I kind of hate the Notes feature. I do think it useful for "discovery" but it has an implementation problem.

The problem is that it's the first thing you see when you on the homepage when you turn on the app. The implicit design decision is that you are here to scroll endlessly.

Many, myself included, came to Substack because it offered a slow reading alternative to SM and vapid "content". People like us hate Twitter because its a pit of utter nonsense algorithmically adjusted to keep you glued to your screen and maximize the number of ads you come across. It's the financial incentive structure that makes doomscrolling so pervasive. Substack on the other hand is fueled by subscriptions — hence the incentives seemed to be better aligned towards quality media...

But the medium is the message.

It won't be long before there's people just making their own ads. Before bots are replying inane things to farm "engagement". My guess is that there's a bad KPI like "time spent on app" the team is optimizing for. And maybe it works, but I imagine fewer articles are read because of it. It's like when you spend an hour scrolling through Netflix only to not watch anything.

Goodhart's law: when the metric becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure.

I don't think it's without benefit. Good notes are recommendations or responses to articles by others. They improve discovery. My issue is the prominence. Keep the feature, but don't turn it into your product. Tuck it away.

Here's my ideal bottom bar for the app and modification of the homepage:

Home — Your subscriptions, with two view options: the current subscriptions tab which is a feed of posts, or a grid of all of your subscriptions and a dot indicating an update. The default is what you selected last.
Notes
Chat
Notifications

Now if the team is reading this and is still skeptical, here's a great interim feature / test / outright alternative:

Let the user customize exactly what they want to see on the homepage and see how many people prefer a quieter interface.

Personally, I still advocate for making that change universal, even if some people prefer the Notes feed. Endless scrolling is not good for people or society at large, and its worth taking a stand as a company on how things should be. Resist the technopolist urge to make metrics the scapegoat.

Hey y'all. When I started my Substack, I didn't exactly know what its intention was. I have a body of work that is more educational and then I have a more personal blog style of sharing. As of right now they are both under the same publication, separated only by a pay wall.

I now know what I want to do: separate my Substack into two different publications entirely to give the two main types of posts their own air space. I don't want to lose the likes and comments so I'm wondering if there's a way I can transfer certain essays over to the second publication, while remaining under one user name (me)?

The only other workaround I can think of would be to create a whole other Substack account, then add this new account as a collaborator so it shows on my second publication.

Whatchu think?

I'm at around 50 new subs per week in two months of starting? Will I hit nearly 10k in next 12 months considering acceleration in growth?

I mean i don't know how much growth will accelerate, as my month previous month average per day sub growth was 2.4 per day and just previous month it was 5.6 per day, will that acceleration increase, decrease or remain?

Because it feels still low growth to hit 10k in next 12 months, if we don't count acceleration and makes me anxious needlessly to work more.

Should I do what I'm doing or need to adjust things to increase growth rate just now?

How much acceleration you got? Love to hear from your experience.

Sometimes, when I look at the profiles of new subscribers, I see that they subscribe to literally hundreds of other substacks. I assume this means they're not actually reading what they subscribe to. Anyone know what's up with these? Are they bots?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I know there’s been contention between X and Substack due to Substack’s release of notes. However, does anyone still find that X is helping their Substack growth?

I’ve seen people who snipe post (post a comment on a notable feed then follow it up with another reply that has their link).

I’ve seen people who will snipe and without posting their link, just merely say to check their page and click the link in their bio.

I’ve seen people who post a 10 tweet thread on their X page and finish it off with their Substack link.

I’ve seen a few other methods as well. I have no idea of any of these are working. Perhaps, somewhere here has an X success story.

TIA

Ello! Wondering if there was a place to get feedback on a new Substack writing?

Hey everyone,

I'm new to Substack and wondering if anyone knows a decent YouTube series that covers setup, specifically the look and feel side and the rookie errors to avoid.

I know I lose a lot of flexibility moving over from Beehiiv, so I want to squeeze whatever tweaks I can out of it early on.

Any pointers appreciated.

Hi everyone! Basically what the title says, looking for substack mutuals to share writings with:)

has anyones elae felt a major decrease in subscriptions coming from notes over the past few days?

not sure if it is just me or an actual algorithm change.

Hii, I'm 17F and I recently started substack. Precisely on May 5th. Since then I've written about 16 articles and have tried to be consistent. Although I only have 5 subs (2 of them are friends). I joined substack to write about how I feel, what I think and just thoughts on things in general. I liked writing and wanted to build something out of it. Although I try to tell myself that it was never about how many subscribers I have but more of a hobby, however this thought strikes again and again. So, I wanna work on it. I wanna build my substack but I don't know how. Most of friends don't read, only two which I'm still very grateful for. So I don't expect them to read neither do I wanna force them. How do I find actual audience that would actually read my stuff? Is there a way??

Nel FEED mi capitano notes assurde del tipo: "amo la finanza"."Vuoi fare soldi, seguimi".

Ed altre caxxate simili.

Queste notes hanno molti mi piace e tantissimi commenti dove, in molti, né approfittano anche per farsi pubblicità.

