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. PDT / 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. EDT. We encourage writers to stick around after the hour and continue the conversation together.
Some updates and reminders from the Substack team:
Introducing Chat: Substack Chat is a new space for writers and creators to host conversations with their subscribers. Now available in iOS, you can host quick commentary and brainstorm ideas on the go with photo replies. Think of it like your own private social network where you make the rules. Take a tour of Chat and get started in four simple steps.
Introducing mentions: It’s now possible to link any mentions of other Substack writers or publications in your own Substack posts. Simply search to tag writers and publications in the Substack network from within the editor using the “@” key. Learn more here.
Now in beta: Cross-posting. The new cross-posting feature provides a way for you to share another publication’s post with your audience. With this feature, you’ll be able to add your commentary and share the post with your audience via email. Learn more about cross-posting by watching this demo video or visiting our Support Center.
Have questions about Substack or feedback about what’s new? You’re in the right place! Leave a comment in this thread.
Thanks everyone for joining the thread today and sharing your ideas and feedback! We had a huge number of Substack employees in the thread today - too many to list here!
Hello all, and happy Office Hours! Here’s a little bit of encouragement from one small newsletter to all of you: Today, let's celebrate the lurkers. The folks who read your posts every single time without fail. They never comment and never click the little heart, but they love what you do so much that they tell their friends and family about it. You may never know how much your writing means to them, but when you DON'T post, they feel the loss. These are your true fans, your real audience. You may have two of them, or you may have 200 of them, but that doesn't matter. They're yours. Every time you feel like giving up, like no one is listening, like what you write doesn't matter...think again! Celebrate your lurkers, write for them, and keep going. Trust me. Every time you post, someone out there needs to read it. So keep going, keep writing, and DON'T GIVE UP! 🌿
Just wanted to thank those who’ve worked so hard on this platform. It’s been a perfect place to host the writing I’ve been wanting to do.
I also appreciate that there isn’t a constant pressure to publish content constantly. At least for me, it allows me to post much more quality stuff. In fact, I will be taking a break over the holidays to refresh (and I don’t even feel bad about it!)
I love Office Hours! I learn so much from all you lovely folks - thank you for your generosity and kindness. There really is a different atmosphere here on Substack and it is so refreshing. As I think of how to make the most of every opportunity and learn *all the things* I’m noticing an urgency and hustle bubbling up in me that I came to Substack to get away from. So, a word of encouragement to anyone who can relate: we don’t have to do it all. We don’t have to incorporate every new feature (now or ever). It isn’t a race or a competition. There is a big tool box that Substack is constantly adding to and we can pull out what works well for us when we need it.
I'm curious to know what everyone thinks about all the new features. I love the cross-posting and mentions, but not sure how I feel about chat. It seems like a suck back into social media (which I left when I came over to Substack), but I do appreciate that I have the option to take it or leave it for my subscribers.
I'm sure there are more ways of attracting new readers then just your social media profiles and Substack recommendations (which are great BTW!).
If you haven't tried The Sample yet, I highly recommend it to all. It's basically a servce that sounds out a sample of your NL to hundreds of readers, and some of them might even subscribe! There's both a free and a paid option, I've tried both and helped me get new readers and subscribers. It can also be a good tool to discover new writers in the area you're intrerested in (be it on Substack or other platforms). Here's a link - https://thesample.ai/?ref=850d (full disclosure - this is a referral link, hope that doesn't go against the rules, happy to remove it if it does).
Another example of such a service is htttps://inboxreads.co. Doesn't cost a thing and can help you find new readers who share the same interests.
These are rad new features. I’m excited to try cross-posting! I think it’ll be a great way for guest authors to promote their work on other Substacks.
Speaking of features, there are two blogging-type features I’d love to see Substack add for newsletter websites: Search and Post Tagging.
For newsletters with long archives, being able to search would be helpful to find posts. And it’d be great to be able to tag posts to categorize them on my site without having to create a whole section. Tagging could potentially be used for cross-newsletter discovery, too.
Good morning substackers! I wanted to share a bit of encouraging news for those of you who are beginners on this platform, as I am. I realized a few days ago that my subscriber list (which includes both free and paid) has grown by about 40% since July when I began my Substack newsletter. That is amazing considering that in the three years of blogging on Wordpress and using social media (somewhat) to promote it, I was lucky if I got two new readers a month, not including friends.
