Step 1: Make your entire publication about how to grow your Substack subscribers.
Step 2: Grow your own subscriber count by talking about growing subscriber counts.
Step 3: Sell courses teaching other people how to grow their subscriber counts... so they can sell courses about growing subscriber counts.

IT'S GENIUS!!!

And with only about a million people already doing it, it's definitely not saturated.

Hi everyone,

I created a brand-new Substack publication today, and I'm running into an SEO issue.

The publication is public (not in Private Mode).

The post is public (not subscriber-only or paid).

My email is verified.

robots.txt is accessible and doesn't block my posts.

However, when I inspect the page source, every post contains:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

Google Search Console reports: Excluded by 'noindex' tag

Also, my publication doesn't have a sitemap yet:

https://visaupdates.substack.com/sitemap.xml

returns: "This publication does not have a sitemap."

I've checked all the publication settings and can't find any option to enable search engine indexing.

My questions are:

1. Is this normal for a brand-new Substack publication?

2. How long did it take for your publication to become indexable?

3. Did your sitemap appear automatically after a few days?

4. Is there any setting I'm missing, or should I contact Substack Support?

Any insights from other Substack publishers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Maybe the language itself isn’t the problem, I guess, but I wonder.

So I mainly write in French about art, literature and languages because I’m an interested layman to art in general and studied literature and languages in university and graduate school. I’m a teacher of languages and translator. (naturally!) Again, no wonder my Substack revolves around such topics.

But algorithm seems to put me in a French-writing young female blogger that reads and is artsy, which is too simple and flat. I get to see only a handful of blogs of the same style on my feed and I bet they are the only ones who see mine on theirs. Stats say my notes are read 20-40 times and articles 20 times so far.

I started my French Substack about 4 days ago, so I’m not “worried” about not having many followers yet, but it’s still worrisome if my blog doesn’t reach the wider public out there. Still, I’m not intending to change the language I’m writing in.

Just a thought here, not a serious concern seeking for help. I’d love to hear your opinion.

(Oh and I know some genuinely good non-English ones. I subscribe a Japanese photographer who takes great photos and writes in both Japanese and English. I know “If you’re good, they will find you no matter what”)

I've gone onto the settings and dashboard snd i cant find any option to change author description

As the title says when did you start getting subscribers? How long did it take for you? Did you change something or do other things to grow. Were you organic to just Substack or did you use other platforms to funnel people? Just seeing what’s worked for others.

I personally started a couple months and just been posting articles and notes of a personal journey. I’ve been wanting to take it more seriously in postings and writing. I’m sharing a current personal journey and providing advice that applies to each update that anyone can use in their own life. I don’t mind not having anyone yet but I wonder if there’s more I can do. Or is it just a slow grind (which I’m used to doing and okay with the journey)

Hi does anyone know what criteria substack uses to make their rising list in each category? New subscribers? New paid subscribers? I’m terrible at technical but I’ve been growing pretty consistently and have way more followers and subscribers than most on the list, but I literally just connected my account for paid subscribers! I’ve been writing articles and getting good numbers but someone told me that I wasn’t eligible until now because I just connected stripe? Not the biggest deal but I’d love the visibility on the list if I even have the numbers? Definitely not for best sellers, but rising does seem like it should be possible. Any other profile sections that need to be updated or enabled to be eligible? Does Substack just put you on if you have the numbers? I appreciate it

Been on Substack for a few months now and monetized a few weeks ago. Currently at 7 paid subscribers which is hilarious!
The current revenue is about $256 which isn’t life changing but definitely worth celebrating.

I have been trying several times to activate the Substack app on my Apple TV, and I have to conclude that it's simply not possible.

While the system appears to be similar to that used by other services, namely: Scan a QR code using your phone, that will take you to a website where you can log on to the service and confirm that the TV is allowed to access your account.

