1213 Comments

🏆 Wins 🏆

Tell us something exciting that has happened recently!

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There is a lot to celebrate in today's thread! We hope you take a moment to recognize these milestones as you finish out the week.

The Substack team is signing off. We will be back next week at the same time and place.

Keep going,

The Substack Team

Katie, Kelsa, Bailey, Sophia, Becca, Sam, Ben, Wyatt, Kevin, & Maggie

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Also wanted to say a thanks to the Substack gang for the Recommendations system. I was pretty apathetic about it at first but then a few other writers in my field recommended me and I've got more than 200 signups out of it in a couple of weeks. Hurrah!

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Hi writers! Here's some encouragement from one little newsletter to all of you: the best way out is through! If you're feeling stagnant, uninspired, or blocked creatively, the best thing to do is to KEEP WRITING. Sometimes the stuff we write that we feel the least excited about ends up resonating with someone in ways we could never have imagined. So DON'T give up, and DON'T stop writing! The world needs to hear your voice, and someone out there needs to read your words! KEEP GOING! 🌿

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Recommendations are super dope, I think a featured recommendation that alternates every few days would be a cool feature on our pages.

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This is a Substack appreciation comment.

The team at Substack is incredible — and I want to say thank you to all of them, but especially to those who really helped me sort through a couple recent issues I was having.

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My substack follows my life after quitting the office to pursue writing and yesterday my first commercially published book was sent off to the printers. After the intense editing process I don't think I'll ever look at it again but a very enjoyable feeling.

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Just crossed 2700 free and 125 paid subs! Here are the things I wished I knew when I started: 1. No Facebook or Twitter ads. You can use these platforms for free and actually see better results by posting regularly in forums and threads. 2. You should be cold emailing a lot more. Substackers are way more likely to help a fellow writer than you think so don't be shy. 3. If you are paid, give away your paid subscription to those who help you. Since you will be cold emailing a bunch, you should have lots of free comps given out! (I run https://shortstory.substack.com/ so let me know if any one in this thread wants a free 6 month comp in exchange for a reco or even a quick tweet.) 4. The only positive Return on Investment I have got in advertising is when I reached out to someone in my field, then asked what they charged, found out they don't really do ads, and then worked something out that made sense for them to mention my substack. Most newsletters that have ads regularly will see some click through but they don't break even so you need to forge your own path. That's all! Hope you enjoyed this mini-thread!

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Our win this week was getting included in a Fodor's writeup of travel tips for living abroad (https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/money-saving-tips-for-living-abroad), passing 2000 subscribers, and still staying close to a 10% paid subscription rate.

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Substack that monthly report you send out is extremely helpful!

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I returned to writing after 9 years being away. It feels incredible to be back and Substack has made the process so enjoyable. I hit publish for the first time last week and I'm so excited to get back to it. I'm starting to feel like a full version of myself again!

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I got another paid subscriber yesterday, which was pretty amazing. Slow and steady progress.

https://isanchez.substack.com/

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Good morning,

My question is about how do you build an audience when you don’t have a niche or specific topic?

I interview guests for the Bigger Than Me Podcast. I’ve spoken with ocean pollution experts, business owners, authors, politicians, artists, Indigenous leaders and musicians. My newsletter talks about why I wanted to have them on, and what I took away from the conversation. Each article is completely unique in the topic, which makes it harder to build a community.

Any insights would be valued 😊🙏

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I did a subscription drive and went from 75 to 150 in a week with 3 paid.

Now I have had two unsubscribed. Is this a good ratio? My paid subscriptions are at about 10%. But that will go down as my reach goes up I would speculate.

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Today I hit 16 paid subs, which is amazing to me! It's not something I push a lot, and I feel really honored that 16 people (10 of whom I don't know personally) pay for my work. 🥲

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I love this Substack Thursday. Quite resembles a whole year when we work our ass off, and then we meet for the thanksgiving. This is more like a weekly Thanksgiving--and I love it! So many views and links to so many great pieces. Keep writing!

