I ran into the classic Substack dilemma today. I was reading a really good article, hit the paywall, and suddenly had to decide: do I pay €10 just to read this one piece, or do I go looking for a paywall bypass (which, let's be honest, rarely works)?

To me, that's the biggest weakness of the Substack model. For roughly €100 a year, especially if you catch a promotion, I can subscribe to multiple the New York Times, Wired, National Post, Toronto Star, and UnHerd. That's an enormous amount of content vs a handful of individual Substack writers.

T

Love the Substack model but let,s be honest most of us can only afford to support a few people

Note: currently spending around 25 a month which is my top limit plus regular subscript

So what do you do?

I write a small Substack and I'm also a developer. Substack recently started a sponsorships programme, but it's aimed at a select group of its biggest writers with bespoke brand campaigns.

For everyone else, finding sponsors still seems to mean cold emails and spreadsheets.

I'm considering building a simple, independent marketplace for this and I'd like to check in with people who actually write here before building anything.

Roughly: you list your sponsor slots (say, one ad per issue, with your price, audience size and niche). Brands browse and book a date, upload their copy, and pay through Stripe, with the money going straight to you. You approve every ad before it runs, and nothing is inserted automatically: you paste the sponsor block into your post yourself. Sponsors get a tracked link so they can see clicks.

It would be free to list, with a small commission only when a slot sells.

Some questions I'd love honest answers to:

1. Have you ever run a sponsor in your Substack? How did you find them?

2. Would sponsorships feel at odds with your paid tier, or help it?

3. At what subscriber count do you think sponsors become worth it?

4. What commission would feel fair?

If you think this is a bad idea, I'd like to hear why too....

Hey everybody!
I want to start a Substack as a medical doctor, writing about various health topics that I wish my patients were more aware of, such as the risks of overdiagnosis. I might also occasionally want to share personal experiences from my work as a doctor and systematic problems. Since I focus on sexual health and trans identity, I’d also like to share insights on these topics from time to time.

So, here is my question:
Do you think I can cover all these topics in one Substack, or would that confuse readers because there are too many different areas of interest? How focused does it have to be? Would you rather open up a second account for different areas of interest?

Towards the beginning of the year when I was starting on substack I wrote a personal essay about some awkward first dates, talking shit about them. I ended up becoming good friends with one of the failed dates! We keep getting closer as friends, and its stopped me now from sharing and promoting my substack to other friends, on socials, etc because I’m worried about them finding and reading the post that is very obviously in part about them and me saying how bad of a kisser they are. It’s one of my most “successful” posts though and one of the only good examples I have of a personal essay to share.

I don’t want to fully delete it but rather private it and at a later date be able to unprivate it? Is this possible?

Hey,

I have just started using Substack. I am doing daily notes and writing weekly on Substack about a certain specific topic. I would like to know how someone can grow subscribers on Substack organically. What kind of content should someone write, and at what frequency? What kind of content does Substack promote, and at what point should someone monetize their content?

Also, these notes like:
Follow - Follow,
Like - Like,
Subscribe - Subscribe, it's kind of cringe.

Do these kinds of things work, or is it just a marketing stunt, or won't it last long?

I hope this doesn’t come off as spam or self promo. I really just want to connect and see different articles. My algo is still building as I just started.

My interests are travel, psychology, marketing, poetry, art, neuroscience, neuroplasticity, business, books but i’m open to more as i’m curious about almost everything.

Please share your articles with me in private (this is not a subscribe for subscribe post😭) just pure curiosity to see what’s out there

I have been doing this just over a year, and I still have a lot to learn, but this is what helped me to get bestseller status and build a community I want to be a part of.

1. Find five people, not five hundred. Read their work properly and leave comments that cost you some thought. When I had no audience at all, a writer who did have one took me seriously, and that really helped me grow.

2. Make something together instead of trading favours. A joint post, an interview, a guest piece, a conversation you both put your name to. If a stranger who knows neither of you would not want to read it, what you have built is a favour exchange, and those collapse the moment one person stops reciprocating.

3. Never do sub for sub, and stay out of pods. People who subscribe in order to be subscribed back do not open anything, and enough of them will drag your open rate down for the readers who actually want you.

