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:
A new podcast tab allows readers to better find new episodes from writers they love. If your publication has a podcast, head to Settings and Podcast Settings to see a new checkbox to add the podcast tab to your publication site. Writers creating a new podcast will see a box checked during the podcast creation, and can uncheck it there also.
Tips for connecting with readers: A new guide on how to find and engage your readers shares ideas and inspiration from Substack writers on how to cultivate a thriving reader community. What tactics did we miss?
Product news roundup: We shared a rundown of the latest product updates including changes to how ARR is calculated and new dashboard stats. Take a full read and post any questions you might have in today’s thread.
Got questions or feedback about what’s new? You’re in the right place! Leave a comment in this thread.
A special shoutout thread: Next week we are taking a break from Office Hours as usual for our monthly shoutout thread. And, it's a special one! We will be hosting our first live shoutout thread on Zoom to celebrate the end of the category tour. There will be a showcase of publications across the Substack community. Save it to your calendar so you don’t miss it.
Substack has been such a blessing because of its ease of use and continuously updating feature set. I am able to maintain a weekly schedule and haven't missed a week only because writing on Substack is as easy as writing something on Word or Notepad. Not having to worry about any technical elements has been one of the biggest boons for me and has inculcated this weekly writing habit in me.
This platform also allowed me to participate in Substack Go where I made some awesome friends who I still hang out with on writing hour calls.
All in all, this has been a 100/100 experience.
My sincere thanks and gratitude to everyone at Substack. Cheers!
Hi everyone! I see a lot of people asking about growth strategies, so thought I’d share my experience.
I’ve been on Substack a little over a year. In that time my audience has grown 6X.
By far the biggest jump was when Daily Brew linked to one of my stories in their newsletter. That was great, but replicating that kind of growth was beyond my control.
Two strategies I can control are as follows.
First, I do post my stories to social media. I like Twitter and I already had a decent following there (about 1,200 people). That said, conversion through social media isn’t great. So in my experience Twitter might add one or two free subscribers per week. To get that I have to be fairly active (something I enjoy) and I have to limit self-promo. I try to adhere to an 80/20 rule, so for every ten posts, 8 aren’t self-promo. That said, I try to keep all social media on point by sharing funny posts. I write a humor newsletter so being funny on twitter is really about extending the brand, if that makes sense.
The second thing I do to grow is cross promo. I know that’s been mentioned a lot in these threads, but for some reason people rarely mention the importance of RELEVANT self-promo. By relevant I mean your cross-promoting in the same category, or around connected topics. By way of example, I did a few non-relevant cross-promos at first. I think I added five or six subs, which is nice, but not super helpful. When I switched to doing promo with other humor writers, I found that cross promos would yield 40(ish) subs. Also, those new subs almost always included a handful of super engaged readers. Here I define engaged as readers who are likely to comment.
Anyway, I hope this helps. And if you write humor, by all means hit me up if you wanna do cross-promo!
I have a raw admission -- I’ve been steering clear of these Office Hours at my own peril. Now having made a full commitment to the immense ocean of Substack resources, my audience and engagement is growing exponentially. If you find yourself constantly thirsty for a great non-fiction book, then check us out. https://greatbooksgreatminds.substack.com
Howdy all you Office Hours junkies! Since I've seen several others mentioning growth strategies, I thought I would offer mine. For my Unseen St. Louis Substack, which is all about local history, I have found success in two places: Reddit and local interest Facebook groups. For each post, I share it in the r/StLouis subreddit (as well as others if they fit, such as r/Ireland for my St. Pats history piece about Irish immigrants) and a variety of local groups on FB interested in nostalgia or history. I sometimes have to pick and choose which groups to post in because each is a little different, so I don't post everywhere each time.
For those with Substacks with a local focus, this can be a great move. For others, see if you can identify subreddits and FB groups that may match up. I would think this strategy could be great for Substacks about tech, health, science, crypto, etc. The one area I haven't cracked is fiction.
There are two caveats to all of this: 1. be sure to review the group's rules and policies (some are very anti-self-promo) and check to see that others are sharing links/videos as well, and 2. don't go on Reddit or join FB groups JUST to promote your Substack. Join the subreddits or groups and read other posts first, and comment/participate. Once you've shown you can contribute in a genuine way, sharing a link every week or two (I publish 2x a month) will likely be welcome.
Just wanted to encourage people to do three things:
1. Do cross promos and guest posts! ✍🏾
They’re great for your development as a writer but also gets you seen with a wider audience. theflare@substack.com if you’re interested.