And what is important about this, is that I’m currently recommended by only one other newsletter (I had two recommending me but one of them just quit the platform—-drats), so these new readers aren’t coming because someone with a large audience has showcased my work. They are arriving just by virtue of being on the site and getting to know others, discovering writers that I enjoy, participating on these Thursday posts, etc. 40% is a formidable number, right? so I just wanted to share that.
With that said, feel free to showcase any of my posts you’ve enjoyed or add my newsletter to your Recommendations list, I’m good with that. No, seriously, it’s fine by me.
And I just saw the email about mentions and crossposts, very exciting.
We're over a thousand subscribers strong and growing. We encourage one another through helpful articles, virtual monthly meetups and all around awesomeness.
Tired of Twitter drama? Lamenting the political landscape? Got questions about writing fiction on Substack? You need Fictionistas!
Sincerely,
Brian Reindel
Fictionistas Supreme Ambassador of the Highest Order
It's great that we can now mention people, but are there any plans to roll out @ usernames/personalised URLs for our profiles (rather than just URLs for our publications)?
(So that our profiles aren't like this: substack .com/ profile/ 49352822-firstname-lastname)
Lots of good stuff coming from Substack these days; cross-posting and mentions are very good ides. That being said, in my opinion the badges feature was a terrible move, and needs to be reconsidered. Substack should be about the reader-writer relationship; adding badges at the end of names with lots of paid subscribers will turn the platform into just another hustle-forward, money-driven popularity contest. Substack team: please get rid of badges! They don't promote what Substack is really about!
Hello fellow Office Hours-ers! I'm celebrating today because I'm two months into this thing and recently hit 80 subscribers! But more importantly, in my growth I'm still maintaining an open rate above 70%! I'm a big fan of the slow and steady growth, so while I would love hundreds and hundreds of subscribers, I'm tickled that the subscribers I do have are reading and engaged.
What are the small victories you're celebrating this week?
I'm so excited about the chat feature but I use Android. Do we know when that will possibly be available?
I've made some subscriber progress this week. I got brave, asked people on FB, and I'm almost to 200! (7 away) I also took FB off of my phone in an effort to work towards more responsible social media use and cutting down my "need" to check it all of the time. So far, so good.
And thank you to whomever made the recommendation for The Sample. It has been a huge boost for litthinkpodcast.substack.com
I'm fairly new here and have been enjoying connecting / reading / learning. I decided a little while ago to take control of my odd fiction and get in out there without the sending/waiting loop that takes too long.
So far, so good. I'm slowly getting some traction. More importantly, by having a weekly schedule, it's forcing me to stay on track. I'm kind of like that. Deadlines are my friend, at least most of the time.
That's been a huge benefit. Plus I'm discovering others and learning a lot of new things. That's been great.
With the current Twitter implosion and general uncertainty / malaise surrounding social media, there seems to be no reason to NOT start a Substack publication. My prediction is we'll see even more of the mid-tier journalists taking their followers to this platform. The next five years will be epochal in the history of publicly-disseminated writing.
Hi all. I’ve brought my print magazine readership over to Substack. As a result many of my readers are new to the platform and have questions about how to use it. For example I get questions like “Can I turn off emails and just read at the site…” and “As a comp subscriber can I still pay for an additional subscription or support you.” I wonder if there is a sort of FAQ that others have used? I’d like to send one to all of my readers. And one more question: I use quite a few writers for my content. Is there a way to change the language that says “subscribe to support ME..” to make it “support US”?
I really appreciate the constant innovation from the Substack crew. They really put their hearts and minds into the work and have always been responsive. The support on this platform really make the difference.
I might use Chat as a subscriber benefit which takes it off the main archive. I find it better to not be met with a wall of paid posts and threads. It also has benefits as a community builder too. I’ll chew on it and see what I think later on.
One thing I’d like to see is post templates! It’s a time saver to open up a template with your graphics and links rather than pasting it in every time. Also, text wrapping and left, right, center, and justified text.
1) Ability to schedule regular mailings, e.g. "every Monday at 21:00 EST." Would take a lot of the stress and confusion out of this platform.
2) Ability to save modifications to both the "Subscribe" text blurb and the button itself. Every time I insert this, I have to fix the text from "support my work-->support our work." And nobody wants the hassle of reinventing a custom button every single time they use it.
3) When a user replies to a newsletter, where does the reply go? My co-author and I each have our own emails linked to Substack, but can we designate a shared address for users to reply to?
