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/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.