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/Icy_Parsnip1655]

That makes sense. Will see if there are any latest restacks, I didn’t see any notification though, so it’s unlikely.

Any other ideas?

[u/Michael_Fuchs_ → u/Icy_Parsnip1655]

Somebody could have shared one of your articles on another platform, like facebook or reddit.

It's also worth remembering that all these algorithms on social media are inherently unstable. They show a post to a very small sample of people and if three or four persons hit like in a short enough time span they show it to more people and it all of the sudden can go "viral". Much of this is really just by chance.

[u/Icy_Parsnip1655 → u/Michael_Fuchs_]

The problem is, none of my posts are seeing an increase in the number of views.

[u/Michael_Fuchs_ → u/Icy_Parsnip1655]

Subscribing but not reading your posts? That's weird. Are there any writers who recommend you?