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:
Product news: In the past few weeks we’ve released a number of new features and updates including recommendations, account security, and more. See all the latest in our recent product news update.
New writers: Last week, we met a number of new writers at Office Hours. Who else is new here? Say “hello” in today’s thread and let us know what is on your mind. We can’t wait to meet you! For the veteran Substack writers here, what advice do you have for writers just getting started? Please share in today’s thread.
Got questions or feedback about what’s new? You’re in the right place! Leave a comment in this thread.
What questions do you have about podcasting and audio tools on Substack? We're collecting your questions to bring back to our team for next week's special Office Hours all about podcasting.
Our team is signing off until next week. It looks like we might push back the Office Hours on podcasting and host regular Office Hours instead. We will confirm with you early next week.
Keep going,
The Substack Team
Katie, Bailey, Kelsa, Jasmine, Tania, Seth, Jared, Nicole, Emmad, Kristen and Maggie
As this thread is asking people who have been around for a while to share their learning, here are a couple of pointers from my end:
1) Consistency and building a habit helps in more ways than one. Of course it gets your readers to expect you to show up every week / fortnight / month (whatever your schedule is), and that builds expectation and hence engagement. But it also motivates you and keeps you accountable. So please have a schedule.
2) Engage with your readers in more ways than one.
Create a heartfelt welcome email that is sent to new subs (you can see mine by subbing to Hello Universe where I write one fun, thought-provoking poem every week https://hellouniverse.substack.com).
Also update your "About" section to be a good reflection of your writing that makes your reader want to engage with you. It could invite discussion, pose questions, and create debate.
Similarly, pose good and insightful questions and requests for feedback within your posts as well. And when readers reply to your posts, make sure to send them a thoughtful response.
In summary, engagement is not just likes and comments, but also conversations between you and your reader in their inbox. Try to use those to build a sticky and engaged reader base. All the best! 😀
I just want to share that this week I hit 450 subscribers. I've made a point of commenting on someone's post every day for the past few days and the recommendations feature has brought in new people this week. My next goal is 500. For years I've wanted to have 500 people on my list and I am nearly there
Good morning! Thanks for the opp to ask you direct questions. Substack kicks a$$!
1. ❤️ the new recommending other pub feature. Is there a way to reorder the list or will it always display in alpha order?
2. How do I embed my email address in a post? Is the link feature limited to websites only (I.e., with an https:// address)? For example, I am featuring a monthly 100-word micro interview for writers and asking anyone interested to DM me with their email address so I can send the questionnaire. Which brings me to...
3. Is it possible to email other substack writers? Or are we limited only to direct comments (in which we may not want to share our emails with the world in our comment section).
I’d love to know from those of you who have strong paid lists, are there things about readers - characteristics - that make them more likely to pay for content? They already pay for content, know you personally, generational, etc. I have a strong free list but the paid list is something I need to grow. Thank you!
Our Substack Writers Unite Twitter hype pod is open for new writers who want to get new eyes on their work. Follow me @youtopianj and I will add you to it.
Hi all! I'd love to see samples of how you announced you were "going paid". Looking to strike the right tone and always benefit from seeing what others have done before. Thanks!
It was mentioned down below, but it's worth repeating, that the "about" page is a great way for readers to get a feel for what your substack newsletter is about. New writers: don't forget to update your About page from the default text. Readers look there first to find out what to expect.
Hi. I have a relatively new newsletter title Backwards Smile. Im not on any social media. Is it possible to grow without it? if so any advice on how to. Thank you
I just want to post some encouragement from one tiny newsletter to you: growing an audience is the same no matter what platform you're on. Focus on quality, not quantity. Grow a community, not just an audience. Stay consistent, and enjoy the process. Most importantly: don't give up! 🌿
It is great to meet you all! I recently joined Substack and am looking for ways to grow my burgeoning audience. What methods of outreach did you find to be most effective in gaining subscribers? Did you find posting on social media platforms, or a website, or word-of-mouth to be more effective? Thanks for your insight and advice!
I'd also like to know how to find good newsletters of a similar-ish subscriber base (we have approx 900) so we can use the recommendations feature. Think there is more value in a recommendation from us then vs. us recommending a newsletter with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Wondering today about anyone who has dealt with aggressive subscribers and/or trolls? I had my first experience with this recently, and it left me feeling unsettled.
