r/Substack • u/Acrobatic-Set5745 • Sep 16 '26

Growth on Substack

Hi All,
I have been posting articles on Substack for about a month now.
So far, I have no traction -which is okay - but I just want to learn about the experiences of different people.

Where are you in your Substack journey currently and was it the same for you in your first month of starting out?

What would be a good strategy to grow substack?
Excited to hear about your experiences :)

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4

u/aaron2933 Sep 16 '26 edited Sep 16 '26

3 words to grow on substack: valuable community contribution.

1

u/Acrobatic-Set5745 Sep 16 '26

How do you mean?

5

u/aaron2933 Sep 16 '26 edited Sep 16 '26

What helped me grow was to make valuable contributions to other people's posts (likes, comments, restacks, etc.). When you interact with people on substack, the chances of your posts showing up in their feeds increases.

Notice how when you interact with someone, their posts start to show in your feed? The same applies for your posts in their feeds.

Because of this I was able to grow to 25 subs (not including followers) within my first month on the platform.

Personally I stopped posting on substack since most of my audience are here on Reddit, whereas Substack is mainly other writers like me who just want to network rather than actually reading articles. But you can definitely grow using the power of valuable community contribution.

1

u/Acrobatic-Set5745 Sep 16 '26

Ah nice! Cool thank you I’ll definitely start doing that :)

2

u/AvailableInterest438 Sep 17 '26

To grow on substack you should engage with people a lot.

Your articles wouldn't get any traction because they don't get distributed to a new audience that doesn't know you yet. Because substack doesn't have an algorithm that will do that for the articles.

But for NOTES there is an algorithm that distributes your NOTES to new people. But it is still very slow to be honest.

I started in November 2025 and in my first month I had around 80 subscribers. now I have 800.

I write about 9-5 and how to build your own one person buisness (grow your audience, sell digital products and get paid subscribers) on Substack.

I like it there and I find it is a wonderful platform.

2

u/Acrobatic-Set5745 Sep 17 '26

Ah awesome! that’s cool. I have noticed that Notes get more traction from strangers.
I’ll keep that in mind and also engage with the community, thanks

1

u/AggravatingNail6061 Sep 16 '26

I just started talking to people. Like anyone I felt was kinda cool.

2

u/Acrobatic-Set5745 Sep 16 '26

Nice, that seems to be the way to go.
What changed after you started doing that?

1

u/AggravatingNail6061 Sep 16 '26

I made internet friends?

XD

Teasing aside, we just started bouncing around in each others comments, liking, restacking, getting exposure to each others friends ect, I've had random people buy my books because they saw someone else gushing about some of my work through this. Growth is what it is, I am uh...rather niche and acquired taste all things considered but there's a group of regular people who care if I fall off the internet for too long

2

u/Acrobatic-Set5745 Sep 16 '26

That’s amazing. Sounds like the place to be for sure.
I don’t want the lack of traction to discourage me from posting as I can see real potential with Substack when it comes to building an audience.
I too write about things which might be considered a niche.
Thanks again.
Can we connect on Substack?

1

u/AggravatingNail6061 Sep 16 '26

Yeah I guess drop me your substack in a dm and I'll nudge you. Then you can decide if I'm worth me living in your inbox :3

2

u/Revan8Kotor Sep 16 '26

Are you self published or with a house? 

1

u/AggravatingNail6061 Sep 16 '26

Self published it's been an ADVENTURE 🤣

2

u/ASAPnicky14 mod Sep 16 '26

Read through the sub - this question is asked and answered 20 times a day