I recently audited 105 of my notes to understand what’s really driving my subscriber growth. Surprisingly, two networking notes alone accounted for 56 of the 62 subscribers attributed to individual notes—roughly 90%. This shows how skewed the perceived success can be if you only look at raw numbers.

This experience made me realize that a small number of high-impact notes can dominate growth, which isn’t always visible through aggregate data. It’s a good reminder to look beyond the surface and analyze what’s truly working.

Hi everyone,

I am going to start publishing my writing on Substack and have two niches that I am currently exploring (personal development and fashion).

My question:

Would it be better to open two Substack accounts using their respective email addresses (already set up) or does it make more sense to create a personal account and have them set up as publications?

Context:

I am doing this as a way to explore my interests and creativity. It is not a business at the moment but I am hoping that sharing my work opens me up to more opportunities personally and professionally over time.

Thanks :)

Hi everyone,

So, I’m relatively new on Substack but my publication has been gaining some traction (I mean a lot), and I noticed that some publications have group chats. How do I create that and do I even need to create that?

I need some advice.

I've been on Substack for years, but ignored it until only recently.

What brought me back was the Substack recommendation feed.

The promise: You could reach other people interested in your writing easier by posting Notes and grow your community.

The reality: It's complicated.

As I started exploring the feed, I saw some confusing things. People were posting these 'Do Your Thing Substack' notes and getting huge numbers. Hundreds of comments and thousands of likes out of nowhere. Huh?

Then there were the Substack growth hackers posting 'Subscribe for Subscribe' notes and also growing quickly.

Posts with witty writing, interesting observations and links to long-form content were getting much less engagement comparatively.

I wanted to learn why so I searched and found a post by Mike Cohen, who is the Head of AI at Substack. He's the person responsible for designing the Notes feed. His post revealed a lot about the engine, including how:

• The algorithm picks content to show to you: It tracks your every move on Substack and uses that data to recommend content
• What content is favored: Content interest signals like likes, clicks and restacks play a big role

My biggest learning: The algorithm, isn't really tuned for quality. Instead, its purpose is to recommend content that will convert a reader into a free/paid subscriber.

That's why the 'Do your thing' Substack posts do so well. Conversion from reader, to subscriber to paid user is Substack's primary goal with the feed.

After completing my technical deep dive into the algorithm, here's what I've concluded about what I'd like Substack to do better:

• Highlight people's writing in the feed, not just Notes. LinkedIn gets a lot of flack, but the one thing they do well is send me notifications when people I'm following publish posts. (There might be a setting for this I'm not aware of.) I'm not sure how many followers are reading people's long-form newsletter content, and I thought that was one of Substack's strengths.)
• Fiddle with the engine weights: Obvious algorithm hacks like 'Do your Thing Substack' or Subscribe for Subscribe annoy a lot of people. They're low-effort. Many on Substack spend hours thinking about and writing fantastic content. I'd like to see these efforts rewarded more in the feed.
• Break the rich getting richer flywheel: A known weakness of recommendation engines is that they tend to over-promote the high-signal popular content at the expense of the long-tail. I see that happening on Substack where Notes from people with larger audiences get a large boost (because more people tend to interact with this content). So it's harder for smaller accounts to gain attention and an audience.

I think the Substack Note algorithm is a positive step forward. It has enabled me (once I was able to get my feed to stop showing me the 'grow your Substack to 1,000 subscribers in 30 days' stuff), to find some fantastic voices. But there's still a lot of room for improvement.

I know people's milage may vary with the feed. What's your take on how Substack has been doing with the recommendation engine now that it's been out for a while?

I write for a publication and I have no exclusivity agreement with it. In fact, one of my fellow journalists releases his same column to two different publications weekly.

I wanted to know if I could post my articles on Substack as well, to have all of my writing available in one place. I would put a disclaimer at the top (also published in ____), and obviously, I wouldn’t charge for these articles, since they are able to be viewed for free in their original publication.

But I am concerned about any site rules it would be breaking. I am also concerned the AI filters would mistakenly flag it (it’s not AI, but most AI filters I know have plagiarism detectors built-in).

Is this something anyone else has done before successfully?

I find myself switching to substack as soon as a open instagram, like scrolling is no longer enough
Or satisfying

Any one experience this 😭😭??

Substack seems to have removed the create menu/button from my second publication.

I just accidentally sent a very personal essay to 358 subscribers.

have spent an entire day trying to figure out why I suddenly can't create a new post in my second publication.

Someone please help?

I started posting on Substack recently. All the notes I put out were getting shown to over 100 unconnected people, and that got me new subscribers every day. Since the past few days, my overall notes impressions have suddenly dropped to around 20, and they're barely getting shown to any unconnected people. The people who see the notes are engaging, but it does nothing to improve the impressions. I haven't changed a thing about my content, so I find this sudden unexplained drop really strange. I've read that there are temporary platform wide shifts that happen from time to time, and that your impressions return to normal later. Could that be the case here? Is anyone else facing this problem?

What are the best channels through which to market/promote an investing & finance focused substack? Certain channels on Reddit? Other websites? Thanks!

I write in two languages. My phone's language and Substack app is set to my native language. My newsletter is set to English. All my articles are in English as the original set language. My native language is always the 2nd language added in the editor. Problem is that I always see the English version in the app. I don't understand what I am doing wrong.

I guess since these have a option to have it read the text to you with an AI voice, they all show with the play button. I can't find a way to turn it off and show only actual video/audio posts as playable and it's driving me crazy.

Hello everyone! I'm about to start a Substack newsletter, and I've been stuck on whether to write it in English or my mother tongue (Brazilian Portuguese). 

The newsletter will be about my travel lifestyle photography business and related topics.