I have been playing w providing audio versions of my essays for accessibility purposes. Is there a way to indicate that this is not exactly a podcast but an essay with a voiceover? The headphone icon is a little misleading, as I'm just reading what is also written in the show notes.
Loving the podcast option, and definitely working my way up towards that as I build my community and figure out my niche (which right now, is quite broad, as it's all about "being a human in progress", which is literally everyone).
Barely new anymore (we started end of the year), but happy to be here and I've really been enjoying what I've learned from On Substack. I did a roll call a couple weeks ago (the question was who are you and why are you here?) and it was bonkers - LOVED it, and learned a lot about our readers. Took the additional step of linking to that post from our welcome letters, encouraging new folks to introduce themselves, which should make that post very much a living document. It should also encourage the sense of community that's very important to us.
I'm very interested in metrics - what the range of "normal" is. My partner and I are both longtime professional writers with deep old blogger roots and existing platforms, but I'm not sure what rate of growth is considered excellent or lagging here. Also, as far as we can tell, there are very few of our tribe (thoughtful foodie hunter nature nerds) on Substack, so we're not sure how much of our potential audience is already reading the platform, vs needing to be educated about it.
Is anyone here doing an advice column style newsletter? I was thinking of that being my paid content later on down the line, after I've grown more, and I'd love to subscribe to a few established ones and get inspiration! :)
Been getting so inspired with community and new ideas in the comments! Nice to see you all! This is my first time here. I started writing on substack a couple of months ago. I've been really enjoying getting into the habit and am so excited to foster connections with other writers. I'm a freelance performance artist, clown, and poet writing short auto-biographical stories, poems, and explorations.
Why have you messed up Substack reader by not using normal hypertext links and replacing them with less-functional javascript links? This means that I can no longer press the middle mouse button to open links in a new tab.
Hi I am new! 👋 I am going to have my first month anniversary with my newsletter writing weekly without gaps. I’m proud of that. I like how easy Substack makes it for writing and now podcasting.
Brilliant amount of information on here - VERY helpful! Just glad I can read back through it all so I can absorb it. Quick question: I read a lot about 'call to action' - just how overt/obvious should you be? I just suggest that if they like it, subscribe and share ...
Let me start by saying that I love and adore Substack, so this is in no way a slight against the company whatsoever, but I had a situation a couple of weeks ago right after I sent my first newsletter, and it was quite troubling.
I had spent weeks planning and designing what my newsletter was to become. I fretted over every little detail when it came to consistency in formatting and overall design, I worked long and hard to make sure it was perfect and completely error free before I published.
The minute my first newsletter went live, I got the alert via the Substack app and clicked to read through it once again to see what everyone else was seeing. Imagine my abject horror when right after my introductory paragraphs, there was a huge, glaring mistake!
Mine is a music newsletter, and near the top after the intro, I included a quote from Tom Waits. It was formatted perfectly when I set the newsletter to be published, but when viewing the published version, that quote was doubled up, meaning it appeared twice and the formatting was totally off. I was (and still am) mortified.
Immediately, i went to edit the error, wondering how on earth I could have missed such a thing, only to find that I didn't make the error myself at all - when I click to edit, everything looks perfect. The quote appears once, exactly as I had it formatted. But viewing it as the public sees it, there it is, doubled up.
I immediately went to reach out to Substack for support, but couldn't find anywhere a support address was listed. I took my chances and sent an email detailing the problem to help@substack.com because I figured there had to be such an email address setup to support writers who experience problems. I waited and waited and heard nothing back.
Days passed. An entire week later, just as my second newsletter was about to be published, I finally got a response from Substack support, but the response asked me to please respond back if I was still in need of help.
I was confounded and annoyed. Of course, I still needed help. I needed help a week ago when I submitted a request for help. To finally hear back from someone, not with an answer or a solution to my problem, but to ask me if I still needed help, felt...not great.
I responded back that yes, i still needed help because this never got resolved and my second newsletter was minutes from being published and I feared it would happen again.
I was met with more radio silence. Today, 3 days later, I've still not heard back from anyone.
Thankfully, the second newsletter had no formatting error or doubling-up of the quote. But the first error in the first newsletter is still there. If I go to edit, it still looks perfect as if there is nothing wrong. I don't understand this at all, don't understand what went wrong in the first place, and don't know if I will have issues with this same thing again in future newsletters.
Again, I'm very happy to be here, and am a total evangelist for the Substack platform, but this experience was less than awesome. And, like I said, my original problem remains unsolved. I'd love to hear from someone at Substack who can help. Thanks for reading, sorry this was so lengthy.
