc. As I'm thinking more deeply about this (right this very moment), I don't get tired of writing, per se, as much as I do hustling for paid subscribers. That's where the burnout-y feeling resides.
I haven't gone paid yet but I am not hustling for paid subscribers unless I have 1k or more. They can chill, trust me.
I'm going to write "They can chill, trust me" on a Post-It and staple it to my screen. (I meant hustling for free signups to become paid subscribers. My paid folks are relaxed and happy with whatever. My free folks are the hardest to please.)
Yeahhhhh! I know what you mean. It is a long game, so just be prepared.
Oh Sarah, I want to be you when I grow up. I'm impressed that you are writing that far ahead. I stay a couple of days ahead and that is it. I am contemplating what my strategy should be once tax season starts again next year. I'm amazed that you do this with kids and a job and no doubt a zillion other things that you must also be doing. You go girl!
Aw, thanks, Gayla. Your (ongoing) support is so sweet; I truly appreciate it.
I am lucky to have such a rich, full life to balance. To be fully transparent, I pay someone to clean my house every other week; my husband cooks all our dinners; my mom takes my kids for a sleepover nearly once a week -- without those things my newsletter probably would not exist. ("Having it all" is an illusion; don't let anyone tell you otherwise.)
I am a super disciplined person (sometimes that's an asset, sometimes a character flaw) and this is the way I work best. In the beginning I was definitely writing only a few days ahead but I felt too anxious only having a little buffer and realized that "weeks ahead" actually allows me a lot more breathing room -- I can take fairly substantial chunks of time off if I'm very busy or just not feeling it and my subscribers are none the wiser.
I think it's a learning process to figure out what works best, so don't be afraid to experiment and iterate until you find a sustainable (and sane) schedule -- it's worth it!
Thank you Sarah for the comments and the encouragement. I do know that "having it all" is not possible, I've tried it several times in my life and something always suffered while trying to have it all. I wish I was as disciplined as you as I might be able to get more than one newsletter ahead, so maybe I need to focus more on what I could do differently instead of complaining about it where I sit at the moment. I know I would feel better if I could get further ahead, so that is what I'm going to work towards now in advance of tax season next year. I appreciate you, thanks so much.
You're welcome, Gayla. And I am always happy to chat more about this, if you need a sounding board!
Thank you for sharing, Sarah. The fact that you work 4-5 weeks in advance is very impressive and inspiring!
I was going to do it twice a week. But I was highly advised to do it once a week. And I'm super glad I did. I couldn't imagine doing the entire newsletter process condensed to a couple of days.
Me too. I review movies and you'd think twice a week would be easy. It's not! To write a quality review you have to research the movie beforehand, see it, sometimes more than once, think about it, craft and recraft the review, and I also, thankfully, have a movie-knowledgeable friend who edits me for free just before I publish, to catch glaring errors. Once a week is a marathon. Quality is absolutely uppermost in my mind.
I'm doing reviews too, but books. I have to read the book and then do that same process. No way I could do twice a week.
Boy, do I hear you!
Yes! And you should be rewarded.
I didn't expand to twice a week until I built up a backlog of posts, and started realizing the new ones I was tacking onto my publishing schedule were no longer timely. The posts I wound up offering on my new days are also a different kind of content. Now I do essays on the outdoors Thursdays, and interviews about the outdoors as a podcast, on Sundays.
Because the type of content is different, I think it's spared me from getting sick of it.
Good idea.
I do a short message on Tuesday and a long one on Wednesday. I think part of my problem is that I have not kept my Tuesday container small enough -- it has grown bigger than I intended (no one's fault but my own) and I need to scale back.
Really happy to see such regular feature drops from the Substack team. I've found that when I need a feature as a writer, more often than not, Substack already has it.
Kudos to the team. 🤗
Please do subscribe to my newsletter for a fun poem every week!
https://hellouniverse.substack.com/
Thank you! Writer feedback is important to us and helps to inform what we build next.
An updated subscribe button? Hallelujah! Hopefully this will help me on my quest to hitting my first 100 subscribers :)
I'm SO CLOSE to 100. Hoping to hit it before launching a new section of my outdoor newsletter. More than happy to help you on your quest.
Thank you Cole, appreciate you! I'm already subbed but wish you good luck, brother :)
I'm not that close to 100, about 43 I think...so please feel free to sign up for Crime and Punishment: Why the Poor Stay Poor in America.
Still working on that 100 myself. High five.
Well, I just subbed :) Hope it helps!
Aww… thanks!
Do ittttttttttttttt
Publishing fiction every day (446 and counting) has almost assured that I will burnout spectacularly at some point. I'm hoping that when I do the wreckage is as entertaining as Hunter S Thompson at his most unhinged, or nonsense words Lewis Carroll would have been jealous of.