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I want to also say how impressed I am with the Substack platform. I love everything about it, how it works to write, blog, podcast, add video. The potential is fantastic. And, I’m discovering some really great writers. I’m a musician, amateur writer, so seeing how it’s done is very enlightening. The subscription fees from my $5 $50 and $100 dollar memberships just hit my bank deposit, very handy. I’m also seeing a decent amount of podcast hits from my posting on Substack and sending it to Apple and Spotify.

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I've been thinking a lot about milestones this week. My baby celebrated his first birthday (or rather, we celebrated his first birthday!) and also stood up for the first time.. (look ma, no hands!) I think he'll be walking pretty soon, but not before falling over (many, many times!) My substack is only 6 months old, so just starting to crawl, but it's exciting to watch it grow, step by step... Forgive this cheesy post, it's been an big week!

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Wow, the linked headings is a great addition. I can't wait to use that!

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Congratulations Valorie and Sari! That is very cool to hear, and very encouraging!

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Substack! What is the best way to share old issues with new subscribers? Should I resend or just copy and paste into a new issue? I have great content from over a year ago and many new subscribers who would benefit from it.

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Wins:

- Over 100 subscribers!! 🥳

- My Substack turns one on Monday, the 13th!

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Greetings! Well, about a week ago I FINALLY published my first article, and I have to say, I think I "overwrote" it! I became so intimidated by all the fantastic writers here that I "over-edited" what I had to say. I made the article too long, because I was trying to match some other writer's word count! Well, next time I will do better, I promise!

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Just a quick reminder to everyone out there to update your about page. I'm always shocked at how many Substacks I see which still have the boilerplate text for their about page. This is the first place new readers will visit to find out what to expect from you - give them something compelling and memorable!

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Congrats to those newly published books! Just happens that I subscribe to both Substack publications :-)

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Hey Substack team, when will customizable fonts be available on the computer version? Love that it's on the app but I write and publish from my laptop. I'd LOVE to have customizable fonts!!

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I am excited to share a win! A technical publication I have been working on the last 2 years was finally published. I used my monthly Substack newsletter (directed to a very niche audience) to successfully get pre-orders since my Substack subscribers are the perfect audience for my book (titled "Make Your Safety Training Stick: Increase Retention and Get Better Results). I am considering offering a free trial paid subscription for anyone who buys the book but not sure if I'll go that way yet.

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My poem won first prize at the Dolgeville, NY Violet Festival. I will read it at the festival on Sunday.

https://branwenspoetry.substack.com/p/once-upon-a-violet?r=5ikk8&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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I have a question about commenting! Our readership (Matriarchy Report on Substack) has grown by hundreds (yay!). But we get very few comments (even on posts with 1,500+ reads) and subscribers have told us that it's very cumbersome to leave a comment--they have to log out, log in with a password, they don't remember the password, etc. Is there a way to trouble shoot this?!

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I would love the capability to have two photos side by side. I don’t think that can happen yet. Unless I don’t know about it?

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What is the best way to attract subscribers for new writers? I sometimes feel like most shoutout and events here are for those who are already popular.

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My dividers, that I use often to break up text, are no longer visible against my gray background. No, this doesn't belong here. But Tech support has twice sent me the same boilerplate response suggesting I take up this and another tech issue here, and see if anyone else shares my issue. This isn't the stated purpose of the thread. This is a tech problem, no question: I've been using both the gray background AND dividers for more than a year, and the line was never invisible before. Will you guys in community please get together with tech and fix both the issue and the punting of it to the Thursday thread?

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How do you promote your substack?

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I now have enough subscribers to feel confident in going paid! Any tips on getting started, advice, or anything else?

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Thanks for holding this discussion. I have not been able to post my writing. I am 96 and tech deficient. I need to speak to someone by phone to guide me step by step. Can someone do that? -My # is: 212-204-0656. My name is Abe Markman.

