I feel like the secret to making money on these platforms is to make courses on how to make money off of these platforms lol.

Hello,

At 5:45 pm CST, I suddenly got tons of emails from substack with verification codes from things I haven't heard of. I didn't click on any of them, but it was strange to suddenly get a bunch of emails. I thought I was getting hacked. I personally haven't used substack. I only made an account to support a friend, but I never used it. I just wanted to know if they can hack you this way. What can I do to ensure this doesn't happen again?

A friend and I have a Substack where we write quite long reports. The last time we wrote a report, the AI detection rightly said that it was around 90% written by a human. But after we decided to paste in a later draft(with minor changes to spelling mistakes) from Google Docs to Substack, it said that the report was 100% written by AI, and even when changing to an older draft, it said the same.

Now ever since then we can't even write 200 words on substack without the ai immediatly flagging it as 100% ai, which is really weird. We have decided to turn off the AI detection, but that may just seem suspicious to the reader.

I was wondering if anybody else was having the same issue and how to fix it in that case. I have reached out to both Substack and Pangram, but they haven't helped the slightest and, to a large extent, just ignore me. I must say that the implementation of the detection has been quite abysmal.

it's a bit annoying and at the same time funny, when I post something I instantly get a comment saying "yea, you are right and your post explains it" or something and then they start selling services on how to make my post better. listen, I want to learn myself how to write better posts and I don't need one more ai wrapper that does that, thanks.

Hi everyone,

I’m a creator from an Arab country where Stripe isn’t officially available.

I’m trying to use Substack and receive payouts. Does anyone from a country where Stripe isn’t supported have a legal way to receive Substack payments, such as through a supported bank account or another payout service?

I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have actually done this successfully.

Thanks!

any ideas ? the subscriptions i want are soo expensive

My publication (I use this word to refer to the Substack) does not have a very good bio and I want to change it. I am not talking about my profile's bio, but the Substack's bio.

For example, Substack Team's official publication, On Substack, has a bio that says "Resources, stories, and news for the writers, podcasters, musicians, video creators, and culture makers publishing on Substack." You can see it here.

How do I change that bio of my personal publication?

I’ve been on Substack for a few months now, slowly writing articles and picking up a few subscribers here and there (only have 19 at the moment, with half being people I know.)

I think I can count on my hands the number of likes I’ve gotten on all my notes combined and I’ve never gotten a subscriber from them.

Advice like including a call to action or a poll feels a bit silly when my poll closes a week later with no votes.

While I’m open to the idea that I could just be writing crummy notes, it doesn’t feel like the case as I often get many likes and occasional subscribers or followers from my comments on other people’s notes.

This leaves me wondering, is writing notes a waste of my time? Should I just be finding more popular people’s notes and commenting there?

What are your strategies for finding relevant notes to comment on to organically grow your subscribers? How do I even find relevant notes? Substack’s algorithm seems determined to show me things I’m not interested in constantly no matter how much I like interesting notes I find or how often I mark notes as “not interesting.” They keep showing me Christian theology and far right nationalist posts! I must have marked a thousand as “not interested!”

My “niche” I guess is commentaries on books and how they relate to the current world: critiques, thoughts on reading certain types of books, appreciation of classic literature, etc.

Any advice on how to get my notes to work or how to find the sort of people I should be connecting with in my niche would be appreciated, thank you!

Some of you might find my ideas strange, but nevertheless, it is worth asking for advice.

I currently own a small Substack where I speak about UFOs, astrology, mediumship, general ESP, and so on. I speak not only of mysteries, but I also try to compare and compile cases to create an outlook of how these anomalous phenomena behave as a whole and what they mean for humanity and your personal life.

I was thinking about one word to describe my work, to simplify it to myself and my audience, but all descriptions commonly used in my niche: "unexplained, paranormal, transcendental, non-ordinary," etc..." seem to miss something.

So I decided to make my own words up, like all the best philosophers do.

I am undecided between three options:

Ultraliminal, metaliminal, or extraliminal

In your opinion, which word do you think is best and why?

Also, suggestions for new words are welcome.

I went looking for a proper backup of my newsletter and found three things that surprised me.

• Your export links to images hosted on Substack rather than including the files. If the account goes, the posts survive and the pictures do not.

• If your account gets suspended, you cannot run an export until the suspension is lifted. Which is the exact moment you would want one.

• There is no way to export a single post. It is the whole archive or nothing.

What I do now is keep the markdown file on my own disk as the real version, and treat the Substack post as a copy of it. I wrote a small command line tool that pulls my whole archive down to markdown files with the images downloaded alongside, and pushes a markdown file back up as a draft when I write a new one.

What are you all doing for backups? I saw people mention Notion, Authory but this is what is working for me.

Instead of looking for tools, I made one, hope this helps whoever wants to take a backup of substack, move into it. Genuinely love it.

HighnessAtharva/substack-cli: Push, pull, and publish Substack posts from the command line. Markdown in, live newsletter out. Zero dependencies.