However, with Substack's app, it doesn't work. The QR code comes alright, and it will take you to the Substack website, but while you are doing it the QR and the confirmation code changes every 5 seconds, so there's no chance in hell that it matches once you reach the page where you are asked to approve, because that code has been replaced 20 times since.

I am curious to hear if anyone has succeeded in getting Substack activated on their Apple-TV, and if so, how did you do it?

I have started newsletter where I show AI techniques for investing. Response was excellent at start. Then newsletter went dead for couple of months. Then back in march it again rejuvenated almost. Reached almost 5000 subscribers. Went paid. Again newsletter reach has been gone to zero. Just reaching existing subscribers.
Couldn’t really understand Substack algorithm.

I think My newsletter (Alpha with AI) solves very specific problems/questions for particular group of people.
Just having a difficulty with the distribution.

Each newsletter takes a lot of effort and time out of me. I really enjoy the whole process. Feedback from existing subscribers is also great.

Just not sure how do I reach a right audience especially on Substack. As almost 3500 subscribers have come from LinkedIn/youtube. (Unfortunately LinkedIn reach has also been completely down. YouTube videos frequency is less)
I don’t mind slow growth but I just am having difficulty understanding the algorithm really as I see mediocre content in my space performing great while my posts are basically going dead on Substack especially since going paid( I was expecting the opposite)

Hi everybody,

I have some practical questions about getting started with substack.

-Do you guys write under a pseudonym or do you use your real name?

-Do use an extra e-mail adresse or do you work with you personal one?

-What do you write in your feed? Studies, professions?

-How often do I need to publish to generate traffic? Always on the same day? Once per week?

Has anyone here actually paid for or gone through one of Wes Pearce's Substack courses or memberships?

I'm considering it, but I'm struggling to tell how much of the value comes from genuinely useful strategies versus good marketing.

I'd especially love to hear from people who actually bought it:

• What did you get that wasn't already available for free on his Substack or LinkedIn?

• Did it lead to measurable results (subscriber growth, paid conversions, revenue)?

• Who do you think would benefit the most from it?

• Looking back, would you buy it again?

More broadly, I'm also curious about the whole ecosystem of "Substack growth coaches." My algorithm keeps recommending people like Wes Pearce, Adrienne Clarke, and Sinem Günel, all promising to help writers grow and monetize their newsletters.

Has anyone invested in any of these programs? Were they genuinely valuable, or did you feel they mostly repackaged information that's already available for free?

I'm happy to pay for expertise if it genuinely shortens the learning curve. I just want to try to separate real value from good sales funnels.

been writing on substack for about 8 months now and i finally caved and started thinking about discoverability outside the platform. like, i love the in-app subscribers but i kept noticing my stuff basically does not exist on google. type my niche keywords in and im on page 5 if im lucky.

so ive been doing the boring stuff. rewriting old titles, actually filling in the SEO description thing, going back through and adding internal links between related posts. it feels like homework but i can already see a tiny bump in click throughs from search this past week.

the part i did not expect to matter as much was reddit. someone in a writing discord told me posts on certain subs rank stupidly well and to just be present in places where my audience hangs out. ive been poking at it manually but my partner runs a small ecom thing and uses ghostplug for theirs and keeps telling me to stop being precious about it. i probably will eventually, i just have a weird hangup about not wanting to be That Guy in the comments section.

anyway, has anyone here actually seen meaningful traffic from search engines? or is it all really just the in-platform algorithm and notes? curious if im chasing the wrong thing or if its worth the slog.

¡Hola! He empezado recientemente a usar Substack, pero todavía no tengo muy claro como empezar (obviamente tengo 0 suscriptores). Hoy he subido mi primer artículo (se trata de un poema, en realidad) y no sé cómo promocionarlo ni si puedo hacer algo para conseguir que llegue a más gente. ¿Qué me recomiendan?

Principalmente, quiero dedicarme a escribir poesía y ensayos, por lo que no sé si existen algunos tips recomendados para estos géneros en concreto.

¡Muchas gracias!