4) Can you please permit blurbs from people who read the newsletter but do not have a Substack of their own? Some of our most prestigious subscribers, who could really help us by endorsing the newsletter, do not have Substacks. Potential readers have no idea how beneficial the publication might be for them.
Is anyone else having problems with the latest draft of a newsletter reverting to a previous draft?
This happened to us several times over the past several months while working on a newsletter, which is bad enough. But last week we almost sent out a scheduled email that had reverted to a half-written newsletter. This would have made us look very unprofessional.
I messaged the Substack help folks three days ago, but have yet to hear back from them.
I like all the new options, but waiting a bit on chat till I understand it better. The idea of tagging other writers, as you mention them in your posts is excellent, and... I can only hope someone will think enough of my posts to "cross-post" one out to their readers. If you already put out a lot of content, though, sending your readers someone else's post might be one too many. I will use this option occasionally, for sure.
After 15 years of being a devoted Twitter user I deactivated my profile last week and don't plan on returning. I don't know of Substack or related apps will completely replace that experience but right now I'm bearish on Twitter.
I just started on Substack after 2 years on wordpress + mailerlite. So amazing to feel the pain disappear.
Is there anything in the roadmap to support the referral program for free subscribers? Some kind of internal sparkloop features? It is the only missing piece to grow the upper funnel.
Hello! I am new to Substack and loving what it stands for and the opportunity it gives everyone. I was curious your thoughts on going paid - when should you if you should? What do you offer of value that makes a paid subscription worth it? Thanks!
Hello everyone! I'm really enjoying connecting with my community through Chat, and I'm excited to see more features being rolled out.
I am having a bit of a problem with the notifications in Chat, however. I get a push notification for all comments in a chat on the home screen of my phone, but in the app itself, I only have notifications on the notifications tab for new comments - not replies. This has made it nearly impossible to keep up with people responding in the little sub threads, and I have to regularly go through every single one to make sure I've missed something. I'd love if it was possible to just have notifications from everything so I can easily tap into each new comment without having to look for them.
This week I launched a podcast as part of my Substack! I have no idea what I'm doing, what future episodes will be like, or what my marketing strategy will be. But it was super fun to learn and be new at something.
Just shouting out the fact that I really enjoy Substack as a vessel for poetry (both sending and receiving). It would be awesome to develop and highlight that community even more here. Thanks Substack team!
I'm excited about cross posting. I generally right to a niche that enjoys history, so being able to share my fave substacks that way will be awesome. I hope to eventually migrate off of wordpress onto substack 100%
It's SO wonderful that Substack continues to deliver thoughtful products and services. THANK YOU!
🤗🤗🤗
There is a lot of potential in "Chat" and I wonder if a voice function can be added so that writers can meet in real time to actually have a conversation as is possible on Discord?
For example, I run a Discord for animation and comedy writers, and we meet to do table reads of our scripts, which is tremendously helpful. By the way, anyone here who is interested in screenwriting is welcome to join: https://discord.gg/6KbUKFP6
I just had an idea for a future Substack feature... it would be great if more experienced writers could be given the chance to mentor newer writers... just a thought!
My posts tend to be longer and in sections. It would be great if the Editor had the capability of creating a "jump down" menu, i.e. instead of having to scroll to a particular section, you could create clickable links at the top of the post that would take you to a specific section below (and also links to take you back to the top). Anyone else feel this would be a good additional editing feature?
Chat: Is there an estimated date for when it will be available to use on our laptops? I am so unwilling to type for any length into my phone. Yes, I'm old.
Hi. I'm thinking of ways to entice more people to a paid subscription. I did some research a few weeks ago with my free subscribers and one of the ideas they liked was doing author interviews on a podcast. I'm sure it would be easy to find people to interview, but if these interviews are behind a paywall, then the guest and their network won't be able to access it, which is a loss of publicity opportunity.
Does anyone else do a similar thing and how do you handle that?
@substack - how about a facility where you could send out a special link to a paid post that allows the person to bypass the paywall? Medium does this with the friend link so that you can still distribute the content to people who aren't members.
I have +2.5k followers on Linkedin, but it is revealing quite tough to turn them into (free) subscribers. People like, but it is difficult to get new reader emails.
What are the recommended strategies to gain subscribers from Linkedin?
My publication is Think Twice, It's All Right.
I write for fellow overthinkers, articles on decision making, personal & career growth in conditions of high uncertainty.