2. Speak up in the comments! 🗣
Writers (like me) love to engage with readers. Discuss the piece, what you thought, what surprised you. Building community is the best part of Substack.
3. Connect! ⛓
I’m at @theone_chiv on Twitter and Instagram. I have snow and bacon ASMR reels for funsies. We’re all out here trying to promote, but also be ourselves.
Hey, folks. I'm deep in a seasonal freelancing gig, so may not make it to Office Hours today. But just wanted to put this out there: my biggest growth jumps have always come from cross-promotion, so I'm up for that if any of y'all wanna go in together on something. You can email me at ashasanaker@gmail.com, and check out what I'm up to at https://ashasanaker.substack.com. Looking forward to working together!
around 30% of the newletter emails go to spam folders. I see both from the newsletter I write, both from newsletters I am subscribed to (even newsletters I am a Paid subscriber to!) - Substack Team: please solve this issue, because it is a major problem for many of us. Our hard work of hours and hours of writing an article literally goes to trash.
Substack Team: can't you insert some codes in the newsletter emails, so they don't end up in the spam folder of subscribers?
I write a newsletter about books, reading and all things adjacent to both. I wanted to let all the peeps at Substack know how much I appreciate all the additions/changes to the platform; it makes is so much fun to be a part of the Substack newsletter world.
I’d also like to add my “two cents” for a new category in “discover” called books or reading. I spent several hours over the weekend going through the discover feature and I found upwards of 40 “new to me” newsletters about books and reading. I already subscribed to a couple of dozen prior to this, so that makes at least 60 of us all writing about books and reading. It would be fantastic to see Substack give us our own category, and highlight and feature/promote us as a group as they have done with the “food writers.” I’ve enjoyed seeing the food writers cross promote each other and make their little newsletter community stronger for it.
Everyone is talking about growth strategies but you should also make sure you offer something unique and have a plentiful amount of content. Once you can deliver something that readers can benefit from, then you can start scaling and this is a never ending process that requires promotion, promotion, promotion. You have to be in this for the long haul. Keep writing and working away. A year ago I was barely getting 100 opens and now it is almost 30 times that per issue. There is no magic bullet, there is just the work and the hustle.
Hello! We love Substack and think it's so great you run office hours. We were wondering: are there any plans to introduce a predictor for best time of day to send newsletters based on your audience and their activity? We have readers in so many different time zones, so we're trying to get a feel for what time of day is best for sending things out.
Still have tiny readership. However, one particular topic got much more intake than usual, including viewers from multiple search engines--both the usual and obscure ones. None of them subscribed. I don't want to turn my Substack into click bait, so I guess it's back to the long game.
Greetings! Here is my question. I changed one of the sections in my newsletter to make it a separate subscription. How can I unsubscribe people who signed up for the whole shebang but don't want that section? Alternatively, how can I ensure that people who DO want that section haven't been unsubscribed from it now that I've changed the settings? Thanks
Hi everyone -- I created a new section for my podcast...and then scheduled it to go out to my list as normal...and it only went to 2 people who had subscribed since I added the new section. How can I make sure my subscribers all get what I'm sending out? There seems to be no way to determine who a post gets sent to... or (maybe even better) how to edit the subscribers to make sure which sections they receive in their inbox. Thanks!!
Hello, I was curious if there was an easier way to insert tables into the body of my newsletter. I currently just use screenshots of excel sheets, but I was wondering if there was a way to plug in an HTML code or another service that might make this easier/less amateur?
Have a question about stats. In stats it will say I have 100 clicks from Facebook and 2 subscribers, yet in the subscriber page, I will have dozens of subscribers from Facebook, please advise.
Thanks for hosting these Office Hours! I haven't been on much in the past few weeks, mainly because of the Substack App and my reading habits. The app is a great reading experience, but I read my Substack newsletters now via the app early in the morning. By the time I get the email about Office Hours, it's the next day, lol. So here's a feature request: being able to toggle – per newsletter, via the app – how you want to receive your subscription.
Hey guys, curious where in the roadmap are language mutations of Substack? Is it something that can be expected this year? I am asking because of interest from local newsrooms in Europe where English isn’t an option as older audiences do not understand it. Thanks.