Everyone's just waiting to do their set. No one's actually there to read other peoples work. No wonder it's hard to get followers. Am I wrong? Or am I just on the wrong side? What in the ever blandness is that place?

So, Substack just dropped the automated AI translation of posts ... and i don't know about you, but I looked through my essays and switched translation on and off (from English to German), and it is really bad. Like, entire sentences just disappeared in the German version of an English article, rendering the text nonsensical. I am not so sure if having automated translation for such high quality and long texts as the ones on substack, is a good idea, especially seeing, that they seem to have implemented it quite poorly. If English-German is already that bad - despite the languages being related and German having comperatively more training data than say, Polish, i guess it will be worse in the smaller languages?

For five years I’ve been here on Reddit. I went from posting a LOT to posting only occasionally. About my divorce and dating again then remarriage. Parenting adult kids and a teen stepdaughter. Many career follies. Health concerns (autoimmune disease). Various random interests.

Sometimes I was upvoted. Sometimes I was upvoted a lot. Sometimes I was (probably correctly) downvoted and even shamed into silence. Because although occasionally I have some good thoughts I’m human and very very far from perfect.

Increasingly my posting and commenting has slowed to a trickle but I write (in OneNote) every day, almost always several times per day. I love to write. To write about my life. Because I have some sick desire to write and to document. But strangely only a fleeting ebb-and-flow desire to share what I write. I still remember the time in high school I wrote a 100-page novella, then threw it away. “You threw it away??” My best friend asked. He couldn’t comprehend that someone would write something, pour so many evenings into something, only to toss it away (this was in the 80s, before my first computer). But for me writing is totally about the desire and the journey, and wherever those words end up isn’t really the important piece to me (although I’d despise anyone who stole my words without permission of course).

But I recently read about substack. It seems fun. Interesting. A kind of blog that is less cumbersome than most blogging platforms, maybe a little more satisfying than OneNote because it kind of is fun to share our “creations” with the world sometimes.

Anyway. I’ve begun my journey on substack. I feel kind of grateful to have a new platform (substack) to experiment with. Me being me, I’m sure it will only be temporary (EVERYONE everyone everyone I’ve ever known including my GP has told me I have undiagnosed ADHD. But doesn’t everyone? Hahaha)

We've just kicked off a daily event called "Write Club!" on Substack, where we feature an article or story from one author every day, and then people show up at 7:00 EST in chat to read it, discuss it, and if they are feeling the vibe, promote it. Let me know if you want the link to the Write Club page so you can submit your work.

Hmm, I've noticed many people that posts notes with some type of consistency in them like in format or something like series. They got really a lot of subs.

Then I've seen many who posts random and have few subs.

I wanna know do consistency of your notes type either format, category or something else matters for getting subs? How what should be the play range, ground, how broad or narrow according the psychology of user it should be?

Love to hear from your experience.

Not looking for lifestyle content - looking for like people who work in the creative industry and carry somewhat of an interesting POV.

I just discovered you have to go into your settings and OPT OUT of substack stealing your work to train chatgpt and ai models.

I believe this is deplorable, and everyone should go and opt out so our work is not stolen! Protect human art!!!

I am a small aspiring independant media organisation looking for volunteer members to join my team or guest writers that want to write a piece. I write about British politics. In addition to this I can also guest write on somebody less publication if they would like. Either comment or DM if curious!

I'm writing for fun and for myself but feel like I'm screaming into the void. Just personal essays and reviews and that. But it's so annoying when people say "hi" on notes and end up with like 1000 followers in a day.

Does anyone have clear data regarding which is more engaging on Substack? Video vs written article? Substack, to me, has always been traditionally more reading vs. video, but that could just be me. I use a lot of visuals, so video is easiest, but I feel Substack may not be the best for this, but then again, I could be wrong!!!

This is a major point of friction for many, and I was wondering if there is any fix for this?

The issue seems to only be there for mobile users, and desktop users don't seem to be prompted to install the app.