Edit: I also wanted to mention that I only see this error when viewing the newsletter in the Substack app. If I view it on the web, it looks fine. And because I only receive alerts via the app and do not receive the actual email, I have no idea if others saw the error I'm seeing when viewing via the Substack app.
I realize this may be kind of an arbitrary question and just depend on a lot of various factors, but is there any benchmark for what would be considered a strong open rate for your newsletter?
I am LOVING the new recommendations feature! Just found out my newsletter is recommended by others and it's wonderful, and I love recommending newsletters I love. https://fires.substack.com
Hello, my name is Arjan and I am reading poetry. And writing poetry. And, and that's why I am typing this now, sharing poetry. So, if you have a poetry substack, drop it here. I'll subscribe, read and maybe share. At least, when it's your own work. I like reading substacks about poetry from others, but I'm not sharing that :).
I'm a business, stock and options guy as well as a retired, blogging financial writer.
Impact graph: I like statistics.
What I am hoping Substack will do when it has the time and resources is come up with daily, monthly and annual graphs that we can use to determine how well we are doing.
1. New members per month with graphs showing sources.
2. View graphs with graphs showing sources of readers, free and paid.
3. Open rate graphs.
4. Show data and stats by category of site: Business/Financial, Financial Markets, Options, Food, Politics, Spiritual, Books, Health, etc.
At this rate, as a new writer and a veteran entrepreneur and publisher, I'm on my own. I'm competing with myself, and I'm flying blind.
This might be a pointless question to a newsletter but, is there a way to save somebody's post instead of having to subscribe? Many times I find a post I want to read or listen to, and specially with podcasters it won't be a time where I can stop and do it. It'd be useful to save those pieces and get back to them as we find the right time, before we decide to subscribe – I did that and now my inbox is overloaded.
I have a blank canvas right now and want to get off on the right foot .
I would like to employ sequential access for my readers. They would get emails every Tuesday and Thursday but they would get the next episode from where they left off rather than the actual days release. this would allow for binge reading for folks who want to catch up. Folks who are current would get the standard days release. Premium payers would get access to the topics two weeks ahead of time.
This all means I need to have at least two weeks ahead written. But right now I could do at least 30 episodes with out any issues.
I was thinking about creating a QR code for my Substack, which could be placed on flyers and such. (Could be a good feature for the roadmap.) Anyone done something like this before? Any idea how to create a QR code for a website?
Hello all. Fairly new at this forum of writing but finding it interesting and challenging. Consistency is difficult for me as I am somewhat scattered to the winds but I'm working on it. Unfortunately, I find the vast majority of social media to be somewhat toxic so am not as active as I should be. But I'm learning.
I've had a weekly blog for over ten years, and have just recently moved over to Substack. Two questions: 1) do I delete the old blog posts on my website and eventually repurpose them into Substack? 2) How often should posts go to all subscribers and how often to only paid subscribers? And how do you decide which one goes where?
Is there any way to get around the posts being too long in Substack and cutting off the email for some subscribers in gmail? Any way we can adjust the HTML or something and adjust the width?
I would love to hear from other fiction writers about their growth on Substack, and if they have any specific recommendations. I'm finding while there are a lot of opportunities to grow in spaces like productivity, politics, curation, etc., there is very little that really focuses on growing an audience of casual fiction readers. I would say even more specifically short stories, but I'm guessing authors that serialize would want to know this as well. Right now I've come to the conclusion my best approach would be getting published via a well known outlet (traditional or online) for the genres I'm focusing on, and that will bring interest back to my Substack. Other than that I'm not sure what else to do (I'm already using The Sample service).
Roll call! 👋
Who's new here? Reply to this comment. We're excited to meet you and say "hello."
What's on your mind today?
💌 Dear writers,
What advice do you have for our new writers just getting started?
🎙️ Hey podcasters 🎙️
What questions do you have about podcasting and audio tools on Substack? We're collecting your questions to bring back to our team for next week's special Office Hours all about podcasting.
Thanks for joining us today for Office Hours!
There is so much great insight for writers just getting started in the thread here: https://on.substack.com/p/office-hours-37/comment/6168738?s=w
Our team is signing off until next week. It looks like we might push back the Office Hours on podcasting and host regular Office Hours instead. We will confirm with you early next week.
