152 Comments

This is what I love about Substack! You all listen and implement with excellence. So love this platform.

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Agree. The Substack team is a part of the community. Love it.

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Yes! I love seeing the new features being released!

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I really, really love that I can't keep up with all the improvements you're making at the moment. Always something new to geek out with. Substack, you are collectively the Tony Stark of newslettering. Thank you for all these cool new flying metal suits to wear.

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Let's go! 🚀

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LOL -- that was my first reaction -- GASP! FIVE new products, when I'm still working to catch up with Podcasts, for example. BUT: Imagine a world without all this support, without this fantastic Substack team -- OH VEY!!!

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I'm loving the welcome page blurbs! There are a handful of publications I recommend, and now more readers will know why. So much talent on Substack!

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I love the new blurb feature - thank you so much. I'd love to be able to add custom blurbs, if possible. For example, a blurb from a reader comment or from a tweet recommending the newsletter, so it's not just limited to other Substack writers.

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Great idea! Passing along to our team

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I agree. I don't have any Substack recommendations to add to my blurb, but I do have reader feedback. That would be great to add, if possible.

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Ooh this is such a good idea! I’m new to substack but I understand a lot of people get their readership from (and interact with their subscribers on) Twitter.

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I don't get a huge amount from Twitter, but have had a nice blurb from there once!

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This would be especially helpful given that social media is the main source of pretty much everyone's readership from what I've seen

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Thank you for the new features!! More text formatting options such as double paragraphing, font sizes, etc would be amazing!

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I also feel this is necessary, although I am able to cope the way it currently exists..

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I agree it’s fine currently, but it would be super helpful if a piece has sections/subsections (like mine). Sometimes it can feel like a wall of text, even with the headers!

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Agree with this. The platform is great, but it would be nice to add some visual variety.

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Agree with this request - more style features, including centered text for some sections.

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Yes! Helpful features, for sure. Please keep them coming. How about more flexibility in laying out pages with photos and art in various sizes all across, and up and down, pages?

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This is on our teams radar for consideration.

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Coolio! Would luv to have it all over everywhere on your radar . . . .

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Glad to see more product news from y'all, as always.

But I do have a rare complaint — I've been noticing "Subscribe" pop-up ads that appear without warning while I read other Substacks. Pop-ups are the bane of web reading, and I know that they'll throw off the reading experience I try to give in my own work. Is it possible to turn off pop-ups in my own Substack?

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This is currently an experiment. I am passing your feedback along to our team!

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Yes, that happened while I was reading a newsletter. Don't like it at all. Feels spammy and pushy to me.

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Hard, hard, hard agree. I just experienced this with a long form piece. Readers can decide if they want to subscribe. We need to trust them.

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I haven't seen this yet but I'm totally against the idea.

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I haven't seen this, but if it's happening, I'm 100% with Kevin.

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The recommendation blurbs are great! I have been adding blurbs to my About page. This is even better because non-subscribers see them automatically. Thanks!

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Yes I've been doing that too!

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I'd love for the polls to have more than five options and no expiration.

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Two suggestions:

I don’t have the ability to add a special offer to the paywall. It’s either 7 day free trial or pay full price. But I am running a special 80% off option for a specific series and can’t add it to the paywall. I can only add it as a button.

Also, I think we need to keep the stats on people who unsubscribe, free or paid. Maybe a separate section in the stats for that? I just had a long time free subscriber disable emails and now I can’t see what their activities were. Perhaps I could learn something about why they unsubscribed if I still had access to which emails they opened and which they didn’t.

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1. This is really smart and I see where this would be helpful, sharing with our product team.

2. Super interesting! I passed along to our data team.

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback, Andrew!

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@katie -- to second that, since you guys pipe into stripe, more customization around pricing options including additional offer tier(s).

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Andrew's suggestion about stats on people who unsubscribe definitely gets a vote from me!

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Glad I’m not the only one.

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Welcome page blurbs and the recommendations feature are excellent additions. I'm new here to Substack, but nonetheless, I get the sense that this is a place where writers tend to look out for each other and lift up each other's work.

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Welcome, John!

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Real-time stocks pricing is amazing! And surprising not everyone still knows about it. So I try to let everyone know about it.

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Second that @substack! Need to expand the options for $ tags including crypto, futures, etc.

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Cool product news! Now the only thing I need is for Substack to invent an AI humor writing program so I can call it a day 😁

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When AI takes slice of life humor we're truly doomed!

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Truth! In fact, I suspect there's an early Terminator draft where Skynet becomes sentient, goes into comedy, fails, and nukes humanity because we didn't laugh at its jokes.

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I write my humble little blog here on Substack, and it's just amazing how often the Substack team adds new features! The platform is easy to use, clean looking, and it's just such a joy to type my latest post. The new poll feature is a fun way to get my readers to engage with my content, and I really appreciate the Unsplash feature too. Thank you!

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I haven't tried the welcome page blurbs yet, but I definitely will. Looks really useful. I love how proactive the Substack team is.

One thing I'm struggling a bit with is that I'm finding it a bit challenging to find other writers who cover similar topics. The discover feature works OK if you're looking for something broad, but if you're looking for something specific, it can be more of a mixed back. Plus, many search results are Substacks that haven't been updated in a while. Being able to sort by activity would be useful there.

Related, the recommendation feature is great, but it would be helpful to be able to see all of the recommendations of the writers I subscribe to in a central location so that I don't have to click through every writer one by one to see their recommendations. That might help improve the discovery of relevant writers.

Anyway, thanks for listening to the users. Keep it up!

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Jul 20, 2022·edited Jul 20, 2022

Great feedback! Both things we will keep in mind as we continue to build out reader.substack.com and the app

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Appreciate your reply. Y’all at Substack are on it!

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Wow!!!!

You read my mind, Substack Engineers!

With surprise and gratitude,

E. Jean

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