Hello. I have been on Substack for several months and love it. I have about 500 subscribers and get a lot of great feedback on my articles but just see very little subscriber growth. I put the articles out on LinkedIn and FB too. Signed up for a service to "spread the word" - I know this takes time, but just wondering if there are other things I can do. I write an article per week- Monday's Motivation thank you
I wanted to leave a comment to draw attention to the tons of great content Substack makes available via their YouTube channel. I’ve been learning a lot and gaining useful insights from the wide range of topics covered in those videos!
Another question I have: Is there a way to upload audio clips and post them throughout the post? It would be amazing to have a written newsletter that also has some audio clips but I'm not sure how to do that other than just uploading one audio file that posts at the top. Thanks!
Hi all! I'm a pretty new newsletter writer; just launched mine earlier this month. My newsletter (This'll Have to Do) is stories, musings, etc. and, at the moment, mainly focuses on the daily selfies I took from late March 2020 to May 2021. You can find it here: https://samjeancoop.substack.com/
I'm interested in growing my newsletter, as I think we all are. I've definitely read some of the suggestions so I've got those in the back of my mind. But since my newsletter is pretty personal and kind of niche, I'm having a hard time figuring out where exactly to start. I promote on instagram and a bit on LinkedIn (I'm already on there for job searching purposes so I figured, why not). If you use Discord at all, how did you y'all find your Discord Communities? Any suggestions on interesting or unexpected copy to include in newsletters to encourage subscribers to share? Any other unexpected ideas or places you've found subscribers and/or writers in similar veins to connect with?
Haven't launched my Substack yet am working w a consultant and whoa it's a slow process for me. But the name/ Substack domain is "Immunocompromised Times" and it will combine science reporting with memoir comics and reported essays
Hi gang! I've seen several comments about asking readers to reply to posts to increase engagement. I've only been doing this for a couple of months but my replies are usually from the same handful of folks I consulted before starting out on my journey.
1) How do you ask folks to reply? Is it as simple as putting your email in your posts? Is that a party foul?
2) Still wondering how to get rid of the yellow round thing that looks like a hockey puck that is the default for our post. Many on this writer's hour use their photos.
3) How do I resist the urge to worry about number of readers? I vowed not to do this. Now I'm thinking if I could just get past a certain number (like 100...) I'd stop. Honestly!
2. The top menu bar on the substack homepage says "For Writers" "For Readers." Will it at some point say "For Listeners" with links to podcasts published on Substack?
I have made the decision to start podcasting. My baby steps are to read all of my posts since I started, a little over a year's worth. My idea is to use Movavi recording software to get both audio and video, then separate the two and post the audio on Substack. I want to record entire months in one podcast post, but not as a continuous stream. My thought is to introduce the month in the main podcast and then upload the other audio files.
this is do-able right? putting several audio files into one podcast post?
thanks
Substack has been phenomenal for me! katie, baily jasmine and the whole team are rock stars!
Hey fellow writers and Substack team. I've found what may be a bug in the editor that I REALLY would love to see fixed. It seems like it's impossible to add a "share with caption" button into the email header or footer, but it is possible to add "subscribe with caption."
Not sure if this is for some reason intentional, but having this would be a fantastic tool!
Hello substack team, I have a spirituality based newsletter here called Source Driven (https://vishankagandhi.substack.com). I was wondering if you can please touch upon ways we can expand the reach for niche publications. Does the algorithm support the promotion of such content? Thanks! :)
I am new on Substack (one month so far!) and was curious how other publications have episodes with attached photos all over their homepage as opposed to a long line of publications.
For all the readers out there! "By first reading aloud and then reading alongside, my grandfather showcased how the most talented authors effortlessly unspooled, cleverly recounted, and skillfully concluded tales both true and tall.
He helped me realize that reading represented a conversation between reader and author—the former living and the latter sometimes dead—that this simple act led to an inheritance of wisdom from generations past."
I see a lot of you talking about the header/footer in your newsletters. This is something I haven't delved into yet. I'm not even sure from the newsletters I subscribe to what would be considered the header/footer vs. the regular post. What is the advantage of using a header/footer? What does this look like in the final product? Does this apply only to emails? Or to the post itself? Or is there a tutorial or something I should look at to find more info?
First of all, thank you for creating this platform. I truly feel the connections with the writers I follow and the readers following my Substack publication. I have a couple of questions: 1) I just created a separate newsletter under the main umbrella, and was wondering if I could move some of the old posts to live under this separate newsletter I just created? 2) Is there a plan in the future to have half of the post available to free subscribers and the other half only visible to paid subscribers? We have a magazine photo shoot component to accompany each podcast episode, and we are hoping the photoshoot aspects only be offered to paid subscribers while the podcast components are still available for all. But currently, if I add a "paywall" to a post, the whole post becomes off-limit to free subscribers. Thank you a lot.