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Hi I started Why Journalism Matters 18 months ago. It's a study and a celebration of Investigative and Campaigning journalism around the world. There is much that deserves celebrationa nd championing. I am a retired journalism lecturer in the UK and my objective is not to make money for myself but to help raise funds for journalistic organisations like Reporters without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists(CPJ). When I get to a critical mass of free subscribers I am hoping to ask some of those readers to go paid (and get some extra benefits). I get a lot of interest from various individual readers around the world and have recently started a French language edition because RSF is based in Paris. But getting people to subscribe has been hard work although there is a steady trickle. Ideally I need at least 200 readers in order to persuade say 50 of them to go for a paid subscription. (One idea is to offer them the truly wonderful photobooks produced by RSF three times a year as part of the package, and I am sure there are other similar benefits offered by CPJ which could be part of whatis on offer. I have had great support from the Global Investigative Journalism Network which has been a real gateway into developing content and contacts, but the whole thing needs a bit of a boost and I am not sure how to pitch it differently or better to attract more active interest. All suggestions gratefully recieved! Here's the link so you can have a look.

https://whyjournalismmatters.substack.com/

Many thanks and I look forward to hearing from you

Ted Sullivan

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Linked headings?! Be still, my heart.

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Even more photo capabilities would be awesome. I'm using gifs now to get some movement, but the ability to host larger moving files would be awesome. Slow moves on high res photos can look really nice

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Hi, I noticed that the new UI for display audio has changed from a player to a button. My question is this here to stay or just an A/B test? I have seen an 98% drop in audio listens since the introduction. I have also had subscribers reach out asking why I stopped doing audio as part of my newsletter.

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Custom buttons in posts don't have the blue box around them when viewed in the app, or web browser. The default Substack buttons like "Subscribe now" retain the blue box.

Other than that, solid week for me. I'm climbing the leader board, got 25 free sign ups, active engagement in comments, and 3 recommendations. Doing my first collab post with another music newsletter author tomorrow. Fun stuff.

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Well, poking my shy head to say how grateful I am to be showing up to the office hours finally - for the first time! It's been in my mind for ages yet my imposter syndrome told me that a newbie newsletter wouldn't be good enough or interesting enough for me to show up here. Amazed to see so many people getting started too! So inspiring. Much needed!

So I'm making this my win today🙌🏼. I started my newsletter a few months ago and having good plans for it, looking forward to sharing more. I have found Substack to be an extremely cozy, welcoming writing place like I hadn't felt in a long long time! I'm glad it exists, and the fact that such initiatives like this one here encourage us all to be free to write, share and express, makes it all one hell of a universe for writers. I'm grateful!

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Reddit has been helping drive traffic and the people who discovered me on Reddit have been leaving enthusiastic comments. Still less than 250 subscribers though

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I took part in a presentation about Substack in an International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) session with https://diannejacob.substack.com/. One of the questions that came up is if there is, or will be, a searchable database for our individual newsletters?

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Hey, Substack! I was curious to know if Substack is run on any sort of an algorithm the way Twitter or Facebook is or if all of the content showing up in our inbox is all organically the stuff we signed up for?

I'm curious because I used to work in social media for years, so everything felt so manufactured, but everything on here feels so organic—in a good way!

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Tom White of www.whitenoise.email here! I write a weekly(ish) missive on all things psychology and philosophy, books and the brain, what and why :). My question: how best do we avoid gmail’s pesky spam filters? Despite all the tricks (I.e. being added to readers’ address books, moving out of the promotions tab, and encouraging responses), my notes still sometimes land there!

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I created https://newslettertosocials.com/ which is social media automation specifically for newsletter creators! The site connects to your newsletter, suggests engaging content, and automates scheduling across all the major social media platforms.

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Where the hell do you start when trying to get a book published?

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So I have two substacks but I have been sick from April to date (finally on the mend). One of my substacks is for my law practice/business. The other substack is intended to be a serialized memoir about my life - especially working as a lawyer in the Middle East.

I'd like to get your views on the latter - my memoir as a serial.

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I know this has been asked before but it would really help if Substack can better sort in the dashboard where direct sign ups actually come from?

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I think it would be really great if Substack had a feature where I got promoted.

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