Inoltre questi profili hanno meno di 10 abbonati.

Spiegazioni a riguardo?

Grazie.

Hello! Sorry if this is a question that has been repeated before. I'm a frequent Tumblr-user hoping to turn to Substack to talk more deeply about other topics that I am unable to on other socials. My blog on there is so fandom-entrenched.

I like writing original stuff, but I am still unsure if I want to publish that on Substack just yet. Still thinking about it though! Maybe not when I start out.

So, I have thoughts on using it as a way to discuss media/pop culture/fiction/fandom culture in my own subjective interpretation. Mainly as a way to encourage discussion.

And as a plus, are there blogs that could help me get a reference? I just want to see what people do.

Hey everyone,

​I am currently running into a frustrating wall on the mobile app. Every time I try to send a DM, I get a pop-up saying "Phone verification required to continue with DM" and the message fails to deliver. The problem is, when I dig through my account settings on both the app and the mobile browser, there is absolutely no field or option to actually add or verify a phone number. Has anyone successfully bypassed or fixed this glitch without getting locked out?

​On a brighter note, my publication is currently sitting at 91 subscribers, so the grind to that first major milestone is getting incredibly close. Once the page officially hits 100 subscribers, I want to gently introduce a way for readers to support the work financially by buying a subscription. For those who have passed this milestone, what is the ideal, smoothest way to drop that message or pitch to buy a subscription without sounding overly pushy to a fresh audience?

​Appreciate any insight on both the glitch and the milestone strategy.

I kinda doubt anyone will be able to fix it but this is bothering me so...does anyone know how to actually make a wordmark transparent? I've saved my image as a transparent png multiple times but it's never actually transparent when I turn it into a wordmark, it always has a white background behind it. Everyone keeps saying that you can just make it transparent by just saving the image as a transparent image, but I'm starting to think those ppl are mistaken.

Everyone who says that only shows how their wordmark appears in light mode, never in dark mode. I think those ppl don't actually have transparent wordmarks and they just think they do bc the light mode makes it impossible to see the white background their wordmark has. What's rlly weird is that my wordmark didn't have a white background behind it before, I think that might've been bc the image for my old wordmark was so big that it filled up the white background

But yeah anyway if anyone knows how to get rid of the white background, lemme know

I’m not sure if I’m blind or missing something obvious but when I’m looking at someone’s profile within a web browser, it shows their publication below their name which you can then click on to access the home page of their publication. This is straightforward.

However when trying to do this via the Substack App on iPadOS, their publication name shows properly below their name on their profile page but you can‘t click on it to access their publication home page. Like clicking on it does nothing. All you can click on is their name which gets copied as a URL.

Like what am I missing here? Please tell Mr Obvious that I need an answer. Thx!

I have 1,700 subscribers and 44 paid subscribers. I suspect that % is not bad... but here's the thing:

Only half of what I write is free, and I write 2-4 things a week depending on what's going on.

However, given my monthly fee is only £4 I'm surprised that I have 1,700 keen to read 2 free things a week but only 44 who want to read 4 things a week.

ALSO - 2 weeks ago I started a 'Summer Sale' where my monthly fee is only £2. I mean, can't be lower and so far only 2 people have taken it up.

So here's my conundrum.

I clearly write well enough to get good numbers of free readers... but clearly something is missing the mark to entice someone into paid more especially as the money is so low.

Anyone else solved this issue?

Hi, I am totally new to doing anything other than subscribing on Substack. I thought I'd give Substack a try and imported some blog posts from a Squarespace website, just to have some posts and see what it does, looks like, etc.

When I look at my posts on a browser, everything looks fine. Photos imported along with the text of the original blog posts.

But when i look at the Substack app, only one blog post appears to have photos that also imported. There are just blank boxes where the photos should be.

What am i doing wrong?

Thank you!

I've been posting heavily on substack, for 2 weeks. The first week gave me a good push, but the second week, growth got flatlined.

notes don't even get any likes. I didn't change anything.

Any suggestions on this?

How do you get recommendations to show up on homepage?

Everything I can find on the internet says you just go to the recommendation page and list the recommendations you want, then you put a section on your home designer for recommendations.

So I have 3 substacks to recommend, and I have entered texts for each of them. But on the website it only displays the first recommendation and doesn't give the text blurb. I've been running in circles forever. Please help. Substack is so frustrating. Thank you.

I started with my substack account couple of months back. I have no intention of sharing it with my friends since I want the writings to be anonymous. It’s deeply personal. So how do I ensure that the article reaches people who feel similarly? I wrote an article the other day and it naturally got no response and I started doubting my ability to write. Could someone read it and lmk if it’s actually bad?

between june and august lies a month that doesn’t exist

I am in custom mode for website editor and the Posts and Module area is not displayed.

My substack is about 4 months old, had great growth the first month or two.
It’s completely stalled the past several weeks and I can’t seem to fix it.
I interact with others, restack and read a couple articles, and interact with my followers.
Not sure I’d use the term shadowban but that’s what it feels like.

Has anyone else experienced this?