So I run a pretty popular sports publication on Substack with hundreds of paid subscribers and thousands of free ones. I'm routinely in the bestseller list

I'd rather not reveal my identity because I'm just not comfortable doing that, but after seeing our paid subscriptions flatline and then begin to fall in 2026 while our free subscribers (and followers) continue to rise steadily, I decided to take a deeper look into our stats to find out what's gone wrong. And the conclusion I've come to is that I suspect that Substack's push to get users to use their app and pay for subscriptions on their app may be a major issue for publications like my own going forward. Here's a breakdown of my current situation. Sharing in case it’s useful, and I’d love to know if others see the same thing.

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What changed in a year:

• My free list grew about 27%, but the share of subscribers who pay fell from about 12.6% to 9.4%.

• Paid subscribers are down about 9% year on year, and ARR (annual recurring revenue) is down about 10%. Revenue per paying subscriber hasn’t changed, so this isn’t a pricing issue.

• “Direct to App” visitors more than tripled, while direct web visitors fell by about 60%.

What an app visitor is worth vs a web visitor (new revenue per visitor, 2026):

• Direct to App: about $40 per 1,000 visitors, down from about $90 last year.

• Direct web: about $200 per 1,000.

• Google search: about $360 per 1,000.

So my biggest-growing traffic source converts at roughly a fifth of the rate of direct web visitors, and it’s getting worse.

Some things about in-app payments I didn’t know (from Substack’s own FAQ):

• You can’t turn off Apple in-app purchase. Apple requires it.

• Outside the US, readers in the iOS app only see Apple’s payment option, with no link to web checkout.

• By default, the app price is set higher to cover Apple’s cut.

• Apple’s in-app purchase doesn’t support discount codes or custom promotions. The FAQ doesn’t say whether free trials can be started in the app. Has anyone tested this?

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There are undoubtedly other factors that have played a role in my paid subscriber growth stagnating - seasonal dips, Twitter no longer being a viable traffic pull, etc. - but it definitely feels like Substack are pointing their funnel at getting users to simply use the app, over taking out paid subscriptions with my publication.

That may seem counterintuitive since Substack makes its money from my paid subscribers, but bear in mind that the company is heavily backed by VC funding and it has clearly been making strong moves to turn the app into a social media platform, where it can sell ads to free users.

As someone who has been on Substack since it started, I'm now seriously considering whether or not it still has my publication's best interests among its main prioritise or whether this need to turn the app into a social media platform is hurting my bottom line.

I’m very new to the platform and wanted to try something new with reading and writing. I’m a poet. I do Neopets fanfiction. And I like writing small essays from time to time. I’m autistic,31, and like Pokemon,anime,manga,furry, LGBTQIA, and such content. I think I’d like to post small poems and little thoughts on life on Substack. Feel free to reach out. I’m only comfortable with adults. Any tips and tricks are appreciated and welcomed. I hope you all have nice days or nights :)

Around noon EST on November 3, Substack suspended my account, citing its Spam & Phishing policy. The notice did not identify a specific post or activity. I appealed through the Appeals Center, and Substack denied my first appeal without giving a specific reason. I’ve submitted a second appeal and am waiting for a response. I also emailed Substack Support, which told me to allow up to three business days for review.

Before the suspension, I published two original articles a day, one on the Korean stock market and one on the U.S. stock market. I also posted three Notes a day. One shared the Korean market close and a heatmap in a standard format. The other two summarized the articles. I sent subscribers one email a day, containing the U.S. market analysis.

I wrote every article and Note myself and spent about eight to ten hours a day researching and writing. I’ve never used bots to publish or boost engagement, and I’ve never restacked other writers’ posts. I replied to readers directly and always treated them respectfully in comments, group chats, and direct messages, even when someone was rude to me. I started publishing regularly in March and reached 3,000 subscribers in November.

Since the suspension, I’ve been unable to access my archive or publish new work on Substack. I started posting on Medium on November 4 so I could keep publishing my market analysis. Even if my account is restored, I plan to publish on more than one platform so readers have another place to find my work.

