Learning Substack the Hard Way

No, I'm not going to beat this topic to death, but while I'm currently engrossed in Substack, I wanted to share the little bits I've learned. 

I do believe that the app can work well for self-published authors (not for me, but for other self-published authors who have interesting things to say). I'd never really gotten into Substack, other than reading the emailed posts from the accounts I subscribe to. What I learned from those is that in order to be successful, one has to constantly write interesting things. Not just occasionally, but all the time. Subscribers can be fickle; at least I can be. I'll tolerate one dull post, but the next one had better be interesting, because I abhor in-box clutter. Thus, growing an audience takes a ton of work. I admire those who do it well.

In my brief (two day) dive into Substack, I found that one can get readers, but landing subscribers is wholly different. I've gotten none, which isn't a shock. I didn't expect to get any. Still. there are people who apparently use Substack as "discovery", scrolling through a timeline as one does on Instagram or TikTok. Because I have been read---not a lot, but a handful of times. 

If you decide to try Substack, a day or so after you publish a post, take a look at "Stats", located in the left-hand menu after you click on "dashboard". There are six subheadings under Stats, and the first one I clicked on was "Posts". This shows the number of views each of my posts has received. If you want to find out which topics strike a chord with the audience, these numbers are helpful.

Herein lies a problem for me: Even though my past posts were published as free, Substack converted them to paid after an undetermined period of time. I had to manually disable that function. (Again, come on, Substack. You've gotta make things simpler!) If you run into this issue:

1. Go to your dashboard

2. Click on Settings

3. Then in the left-hand menu, click Payments

4. Scroll down to Paywalling

5. Find "auto-paywall after..." 

6. Uncheck the box next to the time period and select "Remove Paywall"

I have no need to paywall anything I've published. I prefer to have readers. My pipe dream would be to acquire some subscribers, but that's why they call it a pipe dream.

Back to stats...

Next, I clicked on "audience". This screen shows where your readers are located, which is kind of fun, but not necessarily a big business tool. But it also shows "overlap". In essence, people who read your post(s) also read the Substacks listed. This can be enormously helpful; I just haven't quite figured out how yet. 

Don't be surprised if the list is eclectic. My list includes The Free Press, which is obviously a huge account, so my overlap with it is meaningless. I also share overlap with a couple of weirdly unrelated accounts: a couple about romance books and one cozy mystery Sub. Another is for book recommendations, and there is one author account. 

The subheadings "sharing" and "referrals" would be great if mine showed any numbers, but again, I have zero expectation with regard to that. I will, however, start referring other accounts, but only ones I actually enjoy reading. While I have no subscribers, my referrals will appear on my posts, and I do think it's good to acknowledge other interesting Subs. 

The "traffic" subheading, like Google Analytics, shows where your readers originate. All of mine are either direct or from the Substack app itself, again demonstrating that there are people who simply scroll Substack's timeline.

A couple of unrelated things:

I'm told that publishing notes is a good thing and should be done regularly. I decided that any note I post will be short and unrelated to anything in particular---just things off the top of my head. Trouble is, I can't always think of something to write a note about, but when I do, I can schedule a note. It's like the old days when you could schedule a tweet. This'll work well for me, since I don't do well under pressure. 

Does this all mean that I've grown comfortable with the app? Hardly. It's still a hot mess. Writing a post is the easy part. After you write a post, vertigo sets in. There are too many choices of "how" to publish, and don't you dare make a mistake! It's insane. It reminds me of that time I tried to set up a blog on WordPress.

I intend to tinker around with Substack for a bit, and if I accidentally learn anything useful, I'll share. Otherwise, I think it's time to talk about something else.