I am astounded by this record. You should be very proud of yourself because most people would never be able to maintain a track record like that. (I struggle just to write every day, but I publish only 2-3 times a week!) I need to check out your newsletter so you may have done this, but I would love to read your reflections on what it's like to do this kind of thing.
My friend Brad Stabler, who happens to be Michigan Secondary English teacher of the Year, is looking for a YA substack for his students. I'm gonna point him to Story Cauldron.
Wow, thanks. I'd be open to giving him a comp subscription if he'd like to read more than my 3 free chapters. Maybe share my email (jackie@jackiedana.com) with him so we can chat more?
And I will give any student a free sub to my novels, no questions asked (and sorry I deleted/reposted this, I was having issues with the nesting!)
Hi Jimmy! My substack is also YA fiction! Completely free to subscribe.
I will alert Brad to yours as well.
Perfect! Thanks!
The few nonfiction pieces I have added to my newsletter are memoir.
Maybe I should add a third section that addresses writing, the process, and the borderline insanity of daily publishing ( as opposed to daily writing, which can be edited many times before public viewing )
A new section would be great if it's something you plan to do regularly. I added a section that is tangentially related to my other two (it only has one article but I have PLANS!). I created it as a separate section because I think some of the people who want to read that content may not be as interested in the other stuff (and eventually I may split it off as its own newsletter, but that feels premature right now).
But if you are only going to write this kind of content occasionally, I think it could fit into your overall newsletter content. It really depends on how you imagine your audience shaping up.
Anything people are interested in. I'd like to keep it one single entity.
Sharing your email with Brad now
I am both hoping you find rest but interested in the wreckage. 🤭
Me too, me too. But 100 more subscribers would allow me to take some other work off my schedule and delay that meltdown greatly.
I really believe you’ll get there. Your work is very interesting and varied for a DAILY email.
Thank you. That means a ton to me.The feedback is the fuel.
That in itself is super impressive! Be proud of yourself, it is only the stars that eventually burn out.
I'm proud in general but even more so when I feel like I'm asleep at the wheel but hear from a subscriber that the ride of the story made their day
Yeahhhhhhh
I wrote the biography of Hunter, Jimmy, and believe me "UNHINGED" is an understatement----and may the gods bless him wherever he is!
An unhinged national treasure. And I hope he is on his best trip ever. I look forward to reading the bio. Thanks, E.Jean.
Of course, I think you know that prolific writing will not lead to burnout. It will only prompt you to write more. The well does not become exhausted. You seem like a bright guy. Please subscribe to my newsletter -- I welcome your bright comments which will, hopefully, not direct too many sarcastic barbs at me.
I launched my bookstack on Tuesday. It was a great success. It launched with 39 subscribers. I also comped all my prelaunch subscribers the paid version for life. Half the subscribers are friends and family, and the other half was my IG followers.
What I did was create a short message about my bookstack, then I texted it to my friends and family on both text and Facebook messages. Then I also messaged every one of my 400 followers on IG the same message. I got to about 300 before IG stopped me from being able to do it.
Any feedback on how I handled things? Any advice on how to get more followers? How often do you use the "share" buttons? I used the "Leave a comment" button" after each section of my email because I wanted to encourage engagement.
Anyways curious for your feedback. Thanks guys!
I've never seen the word "bookstack" before - great term.
Thanks. I hope it catches on so I can tell my grandkids I coined a term. I stole it from Instagram where we call ourselves bookstagram.
You had me at "I refused rehab for my book-buying addiction." Subscribed! I write a 'stack about children's books, raising readers, and building a culture of reading in your home and am, unsurprisingly, a bookaholic myself. I look forward to seeing you in my inbox!
Oooo Thank you so much ❤️ I actually already subscribe to you. The last issue had the three billy goats. brought back so many memories.
It's a great book. I mean, that troll.... (Thank you for subscribing!)
Now that is marketing! One on one marketing works best, that is how I built my following.
I have gotten the highest conversion rate by making business cards on vistaprint and handing them out to people I meet on the trail and in the climbing gym.
I have business cards too. My husband hands out far more than I do, ha. But they do work!
I did that too - Moo cards for my newsletter. Got them just before the pandemic lockdown but am digging them out now and dusting them off!
That's a great idea. I was thinking of doing something similar. Since I am a book stacker, I was going to put them in library books and maybe books at B&N. LOL. Not sure the ethics involved in that. I was thinking I can make them a little bigger and they'll be bookmarks.
If you have a local, independent bookstore they might put bookmark-shaped ones on their counter. Local independents tend to be more amenable to helping out local authors. (Former GM of an independent here)
There's a couple around here. I wish there was more. They are all second-hand shops. Great idea, Thank you!