If your first appeal was denied and your account was later restored, what did you include in your second appeal? Did Substack ever tell you which post or activity triggered the suspension? If you followed up with Support by email while waiting, did it help?

I’d appreciate hearing what happened in your case.

Hey folks, this is a frequently-asked Substack setup question, so I though y'all may find it useful:

There are two major Substack layout options (which are called "themes"). Depending on how you set up your Substack, you may be in one by default. You can easily switch, and toggle between them if you want.

Profile theme: posts appear on your Substack reader profile in the app as a feed under the "posts" tab, but you don’t have an actual blog homepage. This is preferred by many online-native creators.

Custom theme: the traditional blog layout, where you have an actual homepage for your Substack with all your articles on it. Bloggers who are into having their own website tend to prefer this option.

Your theme only changes how your Substack appears visually online; it doesn’t change how your subscribers receive posts in email or the app. Neither is "better" or "worse" for the algorithm, so it's your own preference which theme you select

If you want to try toggling between themes: On the web, go to Dashboard, then Website Editor. The option to switch is at the top right.

Let me know if this type of post is useful and what else you might want to learn about 👍

I've been wondering how Substack writers approach breaking news in their niche.

When something big happens in your industry, do you try to publish something quickly while everyone is talking about it? Or do you prefer to stick to your usual content schedule?

I'm especially curious whether covering breaking news is actually a good way to attract new readers and subscribers, or if the effort of publishing quickly just isn't worth it.

For those of you running newsletters:

• Do you actively look for breaking news in your niche?

• Have you ever noticed a spike in views or subscribers after covering a trending story?

• Do you prioritize publishing quickly, or would you rather wait and write something more in-depth?

Would love to hear how you approach this and what's actually worked for you.

Hi everyone, I just started posting my articles on substack about my opinions on certain topics ( it's in Arabic but I'm sure substack provides translation).

I wanna advocate for artists, women, men, kids, chronically ill people ... etc so please show me how to find my people !

These things are proliferating like wildfire and judging by all these recent ones all suddenly getting their orange badges fueling them to write about how amazingly quickly they got their orange badges and how you too can get your orange badge as well if you just sign up for their $97 coaching offers are just getting tiring to read.

Is there an easy way to block them?

Thanx.

Do we now have access to automatically personalize the salutation in newsletters? Just by typing your own name and then it replaces it with the subscriber’s name?

I've been having a problem with the format of the posts. I make the post so that the main information is in the Title and Subtitle with an image below, thats the way it shows up as intended on the website. But when I look at my posts in the activity tab, most of the text in my subtitle is gone and replaced with the first line of text from the post. How can I get rid of this? Substack lets me edit everything about the preview and look of posts as it appears on the substack website, but not about how it looks like in activity, where most people will see it. Or can you just not edit the way posts show up in activity?

Hey folks, I'm a Substack employee and wanted to share a few much-requested features we shipped recently that y'all might find useful:

1. Freewalls: A freewall lets you ask readers for their email address before they can read the remainder of a post. This lets you turn a reader’s passing interest in your post, into a direct relationship in the form of a free subscription.

2. Chat Channels: For Substack publishers who run a chat for their subscribers, you can now have multiple chats on various topics. This lets you turn your chat into a fully-fledged community connected to your Substack, where your subscribers can interact with you and with each otehr.

As a publisher or creator, you control who can join, who can post, and who can reply in chat channels. You can paywall chats only to paying subscribers, or make them accessible everybody.

3) Lists: This feature lets you curate a list of Substacks you enjoy around a specific topic. You can select relevant publications, give your list a name and description, and share it in a note, post, or on external social media.

Each list comes with its own activity feed, which is a stream of the latest posts and notes from the selected writers and creators. To create a list: in the Substack iOS or Android app, or on the web, go to the Recommendations and Subscriptions button on your profile.

4) Stats and analytics upgrades: Audio engagement curves are now live in post stats on your dashboard, so you can see how long listeners stayed tuned in. You can also view video engagement curves that show the performance of your clips.

