Have questions about publishing, growing, or going paid on Substack?
The Substack team, and your fellow writers, are here to help!
We’re gathering the writer community and members of the Substack team together in this discussion thread to answer writer questions for an hour.
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.
Some updates and reminders from the Substack team:
Activity alerts on the web. A new activity page has been added to the web version of Substack, allowing writers and readers to track their activity in one dedicated space—including new likes, comments, and replies. As with the Substack app, writers and readers can access the activity page via the account dropdown at the upper-right corner of the Substack site. Readers will still receive emails for new activity and can toggle whether to receive alerts in the “Notifications” section of settings.
We hope to see on the last stops of the Substack (virtual) category tour. This is a meeting place for writers to connect directly over Zoom, and as a showcase for the wide variety of writing happening on Substack within a given category. Join us: https://on.substack.com/p/category-tour
➡️ A question for @Substack, would it be possible to add more categories or tagging for the different "sections" or "newsletters"?
In my case, I have 6 "sections" which are pretty different from each other. One is focused on humor, one is movie lists, one is an animated comic strip, etc. But I only have three tags to describe ALL of them under the main publication, "moviewise: Life Lessons From Movies".
Could we have three tags to describe each "section" in a publication? 🙏
Substack, YOU ROCK. Just received an email to be featured on Substack Discover, but the best part is that they want me to submit other substack writers to be featured. Reply in the comments so I can help you get on their radar.
Hey friends! I know deliverability is a common topic around here so I wanted to share this Q&A with deliverability expert (who knew that was a thing?!) Yanna-Torry Aspraki.
The app is working great. I really like the fact I get alerts so I know when the latest editions of newsletters are posted! Thanks for all the hard work so far
I've been writing a free newsletter for a year or so, and considering offering a paid option but keeping all the content free and accessible to all subscribers, no matter whether they're free or paid. Curious to hear about other folks' experiences with this strategy, as I know it's much more typical to launch subscriber only content when going paid. (I have about 200 free subscribers, so still quite small at the moment.)
From speaking with my subscribers I know that many email systems are still sending newsletters from substack directly to the spam box. I wish there was a better way to make sure my newsletter gets delivered. This happens with many new subscribers who never get their first edition until I send them a reminder to check their spam box.
I am about to start my most ambitious project of the year: a 30-day drawing challenge around the city. It will be shared as daily posts, featuring the art itself and also some words. There will be a weekly podcast with my observations of city life, and many video posts.
I am expecting a surge of new, free readers over the course of the month. But I would love to have a powerful, dynamic image on the Substack main-page to motivate free readers towards the paid subscription. Maybe something like a progress bar towards a goal of my choice - (5000 readers, $500/month)? I am able to do this on BuyMeACoffee, for example.
Ahhh. The Activity alerts are really great - and there was me thinking "oh dear, I'm so stupid I've missed these the whole time I've been using Substack." My ego is very relieved to learn it's a new feature...
Hi all, I was wondering if there was any news on adding a polling feature in Substack. I'd love to ask weekly questions to learn more about my readers. (I write A Cup of Ambition, a weekly newsletter for working moms and would love more info on the age of their kids, topics they'd like to see my cover, etc.). Thanks!
After reading Jessica DeFino's Grow interview I updated my About page and plan on following more of her recommendations soon. IMO one of the most helpful interviews in the series!
I asked about templates when I started writing on Substack over a year ago. So I was thrilled when I saw the Templates beta in my Dashboard. Then disappointed when it turned out to be just a basic email template with no settings. I am hoping this will eventually turn into a full-featured draft template, with all the usual settings, that we can assign to sections. And that we will be able to create multiple templates (one for each section.)
I have been using drafts as templates and copy and pasting the contents into new drafts, but real draft templates will be great! Here's me hoping! 🤓
Thanks for listening Substack. Keep up the good work!