I’ve just shared my first newsletter and am excited to grow my Substack, but what do you do when you’re at a loss for ideas? I ideally want to write a weekly newsletter, and have plenty of themes to explore for now... but, as always, am worried about writer’s block!
I can see how cross posting would be a good antidote for that, but curious to know if anyone has any other thoughts?
How do I get my first set of subscribers? I have a limited personal network for people who would be interested in my newsletter, so I guess my question is, how do I get the word out in the beginning without having a lot of personal contacts?
Anybody else here write about movies (or TV?). I just recently moved my newsletter What's in Theaters + (you can guess what it's about) that I've been writing weekly for five (!) years. Curious to see if there's any others here writing about similar topics. Would love to check 'em out.
Love this platform as an outlet for my new book that I'm serializing once a week. But man, I have to say that it's exhausting constantly begging people to subscribe. I feel like a carnival barker or a dude spinning a sign on the corner of an intersection. I just broke 40 subscribers, which is nice I guess but far from where I want to be.
Much appreciation to the Substack team for constantly trying new features!
I want to know how to promote to readers beyond social media... is that crazy hahaha 😅 I am 47 and spend as little time as possible on social media. I will not spend my days with my phone stuck in my hand. I work full time, have a dog and spend tons of time outside in nature living. I think I have all of MAAAYBE 150 friends on FB and only created a Twitter account because I starting writing on SubStack what not even 2 weeks ago.... the struggle seems a bit real in my case but I’m here for the long haul. I’m going to keep writing that’s what I love to do and anxiety is a thing for so many ppl.
But how do I get more ppl interested in reading? Maybe I should follow every “writer” based group on FB? Has anyone accomplished much in doing that?
Curious to hear: Who has used Chat with their subscribers? What's worked? What could be better?
Thanks everyone for joining the thread today and sharing your ideas and feedback! We had a huge number of Substack employees in the thread today - too many to list here!
We'll see you next week.
Hello all, and happy Office Hours! Here’s a little bit of encouragement from one small newsletter to all of you: Today, let's celebrate the lurkers. The folks who read your posts every single time without fail. They never comment and never click the little heart, but they love what you do so much that they tell their friends and family about it. You may never know how much your writing means to them, but when you DON'T post, they feel the loss. These are your true fans, your real audience. You may have two of them, or you may have 200 of them, but that doesn't matter. They're yours. Every time you feel like giving up, like no one is listening, like what you write doesn't matter...think again! Celebrate your lurkers, write for them, and keep going. Trust me. Every time you post, someone out there needs to read it. So keep going, keep writing, and DON'T GIVE UP! 🌿
What’s your biggest accomplishment this week, writers?
I’ll go first: I’m 10 subscribers away from 250 (?!?!!) and I’m really proud of the piece I wrote on Friday (and Wednesday): https://open.substack.com/pub/thecharrette/p/twitter-performance-art-for-the-common?r=wri5d&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Also, I got my first piece of hate mail. I think I made it. 😂
Just wanted to thank those who’ve worked so hard on this platform. It’s been a perfect place to host the writing I’ve been wanting to do.
I also appreciate that there isn’t a constant pressure to publish content constantly. At least for me, it allows me to post much more quality stuff. In fact, I will be taking a break over the holidays to refresh (and I don’t even feel bad about it!)
Hi everyone!
I love Office Hours! I learn so much from all you lovely folks - thank you for your generosity and kindness. There really is a different atmosphere here on Substack and it is so refreshing. As I think of how to make the most of every opportunity and learn *all the things* I’m noticing an urgency and hustle bubbling up in me that I came to Substack to get away from. So, a word of encouragement to anyone who can relate: we don’t have to do it all. We don’t have to incorporate every new feature (now or ever). It isn’t a race or a competition. There is a big tool box that Substack is constantly adding to and we can pull out what works well for us when we need it.
I'm curious to know what everyone thinks about all the new features. I love the cross-posting and mentions, but not sure how I feel about chat. It seems like a suck back into social media (which I left when I came over to Substack), but I do appreciate that I have the option to take it or leave it for my subscribers.
I'm sure there are more ways of attracting new readers then just your social media profiles and Substack recommendations (which are great BTW!).