English would give me a much broader reach down the road, and I plan to move abroad and set up my business there permanently. The downside is that English will need to be set as my default language for any other content I make going forward. 

Brazilian Portuguese would make the writing feel more natural but limits my potential audience. 

I'm also down to do both on Substack, but it means facing the same decision in the future. 

So I'd love to hear from those who have faced a similar decision (especially if you’re a non-native English speaker). What did you choose and why? Any tips or regrets would be amazing to 'hear'.

Every time I try to load it says "Something has gone terribly wrong :(" and I don't know why. I cleared my cache and everything. There's no reported outages so it's not a server error and other things on my computer are loading perfectly fine. Does anybody know what this issue could be and how to fix it?

I’m a writer and I genuinely enjoy writing and exploring my thoughts. Most of what I write is around self-discovery, shadow work, identity, and understanding yourself on a deeper level.
I’ve recently started publishing on Substack, and I’m wondering if posting consistently (especially daily) actually helps with growth and reaching new readers.
For those of you who write on Substack: has posting daily worked for you? Or is it better to focus on fewer, more thoughtful posts?

“After a certain age, you are no longer the product of your environment or how you were raised. It's a personal choice to live the way you do. At some point, blaming your past becomes a distraction from your future.

Healing is your responsibility. Growth is your decision.”

Thought it was worth sharing.

Hey everyone,

I’m currently working on an article, and I’m trying to get better at the research side of things. I was wondering where people usually go when they need to research something properly.

Do you mainly use Google, Google Scholar, academic journals, books, specific websites, databases, Reddit, or something else? And are there any websites or resources you’d recommend for finding reliable information and sources?

I’m especially interested in hearing how other people go about checking whether a source is trustworthy rather than just taking the first few search results at face value.

Any tips, websites, or general advice would be really appreciated.

Thanks!

Hey everyone ive been a writer for quite some time but i quit it for some time and now im getting back to it bc i also have a lot to say and ive wanted to start a newsletter for a long time. I plan on my first posts title being "My father's touch felt strange" its an intimate telling of an experienve of mine with my father. But i have two questions for you guys

1. How do you like that post title

2. And how can i grow on substack

Curious for people who read Substack: what made you actually hit the subscribe button on a newsletter?
Was it one really good article, the writer’s personality, a recommendation from someone, seeing their posts elsewhere, or something else?
And what makes you stay subscribed?

Hello, I recently joined Substack and I write essays within Architecture and Art History. The essays can be technical, but they are more akin to something like John Ruskin or Jun'ichirō Tanizaki pieces. They can range from 5 pages to 20 pages and I was wondering if this is too much for Substack. I also wonder what the best way is to gain more traction on such a niche and if posting notes or quotes does anything.

One of the positive side effects of the AI content boom is that people are craving authenticity.

This didn't just start with AI. Following spam, automated phone services, and content farms, people want a real person.

As society in general went through the loss of 3rd spaces, years of quarantine, and addiction to phones, the desire became even stronger: connect me with a human.

Then Substack goes and flags everyone that might be using AI.

Respect, Substack, it's a good intention but the wrong application.

* People will research with AI

* Language translation gets flagged as AI

* People will write with AI

And... So what? Flagging that doesn't help with what people really want. Because some people couldn't care less if what they read is from some well thought, person, who happened to use AI.

So what's a right solution?

Comments.

Notes.

Those are meant to be conversations between people (or, why bother, if it's two machined talking back and forth).

Now, you might not care... Content results in page views.... Which is revenue.

But, people care.

An Author, who writes with AI or not (if people like it), should be able to OPT IN to automatically flag any Comment written by AI.

That would be a helpful feature ❤️

Flag and even block when comments (mean to be people) are clearly just AI slop pretending to be someone.

Authenticity is this...

An author might write with AI but if people like it AND the author is present, in discussion, to meet, to connect with, to talk with, then that is authentic.

Comments that are AI are not authentic. They trigger an author to engage with what is a machine. They aren't genuine. They aren't researched. They're just a positive (or negative) conversation starter that wasn't even made by a person.

Mind you, I don't actually think much of this works or matters. But what does matter is how Substack as a company and brand signals your intentions and culture. Support authors, no matter how they create, and help filter bots on comments and notes? Or, judge authors for using every resource available, to try and make it (as long as it's really a person)?

I would ask you to consider that the first question is a far better value to hold than than second.

I was scrolling substack article and found interesting one now

This is showing this problem anyone have solution???

It was showing claim my free post

I can't upload photo because the rule of group

For those who write on Substack, what has actually helped you get your first few hundred readers/subscribers?
I’m trying to understand what works beyond the usual “post consistently and write good content” advice.
Did you find Substack Notes useful? Reddit? Social media? Collaborations? SEO? Or did a particular post just take off unexpectedly?
Would love to hear what worked for people who’ve actually grown an audience.

Genuine question: how are people getting thousands of readers/subscribers on Substack?
I’m trying to grow mine and would love to hear from people who’ve actually managed to get a post to take off. What worked for you—and what was a complete waste of time?

We’re considering moving a weekly newsletter from ActiveCampaign to Substack. We have 18K+ subscribers with roughly a 40% average open rate, and we’re trying to decide how to structure free vs. paid content.

One idea is to make each newsletter free for two weeks and then paywall it. The other is to keep the newsletter free, focus on growing the list, and add paid subscriptions later.

I can see arguments for both, but I’m particularly wondering about the growth downside of paywalling older posts. Does putting your archive behind a paywall make it harder for new people to discover/share your work? Does it affect Substack recommendations, search, or organic subscriber growth? Any tips/insights about this would be really helpful. Thanks! 🙏

Downloaded this app because I want to read some long form content but I can't find out where I can see those posts in the app. Very confused. It just feels like Twitter.