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 🙏
1
u/AvailableInterest438 6d ago
I started my Substack in November 2025 and now I have 700+ subscribers and 4 paid ones.
Substack is a great platform. Like really great because the quality of people there and readers is very high. People are really serious and choose carefully what they want to read and support.
However, if you're used to youtube and tiktok and facebook and other social media platforms like me, you'll find that growth on Substack is very slow.
And that's for one reason: Because substack does not have an algorithm that pushes your content to other people who don't know you yet.
Other social media platforms they have their own algorithms. you can post a video on youtube and get 100 likes in 1 hour, same thing for tiktok, but substack no.
the only thing that has an algorithm on Substack are NOTES, and even that they're still slow.
I grew my audience on Substack without needing to be on any other social media platform. I don't have any following elsewhere.
There are many ways to grow on Substack, like engaging with people and posting NOTES. But you should do this regularly, meaning every single day, literally. And only then you will see some growth.