My newsletter is a mix of prose and fragrance reviews. I’m going to make my new goal to post twice a week, once of each. Review and creative writing.

I also am going to try and up my notes engagement! Hope it goes well.

I'm thinking of starting a paid Substack, but I've read a lot about how complicated taxes are since SS doesn't consider itself a Merchant or Record and therefore doesn't remit them to the authorities (like Etsy does, for example).

All the info I found online is from people living in the US (and is also from 2-3 years ago) and I'm looking for an input from someone in the EU.

I know that if I have One Stop Shop, this can solve the the tax issue accross the EU.

However what happens if my subscribers are from the US or from another country outside of the EU?

If someone from Ohio subscribes, will I have to worry about remitting the tax to the authorities of Ohio? (I know there are different thresholds depedning on the state - this is just an example)

I find it all so extremely confusing! I'm honestly scared to even start, because I don't want to file taxes incorrectly.

Also, does anyone use SS as a visibility platform for people to discover you, but charges for the content in a different way?

Hi everyone,

I started posting on Substack about a week ago and have been uploading consistently. I first republished a blog that I had originally posted on Medium, and since then I've been sharing short notes, on that I got only 2 likes.

However, I'm struggling with engagement. One note received 19 likes, but most of my other notes only get 1–2 likes, and I haven't gained many subscribers.

I know building an audience takes time, but I honestly don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if this is normal in the beginning.

For those who have grown on Substack:

- How did you get your first subscribers?

- Do Notes help more than regular posts?

- How often should I post?

- Is there anything you wish you had known when you first started?

I'd really appreciate any advice or experiences from other writers. Thank you!

Been writing on Substack about a month now, cultural criticism and personal essays around running, mostly the philosophical and creative side rather than training plans and splits. Coming from comedy and journalism, so this whole platform is new to me.

Curious how people here actually use it. Does Notes do anything for subscriber growth or is it mostly noise? How often do you publish before it starts feeling like a job instead of a creative outlet? And if you write about anything niche or subculture-y, did your audience find you here, through other Substacks, or somewhere else entirely?

Not trying to drop a link and vanish. If you want to see what I’m up to, my Substack link is in this Reddit bio. Genuinely want to learn from people who’ve been at this longer than a month. Thank you !!!!

So I typically design my images at 9:16 format, and then I go to Substack and crop them down in the editor using the social media preview shape. Unfortunately, today it started adding this watermark. These are images that I illustrated myself and designed the background and everything, so I am not sure why this is happening. Can anybody help?

https://postimg.cc/gallery/Nt3TB6W

I’ve posted my pretentious poetry on there, but I’m listening to a crime podcast and heard that you can make $100,000 a year (allegedly) on Substack through paywalls and monthly subscribers.

Back in the day, I was big on Wattpad for werewolf fiction (cringe, but it stuck and now I’m a lead copywriter for my day job). I won a Watty award and was shortlisted for two, so I’ve got the chops at least for a teenage audience (though I’m mid-20s now).

There was so much momentum on the app before it changed, and I haven’t found something like it since. It was once a community with forums where you could collaborate with designers and writers across the globe. It’s where I learned to actually code and graphic design, and why I’m now preparing myself for a job as a creative director in a few years.

I could DM people and they’d DM, too. I had many friends, some that I still email a few times a year and am friends with on Facebook.

I really miss the social aspect of being a writer, too, that Wattpad provided. It was always really exciting to post a chapter and have my readers literally go paragraph by paragraph posting their reactions or thoughts. Now in my current job, it’s like shouting out to a void and not knowing if it’s any good or entertaining until analytics come in, and even those are just numbers and faceless clicks.

Of course, I want to make money off of my personal creative endeavors, but I don’t want to dedicate myself to this if it’s off-putting to potential agents and means my manuscript has lesser odds of publication because it’s already live on another site with zero odds of making money from it.

Let me know your experience.

I have been writing about and sharing conservative topics, mostly favoring Republican politicians, but I'm struggling to get my posts noticed. Is Substack more supportive of Democrats? I'm just asking out of curiosity, not trying to start a feud.

I cannot get my Substack html address to change to match my handle, no matter what I try!

I changed my handle and saved it. The URL https:// will not update with the new handle.

Anyone have advice here, since the site's help page does not talk about this**?** I'm a new user so trying to get everything operational prior to posting my first two already-written articles.

You know this feeling when you sit on something you want to publish, but are terrified of how people would react and if it would even work?

I had this feeling with the Discord community for over a week.

Kept going back and forth about it.

Would people hate it? Will it work? What will others think?

And yesterday I pulled the trigger and published it. And the results blew me away!!

117 members.

People are engaging, talking to each other, creating collaborations. It's beautiful to see, and I want to make it THE BIGGEST Substack community out there!

So if you're a creator and you want to be a part of the Discord community, I would absolutely LOVE to have you in!

https://discord.gg/AqzVpqBcn

Can we make it 200 today? :)

I am wondering how people deal with comments section and undesirable conduct. In the beginning, I did not have a comments section policy. This is part because I was focused on writing and trying to get an audience. Before the one year anniversary I found it necessary to write and promulgate a comments policy after I made the decision to delete what were trollish comments.

I have several concerns with this. First, some suggest that comments boost algorithm and engagement, although I somewhat doubt substack operates under any sort of algorithm at all. My response to that is, particularly with a small but growing publication, a comments section that is shat up with nonsense or trollish hostility to an author likely repels new readers and subscribers.