In the town where I live, a lot of coffee shops have some kind of community bulletin board where people can put some of their own business cards. This might be an avenue worth pursuing.
Good idea. Thank you. I didn't think those were a thing anymore.
Youtopian, I intend to forward more questions to you. I am putting my questions together. Some of my questions are in a post that should be on this thread -- that post was placed about five minutes ago. In addition to the three questions I posted, I have a fourth question: I would like someone to assist me in registering for google console so I can be indexed on google console.
You know how to reach me!
I agree and thank you. But now I'm out of people. lol. I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I was thinking of adding a "share this" section in my next issue. Perhaps I can get my 39 to expand that way.
Yes, see mine. Share, follow, etc. Add it.
I did. You're a great artist.
Thank you. I am just the writer, the artist is far beyond my capabilities! Hope you dig it!
Welcome! I am a fellow bookstacker and book buying addict.
What is a bookstack
A substack about books.
Do you mean a substack newsletter about books
Pedantic :)
I put the share button somewhere in the middle of every single free post.
I'm definitely going to do that next issue.
This sounds totally intriguing. I will check it out!
Will you be reviewing books being published on Substack? Inquiring minds want to know! 😀
Thank you. I prefer to read physical books. Something about the physical book just makes me happy. Plus I take pictures of the books for bookstagram. I don’t even use a kindle. So for now I would have to say no.
Fair enough. But I will be in touch next year when I publish my novel on Amazon!
Question for you guys, about changing prices: Substack makes it easy to change our subscription prices in Settings. However, any changes we make only affect people who pay to subscribe *after* you make the change.
Is there a way to, say, reduce the price of my paid subscription from $50 a year to $35 a year that will also reduce it for everyone who already has a paid subscription? (And do I need to do that in my Stripe dashboard?)
It would be awesome if this was possible. I've considered this but worry about my paid subscribers who signed up before the reduction.
I hear you on that. What I'd love is to be able to reduce the price so that when theirs renew, they'll be at the lower price.
I think your readers have to unsubscribe. Wait until the subscription has lapsed. Then subscribe again. Then the will enjoy the lower price.
That could lead to a lot of attrition, though. :(
On burnout. I know I can't commit to posting certain days. I post a monthly piece on the first, and one that will remain "free" on the 15th. Other than that, I give myself permission to post 6-8 other pieces. I keep a number of growing pieces in "drafts" and work at them. In this way, I always have something to add to, to grow. And at points through the month I check to see how many pieces I've posted, to review reader questions, to note what is inspiring me. Something of an "unscheduled" schedule. Much like any writing, it's coming to know and work with HOW you work. Then honouring that. Sometimes, those pieces that come out when dead tired are those that most resonate.
When you refer to "burnout", do you mean that you're too busy with a day job to post on certain days? Or do you mean that you lack enthusiasm for your Substack?
The former makes total sense to me, but the latter is totally foreign to me.
I can't imagine not being hyped to write a Substack piece; if I wasn't hyped then there's no way I would ever choose to write the piece.
Burnout from working on a novel and dealing with all the "stuff" of a writer's life--an agent, selling, editing manuscripts... I still actively produce manuscripts, and feel I need to if I'm going to have a useful newsletter for writers. (I've come out of teaching in an MFA program, and non-producing writers who turn around and teach writing... well, let's just say it's not something I want to do :) It's finding balance. There are topics and issues in writing that I want to explore in my newsletter, and they are not easy topics. It's not a lack of enthusiasm; it's about finding the right door into the topic. To return in my mind to being an apprenticing writer and finding what might speak now to others... takes a certain type of energy.
Yeah I feel the same way as Andrew. There are days when I just can't manage another piece of writing (in which case I publish the following day or as soon as I can get it done, hoping my subscribers understand) but I love writing my Substack. It's one of my favorite activities and if anything, I wish I had more time to devote to it because I have so many ideas and only so many hours in a day, and I have to do other stuff because right now Substack doesn't pay the rent!
Hi there, Substack newbie and just wanted to give my appreciation to this platform. I am a teacher, my newsletter For the Love of Words (oliviamardwig.substack.com) has already been a fantastic way for me to share my educational materials, and of course my love of reading and writing to families. I am hoping to have a feature where I can have folks donate a subscription to a low income students. I know you can gift a subscription, which I LOVE, but is a donation possible? Thanks!
We do have writers who manage to donate subscriptions in a pay it forward way (using comps) - https://annehelen.substack.com/, https://haleynahman.substack.com/about, https://www.bittmanproject.com/about
I like the gift subscription, but how do we set that up?