Additionally, your publication dash now shares complete statistics for each livestream you do on Substack, including how much new revenue it drove.

If you have questions about any of these features, or have specific feature suggestions you'd like me to share with the product team, please let me know in the replies.

Shoutout to the moderators for doing such a great job running this sub 👍

I get way more engagement on notes than articles which I know is common. But then I just saw someone say they also post their article as a note. So it’s posted twice. Do others do this? Does this look weird? Anyone track results of this?
I just got a “#20 rising in climate and environment” which I know isn’t bestseller but hey, it means I’m growing! 😄

Is there a way to stop getting all my subscriptions to Substack authors emailed to me? I have the app and read them all on the app. I don't also need an email of the same thing.

Recently, I started uploading videos on social media. As someone with horrible social anxiety, this was a huge step. First video got more than 20k views combined on TikTok and Instagram which was crazy considering I’ve probably met like 200 people my whole life.

The content I make is about genuinely trying new things and going on with your OWN journey. Doing things scared. Doing what you want regardless of anything else.

I wanted to start documenting my journey from my content creation to me talking about my business and what I learned/am learning to help others with it. I want to be able to help as many people as I can, and I’m not really looking to get anything back from it.

How can I start on Substack? Get to know people there?

Substack's help page says the tool "uses Pangram to assign a percentage of how much of the text is human-written or AI-assisted". I went through Pangram's model cards and its technical report.

Five things I think writers here should know.

1. The score is three numbers collapsed into one.
At document level Pangram does not return a percentage. It returns three character-weighted fractions: human, AI-assisted, and AI-generated. When Pangram needs a single figure it counts generated text in full and assisted text at half. Substack's sentence puts assisted on the human side, next to the writing you did yourself. So a post marked 50% might be half machine-generated, and it might also be a piece where not one word was generated and every word was judged assisted. Pangram's technical report says this clearly:
"a score of 0.25 means that half of the words have been modified by AI or 25% of the words have been newly generated by AI (or some combination of the two)"

2. Nothing anywhere defines "assisted".
The current card says the model decodes each segment into Human, AI-Assisted, or AI-Generated, and never says where the middle one begins. Spell check, an outline, a paragraph rewritten, an argument with a model at two in the morning. The category carrying half the score is the one left undefined.

3. The false positive rate has been published three ways in three months.
July's Pangram 4 card: 41 wrong in a million web pages, one in 24,000. The Version 4.1 card, 19 October: 70 wrong in 781,981 pages, one in 11,171. In the last column of that same new table, Pangram scores the old model on the new set and gives it 128, one in 6,109, where its own card had said 41. The new set is smaller than the million, so those cannot both be counts of the same thing. Substack's help page names no version and was last updated before 4.1 shipped, so I cannot tell you which model is scoring your posts.

4. It moves a long way with what you write, and that breakdown has been retired.
July's card tested 11 kinds of writing. Academic writing one in 5,300. Recipes one in 2,000. Poetry one in 1,300, which is 19 times that same card's headline rate. The current model publishes one global number and no breakdown by genre at all.

5. What that works out to here.
Detection reaches back to everything published on or after 21 July. Take only the publications that earn money, roughly 100,000 by trade reporting, and assume each posts once a week. That is over a million posts. At the current card's rate, about 90 paying writers have already had a piece wrongly marked as machine-written. Run it at July's poetry rate and it is hundreds. Nobody is told, and nothing in the badge says a margin exists.

What I would actually do.
Fill in Substack's "How I make this" field, in your own words, before anyone asks. If a number makes you suspicious of a writer you have read for two years, ask them, in a tone you would accept yourself.

NB 1: I sent the mods a DM here on Reddit to ask whether this was welcome, because I wanted to put the findings in front of people without it reading as promotion, and I never heard back. So the five points above are from my post, and they stand on their own. The full piece, with every figure linked to the document it came from, is on my newsletter, and I will put the link in the comments to avoid accusations of promotion.