Keep going,
The Substack Team
Katie, Bailey, Kelsa, Jasmine, Tania, Seth, Jared, Nicole, Emmad, Kristen and Maggie
As this thread is asking people who have been around for a while to share their learning, here are a couple of pointers from my end:
1) Consistency and building a habit helps in more ways than one. Of course it gets your readers to expect you to show up every week / fortnight / month (whatever your schedule is), and that builds expectation and hence engagement. But it also motivates you and keeps you accountable. So please have a schedule.
2) Engage with your readers in more ways than one.
Create a heartfelt welcome email that is sent to new subs (you can see mine by subbing to Hello Universe where I write one fun, thought-provoking poem every week https://hellouniverse.substack.com).
Also update your "About" section to be a good reflection of your writing that makes your reader want to engage with you. It could invite discussion, pose questions, and create debate.
Similarly, pose good and insightful questions and requests for feedback within your posts as well. And when readers reply to your posts, make sure to send them a thoughtful response.
In summary, engagement is not just likes and comments, but also conversations between you and your reader in their inbox. Try to use those to build a sticky and engaged reader base. All the best! 😀
I just want to share that this week I hit 450 subscribers. I've made a point of commenting on someone's post every day for the past few days and the recommendations feature has brought in new people this week. My next goal is 500. For years I've wanted to have 500 people on my list and I am nearly there
Have a question regarding the star system, what distinguishes a 4 star reader from a 5 star? Open amounts? Comments?
Here is what has worked for me.
1. My newsletter drops every Sunday at noon EST.
2. I spend most of my time promoting/networking, not writing.
3. I leverage my newsletter as a brand, which has gotten me interviews, news articles, etc.
4. I cross promote if it makes sense.
5. I always try and help my subscribers/other writers. Feel free to comment below and I will see how I can help you.
6. I have a unique offering that aims to benefit my readers. Subscribe and see for yourself!
Good morning! Thanks for the opp to ask you direct questions. Substack kicks a$$!
1. ❤️ the new recommending other pub feature. Is there a way to reorder the list or will it always display in alpha order?
2. How do I embed my email address in a post? Is the link feature limited to websites only (I.e., with an https:// address)? For example, I am featuring a monthly 100-word micro interview for writers and asking anyone interested to DM me with their email address so I can send the questionnaire. Which brings me to...
3. Is it possible to email other substack writers? Or are we limited only to direct comments (in which we may not want to share our emails with the world in our comment section).
I’d love to know from those of you who have strong paid lists, are there things about readers - characteristics - that make them more likely to pay for content? They already pay for content, know you personally, generational, etc. I have a strong free list but the paid list is something I need to grow. Thank you!
Our Substack Writers Unite Twitter hype pod is open for new writers who want to get new eyes on their work. Follow me @youtopianj and I will add you to it.
Hi all! I'd love to see samples of how you announced you were "going paid". Looking to strike the right tone and always benefit from seeing what others have done before. Thanks!
I just turned on paid subscriptions today! After a little over a year of writing my newsletter. Super excited to see where it takes me. :)
It was mentioned down below, but it's worth repeating, that the "about" page is a great way for readers to get a feel for what your substack newsletter is about. New writers: don't forget to update your About page from the default text. Readers look there first to find out what to expect.
Hi. I have a relatively new newsletter title Backwards Smile. Im not on any social media. Is it possible to grow without it? if so any advice on how to. Thank you
Hi Katie. I am new :-) Good Morning. Lots on my mind for sure.
I just want to post some encouragement from one tiny newsletter to you: growing an audience is the same no matter what platform you're on. Focus on quality, not quantity. Grow a community, not just an audience. Stay consistent, and enjoy the process. Most importantly: don't give up! 🌿
Dear writers,
It is great to meet you all! I recently joined Substack and am looking for ways to grow my burgeoning audience. What methods of outreach did you find to be most effective in gaining subscribers? Did you find posting on social media platforms, or a website, or word-of-mouth to be more effective? Thanks for your insight and advice!
I'd also like to know how to find good newsletters of a similar-ish subscriber base (we have approx 900) so we can use the recommendations feature. Think there is more value in a recommendation from us then vs. us recommending a newsletter with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Wondering today about anyone who has dealt with aggressive subscribers and/or trolls? I had my first experience with this recently, and it left me feeling unsettled.
Sugar Britches is in the house…new to Substack!
I have been playing w providing audio versions of my essays for accessibility purposes. Is there a way to indicate that this is not exactly a podcast but an essay with a voiceover? The headphone icon is a little misleading, as I'm just reading what is also written in the show notes.