I like your subject. You can create a custom button anywhere in an article, and have it link to any other website. Example to a low income charity. Hope that works for you.
I'm confused about burnout. Branding is stressful. Promotion is stressful. Burnout has never even crossed my mind, though.
One scientist told me this:
13) What are the most exciting projects that you’re currently working on and why are these projects exciting?
You shouldn’t work on any projects that don’t excite you—every project you’re working on should be exciting.
And you should do bold things, but at the same time you need to do normal things in order to eat and pay your rent and pay your health insurance—it would be irresponsible to do only bold things.
Substack is exciting to me as my publication helps my readers and it also helps me. And if you are going to do anything, do it boldly!
Sometimes boldness is your only option.
100% Full speed ahead!
When the corner has to be gotten out of, by any -- prudent -- means necessary.
I try to work on projects that FEEL different. Some days I write prose. Some days I write news. Some days I hunt down interviews. sometimes I paint.
Another vote for being bold and pushing the envelope!
I like good challenges, ones that get your out of your comfort zone and force you to find your voice but not too taxing as to be a burden. My recent essay series took a fair bit of research but was very rewarding once done.
There is work and pleasure. Some projects are work and others are just joy. We can survive on one and not the other. Take the bites you can handle and build to greater little by little.
I have been falling down some history rabbit holes and doing the research has taken a ridiculous amount of time. I am slowly working on a series of historical articles (that are currently on the back burner due to NaNoWriMo) but I am eager to get back to them. They are hella time-consuming but also a bit of an obsession. I almost wish I didn't have NaNoWriMo because I want to work on them so badly! But I can imagine that if I HAD to write them every week, it would be a bit overwhelming. It's nice to be able to work on them as I have time, and in the meantime publish other things that are shorter and easier to fit into my very full November schedule. (I can't wait until December though!)
Is there any way to see who has liked one of my posts? All I can see is how many people liked it.
Yes. Go into "subscribers." You can click on any of the names and see their activity on your substack.
Customizing the 'Subscribe' button with a caption is a great way of inviting readers to subscribe. Hope it is going to have an impact on my newsletter's number of subscribers.
How can I improve search engine optimization? It would be nice if my posts could be found by title or author name. (There seems to be a significant delay before the posts are searchable.)
From what I heard the substack is not very SEO friendly. But it's not really meant to be. It's meant to be an email, with an archived copy online. I would say put your evergreen content on your website and link to it from your substack.
I believe this is why a lot of substack writers publish old content on Medium
I'm so iffy on Medium. That is where I was going to write before I found substack. The top medium writers all write articles complaining about medium, so that scared me away.
I wouldn't make medium my home. I just set it up as a catch funnel for SEO. Curious to hear if anyone else has gone the "custom domain" route, and whether that's helped at all.
In my first paid month on Substack, I made more than I had on 15 ms. on Medium. I now use Medium to draw people to my newsletter here, and to my published books. I've made good contacts and even friends on Medium, but the experience here in superior in all ways! I also feel like my subscribers here are not having to put up with a lot of garbage on their screens as they do on Medium. Here, some of my subs are happily discovering other newsletters. It feels very win-win :)
Just a note: if you cross-publish Substack posts elsewhere, it could affect SEO for your main Substack. That's totally fine if that's the tradeoff you want to make but just a heads up! We know our own SEO isn't great, and our engineers are running several ongoing experiments to improve it.
We also would also recommend linking your Substack in your Medium bio and at the top/bottom of your Medium posts if you do go that route.
Make sure you’ve verified your site in Google Search Console and submitted your site map or RSS feed. Best way to get content indexed faster.
Oh no - how do I do that? It may be beyond my bandwidth...
Thank you!
You can optimize your posts with on page SEO techniques. Easy to do as you are writing your articles. (Shameless link: https://pau1.substack.com/p/6-steps-for-more-substack-subscribers). Under the best circumstances, it may take up to 6 months for Google to start to rank an article high up the list.
Thank you to Substack this week for making office hours available for us. I started Feb of this year writing personal stories and thoughts about what it is like for a traditional healthcare provider to incorporate eastern healing and meditation and how I have journeyed in this culturescape of fear and not enoughness to lead a life of increased conscious awareness and tools I use to stay present and grateful. Shout out to YouTopian Journey for awesome graphics and writing. And, just found Sol Report—so good. Thank you Substack!!!
Thank you!!!!!
This is a big question, but is there any discussion happening about what it would mean to help writers monetize or generate subscriptions through high-performing articles "after the fact?" An article I wrote early on continues to accrue a lot of views, but I'm not converting those to subscriptions.
Any ideas?
This is a great question. My "top" editions are mostly really early in the newsletter, way before I went paid. I'd love to bring them back around to get more use out of them.