I'm starting to organize a newsletter and hope to launch in May. I'm having some trouble getting my site set up. If anyone has ideas about the following, I would appreciate it. Thanks very much!
1. How do you set up an unsubscribe option?
2. How do I edit my webpage and homepage so that there is always certain text on the top or in a sidebar on the right. I see how to do this as an Email Header, but I want it to appear on all versions of the newsletter.
3. How do I place text in different places around the site? The Bitterman Project has text all over the place!
I'm considering holding Office Hours for my own publication, Busy Bee Kindergarten, which is all about how to effectively teach kindergartners to read and write. https://busybeekindergarten.substack.com/
Would I just try to copy your procedures and format? Maybe send an email out announcing the day and time? Then sit there ready to respond to comments to that email? It might be hard to catch up, but the comments should always be available, right, so readers could come back later and still read through everything? Any help or ideas would be appreciated!
I might be looking a gift horse in the mouth here, but I've seen a *huge* uptick in free subscriptions (about 30% growth) since mid-March. I've been running my newsletter steadily for 3 years and have not seen this type of growth since my initial launch week. Some of the new signups are from addresses that look fishy -- either nonsense strings of letters, unfamiliar domains, or what appear to be publicly listed contact addresses for roofing companies and marketing studios (?)
Maybe I am being paranoid here. I can't think of how someone would exploit this for phishing or any other type of scam, but it's got me wondering if other writers have seen something similar. Thoughts?
Fast question: what happens to all my free subscribers when I move to paid?
Can I give them option of staying free because they've been the first round and have helped promote / grow my newsletter?
If I wanted to let them know I'm going paid but give them the free option for supporting me so far, how would you recommend doing that.
Has anyone gone that route and with what steps?
ALSO, along with my own 'Shelf of Crocodiles,' I'm working with a talented artist named Damian Fulton on his own recently-launched newsletter 'Radical Rick Spitballing'
It's based on the art and zany, Mad-Magazine like characters of his comic strip 'Radical Rick,' which ran in BMX Plus magazine through the 80's and 90's
Just this week, Damian's raffling off one of his Radical Rick paintings in an effort to fundraise relief for Ukrainian refugees through Foursquare.com.
Hi all, I'm also relatively new to Substack. Great to be here! I have a post going out on Saturday where I uploaded a GIF I created. It looks fine on the web browser but the GIF doesn't display in the email.
I'm getting round it by having a button saying 'if you can't see the GIF, click here' but it might be something for Substack to look into.
This week I have a question for you all about currency for paid subscriptions. I am based in the UK and am going to introduce a paid subscription next month. I am thinking of a monthly amount of USD $5.99 or GBP £5.
It would be simpler, and cheaper for me to use GBP but USD seems to be the universal currency of the internet.
Here's my question - if you are American, would you be phased by a subscription quoted in £? Would you know roughly how much that is in $?
For those of you that have paid subscriptions for an audience in different countries what are your thoughts, particularly if you not based in the USA?
I've signed up for a couple of referral services - if you promote them and they get a subscriber, they'll get you one. I've only gained about three subs this way, so I'm wondering if anybody else is using them and what kind of response you're getting?
Hi, I'm in the Eastern Time Zone at 1p trying to reach the Office Hours. Am I in the right place? My first time here. Does it take place in this thread?
Hi all - I recently sent my newsletter out. One reader replied to it and asked to be unsubscribed. There was an "unsubscribe" link at the top of the email they replied to. If I click on it, will I then unsubscribe that person? Or do they have to do it? That would be a lot easier than going into settings and finding the person. Thanks!
Hello wonderful writers!
Thank you for showing up for each other today. We love spending this time with you all each week.
We'll be back next week for a very special shoutout thread (see above). We hope to see you there!
Best,
Bailey, Kelsa, Jasmine, Jamil, Jonathan, Aaron, Ben, and Sergey
Hello Substack team,
I want to share my appreciation and gratitude towards this platform.
I just completed a year of writing poems every week on my substack.(https://hellouniverse.substack.com check it out! 🤗)
Substack has been such a blessing because of its ease of use and continuously updating feature set. I am able to maintain a weekly schedule and haven't missed a week only because writing on Substack is as easy as writing something on Word or Notepad. Not having to worry about any technical elements has been one of the biggest boons for me and has inculcated this weekly writing habit in me.