One of the reasons I started a newsletter is because I deleted my social media altogether and have zero interest in returning. Substack has a friendly format and approach and has been vocal about supporting free speech and giving creators control back, which social media has no interest in doing. The next step in this journey would be for Substack to build out a more robust set of search and promotional tools. Generating an automated sitemap.xml and submitting it to search engines would be an example. We need to look past a world that involves social media and come up with a better means to engage the masses. I'm wondering if Substack has anything on the horizon to that end?
I've noticed more of our traffic is coming through Google, which is interesting. Also, one of our newsletters got picked up by a big website in Croatia, which was fine. (The newsletter was about a neighborhood in Croatia.)
FYI, the new Substack app is displaying the content of our web archive rather than our emails, in case anyone needs to know that. Yesterday I sent out an email reminding people about our Fictionistas Zoom call tomorrow and, as always, I deleted the Zoom info from the web to cut down on potential Zoom bombs, only to discover that means the info also doesn't display for anyone who reads Substacks via the app rather than email.
Personally, I would prefer it pull the content of the emails for this and other reasons, but either way, I think it's important people know how it works.
Has anyone who has gone paid have any experience they can share on collecting sales tax on their subscriptions? Other sites like Patreon handle this for you, but since we’re getting paid directly by subscribers and not through a centralized Substack billing system, it seems we would be responsible for figuring out if we need to collect sales tax, register to collect it in various localities, and take care of filing and paying the taxes.
Does Substack have any guidance on this? The only tax information I can find is on paying income tax, which is great help, but this seems like a big missing piece of the puzzle.
Just wanted to let you all know that Chevanne from The Flare and I hosted our second Substack Talk - on Clubhouse this time - about using twitter on substack and imposter syndrome with coach Samantha Demers. You can find it here if you're interested - https://bit.ly/3uqlMRY
(Sorry if Chevanne already posted - I didn't see anything...)
One suggestion that I read for getting our publications up and running is connecting with other likeminded writers and setting up opportunities to cross promote and interview each other on our own platforms.
Any idea how I can connect or find these people who would be actually willing to do this - like tomorrow? It's a great idea, and I want to turn it into action. Simply liking others' articles or commenting is not really bringing this into fruition though. There is an added step that I feel I'm missing, somehow.
I love writing my stuff on Substack, but I think I've maxed out on my word-of-mouth reach and using social media gives me migraines. What else can I be doing to attract subscribers?
It's been suggested in Office Hours to try cross promotions within Substack. How do we find ALL writers in a category and/or ALL who have entered a given tag? What we see now are the top 25 and (to take "Politics" as an example) they all have "thousands" of subscribers and even "tens of thousands". All nice people I'm sure, but they're not going to give us the time of day.
I started featuring Guest Posts on my substack once a month. Shout out to https://katemcdermott.substack.com/ and https://crimeandpunishment.substack.com/ for partnering with me. If you have a post that might fall under the topic of home, let me know. I'd love to work with more writers and grow our bases!
Hello! Substack baby here, just started this week. I have no idea what I'm doing, but am having lots of fun. Question: I'd love to connect with a specific publication here that publishes stuff similar to mine. Is it cool or obnoxious to reach out and toot my horn? Currently laboring in obscurity, but early days! I've yelled to my tiny Twitter crowd and my larger Medium crowd, but would love to meet some similar substackers. Thanks!
Published my first podcast newsletter yesterday!! I have a lot to learn but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. The topic, ironically, was "On Struggle and Progress". If you check it out, pro tips welcome!
Also in my second week of People's Research, a creative class for writers with Marlee Grace of the Monday Monday newsletter, and really enjoying being with my fellow "tornado people"
On an office hours last month I saw someone posting about The Sample.
The Sample is a website that collates newsletters and sends them out to its subscribers based on their interests. They then give a one-click mechanism for the reader to subscribe to your newsletter if they like it.
When you submit your newsletter, The Sample give you an affiliate link so that the more people you send their way, the more they will show your latest newsletter to their reader base.
