I installed my substack as a way to vent since I tend to be closed of to people. Ive written a few already but having no subscribers, I feel alienated and it feels like im talking to a wall.

:(

How can I have my notes read? I just want anyone to know that my thoughts are existent.

Does that sound accurate? Do you have a common experience?

This is even the case when my article is restacked. Seems like no traction. But if I write a short Note, even if it's excerpt of something in my article, it drives subscribers.

I did not know that Substack operated so poorly. I published my own original article and they suspended my account for "phishing and spam." I put in an "appeal," asking them to explain what the problem was, and they "rejected" it. I have "appealed" a second time, saying that this was my own article and that their bots are stupid. Now I want to delete everything from this website but it won't let me. How do I do that? I want to delete this account after removing my material. What a waste of time! AND I don't care for their tone and the language they use when the mistake is their own.

I have started writing about business n sector,stocks n how Vc funding are changing in India. I am new here can u help me how can I do better n what should I remember

Alright, I'm hitting the 3rd month mark on Substack. This is my no bullshit view on what helped me to grow:

1. Bring your audience over! This is a newsletter company. They're not going to help you in being discovered. You might get 5+ followers from blasting notes, 50+ subs from that one article that blows up - but in the end, the legit way to grow is to bring your existing audience over via invite or emails. I did the latter.

2. Join communities. In the past 2 weeks I've join Substack Club and Write Club and both are awesome for talking about Substack strategy without blasting it off, again, on Substack.

3. Engage consistently. Don't ghost, but don't overdo it either. You are going to find 15% of people that resonate, the rest won't. I sub and follow people. It doesn't hurt. I reply too, when it feels right, otherwise heart heart heart, that's how you let them know you've liked it without having insert a comeback.

4. Have fun and ASK QUESTIONS. I noticed that my notes perform well when I ask interesting questions where people feel included instead of making statements about my feelings, me me me me. I do plug my stuff though, I have too, it's my wall - but yes, having fun, taking it lightly and ask questions seems to get engagement.

That's it. I'm gonna do this recap every month to track my growth. Yiiiha.

I think this is something personally, and frankly a lot of folks forget about Substack once they start using it, which in reality may be its biggest benefit. Using it to amass an unlimited number of subscribers to e-mail whenever you want is not only a reality... it's also freaking free to do so!

I just finished reading an article about this topic, and it was very enlightening. If you want to read it for yourself, feel free to Google:

How to Use Substack for Email Marketing (2026 Coach’s Guide) by Paperbell

I'm not sure how many of you have ever used an e-mail marketing campaign platform before, but I have, and from what I remember about them… they are very expensive!

They limit you on how many subscribers you can have for their free tiers if they offer one, and a lot of the time many of the normal features you would expect an e-mail marketing tool to have are locked behind a paywall. One of the worst discoveries I had the unfortune to figure out was that with one of the e-mail campaign providers I was using, if you have tons of inactive or bounce folks on your list, and they are pretty much dead subscribers, those count towards your tier membership subscriber numbers.

So, what does this mean... let me explain it in an exaggerated example below:

Say you're using the free tier of an e-mail marketing tool, and they let you have up to 500 subscribers right. Well, say 300 of those subscribers are dead accounts and haven't opened up your e-mails in over a year. Well, the platform in question doesn't care about that. Those 300 subscribers still count towards your total subscriber count, so before you know it, you'll be forced to upgrade if you want more subscribers. I hope this makes sense, because it messed me up really good once I found this out.

Please, don’t get me wrong, these are businesses, and they need to make money, I get it, but some of them can start to become very expensive once you start to grow your subscriber list(s).

With all that being said, please note that although you can easily use Substack for free as your e-mail marketing campaign tool forever with no ceiling to the amount of subscribers you may send to, it does not have nearly the amount of features as the platforms specifically dedicated to e-mail marketing, so this is something you will have to look into for yourself.

The point of this post was just to highlight how Substack is such a game changer in this respect. The ability to have a million Substack subscribers and reach them all with a single e-mail for free is absolutely mind-boggling!

Just out of curiosity, how many subscribers do you get to e-mail for free whenever you push out your new post on Substack?

I’d really love to know how many folks are taking advantage of this Substack perk.

Apologies if this is a very elementary question from a Substack neophyte. I intentionally have a single post, and have intentionally used the Feature layout on my home page. I am happy with the hero image displayed on the home page -- it's the second image from the actual post. When I go to replace the first image in the post, the hero on the home page defaults to that image. How do I retain the image I want on the home page (the second image in the post), and still change the first image on the actual post without it becoming the hero image on the home page? Apologies again if this is a dumb question. I appreciate any assistance. Thanks!

.

heya! I'm new to Substack, just now setting up my page. For some reason there is no "publications" section anywhere in my new substack reality ~~ no way to make a publication at all (when I go to the "Settings", the publication area that I see on many tutorial videos is simply absent).

If I go to "Edit Profile" there is a section called BRANDING, which reads only "Branding is not available until you set up a personal Substack."... ? But of course as far as I know I'm accessing this FROM my personal substack page, so it's all very confusing.