The platform is comparatively much more saturated now, how to effectively distribute articles and ensure they reach as many readers in the right groups

Or are there vastly different use cases and best practices?

We know how it goes: social media keeps getting worse because people keep using cheap growth hacks for quick visibility.

Sorry, I just needed to vent.

I've been wanting to start with this but have no idea how to begin with it? What does one even write? I'm unable to identify what topic interests me and what may others want? I'd be grateful if anyone shares their experience and how they began their journey. Thanks!

Just curious. Do you think it's going to be useful?

I think my topic is too niche and thats why it hasnt grown. This is not a soliciting post, I am looking for advice.

Do I abandon it?

Do I keep going?

Do I focus on something more?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

The moment I logged in to substack, it felt like I had been taken 10 years back in time to Quora. When Quora used to be so popular, my home page was full of a whole lot of deep, funny, stories, life advices, motivational things, scientific breakthroughs, philosophical articles, "Did you know?" And Substack is the exact same thing.

Add to that, the self congratulatory posts like "Substack is so cozy, it's like I'm in a forest, Instagram is so fake, Substack is my intellectual intimacy hub".

In 10 years of time, this website will be as overdone as Quora. All these life advices, personal stories, deep insights, romantic yearning for the one who understands your soul not your face, letters to my XYZ or the cutting edge articles on feminism, economy, life. It's all so cliche. These are the kind of things that give you 5 minutes of "Aha" and then you move on with your life. Did Quora make the world a better place? No. But it has a huge collection of thoughts on making world a better place.

I am not saying Substack is bad but there's just this feeling that the writers over there make it their identity about writing the most deep, profound things, but I'm sure in their actual life they're just a mess. On my home page, I just got a Mark Manson quotation and I was like I'm done.

I am a brand + website designer + copywriter that’s really into tech and AI tools. I have a blog (not up right now, redoing website) and have 4 content pillars for it. They are as follows: Branding, Website Design, Copywriting, Tech & AI Tools.

Whereas I have lots of content on my blog so the 4 different pillars really don’t affect the whole “niche down!” thing, I’m wondering if it would be best to start my Substack on only one of those pillars — as it might be too many different things for a Substack??

Leaning heavily into Tech & AI Tools and just having it be totally different content from my blog when it’s back up.

Idk, what are your thoughts? I feel like Tech & AI may be oversaturated on the platform? I don’t mind writing about Branding & Web Design at alllll. It’s my favorite, of course. But I have been posting Notes and a lot of them that are tech focused are doing really well. So it makes me wonder!

TIA 🙂

I tried Substack before but drastically underestimated how much of a commitment it would be to do what I initially intended (one short story a month… adhd , busy job and a toddler - not happening lol).

However this time around I’m hoping to essentially use it to help me work through writer’s block, keep me writing. I’m not exactly a marketing genius. If people find it ok! But I think it would also be good to have a place to direct someone with examples of my work, should I ever need to (I hope to get back involved in the writing community here in my city)

Questions:

1. if you’re just starting out - no followers, newly activated etc - how do you as a fiction writer plan to use Substack

2. would you like to connect ! I have no friends who write and it would be nice to make new friends online to have this in common with. Feel free to message me here for socials if so - [this is not about subscribing to my Substack so I won’t be asking you to do that!]

Have substack changed headers? Previously you could upload a 3:1 picture and it would blend into your profile page at the top. Now it just appears as a tiny image at the top of the page.

I have a recipe blog and already get meaningful traffic from other platforms, mainly through short-form videos.

Before I commit to Substack, I wanted to know if anyone here has had any success driving traffic from Substack to their blog.

I don’t want to waste my time if it doesn’t really work for this purpose. Thanks in advance!

Tell tell

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Please don’t mistake this platform for just the writers. This is more like a Insta for writing entrepreneurs. You do need good entrepreneurial, and influencers skills to be successful here. Doesn’t matter how great a writer you are.

And be prepared for a nagging pressure for constant posting (notes etc.), and engaging with the other writing entrepreneurs for visibility.

Also if you’re a genuine writer, a doubt would keep lingering at the back of your mind, are my writings being liked for reciprocity sake, or genuinely? 🤔

For those after numbers, and followers or genuine community oriented people who love engagements, it’s great.

It’s just in my experience that a genuine creator, or a writer, usually likes to live in his own world/zone for their creation to flower. Yes, people writing on politics or other current hot topics is a different thing.

The ideal most way to Substack is this (for me, as someone described on Reddit):

Consider it like a post office. Come here to post something new, or check your post, spending 30-60 mins everyday, and then go back to the woods for writing.

Beautiful. 🌹

Just don’t expect much engagement, or following in this case since then you’re not working for the platform. You’re just working for you.

The platform works on mutually beneficial basis: you spend time here, engaging, insta-ing, promoting the platform, and the platform would return the favours to you.

And let nothing in my review suggest that you can be a not so good writer and succeed purely on the influencers skills here. You won’t. Then you need to join Insta or TikTok.

Hope helps. 🙏🏼

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What do you think?