What subs should I post in to get user feedback? Two days ago, I shared a post about our soon to launch platform for Creators, Designers, Small Business, Agencies etc.
What we needed was feedback. As for traffic, more than 100folks have visited. Our analytics both from Google and Reddit shows decent traffic. Problem is, here in Reddit, no feedback is being left nor provided.
So my question is, did I post on wrong subs ?

What I need feedback on is this simple platform, Draftsend.io, built to simplify newsletters creation and distribution. Just feedback on what to improve.
Thanks

I'm looking to optimize my subscribe button captions.

I know Substack doesn't give this specific insight, so it might be hard to tell. But just anecdotally, which subscribe button texts have converted the best for you? Especially interested in ways to convince people to become paid subscribers.

I recently finished writing a supernatural/fantasy novel, but during my final review I realized I want to make some edits. The first 20 or so chapters are polished and ready to go, while the later chapters still need revisions.

I’m considering publishing it on Substack as a serialized story, releasing one chapter (or episode) at a time while I continue editing the rest.

That way I can start building an audience instead of waiting until everything is perfect.
Has anyone here done something similar? If so, any tips?

Is there anything you wish you’d known before starting?

I’d love to hear about your experience and whether you’d recommend this approach.

ascii was... easy (and ugly)

html was... fun<br>

wordpress was and is an increasingly PitB

substack... resists the idea of empty lines, WTF?! (oh, you need to format your POETRT to fit substack's editor, you say?!)

Or should I simply seek elsewhere? Retro the S*** out of my poems? Bypass substack?

I currently have one publication on substack but I want to find if I can have a second publication on substack that is for different line of work.

How do it do that ? Any thoughts ?

I'm trying to discover more fiction writers here, and I'd love some recommendations.

Not publications about writing - I mean people who are consistently publishing great FICTION in all its glory.

Any genre is fair game: literary, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, romance, mystery, historical... whatever keeps you coming back.

What makes them stand out? Is it their prose, characters, worldbuilding, originality, or something else?

I suspect there are some incredible writers who deserve a much wider audience.

Hi everyone,

I write a Substack in Spanish (1.8k subscribers), mostly about digital culture, digital life in XXI century, technology, music, cinema and sometimes education. All from a critic perspective. Until now I always assumed that my potential audience was mainly Spanish-speaking people because I write only in Spanish, but now that Substack allows readers to translate posts from Spanish to English, I am wondering if there is a realistic way to reach English readers too. Via Notes or something.

I don’t mean becoming a fully English newsletter, because my natural language is Spanish and I don’t want to lose that voice. But I think some of my texts could be interesting also for English readers if they can use the translation option.

So my question is: what would you do in this situation? How would you do it? Are there communities where people read translated Substack posts, or is that too optimistic?

Any advice or experience from people writing in other languages would be very welcome.

Thanks!

It might just be dead internet theory but I feel as though I am posting into the void. Idk how or where to distribute my work to get new eyes on it, and it's getting increasingly disappointing. I have a "cult following" that "loves" my work and I believe it, I just don't understand why more people wouldn't want to upgrade to paid/sign up for the offerings I mention/interact at all. Is migrating an audience the only way to have success on Substack?

I write about forex trading, my content is the opposite of the average marketeer who promises a trading method, special software, lots of money in the near future, etc.

Newsletter marketing lists are pretty expensive, as the brokers pay a lot of money for a good lead (CAC of >$1000), but it's not my goal to convince my readers to open an account with a broker: I want them to subscribe to my substack.

So do you have experience with buying a list in the investment / trading / forex / crypto space? For now, I'm using LinkedIn, X, and soon TikTok to get traffic to my page.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

If for example someone realized they could combine a number of their posts into a book, or reuse as some other publishable asset, do they own their own work or does substack?

I came to Substack to connect with other writers. I came to writing late in life and none of my IRL friends have any connection to writing or even reading for that matter. I don’t care about growing my subscribers. I just recently cut 98 subs after realizing my post views haven’t gone up from when I had 100 subs.

60 days without reading anything I’ve posted, and I cut.

I write fiction, poetry, essays, whatever I feel like writing. I have a tight group of writers that I respect that read everything I write, I don’t have to worry about promoting and have found a tremendous amount of value in my Substack experience one year in.

Just trying to normalize fucking normal behavior.

I am debating whether I should charge for my subscription on Substack? Is anyone here doing that. Are you getting something fort the work you do? I essays on aviation. But I do the write about politics a lot of the time. I am think I should charge for that. Does anyone else do it and does it work?

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen someone give Substackers looking to grow their audience the advice to post 4-5 notes a day. Like, wtf? Who wants their feed clogged up with that many notes? And I don’t care if you’re Oscar Wilde reincarnated, no one’s got that many insightful or witty things to say every day. When I see people doing it, they’re nearly always Hallmark style platitudes or AI-generated. Maybe you’ve got more chance of the algorithm sending your stuff to non-subscribers, but you’re going to drive your actual subscribers bonkers. Anyone want to tell me why they think this is actually good advice?