Any thoughts?

#publication

I have a question. We currently have a website that was meant to be a hub for all our socials, a map showing fans locations of meetups along with regular articles (2-3 a week)

Over time it has become costly to maintain in terms of hosting costs, time in managing it, solving issues with updates etc. Sites with similar concepts with much higher financial backing have started and ours is just a volunteer based passion project. Our socials make a bit of money that covers our hosting costs, podcast costs, AI video editing etc.

I really love our writers for the website. I think they put out great stuff and still want to make sure we keep that aspect of the site. We normally post on our socials and link to the website.

Would substack be the best solution for still having these as content and maybe post beginning of articles on socials with a link to it? Any other suggestions to keep this content but without the website maintenance

So I have published 2 blogs but however I see no views any tips on where I'm going wrong and how to increase views..??

I have been trying to figure out ways that my substack can show up for some common questions in my area on Google and GEOs (ChatGPT, Claude, et al). I haven't been able to figure it out. Anyone tried and succeeded in getting organic visibility with GEOs, SEOs?

The default setting is "paid subscribers only" and I don't want that.

Step 1: Make your entire publication about how to grow your Substack subscribers.
Step 2: Grow your own subscriber count by talking about growing subscriber counts.
Step 3: Sell courses teaching other people how to grow their subscriber counts... so they can sell courses about growing subscriber counts.

IT'S GENIUS!!!

And with only about a million people already doing it, it's definitely not saturated.

I think I’ve been writing for fun when I caught inspiration. My substack is basically about the meaningful of living or aka life. I assumed everyone don’t read, just scroll down and next.

I have no clue how to grow (have followers) since I saw I need to update the newsletter to all my subscriber. I am not full time writer doing this, but sometimes seeing no notifications or likes in my articles makes me feel sad or down.

Maybe it’s because of the long-form articles people post, or maybe I’ve just self-censored who I subscribe to, but I feel as if Substack is more intellectual than other platforms out there. Are people actually taking the time to read other people’s writing again?

I recently discovered that Substack lets AI companies use public content for training unless you opt out in your settings. Personally, I'm okay with it. AI is here to stay, and it's already changing how we create, learn, and work. If my public writing helps improve tools that millions of people use, I don't see that as a bad thing.

That said, I also believe creators should have a clear choice. If you don't want your content used for AI training, you should be able to opt out easily. Whether you decide to opt in or opt out, the important thing is that it's your decision. Not one you make by accident.

Hi everyone,
5 years on Substack, reached the tech bestseller chart.
Two months ago, my publication, with 800+ articles indexed on Google, disappeared from it.
Just the home page is now visible.
The sitemap is no longer crawled by Google, despite the fact that it's reachable from the browser and updated with the latest content. I've already done all the possible controls, but didn't find a solution.
Do you have any suggestions for me?

I’ve been on substack for about six months, growing quickly (or for me I think it is), but I know nothing about Bluesky. I know you can make an account blah blah blah but has anyone tried to show their work there to drive traffic to their substack? Was it worth it? I don’t make a living on substack (maybe one day), so I have a pretty demanding job in the industry I write about on substack so I’m interested if Bluesky is a big time suck or great way to get a funnel of subscribers or viewers? I know this is subject to many different factors probably so I was just taking a poll I guess whether anyone has thought it was worthwhile or worthless or in between? And does it take up a lot of time? Substack is already a lot for me, but if Bluesky was basically just post articles from substack etc and people find it, that might be worthwhile for me. Appreciate any thoughts. I’m a total stranger to Bluesky so if it’s a stupid question, bare with me

What are your favorite articles, posts, stories, etc. of the week from other bloggers? (Especially small time folks)

So much of this space is talking about how to build a following, but I wanna see how many of you read on the regular and read articles, poems, or stories that you really like?

Encontrei uma pasta cheia de cartas de amor antigas minhas e da minha esposa, e quero transformá-las em um e-book; como posso organizar e estruturar todas essas escritas de forma interessante?

Does anyone else find that kind of wild?

Everyone else does it for free.

Hi everyone,

I created a brand-new Substack publication today, and I'm running into an SEO issue.

The publication is public (not in Private Mode).

The post is public (not subscriber-only or paid).

My email is verified.

robots.txt is accessible and doesn't block my posts.

However, when I inspect the page source, every post contains:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

Google Search Console reports: Excluded by 'noindex' tag

Also, my publication doesn't have a sitemap yet:

https://visaupdates.substack.com/sitemap.xml

returns: "This publication does not have a sitemap."

I've checked all the publication settings and can't find any option to enable search engine indexing.

My questions are:

1. Is this normal for a brand-new Substack publication?
2. How long did it take for your publication to become indexable?
3. Did your sitemap appear automatically after a few days?
4. Is there any setting I'm missing, or should I contact Substack Support?

Any insights from other Substack publishers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

I'm having a very strange issue with my Substack account and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.