Loving the podcast option, and definitely working my way up towards that as I build my community and figure out my niche (which right now, is quite broad, as it's all about "being a human in progress", which is literally everyone).
Hi Katie/ Team Substack - could you suggest some ways in which we could improve SEO discoverability of our posts? Many thanks!
Hi writers!
Sorry I couldn't make hours today, but I love the new recommendation feature. It's working out great for me so far!
If any other outdoor creators are here, please reach out. I'd love to do a collab or interview of some kind!
Barely new anymore (we started end of the year), but happy to be here and I've really been enjoying what I've learned from On Substack. I did a roll call a couple weeks ago (the question was who are you and why are you here?) and it was bonkers - LOVED it, and learned a lot about our readers. Took the additional step of linking to that post from our welcome letters, encouraging new folks to introduce themselves, which should make that post very much a living document. It should also encourage the sense of community that's very important to us.
I'm very interested in metrics - what the range of "normal" is. My partner and I are both longtime professional writers with deep old blogger roots and existing platforms, but I'm not sure what rate of growth is considered excellent or lagging here. Also, as far as we can tell, there are very few of our tribe (thoughtful foodie hunter nature nerds) on Substack, so we're not sure how much of our potential audience is already reading the platform, vs needing to be educated about it.
All good, though. Enjoying the journey.
Is anyone here doing an advice column style newsletter? I was thinking of that being my paid content later on down the line, after I've grown more, and I'd love to subscribe to a few established ones and get inspiration! :)
Been getting so inspired with community and new ideas in the comments! Nice to see you all! This is my first time here. I started writing on substack a couple of months ago. I've been really enjoying getting into the habit and am so excited to foster connections with other writers. I'm a freelance performance artist, clown, and poet writing short auto-biographical stories, poems, and explorations.
Why have you messed up Substack reader by not using normal hypertext links and replacing them with less-functional javascript links? This means that I can no longer press the middle mouse button to open links in a new tab.
When is this change going to be reverted?
Hi I am new! 👋 I am going to have my first month anniversary with my newsletter writing weekly without gaps. I’m proud of that. I like how easy Substack makes it for writing and now podcasting.
Brilliant amount of information on here - VERY helpful! Just glad I can read back through it all so I can absorb it. Quick question: I read a lot about 'call to action' - just how overt/obvious should you be? I just suggest that if they like it, subscribe and share ...
Let me start by saying that I love and adore Substack, so this is in no way a slight against the company whatsoever, but I had a situation a couple of weeks ago right after I sent my first newsletter, and it was quite troubling.
I had spent weeks planning and designing what my newsletter was to become. I fretted over every little detail when it came to consistency in formatting and overall design, I worked long and hard to make sure it was perfect and completely error free before I published.
The minute my first newsletter went live, I got the alert via the Substack app and clicked to read through it once again to see what everyone else was seeing. Imagine my abject horror when right after my introductory paragraphs, there was a huge, glaring mistake!
Mine is a music newsletter, and near the top after the intro, I included a quote from Tom Waits. It was formatted perfectly when I set the newsletter to be published, but when viewing the published version, that quote was doubled up, meaning it appeared twice and the formatting was totally off. I was (and still am) mortified.
Immediately, i went to edit the error, wondering how on earth I could have missed such a thing, only to find that I didn't make the error myself at all - when I click to edit, everything looks perfect. The quote appears once, exactly as I had it formatted. But viewing it as the public sees it, there it is, doubled up.
I immediately went to reach out to Substack for support, but couldn't find anywhere a support address was listed. I took my chances and sent an email detailing the problem to help@substack.com because I figured there had to be such an email address setup to support writers who experience problems. I waited and waited and heard nothing back.
Days passed. An entire week later, just as my second newsletter was about to be published, I finally got a response from Substack support, but the response asked me to please respond back if I was still in need of help.
I was confounded and annoyed. Of course, I still needed help. I needed help a week ago when I submitted a request for help. To finally hear back from someone, not with an answer or a solution to my problem, but to ask me if I still needed help, felt...not great.
I responded back that yes, i still needed help because this never got resolved and my second newsletter was minutes from being published and I feared it would happen again.
I was met with more radio silence. Today, 3 days later, I've still not heard back from anyone.
Thankfully, the second newsletter had no formatting error or doubling-up of the quote. But the first error in the first newsletter is still there. If I go to edit, it still looks perfect as if there is nothing wrong. I don't understand this at all, don't understand what went wrong in the first place, and don't know if I will have issues with this same thing again in future newsletters.