If you haven't tried The Sample yet, I highly recommend it to all. It's basically a servce that sounds out a sample of your NL to hundreds of readers, and some of them might even subscribe! There's both a free and a paid option, I've tried both and helped me get new readers and subscribers. It can also be a good tool to discover new writers in the area you're intrerested in (be it on Substack or other platforms). Here's a link - https://thesample.ai/?ref=850d (full disclosure - this is a referral link, hope that doesn't go against the rules, happy to remove it if it does).
Another example of such a service is htttps://inboxreads.co. Doesn't cost a thing and can help you find new readers who share the same interests.
There's also 15+ different newsletter directories here - https://www.growgetters.co/post/newsletter-directory. Some of them probably work better for certain niches, like tech.
Any other channels you know of?
These are rad new features. I’m excited to try cross-posting! I think it’ll be a great way for guest authors to promote their work on other Substacks.
Speaking of features, there are two blogging-type features I’d love to see Substack add for newsletter websites: Search and Post Tagging.
For newsletters with long archives, being able to search would be helpful to find posts. And it’d be great to be able to tag posts to categorize them on my site without having to create a whole section. Tagging could potentially be used for cross-newsletter discovery, too.
Good morning substackers! I wanted to share a bit of encouraging news for those of you who are beginners on this platform, as I am. I realized a few days ago that my subscriber list (which includes both free and paid) has grown by about 40% since July when I began my Substack newsletter. That is amazing considering that in the three years of blogging on Wordpress and using social media (somewhat) to promote it, I was lucky if I got two new readers a month, not including friends.
And what is important about this, is that I’m currently recommended by only one other newsletter (I had two recommending me but one of them just quit the platform—-drats), so these new readers aren’t coming because someone with a large audience has showcased my work. They are arriving just by virtue of being on the site and getting to know others, discovering writers that I enjoy, participating on these Thursday posts, etc. 40% is a formidable number, right? so I just wanted to share that.
With that said, feel free to showcase any of my posts you’ve enjoyed or add my newsletter to your Recommendations list, I’m good with that. No, seriously, it’s fine by me.
And I just saw the email about mentions and crossposts, very exciting.
If you desire a diverse fiction community on Substack, then look no further. You need Fictionistas!
https://fictionistas.substack.com
We're over a thousand subscribers strong and growing. We encourage one another through helpful articles, virtual monthly meetups and all around awesomeness.
Tired of Twitter drama? Lamenting the political landscape? Got questions about writing fiction on Substack? You need Fictionistas!
Sincerely,
Brian Reindel
Fictionistas Supreme Ambassador of the Highest Order
https://brianreindel.substack.com
It's great that we can now mention people, but are there any plans to roll out @ usernames/personalised URLs for our profiles (rather than just URLs for our publications)?
(So that our profiles aren't like this: substack .com/ profile/ 49352822-firstname-lastname)
Lots of good stuff coming from Substack these days; cross-posting and mentions are very good ides. That being said, in my opinion the badges feature was a terrible move, and needs to be reconsidered. Substack should be about the reader-writer relationship; adding badges at the end of names with lots of paid subscribers will turn the platform into just another hustle-forward, money-driven popularity contest. Substack team: please get rid of badges! They don't promote what Substack is really about!
Love the new features.
Chat: I am planning on announcing a first chat for paid subscribers who have pie questions as we near Thanksgiving.
Mentions: Can these be used in comments also?
Hello fellow Office Hours-ers! I'm celebrating today because I'm two months into this thing and recently hit 80 subscribers! But more importantly, in my growth I'm still maintaining an open rate above 70%! I'm a big fan of the slow and steady growth, so while I would love hundreds and hundreds of subscribers, I'm tickled that the subscribers I do have are reading and engaged.
What are the small victories you're celebrating this week?
I'm so excited about the chat feature but I use Android. Do we know when that will possibly be available?
I've made some subscriber progress this week. I got brave, asked people on FB, and I'm almost to 200! (7 away) I also took FB off of my phone in an effort to work towards more responsible social media use and cutting down my "need" to check it all of the time. So far, so good.
And thank you to whomever made the recommendation for The Sample. It has been a huge boost for litthinkpodcast.substack.com
Hello Everybody and thanks for your support.
I'm fairly new here and have been enjoying connecting / reading / learning. I decided a little while ago to take control of my odd fiction and get in out there without the sending/waiting loop that takes too long.
So far, so good. I'm slowly getting some traction. More importantly, by having a weekly schedule, it's forcing me to stay on track. I'm kind of like that. Deadlines are my friend, at least most of the time.
That's been a huge benefit. Plus I'm discovering others and learning a lot of new things. That's been great.
