The People Predicting Substack in 2026 Are Wrong

+ the results are in!

Oh, the predictions.

In case you missed it, a lot of people are writing about what Substack will be like in 2026.

They talk about Substack’s recent declaration that they’re a social media app, albeit with (perhaps) a more discerning algorithm. (It strikes me as just a regular algorithm, but that’s just me.)

And the people leaving the platform.

And the celebrities and influencers crowding the platform.

And how hard it will be to grow now.

Much of what’s been written is suspiciously AI-like in length and tone or simply recycles the usual internet advice.

The main problem: These Substack Nostradamuses don’t understand that there have always been discontent, people leaving, and platform pivots that seem to shake us to our core.

Most of all, Substack growth has always been difficult and Substack has always been crowded.

---

What hasn’t changed

Here are two sentences from the 2021 Substack Writers at Work About page:

Substack is one of the two hardest platforms to succeed on. Like TikTok, it looks easy but isn’t.

(The next sentence: I’ll save you from wasting years, flailing around trying to figure out what works. I did. And I always will.)

Yes, we had the Substack bubble (January - June 2024), during which Julie Fratantoni, PhD and others exploded. People were getting thousands and tens of thousands of subscribers from a single Note. You could write hello on a Note and not even capitalize the h and get subscribers. The algorithm was like a teenager on Red Bull.

And I warned it wouldn’t last. (See “A Substack Notes Reality Check: When 1 Note Brings in 20,000 Subscribers”).

And it didn’t.

That kind of growth is an anomaly.

Substack growth is difficult.

Yes, even for celebrities and influencers. Trust me. Some of them are my clients.

It’s a challenging, wacky platform. I mean, come on:

• James Patterson sold 5 million books in one year but has only 30,000 subscribers on Substack.

• I have clients with 10,000 subscribers who get 5 likes and 2 comments on a post and clients with 100 subscribers who get the same.

Challenging and wacky.

And rightfully so:

• We’re publishing in three mediums at once (web, email, app), writing in two different genres (journalism/essay/blog and the newsletter), and dabbling in new media (audio and/or video).

True, celebrities and influencers are flooding the platform (Gary Vaynerchuk, Andrew Huberman, et al.), but proportionately, it’s no different than when there were only 17,000 of us on Substack and a bunch of big names arrived.

Yes, Notes is a hamster wheel, but, luckily, it’s separate from your Substack. You never need to be on Notes if you don’t want to.

What if Substack is simply what it’s always been? An amazing opportunity (we seem to have forgotten how hard it was to make even a dollar from writing before Substack), an imperfect online space, and a difficult platform to grow and make money on.

So stop listening to people predict what will happen on Substack in 2026 or 2062 or whenever and focus on what you want to do with your Substack.

---

No matter what:

I’ll save you from wasting years flailing around trying to figure out what works on Substack.

That will never change.

All my best,

Sarah