The model doesn't really allow for that. You can have a "buy me a coffee" link that can help but otherwise, it's a challenge. For me, I just hope that if someone finds one of my articles through social that they may then see another later, and as any marketer will tell you, people need several "touches" before they buy. So if they liked one article and then see another they like, they might say, hey this is a great publication, I want to follow it. And then maybe later they will decide to pay for a paid subscription.
Curious to hear from my fellow writers: what methods of promoting have you used? what have been the most and least successful?
Hey Aniella,
So far, the promotion methods I've used are:
1) cross promotions with other writers - this is a mixed bag, depending on the reach of the collaborator, your content's resonance with their audience, etc. All in all, this is something that continues to not deliver until it does so handsomely
2) try submitting your content to recommendation services. Some examples would be
The Sample (https://thesample.ai/?ref=hu) - this results in a nice slow drip of subs over time
Or
Recomendo (https://www.recomendo.com/) -this can give a huge boost, but depends on them picking you.
Hope this helps!
I'll second The Sample. It's a cool service, and I feel like my readers and I both get a lot of value from it.
In what way? do you also link to The Sample?
I do. I add it as a CTA at the bottom of all my posts.
The way it works is that when you sign up, you get sent a newsletter each day w/ the option to subscribe. You give them a rough idea of your interests, but it's algorithm-driven. You can also rate each one you receive and leave feedback. the more you do that, the better it gets at sending you what it thinks you want.
The more people that signup/click through from my page, the more my own newsletter gets shared by The Sample.
As a newsletter owner, I like that it expands my reach, and gets my work in front of people that might not ever see it otherwise. As a reader, I like that they send me stuff that I might love, or that I might not.
these are some awesome ideas!!!
Thanks for the awesome tips. I've submitted to newsletter curators before but hadn't noticed a huge difference. I'll give this a try though. I do agree about cross promotions. They really do depend on audience overlap
What is Recomendo's process?
Great tips -- thanks!
I find my long-standing FB platform has been the most fruitful. I've also had a few jump-overs from Instagram. And more than a few from other Substack newsletters that I subscribe to and comment on regularly. I know other folks find Twitter fruitful, but it's a counterintuitive platform for me, so I have not.
thank you, i appreciate your insight!
Have you experimented at all with Instagram's link feature? They recently dropped the minimum subscriber number to use link stickers in stories
I haven't! I'll have to check that out. Thanks!
Sure! It's under "stickers" and should appear on the first page as "links." I've been trying to put out high quality instagram stories that get people to click through.
I've done cross-promotions with other writers, submitted to every recommendation service, started an Instagram account for my newsletter, added a link to sign up in my email signature, printed business cards that I hand out to people (with context, I'm not just shoving these things in strangers' faces), and taken out a couple ads in Ann Friedman's newsletter (that have been worth every dollar).
Yeah, I'd love to hear about the ROI from Ann's newsletter. I'm advertising outside of Substack right now. It's driving traffic, but not subscriptions or sign-ups so far, so I'd love to consider other options.
I have done Google Ads and Pinterest ads -- both complete flops. Zero return.
I did Instagram ads. Nothing.
I believe it. I had (well, have) an Instagram account just for my newsletter, which is highly visual, and while it was effective at pulling in new people and getting free signups (and even a few paid subscriptions), it quickly became obvious that to do it well I'd have to cultivate two separate, albeit somewhat overlapping, communities. I write my newsletter for the love of it, on the side of my full-time career, so while an IG account was worthwhile to a certain degree, I just don't have the extra time and energy to do both.
I was contemplating the same thing. Cause right now I'm doing FB, IG, Twitter, and Pinterest and I'm trying to make YoutTube videos. And I'm like this is just too much. I am going to cut it down to just IG because I actuallly enjoy it and make friends. But I am going to continue to message my new followers to join my bookstack.
What was your response to the ads you took out in Ann Friedman's newsletter?
The first time I paid for the cheaper of her two ad options and it ended up costing me, iirc, about a dollar a subscriber. Most were free signups but a couple were paid. I'm still at less than 200 subscribers after 18 months of doing this so getting 20-30 new pairs of eyeballs is a big deal to me.
Awesome, congrats and thanks for sharing.
Twitter has worked the best for me, so you could try it
You can also write yourself a twitter bot if you hate being on there, as non-demon-possessed humans often do.
Everything and anything!
can you be specific?
Promote, promote, promote. Twitter is full of distractions, rarely works. Run ads, do shout outs, co-promote, create strategic alliances.
Twitter has worked well for me, but I'm sure it depends on the person.
How big is your following on Twitter?