This platform also allowed me to participate in Substack Go where I made some awesome friends who I still hang out with on writing hour calls.
All in all, this has been a 100/100 experience.
My sincere thanks and gratitude to everyone at Substack. Cheers!
Hi everyone! I see a lot of people asking about growth strategies, so thought I’d share my experience.
I’ve been on Substack a little over a year. In that time my audience has grown 6X.
By far the biggest jump was when Daily Brew linked to one of my stories in their newsletter. That was great, but replicating that kind of growth was beyond my control.
Two strategies I can control are as follows.
First, I do post my stories to social media. I like Twitter and I already had a decent following there (about 1,200 people). That said, conversion through social media isn’t great. So in my experience Twitter might add one or two free subscribers per week. To get that I have to be fairly active (something I enjoy) and I have to limit self-promo. I try to adhere to an 80/20 rule, so for every ten posts, 8 aren’t self-promo. That said, I try to keep all social media on point by sharing funny posts. I write a humor newsletter so being funny on twitter is really about extending the brand, if that makes sense.
The second thing I do to grow is cross promo. I know that’s been mentioned a lot in these threads, but for some reason people rarely mention the importance of RELEVANT self-promo. By relevant I mean your cross-promoting in the same category, or around connected topics. By way of example, I did a few non-relevant cross-promos at first. I think I added five or six subs, which is nice, but not super helpful. When I switched to doing promo with other humor writers, I found that cross promos would yield 40(ish) subs. Also, those new subs almost always included a handful of super engaged readers. Here I define engaged as readers who are likely to comment.
Anyway, I hope this helps. And if you write humor, by all means hit me up if you wanna do cross-promo!
I have a raw admission -- I’ve been steering clear of these Office Hours at my own peril. Now having made a full commitment to the immense ocean of Substack resources, my audience and engagement is growing exponentially. If you find yourself constantly thirsty for a great non-fiction book, then check us out. https://greatbooksgreatminds.substack.com
Howdy all you Office Hours junkies! Since I've seen several others mentioning growth strategies, I thought I would offer mine. For my Unseen St. Louis Substack, which is all about local history, I have found success in two places: Reddit and local interest Facebook groups. For each post, I share it in the r/StLouis subreddit (as well as others if they fit, such as r/Ireland for my St. Pats history piece about Irish immigrants) and a variety of local groups on FB interested in nostalgia or history. I sometimes have to pick and choose which groups to post in because each is a little different, so I don't post everywhere each time.
For those with Substacks with a local focus, this can be a great move. For others, see if you can identify subreddits and FB groups that may match up. I would think this strategy could be great for Substacks about tech, health, science, crypto, etc. The one area I haven't cracked is fiction.
There are two caveats to all of this: 1. be sure to review the group's rules and policies (some are very anti-self-promo) and check to see that others are sharing links/videos as well, and 2. don't go on Reddit or join FB groups JUST to promote your Substack. Join the subreddits or groups and read other posts first, and comment/participate. Once you've shown you can contribute in a genuine way, sharing a link every week or two (I publish 2x a month) will likely be welcome.
Hello! 👋🏾
Just wanted to encourage people to do three things:
1. Do cross promos and guest posts! ✍🏾
They’re great for your development as a writer but also gets you seen with a wider audience. theflare@substack.com if you’re interested.
2. Speak up in the comments! 🗣
Writers (like me) love to engage with readers. Discuss the piece, what you thought, what surprised you. Building community is the best part of Substack.
3. Connect! ⛓
I’m at @theone_chiv on Twitter and Instagram. I have snow and bacon ASMR reels for funsies. We’re all out here trying to promote, but also be ourselves.
Hey, folks. I'm deep in a seasonal freelancing gig, so may not make it to Office Hours today. But just wanted to put this out there: my biggest growth jumps have always come from cross-promotion, so I'm up for that if any of y'all wanna go in together on something. You can email me at ashasanaker@gmail.com, and check out what I'm up to at https://ashasanaker.substack.com. Looking forward to working together!
around 30% of the newletter emails go to spam folders. I see both from the newsletter I write, both from newsletters I am subscribed to (even newsletters I am a Paid subscriber to!) - Substack Team: please solve this issue, because it is a major problem for many of us. Our hard work of hours and hours of writing an article literally goes to trash.
Substack Team: can't you insert some codes in the newsletter emails, so they don't end up in the spam folder of subscribers?