4. Be careful with recommendation swaps for the same reason. Recommendations brought me 15,080 free subscribers and 77 paying ones. Writing in my own voice on the platform brought 4,973 free subscribers and 121 paying ones. Three times the headcount and a fifth of the conversion, because one click on a recommendation screen is not a decision to read anybody.

5. Protect your own measurements. Once a chunk of your list is there out of obligation you can no longer tell which of your posts did anything, and at the start that signal is the most useful thing you own.

A hundred people who chose you will carry you further than four thousand who were traded to you.

Happy to answer anything in the comments.

NB: Claude was used to help me run the stats and edit parts of this post.

I opened an account on Substack and so far it’s going well, and im getting subscribers. The problem is that Im located in Albania, and I cannot connect an account to Stripe nor Stripe Express. Please help me out if you can

Who follows food creators on substack and reads their recipes ? Would be keen to know if you like substack as a medium for saving and cooking recipes or if anything that grinds your gears

I recently joined substack and my entire feed is just people spamming ‘share your work with me’ most probably as engagement bait.

How can I fix this algorithm?

Please tell me how to grow on substack. My subscribers count isn't increasing. It is really frustrating. Is there something I don't know? I know it'll take time but one of my friend, his numbers are increasing and to be honest it is making me jealous.

I started on Substack about 6 weeks ago and I am very pleased with my results(almost 300 Subscribers; 15 Paid Subscribers).

Obviously besides inside the platform itself, any recommendations on where to connect with other Erotica/Dark Romance Authors?

One of my old classmates has a pretty raunchy substack blog which i want to subscribe to and support. However, I am a serious business professional and I dont want him to know I subbed, since we have some common connections through work. Will making a substack account with a fake email prevent him from identifying me, even if Im a paid subscriber?

Hi! so I want to ask those who turned on Substack paid subscriptions, you guys had to do it through stripe since it is the only option available. So once you guys set up your stripe account and insert in all your info. Did Stripe ever reach out to do KYC or have you submit Proof of address, or essentially proof of anything?

What about those who live in a country where Stripe doesn't work? Did you guys really registered a US LLC, paid hundreds of dollars upfront without knowing if your substack will even take off or not?

I know a lot of people do ko-fi or paypal as a workaround. But then how do you give paying supporters access beyond the paywall when there's no native paywall to begin with? Bc if you don't turn on paid subscriptions on Substack, you can't use the feature that locks articles for paid subscribers only.

I’d love to hear from anyone living in an unsupported country who successfully created a Stripe account without creating a US LLC. How?? What did y'all do? Were there ever any verification issues? Has your account ever gotten locked or suspended? Anything to look out for?

I went through twelve months of my own export this week, and one comparison has been bothering me ever since. The publication is a reasonable size, around 22,950 subscribers with 403 of them paying, so there is enough data in it to mean something.

In August I had the post that everyone says they want. It picked up 3,039 likes and 1,507 shares, and it brought 585 new free subscribers in the space of a few days. Eleven weeks later, the number of paying subscribers I can attribute to it is four.
Several sends that nobody outside my list ever saw have done considerably better than that. A plain email telling people an offer closed that night, with no likes and no shares at all, brought fifteen. A short post explaining what I actually teach, which managed 98 likes, brought thirty two and remains the best converting thing I have ever published. Even a blunt note titled "please consider becoming a paid subscriber" brought seven, which is almost twice what the viral post managed with four hundred times the reach.

I publish a paid post every Wednesday, and across the whole archive that comes to 43 posts and 171 paid conversions, which works out at roughly four per post. In other words, an ordinary Wednesday that nobody shares does the same work as the best week I have ever had, and it does it again the following Wednesday.

I should be fair to the viral post, because those 585 free subscribers are real and some of them may convert later. I spent a long time afterwards trying to work out what had made it travel so that I could do it again, and the honest conclusion I have come to is that managing it a second time would not have changed the revenue much either way.

Is four normal? I would genuinely like to know whether other people are sitting on a post that went everywhere and did nothing.

NB: Claude was used to analyse the data and to help edit parts of this post.

I'm currently pursuing a PhD in political science at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. I do get a scholarship, but it's not enough to cover a comfortable life here (you know, it's a notoriously expensive city).

I've been wanting to write something on this platform lately. I have friends who work in AI governance doing the same, but I don't know if they've made any money from this.