Not big at all haha, only like 50. Fortunately some people with bigger accounts like what I wrote and retweeted it. So I think they key is just to write good quality content and the rest will follow.
The recently added "Insert a Paywall" feature is a real game-changer for me. Congratulations on this feature and your work!
Glad to hear you are liking the feature, Sylvain!
Hi, I also wanna say how much I enjoy substack. I originally started my newsletter on squarespace (which still hosts my website) but the tools and analytics and resources here are just so good. I'm a dad of a 3 and 5 year old and sharing the humor behind being a dad as well as the stories that shaped me growing up has been super fun (https://dadstories.substack.com/). One of my biggest obstacles to growing my newsletter is feeling "spammy" -- like I'm plugging it too much on social media. Any advice to overcome this would be greatly appreciated!
Everyone shares their new content on social - that's totally normal and no one will likely even give it a second thought if they see it, so I wouldn't worry about it (unless you are tweeting about it every 20 minutes!).
You're right! I think I have a bit of impostor syndrome -- I'm not a writer! But I am a writer (sorta).
We need more dads writing about that day-to-day of parenting...with the humour, yes!
Thanks so much! I just published a new entry here. Would love your feedback on it: https://dadstories.substack.com/p/8-essential-items-for-a-long-road
That's a great piece! Wanted to leave a comment...but couldn't find the comment bar. Also--you might want to leave a "share" or "subscribe" somewhere in the text. But I thoroughly enjoyed the humour and the pics! Very good :) Brought back a LOT of memories of traveling with my sons... oh my!
I have comments disabled! I don't know why -- I should turn those back on. And I definitely need to work on the share / subscribe call to action. Appreciate you reading!
I'll take a look, yes!
I’m a full steam ahead type of gal so I launched my Substack, The FLARE, heedless of any real advice. It seems that’s a point of trepidation for some but for me, that’s a strength. My questions are, though: How do you plan a launch? What are your strategies? What are offering and how much are you scheduling ahead of time?
I want to launch serial short stories and maybe even commissions in the future.
Congrats! Launching a publication is a big moment in any writer’s journey. We encourage you to treat it as such. The best launches are not just one moment or one day, but a series of efforts that drive a wave of excitement, attention, and subscriptions to your work.
We created a guide for writers launching their publication: https://on.substack.com/p/grow-5
Thank you!
Congrats on the upcoming launch! We need more short fiction on Substack. (Though I might be biased.) ^_^
Love your enthusiasm and willingness to learn by doing.
Thanks! I never took chances when I was younger but now is my chance to try. It’s not as scary as I think.
Are you going to do the short stories as a separate Substack or as a section on your existing one?
I want to do a separate section on my current one. I can’t manage two at this point.
I totally get that!
Tom White from www.whitenoise.email here! I write a semi-weekly newsletter on books, behavior, and the brain.
Are there plans to make Substack more SEO friendly? I find that my posts seldom rank even after solid traction and traffic from different sources. I welcome any and all tips on this front!
Yes! We know it's important to writers and our engineers are running several ongoing experiments to improve SEO for writers across the board.
Is there any work being done on On-site SEO i.e. the substack search function?
Hey Cole! There's lots of work being done on the search functionality, and it's something we're actively developing on right now.
Thank you! I know a lot of people have been asking about it. The example I gave elsewhere is that When I search "Climbing" on substack, my newsletter about climbing ranks below several that are about basketball.
Ah, this is a great one to flag, I'll make a note of this case. Thanks for calling that out, appreciate it!
I would love to see on-time donations for those who want to support but may not be able to do that monthly. Also… an APP.
Would love to see Substack Reader become a native app.
Another vote for an app. When I go to Substack on my phone (outside of reading the email versions) I frequently have to get a sign-in link first. An app would make reading so much easier - especially when you subscribe to as many Substacks as I do! :)
We will make it happen. :-)
YES! This is a great idea.
Is there anyone on Substack that is writing about a product, how to use it, tips/tricks, ideas and soliciting their users/customers feedback by say adding a survey in each issue? If so, could you make and intro so that I could learn best practices/ideas from their experience? I'm trying to craft a substack that our customers would want share with others.
Does anyone have any recommendations for making welcome emails after people sign up? I'm trying to keep it simple but make sure people get an idea of what the newsletter is about.
When people buy a paid subscription, they get this:
"Thank you for supporting hyperlocal journalism!
"You will start receiving the weekly newsletter right here in your inbox. You can also log in to CoppellChronicle.Substack.com to read the full archives and other posts as they are published.
"If you don’t mind me asking, how did you hear about the Coppell Chronicle?"
When people sign up for free, they get this:
"Thanks for your interest in the Coppell Chronicle. You won’t receive all of the content that I send to my paid subscribers, so I hope you’ll consider joining their ranks soon.