With the current Twitter implosion and general uncertainty / malaise surrounding social media, there seems to be no reason to NOT start a Substack publication. My prediction is we'll see even more of the mid-tier journalists taking their followers to this platform. The next five years will be epochal in the history of publicly-disseminated writing.
Hi all. I’ve brought my print magazine readership over to Substack. As a result many of my readers are new to the platform and have questions about how to use it. For example I get questions like “Can I turn off emails and just read at the site…” and “As a comp subscriber can I still pay for an additional subscription or support you.” I wonder if there is a sort of FAQ that others have used? I’d like to send one to all of my readers. And one more question: I use quite a few writers for my content. Is there a way to change the language that says “subscribe to support ME..” to make it “support US”?
*waves to any illustrators* hi friends!
I really appreciate the constant innovation from the Substack crew. They really put their hearts and minds into the work and have always been responsive. The support on this platform really make the difference.
I might use Chat as a subscriber benefit which takes it off the main archive. I find it better to not be met with a wall of paid posts and threads. It also has benefits as a community builder too. I’ll chew on it and see what I think later on.
One thing I’d like to see is post templates! It’s a time saver to open up a template with your graphics and links rather than pasting it in every time. Also, text wrapping and left, right, center, and justified text.
Shoutout to everyone writing on Substack. Keep going. This platform is going to continue to explode.
Hello. A few suggestions and questions:
1) Ability to schedule regular mailings, e.g. "every Monday at 21:00 EST." Would take a lot of the stress and confusion out of this platform.
2) Ability to save modifications to both the "Subscribe" text blurb and the button itself. Every time I insert this, I have to fix the text from "support my work-->support our work." And nobody wants the hassle of reinventing a custom button every single time they use it.
3) When a user replies to a newsletter, where does the reply go? My co-author and I each have our own emails linked to Substack, but can we designate a shared address for users to reply to?
4) Can you please permit blurbs from people who read the newsletter but do not have a Substack of their own? Some of our most prestigious subscribers, who could really help us by endorsing the newsletter, do not have Substacks. Potential readers have no idea how beneficial the publication might be for them.
Cannot wait for simple tagging for every post to make it on substack.
Is anyone else having problems with the latest draft of a newsletter reverting to a previous draft?
This happened to us several times over the past several months while working on a newsletter, which is bad enough. But last week we almost sent out a scheduled email that had reverted to a half-written newsletter. This would have made us look very unprofessional.
I messaged the Substack help folks three days ago, but have yet to hear back from them.
I like all the new options, but waiting a bit on chat till I understand it better. The idea of tagging other writers, as you mention them in your posts is excellent, and... I can only hope someone will think enough of my posts to "cross-post" one out to their readers. If you already put out a lot of content, though, sending your readers someone else's post might be one too many. I will use this option occasionally, for sure.
After 15 years of being a devoted Twitter user I deactivated my profile last week and don't plan on returning. I don't know of Substack or related apps will completely replace that experience but right now I'm bearish on Twitter.
I just started on Substack after 2 years on wordpress + mailerlite. So amazing to feel the pain disappear.
Is there anything in the roadmap to support the referral program for free subscribers? Some kind of internal sparkloop features? It is the only missing piece to grow the upper funnel.
Hello! I am new to Substack and loving what it stands for and the opportunity it gives everyone. I was curious your thoughts on going paid - when should you if you should? What do you offer of value that makes a paid subscription worth it? Thanks!
Hello everyone! I'm really enjoying connecting with my community through Chat, and I'm excited to see more features being rolled out.
I am having a bit of a problem with the notifications in Chat, however. I get a push notification for all comments in a chat on the home screen of my phone, but in the app itself, I only have notifications on the notifications tab for new comments - not replies. This has made it nearly impossible to keep up with people responding in the little sub threads, and I have to regularly go through every single one to make sure I've missed something. I'd love if it was possible to just have notifications from everything so I can easily tap into each new comment without having to look for them.
Thank you!
This week I launched a podcast as part of my Substack! I have no idea what I'm doing, what future episodes will be like, or what my marketing strategy will be. But it was super fun to learn and be new at something.
Hey, guys! I started Casey's Catch four weeks ago and am loving this. I reached 100 subscribers 3 weeks in. Woo-hoo!
Just shouting out the fact that I really enjoy Substack as a vessel for poetry (both sending and receiving). It would be awesome to develop and highlight that community even more here. Thanks Substack team!