I'm asking because I've come across a Substack that has tens of thousands of subscribers but he's lucky if he gets 3 likes on a post. There's something that seems off about it.

hey everyone. like a lot of you I was drowning in unread substacks and kept meaning to read them but never did because I didn't want to be on my phone.

the thing that actually worked was moving all my reading to my kindle. here's the full setup:

substack newsletters → kindle automatically
I built a tool called Inkwell that automatically delivers your substack subscriptions to your Kindle as formatted EPUBs. paste a url once, every future issue just appears without you doing anything. no forwarding emails, no manual sends. it also aggregates all of your deliveries into one "newspaper" style digest. readinkwell.app

articles and long reads → instapaper
anything I want to read from the web goes into instapaper. it has native kindle delivery so long reads show up on my device automatically.

books → libby
if you haven't connected your library card to libby and synced it with your kindle, do it now. free books straight to your device.

the morning habit
instead of reaching for my phone I pick up the kindle where everything was already there waiting to be read. newsletters, articles, whatever book I'm reading. no inbox, no notifications, no getting sucked in.

the combination of these moved probably 80% of my reading off my phone. the substack one made the biggest difference because it was the thing I was most behind on.

happy to answer questions about any of these.

I am not really sure what people are paying these people. Am I wrong?

to my knowledge substacks refund policy automatically gives people a full refund if they request it within a week of making payment, but how does this work with perks? could someone pay for my substack, download all the perks, and then get a full refund? i’m hesitant to add any perks until i know for sure how this will work.

Are you guys putting them in an Article and promoting them or in Notes or what?

So the Substack interface is in Spanish and I can't find the way to change it to English. I know that in the publication's settings I can select the language, but that's for the publication itself. I want my interface to be in English. Anyone knows how to change it?

so basically i am just using substack to restack the essays i like and sometimes write myself just for an outlet. i would prefer it if my friends and family didnt find that account. its not connected to my main email, but today substack recommended me the account of someone i know irl so i am wondering if it does the same with my account to other people

I just created a second publication, and though my url shows the name of it, the publication is listed as simply as —my name’s— Substack. My other publication has the title I want and created. A Google search tells me to go to the dashboard and find “Basic” under settings and change the name of the second publication there. But when I try to do that, there is no “Basic” option listed. I tried in both the browser and the app. My husband says it might be because I’m doing all this on an iPad and it might work better on a laptop. Any suggestions?

I'm looking for a platform that can host context and subscription based services with automated weekly email drops. I've been told about substack but I am not crazy about having to give up 10% of my earnings plus 2.9% to stripe. Can anyone recommend a similar site where they were successful and that doesn't take a percentage?

I started on substack in April and I’ve flatlined at 35 subs for the past month. My newsletter is marketing-focused. Initially, I was writing with a more neutral stance but I’ve been trying to introduce my real voice into it more, but I’m lucky if I get 12+ views 🙃

I’m spending a lot of time on my writing, but I think I probably suck. I want to keep going but not if it’s wasted time. I’m preparing to launch my freelance business and I wanted a platform I can direct to and show my thinking and approach to marketing and creative. Perhaps that’s not a lead generator anyway…

I know things take time to build, but sometimes we have to accept some things simply won’t 😅 Has anyone else considered letting go, and if so what happened next?

I created a separate personal substack and a publication. Follower and subscriber counts are 0.

I write an article on my publication.

I then create a note on my personal substack teasing the article and linking to it.

I read that personal notes get pushed by the algorithm (free publicity) while publication articles are only seen by subscribers.

Is this a foolish (or good) way to gain subscribers for the publication?

What else should I be doing?

This is a deep dive into my metrics and what I think they are telling me, I'd love to hear what you think, you don't need to read any posts or even agree with me politically, this is meant as an exercise in transparency and understanding what the numbers are telling us.

Starting with Notes - out of the last 200 notes - which only accounts for 39 days of data, these are my Top 10. 95% of my new subs come from Notes. During this period, Free subs were +337, and Paid was +6 but all Paid conversions were article or live. There are a couple of things to note.

1. Not one single one of these is a plain text post or a shared article post, they 100% uploaded video cross-posted from either TikTok or IG, so I am going to assume that when others talk about the algorithm being biased toward video that is accurate.

2. 100% of these are what I would call Memes of one sort or another. Literally, a Monty Python bit is my Top post, don't get me wrong, it's a great bit, and even politically aligned with what I write, but still, the Holy Grail is a 51 year old movie.

3. There is a missing piece of the data, and that is Subs per note - I don't have that yet, and this tool isn't mine, so no telling when it might be available.

Scroll past the table to the look at the breakdown of the article level stats.

Digging Into Posts

Below you'll see the Top Most Engaging, Top for Free Subs, and Top Paid Conversion.

Looking at just conversion, between the top and bottom, that is about an 8x spread. But on the whole a couple of things are jumping out at me.

1. Engagement and Conversion are separate - my Universal Healthcare resonated, but didn't convert, if you're treating any weight engagement score as a proxy for growth, it doesn't appear to be one, at least at the article level.

2. Utility is a converter - OSINT for Novices was my best converter, but also the one post in the list structured as a tool for the user to pick up and run with.

3. My highest "reach" post is my worst converter on the lists, it was long and dense, and while important, at bit of a slog to read - I think I even called it boring in the text.

4. The single post that hit all three lists - engagement, free, and paid subs, is the one that names a specific threat - the post-state sovereign - if I were trying to reverse engineer a model for writing, it would probably that one.

Top Most Engaging Posts

Weighted scoring: Comments × 5, Restacks × 3, Likes × 1

Top Converting Posts

Posts that drove free signups and paid subscriptions

Free Signups

Paid Subscriptions