"If you don’t mind me asking, how did you hear about this newsletter?"
Thanks to Carol Sill's PersonalPapers blog - (found reading this office hours yesterday) I think it was a great way to thank me for subscribing. The title is: "OMG thanks!"
I'd recommend keeping it concise, but writing something in your voice to introduce yourself and what they can expect (topic/frequency). I've also seen writers link a few of their favorite posts in Welcome emails or ask readers to introduce themselves personally!
Glad to have arrived on Substack at the right time! Still finding my calling>>
How do I expand readers? I don't want to start charging for my publications until I have a decent amount of folks reading. My plan is to always generate free content and have the more elaborate content be paid. Thanks.
The "Card" feature that substack rolled out last week has been a game changer, I think. It makes promotions look more professional.
What is the card feature? I missed last week.
Here's a tweet explaining it :) https://twitter.com/SubstackInc/status/1456329265318797314
Oh, a Twitter card. I got it, thank you.
Promote like there is no tomorrow.
What methods of promoting have you used? What have been the most and least successful?
Totally agree with the strategy to make sure you're always doing some free content with special paid features for your biggest fans/supporters. Here's a resource we made with some tips to grow a free audience: https://on.substack.com/p/grow-4
I am having issues with my substack going to spam, and I mean my personal email spam! This started two weeks ago on my Yahoo account. Any fixes? I also think this is causing a vast amount of my subscribers not to see my substack.
Same!
How's your open rate? Have you cleaned out subscribers that aren't opening? That can send a signal to your email that it's spam.
Open rate was 35% but as I have continued to grow, it has fallen. You recommend I remove everyone that doesn't open?
I'd be curious to see what the Substack team has to say in this situation, but I know I've seen them recommend culling non-openers in previous open threads.
The problem with this is that some people show as never opening the newsletter but may actually be reading it. I have a friend who showed up as ever having opened it, but then she commented about one of the newsletters on Facebook. So she was reading but Substack wasn't showing her reads, maybe because of her email platform or something. SO before you remove people it might be worth reaching out to them (which could creep them out if they think you're paying attention to who reads what, but...)
Oooh. Good to know.
I'm also curious about the results of this
I just set up paid subscriptions and was wondering if in the future you will add a separate benefits bullet for Annual subscribers? I am going to offer an added benefit to annual subscribers but just plan on explaining that in the welcome email and paid subscriptions launch post. Thanks!
Love this suggestion. Yes!
That sounds dope, congrats.
Thanks!
You can filter/customize your email list and only send stuff out to your annual subscription folks. Would that answer your need, or am I misunderstanding what you're looking for?
Oh didn't realize I could do that, that's helpful. What I'm looking for is a separate line item for annual subscribers on the subscription page to show them what they get (I'll be mailing them physical art prints). There are only fields for monthly and founder tiers.
I’d recommend that you list it in your subscriber benefits, but specify “(Annual Only)” or similar.
You can use the subscriber dashboard to filter for Annual subs and send them an email to request any relevant info (addresses, etc.) to send the art prints. https://on.substack.com/p/subscriber-dashboard-guide
That works, thanks so much!
I have questions! I see that some folks have made their main page more of a "home" page with other links, customized colors, etc. - I cannot figure out how to do this but I want to in my holiday week off upcoming. Suggestions? I am also planning to add some kind of subscription option.
Play around with settings! I am still learning myself. And every week we learn something new form others posting, asking, and answering.
It's all under settings on your dashboard. For example, if you go to settings and scroll right down to a grey box called "Publication details" you can add in recommended links. These will appear on the right hand side of your main page. It's worth poking around in the settings to see how they work. Also I think that there are some instructions on your "posts" page in the dashboard - right hand side under resources.
Thanks - I NEVER would have figured that out. I figured you had to select a page layout style somewhere!
no problem
Oh, I got it Thank you!
Here weeeee goooooooooooo
First to show up at the party?? 🥳
First to show, last to leave, party on!
I love a closer.
Let's do this.
I have expressed my alienation and exasperation about our digitalized world. I fear I probably sound like some antique relic of a bygone age. Although I may be older than most of you (I am 64), believe me, my generation knew what COOL was and nothing was as cool as charging down the street, throwing rocks, while someone is blasting "Street Fighting Man," by the Stones, on a boombox.
In any event, this is a quatrain I wrote which tries to articulate my dismay at the itty bitty world of bits and bytes.
The tyranny of binaric thought
The stilling of the nuanced voice
The menu selection that misses the point
That never gives me one true choice
David Gottfried, Copyright, 2019
PS. I write a lot more than this sort of poetry. Try my pungent and provocative essays
is there a way to tag another Substack user in a post?
