I was reluctant at first to post much on Substack (had the account for 2 years and rarely posted on it), and now I can see why I had such "bad vibes" about Substack. Thanks for the heads up on the non-existent support. Is it only the "big names" with millions of followers who get any real attention?
You do kind of have to already have an audience that you bring with you if you want any serious traction, though it is possible (very very rarely though!) to build one here. You really have to kiss a lot of babies and milque a lot of toast to be anything here.
Two weeks ago, I was ranked the 22nd most read newsletter in Finance. I have 55,000 subscribers. My articles used to all go viral, tens of thousands of views per article, hundreds of likes and shares - I then get a message from a guy who has a Top Ten across the entire network publication telling me that I need to start writing about 'approved' topics. I do not know if this guy was associated with Substack but he IS a Top Ten publication, he makes $3,500 a week off his newsletter he told me, and ALL of his content is AI-generated garbage that he isn't even writing. He told me that I need to stop talking about certain topics or I am going to lose algorithmic favoring on the platform. I basically told him to screw off and that I am going to write about what I want to write about. He then blocked me. The next day, I watched in a span of 5-minutes over 600 subscribers vanish. I received a few dozen emails from people saying they did not unsubscribe. Youtube has been well-known for auto-unsubbing influential subscribers to prevent content they do not want going viral from breaking out of the algorithmic corral they place creators that do not align with their corporate narrative into. Substack recently received a lot of venture capital funding. We can assume they are now officially 'compromised' and part of the same corporate machine that most of these other platforms belong to. I then started monitoring on camera a few oddities I was noticing in the backend. I have PROOF that Substack is now censoring certain writers. When someone restacked one of my articles, I went to look on her activity panel and it did not show up. I contacted her and told her. She showed me it appeared on HER end. So, Substack is keeping up appearances by making it look like these restacks are actually spreading your content but in reality - nothing is being shared. Everything is compromised now. Anyone that presents a narrative that does not align with the one the super-rich want is going to end up in the same boat I am. I predicted this was going to happen the day after I learned that Substack received venture capital funding.
Thanks for your detailed reply - damn, that is frustrating. Was that a restack or a cross post?
I once again am unable to cross-post from 2 different browsers on 2 different computers.
It worked for me twice and then the next time I try, the button never becomes available to move forward.
I am not sure how much the algorithm is working here still, especially if you use the "Following" tab. Part of the fall off is likely due to AI bots this clown created to artificially inflate his numbers.
I can't stand AI slop content & it's frustrating for the people who fall for it.
Substack already had VC funding from a16z and Y Combinator.
The founders are Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi. Hamish used to work for Elon Musk at Tesla.
They recently got another round of $100M at a valuation of $1B and are on cloud 9 given that Skydance now is looking to pay $100-200M for ONE PUBLICATION on the platform. The Ankler is worth at least $25M and Zeteo came in with big money behind it. Corporate media is also setting up shop here, so they created an enterprise division to better serve bigger publications with possibly hundreds of writers - which is still in its infancy.
Since recording this segment last week, I have learned that there is human support available to "Bestsellers" and somehow I was fortunate enough (or annoying enough) to get on their radar to try to address my concerns, even though my publication earns less than $1k/yr total w/ 4000 free subs (just hit 4000 today!). They really haven't done a great job so far, though I will say that they at least are making an effort while blaming my browsers for the cross posting issue the entire time. Everything I have done has been organic. I've never paid for a click or to promote anything and every sub has been earned or referred.
This week, Substack also revamped its analytics slightly, but more to showcase earnings. The Traffic tab looks promising but we'll see how much the new data helps. The podcast and video numbers are underwhelming.
I was reluctant at first to post much on Substack (had the account for 2 years and rarely posted on it), and now I can see why I had such "bad vibes" about Substack. Thanks for the heads up on the non-existent support. Is it only the "big names" with millions of followers who get any real attention?
You do kind of have to already have an audience that you bring with you if you want any serious traction, though it is possible (very very rarely though!) to build one here. You really have to kiss a lot of babies and milque a lot of toast to be anything here.
A year. I've been trying to tell you their chat bot and support are non existent.
Fair. Yes you have
There's tons of glitches and other irregularities as well. It sucks more people are experiencing it. Hope you are doing well and all that. 🙂
wow! thanks for the heads up!
imo, substack wants to tie up your time and lead you down allies of little or no interest. but who owns substack?????????
Two weeks ago, I was ranked the 22nd most read newsletter in Finance. I have 55,000 subscribers. My articles used to all go viral, tens of thousands of views per article, hundreds of likes and shares - I then get a message from a guy who has a Top Ten across the entire network publication telling me that I need to start writing about 'approved' topics. I do not know if this guy was associated with Substack but he IS a Top Ten publication, he makes $3,500 a week off his newsletter he told me, and ALL of his content is AI-generated garbage that he isn't even writing. He told me that I need to stop talking about certain topics or I am going to lose algorithmic favoring on the platform. I basically told him to screw off and that I am going to write about what I want to write about. He then blocked me. The next day, I watched in a span of 5-minutes over 600 subscribers vanish. I received a few dozen emails from people saying they did not unsubscribe. Youtube has been well-known for auto-unsubbing influential subscribers to prevent content they do not want going viral from breaking out of the algorithmic corral they place creators that do not align with their corporate narrative into. Substack recently received a lot of venture capital funding. We can assume they are now officially 'compromised' and part of the same corporate machine that most of these other platforms belong to. I then started monitoring on camera a few oddities I was noticing in the backend. I have PROOF that Substack is now censoring certain writers. When someone restacked one of my articles, I went to look on her activity panel and it did not show up. I contacted her and told her. She showed me it appeared on HER end. So, Substack is keeping up appearances by making it look like these restacks are actually spreading your content but in reality - nothing is being shared. Everything is compromised now. Anyone that presents a narrative that does not align with the one the super-rich want is going to end up in the same boat I am. I predicted this was going to happen the day after I learned that Substack received venture capital funding.
You can watch the proof on video here - https://wisewolfmedia.substack.com/p/proof-subtack-is-censoring-our-publication
Thanks for your detailed reply - damn, that is frustrating. Was that a restack or a cross post?
I once again am unable to cross-post from 2 different browsers on 2 different computers.
It worked for me twice and then the next time I try, the button never becomes available to move forward.
I am not sure how much the algorithm is working here still, especially if you use the "Following" tab. Part of the fall off is likely due to AI bots this clown created to artificially inflate his numbers.
I can't stand AI slop content & it's frustrating for the people who fall for it.
Substack already had VC funding from a16z and Y Combinator.
The founders are Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi. Hamish used to work for Elon Musk at Tesla.
They recently got another round of $100M at a valuation of $1B and are on cloud 9 given that Skydance now is looking to pay $100-200M for ONE PUBLICATION on the platform. The Ankler is worth at least $25M and Zeteo came in with big money behind it. Corporate media is also setting up shop here, so they created an enterprise division to better serve bigger publications with possibly hundreds of writers - which is still in its infancy.
Since recording this segment last week, I have learned that there is human support available to "Bestsellers" and somehow I was fortunate enough (or annoying enough) to get on their radar to try to address my concerns, even though my publication earns less than $1k/yr total w/ 4000 free subs (just hit 4000 today!). They really haven't done a great job so far, though I will say that they at least are making an effort while blaming my browsers for the cross posting issue the entire time. Everything I have done has been organic. I've never paid for a click or to promote anything and every sub has been earned or referred.
This week, Substack also revamped its analytics slightly, but more to showcase earnings. The Traffic tab looks promising but we'll see how much the new data helps. The podcast and video numbers are underwhelming.