I submitted Gentle Creative and did nothing. Within the first week I got 5 new subscribers. Then I subscribed myself and promoted it to my Substack Go group. So far I have received 16 new subscribers for very little effort.
Is there a way, in the app, to turn off emails for newsletters individually? I'd like to receive my own, to make sure everything looks good in the email format, but read everything else on the app.
I would like a logo for my newsletter, so I am looking for recommendations for brand developers or graphic designers. I can make one on Canva, but I’m looking for a bit more. Thanks!
I've been writing my articles since January and I've had some growth, but I feel like I've hit the wall of people from my network and personal life who are going to sign up. I'm now trying to find new ways to reach audiences, and wanted to see if anyone had suggestions on the best ways to reach people? My newsletter focuses on the intersection of gender, media and identity (what I have my master's in) - I'm finding it hard to promote on Twitter and would love to find a way to perhaps use TikTok but not sure how to translate the content to the video format. Any suggestions welcome! Thanks all in advance :)
I'm wondering if anyone here has any growth tips they'd like to share. I'm trying to build my Brace Yourself newsletter, but it's quite a specific niche. We discuss what’s coming, how to adapt to economic instability, food shortages, societal upheaval, governmental indifference & anything else life throws at you. Increased self-sufficiency is our goal, through the lends of growing one's own food. Like I said...niche. But I'd love to hear suggestions how I can grow or improve!
I would like to start using Substack to build a following and also to publish some writing-book...however i worry that once I start I will be under pressure to post content regularly....so I wonder if I can begin without actually publishing until I get my writing happening in a reliable fashion? and then say go and start feeding some work to publish.
How do readers get access to new articles published by new writers on Substack? Should there not be a menu for all the new/latest articles published in a chronologically order? Likewise, should there not be a menu for articles available to all without any subscription? Something is amiss at Substack. I cannot even find my own article on Substack without a login. LOL.
Which could be the best strategy to build a paywall? I mean, I began my newsletter last week and I already hace 300 subs, but my main content, the value it has, is to be free. Is better to offer podcast or deep articles to paid subs?
What is "Hacker News." I have heard people refer to it as a tool or a medium which can boost one's readership. Perhaps I am unduly fearful, but the title is enough to make me squeamish.
I put all of my posts behind a paywall. Someone signed up for a free subscription. How is that possible? I don't want any free subscriptions. I want people to pay for my hard work.
This one is for all of us storytellers! "A business without a clear story resembles a car without an engine. No matter how much you kick, scream, or turn its crankshaft over, it won’t go anywhere. It’s no more than a dead vehicle sitting (or a dead company walking, for that matter).
Like near all things in life, I find business simple, but not easy.
It consists of two foundational pillars: spreadsheets and storytelling."
I moved my paid subscription, Stripe account, to this one as I am mostly unconcerned with paid subscriptions for The Arrogant Sage newsletter. I'll revisit in the future and create another Stripe account... which brings me to my question.
Substack - any chance of making it possible to connect you Stripe account to more than one newsletter?
Thank you for coming to Office Hours! Our team is signing off for today and we will be back next week.
In the meantime, our resources are here for you.
https://substack.com/resources
https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us
We hope to see on the last stops of the Substack (virtual) category tour. This is a meeting place for writers to connect directly over Zoom, and as a showcase for the wide variety of writing happening on Substack within a given category. Join us: https://on.substack.com/p/category-tour
See you soon,
The Substack Team
Katie + Bailey + Jasmine + Kelsa + Seth + Jack + Wyatt + Seth + Thoomas + Helen + Kyle
Just published my first Substack article today! Pressing Beyond.
I did it! I finally got a post go viral (for me)! 13k visitors and a 50% increase in subscribers from Hacker News. 🤗 This is the post that did it:
https://moviewise.substack.com/p/the-wisdom-in-kung-fu-panda
Now the pressure is on!
I also added a Comic to my newsletter:
https://moviewise.substack.com/s/good-times
➡️ A question for @Substack, would it be possible to add more categories or tagging for the different "sections" or "newsletters"?