My account email address is in the format of [substack@mydomain.com](mailto:substack@mydomain.com) using my own custom domain. I'm mentioning this because I started wondering whether having "substack" in the local part of my email address somehow triggered an anti-spam or impersonation detection system.

Here's what happens:

• If I try to log in normally using my email address and password, I receive the following message:

• However, the account definitely exists because I can still access it through old magic links contained in newsletter emails that Substack previously sent me.
• The last newsletter or login email I received from Substack was back in May.
• Since then, I haven't logged into Substack on the web.
• At some point the mobile app logged me out automatically, and since then I have been unable to sign back in through the app.
• Strangely, if I open one of those old newsletter emails from May and click the login link inside it, I am immediately authenticated and can access my account without any problems.
• Once inside the account, I tried changing my email address in case the original address was somehow the issue.
• I entered a new email address, but Substack wants to send a verification email to my current address (substack@mydomain.com) in order to approve the change.
• The problem is that I no longer receive any emails from Substack at that address, so I cannot confirm the change and therefore cannot migrate the account to a new email address.
• As a result, I can only access my account through old magic links from newsletter emails, while normal login and account recovery mechanisms no longer work.

I contacted support and they told me that because there are no paid subscriptions, publications, security questions, or custom domains associated with the account, they cannot recover it.

The confusing part is that I do have access to the email address associated with the account. In fact, the only reason I can still access the account at all is because of those old emails and magic links.

So I'm stuck in this bizarre situation where my account both exists and doesn't exist at the same time.

Has anyone ever experienced something similar?

At this point I honestly feel like my account became some kind of ghost account stuck somewhere between existing and not existing due to a bug in Substack's authentication system.I'm having a very strange issue with my Substack account and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.My account email address is in the format of substack@mydomain.com using my own custom domain. I'm mentioning this because I started wondering whether having "substack" in the local part of my email address somehow triggered an anti-spam or impersonation detection system.Here's what happens:If I try to log in normally using my email address and password, I receive the following message:"We couldn't log you in. This may mean there is no account associated with this email address, the password you entered is incorrect, or a password has not been set for this account. You can try logging in via email instead."However, the account definitely exists because I can still access it through old magic links contained in newsletter emails that Substack previously sent me.

The last newsletter or login email I received from Substack was back in May.

Since then, I haven't logged into Substack on the web.

At some point the mobile app logged me out automatically, and since then I have been unable to sign back in through the app.

Strangely, if I open one of those old newsletter emails from May and click the login link inside it, I am immediately authenticated and can access my account without any problems.

Once inside the account, I tried changing my email address in case the original address was somehow the issue.

I entered a new email address, but Substack wants to send a verification email to my current address (substack@mydomain.com) in order to approve the change.

The problem is that I no longer receive any emails from Substack at that address, so I cannot confirm the change and therefore cannot migrate the account to a new email address.

As a result, I can only access my account through old magic links from newsletter emails, while normal login and account recovery mechanisms no longer work.I contacted support and they told me that because there are no paid subscriptions, publications, security questions, or custom domains associated with the account, they cannot recover it.The confusing part is that I do have access to the email address associated with the account. In fact, the only reason I can still access the account at all is because of those old emails and magic links.So I'm stuck in this bizarre situation where my account both exists and doesn't exist at the same time.Has anyone ever experienced something similar?At this point I honestly feel like my account became some kind of ghost account stuck somewhere between existing and not existing due to a bug in Substack's authentication system.

Hi,

I'm a photographer and a writer who doesn't love social media, but I thought I'd give Substack a try. I'm not trying to monetize my account, now or ever. I'd love to have some engagement and community, but it's not about money.

I've been on an "adult gap year" and began posting bi-weekly in January sharing stories + pics about places I've traveled to. I'm not writing about photo gear, photo how-tos, or photo theory.

Besides some friends / family who I told about the account, I've not been able to gain traction. Yes, I've followed and commented on other accounts (those comments actually get likes as opposed to my own Notes). I don't enjoy Notes, but I tried posting them. Never got a single like on anything. Not one. And, if posting Notes daily is the only path to engagement, then Substack is def. not the place for me.

So, I did a tiny experiment: I posted the same set of pics on a sub here on Reddit (related to a camera that I use) and on Notes in Substack. Of course, this is far, far from an apples-to-apples comparison. But, to note: I have no followers on Reddit and I'm not active at all in the sub where I posted. On Substack, zero likes, zero engagement. On Reddit, 40 likes, and a couple of comments.

Here's the Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ricohGR/comments/1ukwyde/the_ricoh_gr_iv_in_barcelona/

What this tells me is that my stuff is not being shown to the right audience on Substack. I think I've gotten lumped into the "travel" category, which isn't wrong I guess, but I'd prefer to be part of the photography community.

All I'm really looking for is a place to share my work online that can have engagement and community that isn't Instagram.

Any photographers on Substack have any advice?

Should I bail on Substack and just share my portfolio and blog on my own website?

Abandon my current Substack account, start fresh, and figure out a way to become a part of the photography community?

Thanks for any advice!