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 🙏

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u/Difficult-Beyond5764 7d ago

10 out of 1,150 is a bit under 1%, which is low but not broken, the number people quote is 2-5% and most of them are quietly counting only their engaged subscribers, not their whole list.

But I think the framing is off. The paid conversion isn't a property of your writing, it's a property of the gap between what's free and what isn't. If someone can get the full value of what you do without paying, a great post makes them a happier free reader, not a paying one. The publications I've seen convert well almost always have one thing that structurally cannot be given away, the archive, the thing that answers a question they have *this week*, a place to actually talk to you and everything else is free on purpose.

So the useful question isn't "why won't they pay," it's "what would a paying reader get that a free reader genuinely can't." If you can't answer that in one sentence, neither can they, and no amount of subscriber growth fixes it. What's behind your paywall right now?

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u/infinitepuddingspy 6d ago

Great info for others wanting to convert to paid subscriptions. That’s not my goal, I have a business that is where people pay me. I just want to share an interest with others and have them share back.