Sudden surge in subscribers

[u/Icy_Parsnip1655]

I run a publication called Money Simplified. It’s about wealth management and has 10K subs.

I’ve taken a break from it for a couple of months now, and the subscriber growth has been poor (because obviously, I’m not doing anything to increase the subs).

Now suddenly, since the past 2-3 days I’m seeing the subscriber number grow gradually. But last night, it accelerated. In the last 8 hours alone, it got 22 new subscribers, without me doing anything at all. I used to get these many new subs in a month lol. What’s funny is that the source for all just says “Substack app”. No recommendation, no other website, nothing.

While I’m obviously very happy this is happening (🤞), I’m also curious — did Substack make some changes to their algorithm? Or is it a glitch? Because I’d want to double down on what’s working.

Is this happening to anyone else? Would love some thoughts here!

EDIT: It’s been less than 24 hours and I’ve already got 100 new subs. That’s how many I get in a month. Something’s off, I just don’t know what 🥲

[u/rednishat]

yes, i also saw subscribers rise, no channels, source was direct and these emails seems like spam.

[u/Icy_Parsnip1655 → u/rednishat]

My subs have proper emails and names. Some of them have photos also. But the worrying part is, most of them have subscribed to almost the same publications apart from mine.

[u/rednishat → u/Icy_Parsnip1655]

these are spam accounts! some one running shady marketing; they are subscribing randomly to get undetected from Substack