What is Substack, really?

Here's the writer's dilemma on a platform that is trying to be everything, and deviating us from the one thing that it is supposed to be.

A email newsletter platform is not a blog, not a journal, and definitely not a social media feed.

Substack is trying to be all of it at once, and there lies the dilemma for most writers here.

Traditional email newsletter platforms have one goal: Send out their content directly to your email inbox to subscribers.

Many email newsletter platforms still thrive on this basic contract like the Long Sunday Reads, for example, which is a weekly newsletter with very interesting reads.

Substack started this way too, by bringing back the newsletter model back from the deal.

They said the emails you collect when someone subscribes is your true currency, and you can take it anywhere you go.

Then came the Substack Notes feed which deviated from that model and not so slightly.

Substack Notes is driven by an algorithm that promotes the popular writers and inundates our feed with promotional content, the ones that help Substack grow.

In that haystack there are many original writers like me and you, the lost and lonely souls of Substack hoping for someone to notice us.

We are confused.

We seem invisible.

We wonder how we can grow our “newsletter” if our writing goes unnoticed, unliked.

I am here to tell you to keep hope alive.

“Go to the mattresses.”

Do whatever it takes.

Not only should you subscribe to the writers you want to read, subscribe to the writers who ask for your subscribes.

Be shameless in asking writers to subscribe, read, like, and share your writing.

Pay it forward.

Don’t mind the nay-sayers.

An email inbox overload is just an excuse because it is not as bad as the scrolling feeds that distract us constantly.

Be active on the Notes app to engage and connect with other writers, but also read the content that comes directly to your inbox.

Control your inbox using a filter or folder to organize the newsletter content you have subscribed.

Read as much as you can.

If you don’t like what you read, delete that post, wait for their next.

Don’t judge a writer by one or two posts because we are dynamic in our thinking and creative in our writing, and we cannot be pegged into just one hole.

Reach out to your subscribers and cross-promote, and collaborate through guest posts.

Remember that you write an online newsletter and your content is delivered by email, that’s the original contract.

Everything else is a distraction.

So write on, subscribe to many, like what you read, and share and support your fellow writers.