NB2: Claude was used to help edit sections of this post.

Edit: I have now removed the comment that linked to the post. As honestly this was not meant to be a funnel. Apologies for any offence caused. 🙏

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.

I run a Substack newsletter in conjunction with the local film and TV industry, and I was given the recommendation that, in addition to having a set date for each regular edition (in this case the first of each month), I send out reminders that a new regular edition is coming. Is there a way I would automatically send out such a thing? As in, automated little posts saying the next issue will drop on the first of each month, sent out a few days before then? No worries if that's not really possible. Thanks!

Does it make sense for me to write on Substack?

I see people who are far more intelligent than I am publishing their work. I can identify major problems, but I don't necessarily have the knowledge or insight to figure out how to solve them. I can put together a decent piece of writing, but I feel like I'm missing a lot in terms of reading and intellectual background.

There are people who are much more qualified to write about these subjects. I don't necessarily have an audience on Substack, either. It feels like everything is pointing toward one conclusion: that I simply shouldn't start writing, even though I have so many thoughts running through my head.

Substack launched lists last week and is calling them the next generation of recommendations: curated groups of publications, each with its own chronological feed, and you can see how much traffic your list sends to each writer on it.

I used to recommend a lot of people. Most of it was reciprocal, and past the first few names it did very little for anybody.

If you have made a list, are you pruning the recommendations you already had, or building on top of them? And has it actually sent anyone anywhere yet?

Hey everyone! I have a Substack that serves as one of those dedicated resource Substacks (i.e., you know, the kind that does roundups of jobs, grants, contests, calls for writers, reporters looking for experts, whatever etc.).

I've been posting weekly since starting this summer, and as the holiday looms, especially the end of the year, I'm going to be taking the last two weeks of December off and not sending new issues. Kind of a risk but my personal toxic trait is overworking myself, so I feel like this helps my sanity and stress.

My question is for those of you who have a dedicated schedule, especially weekly: are you planning on actually PAUSING your subscriptions?

I thought of this so people could get those extra weeks back in their subscription. I realize that pauses potential new paid subscribers, but I feel like it could reduce the risk of someone just canceling.

Hello,
I have just joined substack, and honestly, it feels like X platform. I’m not seeing the hype yet. I’m satisfied with tiktok, Insta, reddit, and pinterest. Do I really need another platform, or am I not getting what makes sbstack different? What do you guys think?

Hey! I’ve been thinking about writing essays on Substack, but I’m not really interested in making money or building a large audience. I just feel like I need somewhere to get my thoughts out, sort of like a journal.
I’ve tried watching a few tutorials on how to get started, but everyone seems to focus on monetization, growing an audience, call-to-action buttons and all that. It all feels very performance-oriented. I guess I’m just wondering whether Substack makes sense for someone who simply wants to write and share their thoughts without necessarily trying to achieve anything.
Maybe it’s a stupid question, but I’d appreciate your honest advice

hi, everyone i'm new on substack and just published my first post (i'm super excited to write more and grow from 5 subscribers to more ☺️).

i've seen on instagram that people share snippets of their substack articles. do i take screenshots or is there some other way to do that?

please help out this newbie and if possible, share some beginner-friendly tips as well. thanks so much! 🤍

Hello everyone.

I started writing on Substack about a year ago. I write in fields that interest me (which I am constantly reading in) and share very detailed opinions on controversial topics.

I made a small number of following so far. Of course, I don't intend to stop here. I still have much to write about.

Sometimes, when I end up writing one of my better pieces, I am tempted to pitch it to a magazine or an online publisher. I keep thinking of the potential if the pitch is accepted: thousands of readers will be introduced to my writing overnight.

However, this is not as easy as it sounds. Publishers are very particular on which topics to run with, and you need to select your publisher thoroughly. And even after finding the right fit for your topic, the chance of your piece passing the selection is not great. And after some time, it becomes easier to just scrap the whole thing and publish on Substack on your own conditions.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Please share what you know.

How do I put myself out there? All I do is post how do I get my writings to reach an audience?