Again, I'm very happy to be here, and am a total evangelist for the Substack platform, but this experience was less than awesome. And, like I said, my original problem remains unsolved. I'd love to hear from someone at Substack who can help. Thanks for reading, sorry this was so lengthy.
Edit: I also wanted to mention that I only see this error when viewing the newsletter in the Substack app. If I view it on the web, it looks fine. And because I only receive alerts via the app and do not receive the actual email, I have no idea if others saw the error I'm seeing when viewing via the Substack app.
I realize this may be kind of an arbitrary question and just depend on a lot of various factors, but is there any benchmark for what would be considered a strong open rate for your newsletter?
I am LOVING the new recommendations feature! Just found out my newsletter is recommended by others and it's wonderful, and I love recommending newsletters I love. https://fires.substack.com
Hello, my name is Arjan and I am reading poetry. And writing poetry. And, and that's why I am typing this now, sharing poetry. So, if you have a poetry substack, drop it here. I'll subscribe, read and maybe share. At least, when it's your own work. I like reading substacks about poetry from others, but I'm not sharing that :).
I'm a business, stock and options guy as well as a retired, blogging financial writer.
Impact graph: I like statistics.
What I am hoping Substack will do when it has the time and resources is come up with daily, monthly and annual graphs that we can use to determine how well we are doing.
1. New members per month with graphs showing sources.
2. View graphs with graphs showing sources of readers, free and paid.
3. Open rate graphs.
4. Show data and stats by category of site: Business/Financial, Financial Markets, Options, Food, Politics, Spiritual, Books, Health, etc.
At this rate, as a new writer and a veteran entrepreneur and publisher, I'm on my own. I'm competing with myself, and I'm flying blind.
How do I participate in Office Hours?
Good thursday everybody!
This might be a pointless question to a newsletter but, is there a way to save somebody's post instead of having to subscribe? Many times I find a post I want to read or listen to, and specially with podcasters it won't be a time where I can stop and do it. It'd be useful to save those pieces and get back to them as we find the right time, before we decide to subscribe – I did that and now my inbox is overloaded.
Thanks!
I have a blank canvas right now and want to get off on the right foot .
I would like to employ sequential access for my readers. They would get emails every Tuesday and Thursday but they would get the next episode from where they left off rather than the actual days release. this would allow for binge reading for folks who want to catch up. Folks who are current would get the standard days release. Premium payers would get access to the topics two weeks ahead of time.
This all means I need to have at least two weeks ahead written. But right now I could do at least 30 episodes with out any issues.
I was thinking about creating a QR code for my Substack, which could be placed on flyers and such. (Could be a good feature for the roadmap.) Anyone done something like this before? Any idea how to create a QR code for a website?
I'm having trouble sending the right link to my newsletter. When I provide my substack email people say it doesn't work. Advice?
Hello all. Fairly new at this forum of writing but finding it interesting and challenging. Consistency is difficult for me as I am somewhat scattered to the winds but I'm working on it. Unfortunately, I find the vast majority of social media to be somewhat toxic so am not as active as I should be. But I'm learning.
Do visits on our stats page reflect the sign up page? Or actual visits to our substack page that lists our articles?
I've had a weekly blog for over ten years, and have just recently moved over to Substack. Two questions: 1) do I delete the old blog posts on my website and eventually repurpose them into Substack? 2) How often should posts go to all subscribers and how often to only paid subscribers? And how do you decide which one goes where?
Is there any way to get around the posts being too long in Substack and cutting off the email for some subscribers in gmail? Any way we can adjust the HTML or something and adjust the width?
I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between a post and a thread?
I would love to hear from other fiction writers about their growth on Substack, and if they have any specific recommendations. I'm finding while there are a lot of opportunities to grow in spaces like productivity, politics, curation, etc., there is very little that really focuses on growing an audience of casual fiction readers. I would say even more specifically short stories, but I'm guessing authors that serialize would want to know this as well. Right now I've come to the conclusion my best approach would be getting published via a well known outlet (traditional or online) for the genres I'm focusing on, and that will bring interest back to my Substack. Other than that I'm not sure what else to do (I'm already using The Sample service).
when first starting out, is it a wise strategy to offer content for free, and as your audience grows then switch content to subscription?
I'm only seeing last week's comments. What am I doing wrong?
Hello!