In my case, I have 6 "sections" which are pretty different from each other. One is focused on humor, one is movie lists, one is an animated comic strip, etc. But I only have three tags to describe ALL of them under the main publication, "moviewise: Life Lessons From Movies".
Could we have three tags to describe each "section" in a publication? 🙏
Substack, YOU ROCK. Just received an email to be featured on Substack Discover, but the best part is that they want me to submit other substack writers to be featured. Reply in the comments so I can help you get on their radar.
Hey friends! I know deliverability is a common topic around here so I wanted to share this Q&A with deliverability expert (who knew that was a thing?!) Yanna-Torry Aspraki.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pySiYQ_5OMsj1U4r5XXLPru0NtiVg2FVaO5INBlNffk/view
In general, I highly recommend Dan Oshinsky's Not A Newsletter.
The app is working great. I really like the fact I get alerts so I know when the latest editions of newsletters are posted! Thanks for all the hard work so far
I've been writing a free newsletter for a year or so, and considering offering a paid option but keeping all the content free and accessible to all subscribers, no matter whether they're free or paid. Curious to hear about other folks' experiences with this strategy, as I know it's much more typical to launch subscriber only content when going paid. (I have about 200 free subscribers, so still quite small at the moment.)
From speaking with my subscribers I know that many email systems are still sending newsletters from substack directly to the spam box. I wish there was a better way to make sure my newsletter gets delivered. This happens with many new subscribers who never get their first edition until I send them a reminder to check their spam box.
I am about to start my most ambitious project of the year: a 30-day drawing challenge around the city. It will be shared as daily posts, featuring the art itself and also some words. There will be a weekly podcast with my observations of city life, and many video posts.
I am expecting a surge of new, free readers over the course of the month. But I would love to have a powerful, dynamic image on the Substack main-page to motivate free readers towards the paid subscription. Maybe something like a progress bar towards a goal of my choice - (5000 readers, $500/month)? I am able to do this on BuyMeACoffee, for example.
"30 Days of TinyPeople" announcement for the curious: https://sneakyart.substack.com/p/s27?s=w
Feature requests: Center-justified text and anchor links - thanks!
Ahhh. The Activity alerts are really great - and there was me thinking "oh dear, I'm so stupid I've missed these the whole time I've been using Substack." My ego is very relieved to learn it's a new feature...
Hi all, I was wondering if there was any news on adding a polling feature in Substack. I'd love to ask weekly questions to learn more about my readers. (I write A Cup of Ambition, a weekly newsletter for working moms and would love more info on the age of their kids, topics they'd like to see my cover, etc.). Thanks!
After reading Jessica DeFino's Grow interview I updated my About page and plan on following more of her recommendations soon. IMO one of the most helpful interviews in the series!
I asked about templates when I started writing on Substack over a year ago. So I was thrilled when I saw the Templates beta in my Dashboard. Then disappointed when it turned out to be just a basic email template with no settings. I am hoping this will eventually turn into a full-featured draft template, with all the usual settings, that we can assign to sections. And that we will be able to create multiple templates (one for each section.)
I have been using drafts as templates and copy and pasting the contents into new drafts, but real draft templates will be great! Here's me hoping! 🤓
Thanks for listening Substack. Keep up the good work!
One of the reasons I started a newsletter is because I deleted my social media altogether and have zero interest in returning. Substack has a friendly format and approach and has been vocal about supporting free speech and giving creators control back, which social media has no interest in doing. The next step in this journey would be for Substack to build out a more robust set of search and promotional tools. Generating an automated sitemap.xml and submitting it to search engines would be an example. We need to look past a world that involves social media and come up with a better means to engage the masses. I'm wondering if Substack has anything on the horizon to that end?
ive just gone live!
I've noticed more of our traffic is coming through Google, which is interesting. Also, one of our newsletters got picked up by a big website in Croatia, which was fine. (The newsletter was about a neighborhood in Croatia.)
Hi all and happy Thursday!