I write a newsletter about books, reading and all things adjacent to both. I wanted to let all the peeps at Substack know how much I appreciate all the additions/changes to the platform; it makes is so much fun to be a part of the Substack newsletter world.
I’d also like to add my “two cents” for a new category in “discover” called books or reading. I spent several hours over the weekend going through the discover feature and I found upwards of 40 “new to me” newsletters about books and reading. I already subscribed to a couple of dozen prior to this, so that makes at least 60 of us all writing about books and reading. It would be fantastic to see Substack give us our own category, and highlight and feature/promote us as a group as they have done with the “food writers.” I’ve enjoyed seeing the food writers cross promote each other and make their little newsletter community stronger for it.
Everyone is talking about growth strategies but you should also make sure you offer something unique and have a plentiful amount of content. Once you can deliver something that readers can benefit from, then you can start scaling and this is a never ending process that requires promotion, promotion, promotion. You have to be in this for the long haul. Keep writing and working away. A year ago I was barely getting 100 opens and now it is almost 30 times that per issue. There is no magic bullet, there is just the work and the hustle.
Hello! We love Substack and think it's so great you run office hours. We were wondering: are there any plans to introduce a predictor for best time of day to send newsletters based on your audience and their activity? We have readers in so many different time zones, so we're trying to get a feel for what time of day is best for sending things out.
Still have tiny readership. However, one particular topic got much more intake than usual, including viewers from multiple search engines--both the usual and obscure ones. None of them subscribed. I don't want to turn my Substack into click bait, so I guess it's back to the long game.
Greetings! Here is my question. I changed one of the sections in my newsletter to make it a separate subscription. How can I unsubscribe people who signed up for the whole shebang but don't want that section? Alternatively, how can I ensure that people who DO want that section haven't been unsubscribed from it now that I've changed the settings? Thanks
Don't forget to join our Twitter Hype pod for Substack writers, follow me @youtopianJ and I will add you to it.
Hi everyone -- I created a new section for my podcast...and then scheduled it to go out to my list as normal...and it only went to 2 people who had subscribed since I added the new section. How can I make sure my subscribers all get what I'm sending out? There seems to be no way to determine who a post gets sent to... or (maybe even better) how to edit the subscribers to make sure which sections they receive in their inbox. Thanks!!
Is there a way Substack promotes our newsletter to the readers? If yes, how does it work?
Hello, I was curious if there was an easier way to insert tables into the body of my newsletter. I currently just use screenshots of excel sheets, but I was wondering if there was a way to plug in an HTML code or another service that might make this easier/less amateur?
Have a question about stats. In stats it will say I have 100 clicks from Facebook and 2 subscribers, yet in the subscriber page, I will have dozens of subscribers from Facebook, please advise.
Thanks for hosting these Office Hours! I haven't been on much in the past few weeks, mainly because of the Substack App and my reading habits. The app is a great reading experience, but I read my Substack newsletters now via the app early in the morning. By the time I get the email about Office Hours, it's the next day, lol. So here's a feature request: being able to toggle – per newsletter, via the app – how you want to receive your subscription.
Hey guys, curious where in the roadmap are language mutations of Substack? Is it something that can be expected this year? I am asking because of interest from local newsrooms in Europe where English isn’t an option as older audiences do not understand it. Thanks.
Hello. I have been on Substack for several months and love it. I have about 500 subscribers and get a lot of great feedback on my articles but just see very little subscriber growth. I put the articles out on LinkedIn and FB too. Signed up for a service to "spread the word" - I know this takes time, but just wondering if there are other things I can do. I write an article per week- Monday's Motivation thank you
I wanted to leave a comment to draw attention to the tons of great content Substack makes available via their YouTube channel. I’ve been learning a lot and gaining useful insights from the wide range of topics covered in those videos!
https://youtube.com/channel/UCm1ilvByQlcDkuVq1VAxxBg
Another question I have: Is there a way to upload audio clips and post them throughout the post? It would be amazing to have a written newsletter that also has some audio clips but I'm not sure how to do that other than just uploading one audio file that posts at the top. Thanks!
Hi all! I'm a pretty new newsletter writer; just launched mine earlier this month. My newsletter (This'll Have to Do) is stories, musings, etc. and, at the moment, mainly focuses on the daily selfies I took from late March 2020 to May 2021. You can find it here: https://samjeancoop.substack.com/
I'm interested in growing my newsletter, as I think we all are. I've definitely read some of the suggestions so I've got those in the back of my mind. But since my newsletter is pretty personal and kind of niche, I'm having a hard time figuring out where exactly to start. I promote on instagram and a bit on LinkedIn (I'm already on there for job searching purposes so I figured, why not). If you use Discord at all, how did you y'all find your Discord Communities? Any suggestions on interesting or unexpected copy to include in newsletters to encourage subscribers to share? Any other unexpected ideas or places you've found subscribers and/or writers in similar veins to connect with?