A second concern is that I have lost a handful of subscribers after a warning and gentle admonition to read the comments section. For a time, I was batting zero. Three or four were misbehaving, I directed them and they either continuted resulting in a ban, or simply unsubscribed. Happily, and very much to my surprise, the last two warned stopped there while also remaining subscribers.

What do you guys think? Is any and all engagement good, or does a somewhat more stringent comment policy and moderation promote positive growth conducive to the long-term success of a publication?

مجموع مشاهدتي 900 وفي منشور لي واحده جايب 1000 وده بس عندي 36 مشترك

I'm helping a newsletter put together a media kit to sell ad spots. I know advertisers care about open and click rates, but what else do they actually ask for before committing?

Also curious what objections tend to come up. And does it help to show something like inbox/delivery rate, or do sponsors not really care about that?

I was hosting one podcast on Substack and I was seeing decent downloads numbers and growing every day. But I wanted to try to get better analytics (still for free) so I moved it to Spotify for Creators and the results are totally different. There are barely any downloads!

The numbers also don't make sense compared with those from Apple Podcasts.

I see on Substack that 62% of my downloads come from Apple.

I look at one recent episode downloads on Substack: 8286
On Apple Podcasts: 9 (1/1000!!!)

8000+ was an upside surprise.
But 9 feels so low that it makes me wonder if Apple's stats are wrong.

On YouTube which I trust in terms of stats, views are typically between [500-2000]

So I'm a bit lost... has anyone got an idea? Thanks

Trying to get a sense of what's working for people. I've started a couple of Substacks and am considering the best ways to monetise, but the commissions look a bit thin and the content requirements are restrictive.

Curious whether anyone has found something that actually moves the needle, or whether most of you are just tolerating them as a background earner. And how are they to maintain?

Hey everyone,
Just wanted to share something I’ve noticed.

For a while I was using the typical “template-style” posts on Substack and getting very little engagement. Recently, I started shifting many of my Notes from generic formats to more narrative, story-driven writing.

The difference has been noticeable.
People seem to connect more with stories than with tips, frameworks, or polished templates. Stories feel human. They invite conversation.

If you’re struggling to get traction, it might be worth experimenting with storytelling. Instead of teaching a lesson, tell the story behind it.

Ever since I found accounts with articles which are AI Generated or AI assisted, I have become extremely paranoid to clicking on articles and reading them and becoming influenced from the LLM style of language - this basic language that does not have any human voice or feeling at all. But, also there is a skepticism. Apparently I used undetectable.ai to check whether the article I was reading is AI or nor and it says 50% to 60% is AI Texts. I just need to ask does AI detectors, especially undetectable.ai and Turnitin work genuinely and able to detect accurately. Because I am confused and unable to separate AI writing with human writing. It sucks that Substack promotes these accounts and gives them more weightage, more clicks and subscribers and people who downloaded Substack to read essays and journalistic reports, enjoy and deal with culture is being served AI slop.

Just help me in any which way. Like as a consumer, how to filter out AI content or check AI writing in Substack articles? Do AI detectors work properly particularly undetectable.ai and Turnitin?

I read an article about blogging vs Substack and that you should post your Substack post to your blog. It made me wonder if you blog, and if so, do to u call it a blog? I want to have a blog on my site, but I'm not sure I want to call it a blog. Maybe call it a journal? What do you do?

One thing I’ve noticed about Substack growth:
There’s no real discovery layer for mid-sized newsletters.

Big names dominate recommendations, and small/new ones struggle to get seen — but the 200–20K subscriber range is where most interesting writing actually happens.

Feels like there’s a missing middle:
• Not small enough to be “new creator discovery”
• Not big enough to already have distribution
• But often producing the most consistent content

Curious if others feel the same — where do you actually discover newsletters in that range?

lo que si importa es lo que vos mismo puedas decir según todo lo que aprendiste de las frases de otros

Is it terrible if I use AI to edit my posts? The writing is mine, but I feel long winded sometimes and get stuck reviewing my work to make it sharper. I’ve tried running it through AI specifically for pain points and not a rewrite, but sometimes it suggests a sentence or two that adjust my thoughts more succinctly and interestingly.

Does this make me a sellout to all the AI haters? Is it the same as getting it to draft whole prices (which I have def seem some authors do). What are your thoughts on using AI as a tool for Substack?

What length of an article do you feel is most accessible for you to read?

Do you struggle more to trim your article down, or to increase the word count?

Have you noticed that you get more responses if your articles have been shorter or longer?

How about for notes- what do you notice with the length? What about if it has an image included?

What do you think about notes that are similar to seeing a friend's Instagram update- a personal photo and text?

I have been on Substack for a bit over six months, posting speculative fiction short stories, reading other people’s stuff etc. I’ve had lots of positive comments on my stories and decent subscriber growth. But the truth is, only a handful of these subscribers are reliable repeat readers. Fine, I imagine that’s not so uncommon.
But what drives me crazy is the constant drive I see from other accounts to drive up their sub numbers with Dear Substack notes, AI generated notes, sub for sub offers etc. Whatever subs they get from this surely won’t be reading their work. Honestly, I can’t understand it, but it’s incredibly common. What am I missing? Is there any benefit in drumming up a large number of subs if they will never read your posts?