FYI, the new Substack app is displaying the content of our web archive rather than our emails, in case anyone needs to know that. Yesterday I sent out an email reminding people about our Fictionistas Zoom call tomorrow and, as always, I deleted the Zoom info from the web to cut down on potential Zoom bombs, only to discover that means the info also doesn't display for anyone who reads Substacks via the app rather than email.
Personally, I would prefer it pull the content of the emails for this and other reasons, but either way, I think it's important people know how it works.
Has anyone who has gone paid have any experience they can share on collecting sales tax on their subscriptions? Other sites like Patreon handle this for you, but since we’re getting paid directly by subscribers and not through a centralized Substack billing system, it seems we would be responsible for figuring out if we need to collect sales tax, register to collect it in various localities, and take care of filing and paying the taxes.
Does Substack have any guidance on this? The only tax information I can find is on paying income tax, which is great help, but this seems like a big missing piece of the puzzle.
Hopped on late but this is so cool! Started writing on sub stack a couple months ago ♥️
Just wanted to let you all know that Chevanne from The Flare and I hosted our second Substack Talk - on Clubhouse this time - about using twitter on substack and imposter syndrome with coach Samantha Demers. You can find it here if you're interested - https://bit.ly/3uqlMRY
(Sorry if Chevanne already posted - I didn't see anything...)
One suggestion that I read for getting our publications up and running is connecting with other likeminded writers and setting up opportunities to cross promote and interview each other on our own platforms.
Any idea how I can connect or find these people who would be actually willing to do this - like tomorrow? It's a great idea, and I want to turn it into action. Simply liking others' articles or commenting is not really bringing this into fruition though. There is an added step that I feel I'm missing, somehow.
Any advice would be most kind.
If it’s okay… I’m going to shamelessly plug the next topic of my newsletter 🙃
It’s about what ancient Indian philosophy thought about consciousness and the mind as it relates to psychiatric understating of the ‘mind’
You can find out more ( if you wish!) about me here: https://ancientmadness.substack.com/about
I’m on Twitter as well! You can find me here: https://mobile.twitter.com/AshSharma3_14
The activities alert is very helpful -- thank you for adding that!
I love writing my stuff on Substack, but I think I've maxed out on my word-of-mouth reach and using social media gives me migraines. What else can I be doing to attract subscribers?
It's been suggested in Office Hours to try cross promotions within Substack. How do we find ALL writers in a category and/or ALL who have entered a given tag? What we see now are the top 25 and (to take "Politics" as an example) they all have "thousands" of subscribers and even "tens of thousands". All nice people I'm sure, but they're not going to give us the time of day.
I started featuring Guest Posts on my substack once a month. Shout out to https://katemcdermott.substack.com/ and https://crimeandpunishment.substack.com/ for partnering with me. If you have a post that might fall under the topic of home, let me know. I'd love to work with more writers and grow our bases!
Hello! Substack baby here, just started this week. I have no idea what I'm doing, but am having lots of fun. Question: I'd love to connect with a specific publication here that publishes stuff similar to mine. Is it cool or obnoxious to reach out and toot my horn? Currently laboring in obscurity, but early days! I've yelled to my tiny Twitter crowd and my larger Medium crowd, but would love to meet some similar substackers. Thanks!
Published my first podcast newsletter yesterday!! I have a lot to learn but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. The topic, ironically, was "On Struggle and Progress". If you check it out, pro tips welcome!
Also in my second week of People's Research, a creative class for writers with Marlee Grace of the Monday Monday newsletter, and really enjoying being with my fellow "tornado people"
On an office hours last month I saw someone posting about The Sample.
The Sample is a website that collates newsletters and sends them out to its subscribers based on their interests. They then give a one-click mechanism for the reader to subscribe to your newsletter if they like it.
When you submit your newsletter, The Sample give you an affiliate link so that the more people you send their way, the more they will show your latest newsletter to their reader base.