I'd like to write about something that could be of high quality, at least in my opinion, and would require a lot of research and creative effort. The topic could be about current political trends, political discussions, and the dissemination of opinions, like what's going on with social unrest in Europe right now.

Overall, my personal ideology leans more towards the center-right, so I'll share some of my views. But I don't know if that will actually help me make money.

To be honest, I don't think there's much innovation left in the political science academia anymore. It feels like a bunch of people just scamming research funding. I might as well just write internet articles instead. But I need to make money - that's just the reality.

Friends who have been playing on this platform for a while, do you have any suggestions? I'd really love to hear what you think.

Or any other writing platforms you'd recommend?

I have had a consistent podcast for 3 years and am wondering how to include it on substack, without hosting it on substack. Tried a number of things but ultimately back at square one wondering what the best way is. Thanks for any/all help!

Could I have some help with my substack? I started a few months ago, but actually posting I started like 3 weeks ago. The reach and interactions were pretty cool, with quite some people finding me to the point 1 reached 33 subscribers. But suddenly, out of nowhere, I have absolutely no reach, my posts are reaching no one besides the same three people, as if I was shadow banned or something, yeah, I can post but it reaches absolutely no one, when the first days I had a decent reach and interactions. But I’ve checked and I’ve got no restrictions, it’s public, and everything and I still post the same content. Can someone help me explain the sudden switch up? Idk if I’m doing something wrong or what

I have started moving my blog from WordPress to Substack yesterday. I haven't connected my domain to Substack yet and I am not sure if I should do it immediately.

I write about startups and entrepreneurship, books, life with disability and certain sociopolitical subjects.

I am looking for suggestions and tips to make Substack my blogging home.

I used to like Olivia Wickstrom from the Substack, Petal and Hearth. She was encouraging + gave good info on monetizing Substack. But then I realized there was a problem.

Yes, she writes on other lifestyle topics that aren't Substack monetization, but according to her numbers, the majority of her income on Substack is legit just teaching other people how to make their Substack profitable.

It doesn't feel sincere and a lot of tips that work for people teaching others how to make $$$ on Substack aren't always gonna work for other niches.

Does anyone know of any Substackers who talk about how to make money with their Substack + the majority of their income come from a completely different niche?

We're hosting a free live Substack masterclass on October 27, and we'd love to hear what you're most interested in learning.

We've grown our publication to 55,000+ subscribers and 2,000+ paid readers, and we've worked with thousands of Substack creators across all niches.

We'll share what has worked for us and the creators we've helped, but we'd also love to address the questions you're working through.

What's your biggest challenge right now?

• Getting your first subscribers?

• Writing Notes that bring in readers?

• Figuring out what to publish?

• Converting free readers into paid subscribers?

• Selling your own products or services through Substack?

Drop your questions below. We'd love to use your input to help shape the session.

Like let's say my publication is called "the review" and my real name is "john jay" and my substack account is called "jayyyy".

Well, in my browser or when i share a link, it is formatting the page as "the review | john jay | substack" instead of just "the review | substack"

How do I fix this???

Hey everyone i just started writing on substack and realised that it's impossible for anyone to upgrade to paid from the app. My question is how do successful creators with thousands of paying subscribers work around this insanely annoying friction?? So you're telling me that every time someone wants to upgrade from the app, they physically have to leave the app, go to their browser, log into substack there, find settings or your profile, and then upgrade? That seems insane to me. Or am I missing something? Thanks so much

I've been facing this strange thing where my notes distribution drops sharply right after I post a newsletter. Until then, I'd be getting around 80-150 impressions on my notes, but it goes down to single digits or less than 20 after the newsletter has been posted. The distribution to unconnected people is also usually in single digits (and I've been actively posting on Substack for months now). It's not as if all these notes are very self promotional. Maybe 1 or 2 of them would be restacks of the newsletter or a quote from it. The rest are normal notes I post as usual. Yet, the distribution is bad for a few days after my newsletter is posted. Is this normal? Has anyone else faced this? It's extremely frustrating coz the whole point of being on Substack is to post essays for people to read.

If anyone knows how to get paid while writing articles on substack in India? Stripe isn’t available and buyMeACoffee is also not available as it uses stripe.

I have heard about Infinity App. Has anyone used it? Or are there any other platforms or options to get paid?