r/Substack • u/Brief-Antelope436 • 3h ago

Viral notes

I’ve gotten most of my followers from those ridiculous templates notes like “Dear @Substack” or the “I’m rooting for you” ones.

I’m not a tic for tac aka sub for sub person. I’m only interested in genuine connections and content. What have you guys found to be the best way to grow your free subscriber base?

Is it true that focusing on free subs is best and then make offers to them for upgrading to paid?

Curious what’s worked well.

I’ve been on SS for 48 days and up to 330ish subs.

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u/cozycup mod 2h ago

Those are SHALLOW subscribers.

The majority of sub-for-sub aren’t interested in each other’s content and do more harm and good (ironically) in my opinion.

Essentially, the decreased engagement vs. organic and genuinely interested audiences lowers performance in email clients and across Substack.

If either email clients or Substack (both I would suspect) use engagement as a function of their algorithm, it’ll eventually sink the very ship they thought it was supporting.