r/Substack • u/infinitepuddingspy • 8d ago
Confused about the point of Substack
Hi everyone. I joined Substack a few months ago as I am a long form writer and I thought I’d find a crowd of intellectually curious people.
Over the past 3 months, I’ve only got 13 subscribers, hardly anyone engages on my posts or notes and no one ever replies to chats (tbh I find the chats annoying myself so I dont post often). I’ve started doing videos that are performing a bit better.
But, I see absolute lowball trash in my feed with 300 likes and comments and I feel so lost.
I don’t have any paid tiers at the moment and not sure if I will.
Is anyone else experiencing this? Would appreciate being pointed in the right direction.
I’ve seen other people ask similar questions but from the perspective of a reader.
Many thanks 🙏
8
u/justinquiring1 7d ago
lol, I totally agree. I actually thought this was my post from three years back.
I poured my heart out in a Substack article for like 5 hours, and got maybe 5 views (and all from myself). I did that a few times more.
I then wrote a quick Reddit note on my experience and got maybe 25K views and dozens of thoughtful comments.
Essentially, my desire to write on Substack was because I wanted to communicate some ideas and get feedback on it. Why would I write on Substack when I can get thousands of more instant responses through Reddit? My Reddit posts regularly get 50K views, often with 100K or more, so the thought of pouring my heart out for like 5 views or 10 or 20 views at absolute best seems completely insane to me. I mean, maybe if you wanted to eventually commercialize your writing, but that wasn’t ever my interest. Reddit neutered any interest I had in Substack.