Thank you!
I just started a podcast and am looking for people to interview. If anyone is interested, please reach out to me -- or comment down here. You can read a little more about it here: https://shedoesprofess.substack.com/p/about-she-does-profess-podcast?s=w
Haven't launched my Substack yet am working w a consultant and whoa it's a slow process for me. But the name/ Substack domain is "Immunocompromised Times" and it will combine science reporting with memoir comics and reported essays
Hi gang! I've seen several comments about asking readers to reply to posts to increase engagement. I've only been doing this for a couple of months but my replies are usually from the same handful of folks I consulted before starting out on my journey.
1) How do you ask folks to reply? Is it as simple as putting your email in your posts? Is that a party foul?
2) Still wondering how to get rid of the yellow round thing that looks like a hockey puck that is the default for our post. Many on this writer's hour use their photos.
3) How do I resist the urge to worry about number of readers? I vowed not to do this. Now I'm thinking if I could just get past a certain number (like 100...) I'd stop. Honestly!
Tad
@substack: Two questions: 1. What determines if a newsletter is added to the Discover page: https://substack.com/discover/category/food/paid
2. The top menu bar on the substack homepage says "For Writers" "For Readers." Will it at some point say "For Listeners" with links to podcasts published on Substack?
Hi All,
I have made the decision to start podcasting. My baby steps are to read all of my posts since I started, a little over a year's worth. My idea is to use Movavi recording software to get both audio and video, then separate the two and post the audio on Substack. I want to record entire months in one podcast post, but not as a continuous stream. My thought is to introduce the month in the main podcast and then upload the other audio files.
this is do-able right? putting several audio files into one podcast post?
thanks
Substack has been phenomenal for me! katie, baily jasmine and the whole team are rock stars!
Hey fellow writers and Substack team. I've found what may be a bug in the editor that I REALLY would love to see fixed. It seems like it's impossible to add a "share with caption" button into the email header or footer, but it is possible to add "subscribe with caption."
Not sure if this is for some reason intentional, but having this would be a fantastic tool!
Love the podcast tab! Glad there’s a dedicated space for audio content without having to make it into a separate section on the backend.
Hello substack team, I have a spirituality based newsletter here called Source Driven (https://vishankagandhi.substack.com). I was wondering if you can please touch upon ways we can expand the reach for niche publications. Does the algorithm support the promotion of such content? Thanks! :)
I am new on Substack (one month so far!) and was curious how other publications have episodes with attached photos all over their homepage as opposed to a long line of publications.
For all the readers out there! "By first reading aloud and then reading alongside, my grandfather showcased how the most talented authors effortlessly unspooled, cleverly recounted, and skillfully concluded tales both true and tall.
He helped me realize that reading represented a conversation between reader and author—the former living and the latter sometimes dead—that this simple act led to an inheritance of wisdom from generations past."
https://www.whitenoise.email/p/read
How does one convert free subscribers to paid subscribers? I have a lot of the former and a few of the latter.
I see a lot of you talking about the header/footer in your newsletters. This is something I haven't delved into yet. I'm not even sure from the newsletters I subscribe to what would be considered the header/footer vs. the regular post. What is the advantage of using a header/footer? What does this look like in the final product? Does this apply only to emails? Or to the post itself? Or is there a tutorial or something I should look at to find more info?
Hello the Substack team,
First of all, thank you for creating this platform. I truly feel the connections with the writers I follow and the readers following my Substack publication. I have a couple of questions: 1) I just created a separate newsletter under the main umbrella, and was wondering if I could move some of the old posts to live under this separate newsletter I just created? 2) Is there a plan in the future to have half of the post available to free subscribers and the other half only visible to paid subscribers? We have a magazine photo shoot component to accompany each podcast episode, and we are hoping the photoshoot aspects only be offered to paid subscribers while the podcast components are still available for all. But currently, if I add a "paywall" to a post, the whole post becomes off-limit to free subscribers. Thank you a lot.
Hello All,
I'm starting to organize a newsletter and hope to launch in May. I'm having some trouble getting my site set up. If anyone has ideas about the following, I would appreciate it. Thanks very much!