I am excited to use cross-posts and mentions. There are so many Substacks I want to mention!
Great update, Substack team. 🙌🏽
I'm excited about cross posting. I generally right to a niche that enjoys history, so being able to share my fave substacks that way will be awesome. I hope to eventually migrate off of wordpress onto substack 100%
Week one of the newsletter being on Substack! Love it so far.
www.mondaypickmeup.com
Any feedback?
With the dumpster fire that's Twitter now, I'm working on building a Substack community even more, trying to foster discussion and connections.
One thing I've noticed is that replies to my emails don't show up as comments on the post itself. Is there a way to enable that for a publication?
It's SO wonderful that Substack continues to deliver thoughtful products and services. THANK YOU!
🤗🤗🤗
There is a lot of potential in "Chat" and I wonder if a voice function can be added so that writers can meet in real time to actually have a conversation as is possible on Discord?
For example, I run a Discord for animation and comedy writers, and we meet to do table reads of our scripts, which is tremendously helpful. By the way, anyone here who is interested in screenwriting is welcome to join: https://discord.gg/6KbUKFP6
I just had an idea for a future Substack feature... it would be great if more experienced writers could be given the chance to mentor newer writers... just a thought!
My posts tend to be longer and in sections. It would be great if the Editor had the capability of creating a "jump down" menu, i.e. instead of having to scroll to a particular section, you could create clickable links at the top of the post that would take you to a specific section below (and also links to take you back to the top). Anyone else feel this would be a good additional editing feature?
Chat: Is there an estimated date for when it will be available to use on our laptops? I am so unwilling to type for any length into my phone. Yes, I'm old.
Hi. I'm thinking of ways to entice more people to a paid subscription. I did some research a few weeks ago with my free subscribers and one of the ideas they liked was doing author interviews on a podcast. I'm sure it would be easy to find people to interview, but if these interviews are behind a paywall, then the guest and their network won't be able to access it, which is a loss of publicity opportunity.
Does anyone else do a similar thing and how do you handle that?
@substack - how about a facility where you could send out a special link to a paid post that allows the person to bypass the paywall? Medium does this with the friend link so that you can still distribute the content to people who aren't members.
Hi 👋, this is Livio.
I have +2.5k followers on Linkedin, but it is revealing quite tough to turn them into (free) subscribers. People like, but it is difficult to get new reader emails.
What are the recommended strategies to gain subscribers from Linkedin?
My publication is Think Twice, It's All Right.
I write for fellow overthinkers, articles on decision making, personal & career growth in conditions of high uncertainty.
https://livmkk.substack.com/
I’ve just shared my first newsletter and am excited to grow my Substack, but what do you do when you’re at a loss for ideas? I ideally want to write a weekly newsletter, and have plenty of themes to explore for now... but, as always, am worried about writer’s block!
I can see how cross posting would be a good antidote for that, but curious to know if anyone has any other thoughts?
Thanks for doing this!
How do I get my first set of subscribers? I have a limited personal network for people who would be interested in my newsletter, so I guess my question is, how do I get the word out in the beginning without having a lot of personal contacts?
Anybody else here write about movies (or TV?). I just recently moved my newsletter What's in Theaters + (you can guess what it's about) that I've been writing weekly for five (!) years. Curious to see if there's any others here writing about similar topics. Would love to check 'em out.
Is there a way to patch in a guess on a chat so that it's a bit like doing a talk show or podcast?
Love this platform as an outlet for my new book that I'm serializing once a week. But man, I have to say that it's exhausting constantly begging people to subscribe. I feel like a carnival barker or a dude spinning a sign on the corner of an intersection. I just broke 40 subscribers, which is nice I guess but far from where I want to be.
Much appreciation to the Substack team for constantly trying new features!
I want to know how to promote to readers beyond social media... is that crazy hahaha 😅 I am 47 and spend as little time as possible on social media. I will not spend my days with my phone stuck in my hand. I work full time, have a dog and spend tons of time outside in nature living. I think I have all of MAAAYBE 150 friends on FB and only created a Twitter account because I starting writing on SubStack what not even 2 weeks ago.... the struggle seems a bit real in my case but I’m here for the long haul. I’m going to keep writing that’s what I love to do and anxiety is a thing for so many ppl.
But how do I get more ppl interested in reading? Maybe I should follow every “writer” based group on FB? Has anyone accomplished much in doing that?