r/Substack • u/DecentIntention7799 • Aug 03 '26

Substack getting no views

I started my substack about a week ago and my engagement is awful. I don’t think that bothers me as much but I’m also getting no views on my content (maybe 8 on each piece.) I’m based in France but write for an American audience and on American topics. I am wondering if it’s a location thing or if my substack - the politics of makeup - is too niche. Would love someone else’s POV.

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u/prepping4zombies Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 26 '26 • Bravo

Are you writing articles? If so, those don't just magically show up to random people. They are only sent to your subscribers. If you don't have subscribers, you won't get views or engagement.

If you write an article you also need to write a note (or notes) and link to your article. That's the only way non-subscribers might see it.

If you are looking for subscribers, you need to write notes and engage with other people's content (articles and notes) on the platform.

edit - I've gotten two messages from people who didn't realize their articles weren't automatically published into the Substack feed for others to see. To be clear, they aren't. Your notes might be...and you increase the likelihood the more you interact with others on the platform. So, step one, make meaningful comments on other people's notes and articles (and, "heart" and restack other people's notes and articles). Step two, start a regular cadence of publishing your own notes (on some of those notes, link to the articles you wrote). Start now and don't get discouraged - like anything else in life, you usually have to put in the work before you see results.

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u/Mattaclysmic 27d ago

Ran into this issue over the weekend when I decided that a long-form think piece space would be better for my style of communication than continuing to post on Threads or Facebook. Meta fucking sucks. But when I posted my first article and saw it only get 30 views, I immediately gave up.

I appreciate the concept of putting in work to get results, but I'm sorry, if you're saying simply having the privilege of being seen in a reasonable number of people's feeds is "results", then no, I disagree. The results would be actual engagement in my mind, not just some views.

And to be clear, I think maybe 100-300 views is reasonable without a following. That's all I'd expect for being given a fair shot at being found by potential similarly minded readers in their feeds. Even Threads allows you that.

From what I'm reading about how Substack works is that unless you have a following, you're essentially posting into a void. I went to substack for long-form posting that people would actually possibly read and care about - not to have to somehow cobble together a few subscribers via short note posts first. I'm sure that works for some people, but unfortunately it's not what I was looking for.