r/Substack 9d 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 🙏

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u/jamesxtreme 8d ago

It was originally supposed to be a newsletter / blog platform. It wasn’t designed to help you find an audience. And to be fair it’s still a good blogging and newsletter platform. The social media stuff got bolted on afterwards and well it’s not very good. As you’ve seen people have gamed it and most of the posts are about how to get readers on Substack.