I submitted Gentle Creative and did nothing. Within the first week I got 5 new subscribers. Then I subscribed myself and promoted it to my Substack Go group. So far I have received 16 new subscribers for very little effort.
Please check it out with my affiliate link: https://thesample.ai/?ref=c538
You can sign up as a reader and/or at the bottom of the page, you can submit your newsletter.
Going live with Tim Lott's Writing Boot Camp at 5pm today! V excited.
Is there a way, in the app, to turn off emails for newsletters individually? I'd like to receive my own, to make sure everything looks good in the email format, but read everything else on the app.
Do most people who have a following on Substack also have a following on other platforms or do users primarily gain their readership through here?
I would like a logo for my newsletter, so I am looking for recommendations for brand developers or graphic designers. I can make one on Canva, but I’m looking for a bit more. Thanks!
I've been writing my articles since January and I've had some growth, but I feel like I've hit the wall of people from my network and personal life who are going to sign up. I'm now trying to find new ways to reach audiences, and wanted to see if anyone had suggestions on the best ways to reach people? My newsletter focuses on the intersection of gender, media and identity (what I have my master's in) - I'm finding it hard to promote on Twitter and would love to find a way to perhaps use TikTok but not sure how to translate the content to the video format. Any suggestions welcome! Thanks all in advance :)
How do we kill post. I still show the "Coming soon" announcement from months ago and cannot find how to get rid of it.
so anyone who wants to sign up for no-shit writing advice this is your space
I'm wondering if anyone here has any growth tips they'd like to share. I'm trying to build my Brace Yourself newsletter, but it's quite a specific niche. We discuss what’s coming, how to adapt to economic instability, food shortages, societal upheaval, governmental indifference & anything else life throws at you. Increased self-sufficiency is our goal, through the lends of growing one's own food. Like I said...niche. But I'd love to hear suggestions how I can grow or improve!
https://braceyourself.substack.com/
I would like to start using Substack to build a following and also to publish some writing-book...however i worry that once I start I will be under pressure to post content regularly....so I wonder if I can begin without actually publishing until I get my writing happening in a reliable fashion? and then say go and start feeding some work to publish.
How do readers get access to new articles published by new writers on Substack? Should there not be a menu for all the new/latest articles published in a chronologically order? Likewise, should there not be a menu for articles available to all without any subscription? Something is amiss at Substack. I cannot even find my own article on Substack without a login. LOL.
Any best practices in regards to day and time to post?
Which could be the best strategy to build a paywall? I mean, I began my newsletter last week and I already hace 300 subs, but my main content, the value it has, is to be free. Is better to offer podcast or deep articles to paid subs?
I missed today's session because I didn't know about it. I just joined substack a week ago and I already have three posts. It's nice to be here .
What is "Hacker News." I have heard people refer to it as a tool or a medium which can boost one's readership. Perhaps I am unduly fearful, but the title is enough to make me squeamish.
Is there a Writing category yet?
How has everyone else been finding the new templates feature??
I put all of my posts behind a paywall. Someone signed up for a free subscription. How is that possible? I don't want any free subscriptions. I want people to pay for my hard work.
This one is for all of us storytellers! "A business without a clear story resembles a car without an engine. No matter how much you kick, scream, or turn its crankshaft over, it won’t go anywhere. It’s no more than a dead vehicle sitting (or a dead company walking, for that matter).
Like near all things in life, I find business simple, but not easy.
It consists of two foundational pillars: spreadsheets and storytelling."
https://www.whitenoise.email/p/storytelling
Another nag: I really REALLY really (really) want the ability to publish multiple MP3 files in a single post. Pretty please with a cherry on top.
I started a new Substack: The Google Automator:
https://thegoogleautomator.substack.com/
I moved my paid subscription, Stripe account, to this one as I am mostly unconcerned with paid subscriptions for The Arrogant Sage newsletter. I'll revisit in the future and create another Stripe account... which brings me to my question.
Substack - any chance of making it possible to connect you Stripe account to more than one newsletter?
Thanks.