1. How do you set up an unsubscribe option?
2. How do I edit my webpage and homepage so that there is always certain text on the top or in a sidebar on the right. I see how to do this as an Email Header, but I want it to appear on all versions of the newsletter.
3. How do I place text in different places around the site? The Bitterman Project has text all over the place!
4. How do I preview the web page and home page?
I'm considering holding Office Hours for my own publication, Busy Bee Kindergarten, which is all about how to effectively teach kindergartners to read and write. https://busybeekindergarten.substack.com/
Would I just try to copy your procedures and format? Maybe send an email out announcing the day and time? Then sit there ready to respond to comments to that email? It might be hard to catch up, but the comments should always be available, right, so readers could come back later and still read through everything? Any help or ideas would be appreciated!
I might be looking a gift horse in the mouth here, but I've seen a *huge* uptick in free subscriptions (about 30% growth) since mid-March. I've been running my newsletter steadily for 3 years and have not seen this type of growth since my initial launch week. Some of the new signups are from addresses that look fishy -- either nonsense strings of letters, unfamiliar domains, or what appear to be publicly listed contact addresses for roofing companies and marketing studios (?)
Maybe I am being paranoid here. I can't think of how someone would exploit this for phishing or any other type of scam, but it's got me wondering if other writers have seen something similar. Thoughts?
Hi is this what we write in to participate in writers hours?
Thank you @substack for everything you do!
Fast question: what happens to all my free subscribers when I move to paid?
Can I give them option of staying free because they've been the first round and have helped promote / grow my newsletter?
If I wanted to let them know I'm going paid but give them the free option for supporting me so far, how would you recommend doing that.
Has anyone gone that route and with what steps?
ALSO, along with my own 'Shelf of Crocodiles,' I'm working with a talented artist named Damian Fulton on his own recently-launched newsletter 'Radical Rick Spitballing'
https://radicalrick.substack.com/
It's based on the art and zany, Mad-Magazine like characters of his comic strip 'Radical Rick,' which ran in BMX Plus magazine through the 80's and 90's
Just this week, Damian's raffling off one of his Radical Rick paintings in an effort to fundraise relief for Ukrainian refugees through Foursquare.com.
https://radicalrick.substack.com/p/staying-rad-when-a-crisis-hits?s=w
Happy reading and posting everyone!
Hi all, I'm also relatively new to Substack. Great to be here! I have a post going out on Saturday where I uploaded a GIF I created. It looks fine on the web browser but the GIF doesn't display in the email.
I'm getting round it by having a button saying 'if you can't see the GIF, click here' but it might be something for Substack to look into.
so it appears that I cannot insert MP3 files into a post. Can it just be one audio file per post? that limits my great plan! ugh
Hello
How's everyone?
This week I have a question for you all about currency for paid subscriptions. I am based in the UK and am going to introduce a paid subscription next month. I am thinking of a monthly amount of USD $5.99 or GBP £5.
It would be simpler, and cheaper for me to use GBP but USD seems to be the universal currency of the internet.
Here's my question - if you are American, would you be phased by a subscription quoted in £? Would you know roughly how much that is in $?
For those of you that have paid subscriptions for an audience in different countries what are your thoughts, particularly if you not based in the USA?
Many thanks
Cali
Luck with Newsletter Referral Services?
Hi everybody!
I've signed up for a couple of referral services - if you promote them and they get a subscriber, they'll get you one. I've only gained about three subs this way, so I'm wondering if anybody else is using them and what kind of response you're getting?
Here are the two I'm using:
The Sample
https://thesample.ai/?ref=83e1
Refind
https://refind.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=barter&utm_campaign=5dKSJM3MUB8UwVSBssx18Q
(Those are my referral links, and if you sign up you'll receive your own.)
TL:DR - Seems more effective if you already have a following, which is kind of self-defeating!
Hi, I'm in the Eastern Time Zone at 1p trying to reach the Office Hours. Am I in the right place? My first time here. Does it take place in this thread?
I'm wondering if backlinks/domain authority/any other traditional SEO concepts have relevance while publishing on Substack?
Hi all - I recently sent my newsletter out. One reader replied to it and asked to be unsubscribed. There was an "unsubscribe" link at the top of the email they replied to. If I click on it, will I then unsubscribe that person? Or do they have to do it? That would be a lot easier than going into settings and finding the person. Thanks!
Want to thank all the new readers since being here last time. PLEASE SEND more! Thanks