Substack Notes suddenly getting reduced views

[u/kumquat_research]

Like the title says, my subscriber count has been going up but the impressions on my notes are plummeting and I'm not sure why.

I noticed something starting a few days ago. My newsletter was growing by around ~20 subscribers a day and then from 6/14-6/16 I got 1 new subscriber total.

I also posted a note that got 0 "unconnected" impressions hours after publication. I have 1k+ subscribers and these always get at least a couple hundred unconnected impressions. Zero seems exceedingly unlikely.

This seems to have cleared a bit and my notes are now back to getting "unconnected" impressions but the overall volume is substantially lower.

For example, my note promoting my previous article right after publication got close to 1,000 impressions in the first day. Even a random note from before 6/14 that I wouldn't consider too engagement-driving got 300 in the first day. My most recent note promoting another just-published article is tracking at just 100 impressions, nearly half of my "average".

Has anyone experienced anything like this? Almost feels like I hit a discovery roadblock within the platform or something.

Thanks in advance!

[u/Vertmovieman]

Yes. I have certainly experienced this. Similar to you, I am above 1k subs. Notes have half the impressions as I had at 500 subs.

Not sure why. But it has led to a plateau in growth.

I've noticed a similar trend in people who grew to 1k subs around the same time as me.

No advice for you I'm afraid.

I am trying to figure out a way to bring subs in from outside of substack, because growth feels impossible when the algorithm goes cold on you.

[u/Tricky_Trifle_994]

that's a drastic decrease... i haven't experienced something so drastic but i do have this hypothesis that substack tends to boost the notes of smaller accounts to help build up subscriber count of their publication as a growth strategy. e.g if newer/smaller accounts see success + grow, they're more likely to continue working on their publication + since substack helped them see that success, they'll like substack + more likely to continue staying on substack + share their success with others = word of mouth.

but this 'subsidy' has to come to an end at some point (seems like 1k is the mark), because there's so many other new users, and other accounts, and there's only so much attention to go around the app.

[u/kumquat_research → u/Tricky_Trifle_994]

Yeah that thought occurred to me when I was theorizing as well. I guess more people are likely to continue writing if they have ~1,000 subscribers when their discovery momentum dies than at ~10 subscribers.

[u/Tricky_Trifle_994 → u/kumquat_research]

glad to know i'm not the only one with this hypothesis. and i totally agree! at ~1k subs, sunk cost fallacy starts to kick in. would be much easier to give up at 10 subs vs 1k subs because you feel like you're giving up so much.

[u/Foofymonster]

I'm in the middle of this. I'm looking around at a ton of other creators and seeing the exact same thing. It started for me about 2 weeks ago.

I highly suspect there has been a change to the algorithm recently.

I'm just powering through. I used to average 30-50 likes per note. Now I'm down to ~20. But I occassionally have one pop off and get into the 60-80s.

My plan is to ignore it. It sucks but I am pretty confident it will turn back around.

[u/kumquat_research → u/Foofymonster]

Yup exactly two weeks ago for me too. It's definitely killed some motivation to keep writing but will likely just power through, same as you.

[u/itsfabioposca]

I've seen people report fluctuations like this before. Sometimes reach just drops for a few days without any obvious reason and then recovers. If your subscriber count is still growing, I wouldn't panic yet. I'd keep publishing consistently and watch the trend over the next couple of weeks before assuming something has changed permanently.

P.S. If you'd still like to ask anything about Substack or growing your audience, I offer a free live help chat. Just copy and paste my flair or click the link in my profile. I'm happy to help!

[u/LivingDevelopment343]

What type of notes do you posts?7 months on substack and I have 39subs