Hey Sharif! If you post a publication (or post) URL in your Post, it will display as a card that links easily. Hopefully that helps!
ok. thanks.
In what way? As a guest writer on a byline, or a link card in your post?
In my main post section. For example, "I read this in @someone's newsletter ..."
We have a twitter hype pod for substack writers, follow me @youtopianJ and I will add you.
Done
Added you
Just followed you!
Got you!
A quick question for the substack dev team . . . is there a way to italicize text in my post titles? I reference the names of books, films, and paintings every once in a while, and I would like to use italics instead of quote marks if I could! Thanks for any help you (or anyone else) can give!
Not at the moment (since email subject lines can't be formatted) — but I see how that could be useful for the site experience & appreciate the feedback!
I struggled mightily with italics when blogging, but I never found a solution. I write everything in Word, then paste the content into emails, blogs, etc. When I pasted italics into my blog, they always wanted to “stick” to the next word. I finally gave up and started using *stars* instead of italics. It irritates me, because I like italics for emphasis. They were good enough for Hunter Thompson fifty-years ago…However, even old dogs of 79-years need to learn new tricks if they want to get *fed*(and scratched behind the ears), so I’ve been trying to *accept* that fact and move on with my life.
I have slots open for cross promotions. All that I ask is that you have 100+ subscribers and your newsletter is a fit for what I write about. https://youtopianjourney.substack.com/
Hi everyone,
I write about technology themes, companies and strategies. I have two questions:
1. Have you noticed a difference in open rates when the newsletter goes from "[Publication Name" vs "XYZ from [Publication Name]" vs just the author name?
2. This week I made a makeshift referral program using Google Forms. Initial results have been great. Is the product team working on something like this?
Also, I would love to cross-promotions. If you're writing about technology and are interested, hit me up!
Interested to hear more about the referral program, care to share?
The whole thing is kinda scrappy but this is what I did - I sent out an email to my top 25 readers with their respective referral codes and a link to a Google Form that they can forward to others. The forms asks for an email id and the referral code. Then I take the responses and add them to my subscriber list. The reward is a t-shirt that you get after 15 signups.
Thanks for sharing. How many new subs did you get? There is something called Viral Loops that does this process but waiting for Substack to create their own version.
That's a fantastic idea.
Shobhit, just getting around to this office hours (was heads down writing my November piece). Would love to cross-promote - am all about strategies. Ping me via email gabthinking (at) gmail (dot) com.
George
1. We haven't specifically tested this, but you can test it out! My guess is that it might be useful to use your name to make it feel more personal if you're the main writer.
2. Great to hear about your experience with a referral system! We've piloted a couple versions of referrals in the past, and it's one of the growth tools we're exploring for writers, but want to make sure we get it right.
Slightly OT, but I would love to hear more about the new discoverability features, and how we can best utilize those.
Hi Kevin,
You may be thinking about the new updates to Substack Profiles? They display the publications you write, as well as the Substacks you read and a feed of posts you’ve written. You can edit your profile information at any time to select which publications you want to appear on your profile. More about that here: https://on.substack.com/p/new-tools-paywall-embeds
What other discoverability features are you curious to learn more about?
Hi Katie--
I was asking more about ways to increase visibility for a smaller newsletter like mine. If someone's looking for a good read on music, I want to make sure they can find my signal out there.
Guest posts are a great way to get in front of new readers. You might consider reaching out to other music writers or culture writers that have a potential audience overlap.
We see writers have success when writers do guests posts with writers who have a slightly larger audience than you currently have. You might start by reaching out to some of the writers in the music category on the discover page https://substack.com/discover
Here's a product-improvement recommendation for the Substack team:
I like the new option to put a paywall "line" in a post, withe very thing below the line for paid users only.
What I'd like to see is the ability to have a *beginning* and an *end* to that line.
Sone newsletters have multiple sections, and sometimes you don't want to put *everything* below the line behind a paywall, so if you could just pick a section and have the rest stay unlocked, that'd be very flexible and fantastic.
Thank you!
L
Thanks again for hosting this Substack, was dope! As always, I am open for cross promotions (if it makes sense), inviting writers to our Twitter hype group for Substack writers, and generally helping each other grow. Rock on.
As far as I can figure out, it's not possible to edit the group labels or site titles in Recommended Links. So changing or updating means starting all over again. Am I missing something? And if not--is there a plan to improve usability for this feature?
You're right that it's not yet possible to edit. We appreciate the feedback!
So--this isn't on the roadmap? It's honestly useless as it is, at least for me.
Yes. I've tried to get this on Substack's radar before. I decided to add little emoticons on my home page. I had to tear down all the sections and re-do them.