On the left of this page, you’ll see a table of contents, A-Z. Click on the lines to jump to a topic.
This Substack Strategy Handbook includes clear explanations, my top tips as the leading Substack Strategist, and links to deeper dives for each topic. It will save you from being misled by out-of-date, AI-driven, unproven information and advice.
It will (probably) change your Substack life.
After mentoring over seven hundred Substack writers one-on-one and tens of thousands on Substack Writers at Work, I’ve identified the most common questions about Substack’s terms, features, and technical aspects. I’ve distilled them here for you. There will be others, of course, but knowing these will help you so, so much.
My goal is always to help you grow and achieve all your goals on Substack.
Substack’s About page About-your-Substack or About-your-subscribers-page. Here’s what Substack says about the About page: “This page should explain in detail the benefits of reading your publication.”
It’s not about you; it’s about how they’ll be transformed or benefit from your Substack.
It should include:
A photo and a welcome.
The benefits of reading your Substack, what subscribers will take away, and how they’ll be transformed by it (not what you do, e.g., not "I write about...")
Exactly what free and paid subscribers get (e.g., posts, workshops, voice memos, etc.) and why those matter
Headings and bulleted lists of what they get and how often you’ll email them:
Paid subscribers get... (both what they get, e.g., posts, and what they’ll get from it, e.g., responsibly reported journalism)
Free subscribers get…
A bit about you (only insofar as it relates to your newsletter)
A photo of you or your pets or something that represents you
Examples (Note: these are on the longer side):
Poet Maggie Smith’s About page is ideal in terms of content, the way she addresses her readers, and the formatting (headings, bullets, etc.). It's a great About page and I love the way she 1) sets up her philosophy and what the title means to her (graph 1), 2) answers the question 'Why this newsletter and why now?" (graph 2), 3) goes into what subscribers get and then the About Me sections, and 4) gives testimonials. Very clean.
Inevitably, when my clients really dive into their About page and figure out who they are on Substack, they attract engaged subscribers and soar—creatively, professionally, and personally.1
Archive:
Where all your published posts live and can be accessed by your subscribers.
Access: https://your Substack URL/archive
You can paywall your archive: Dashboard > Settings > Payments. Scroll down to Set archive date. Decide on how far back you want to paywall previous posts–2 weeks is the default
Top tip:
This is an automatic paywall, which means your subscribers are going to hit it and likely get annoyed. We want to paywall deliberately.2
Unlike your short description, which is about your publication, your short bio should tell us a bit about you, preferably insofar as it relates to your Substack.
It should be about 26 words.
To find your short bio, go to your avatar in the upper right-hand corner of your page > Settings from the dropdown menu > Profile > Edit > Bio
Branding and design:
You can brand your Substack in multiple ways:
Your wordmark (what appears at the top of your homepage)
Custom (!!)—this is what you can use to link to any outside source
Special offer
Buttons best practices:
Try not to put any buttons or buttons with captions in the middle of the post. It enacts like a pop-up on the reader. People don't like pop-ups and they often signal the end of a post/newsletter even if it's not.
A button with a caption works best at the top of a post because the call to action won't appear in the preview of the email.
At the bottom of a post, keeping the call to action as part of the text with a subscribe button may lead to more paid subscribers. You can use a block quote to set it off slightly. Put this at the beginning or at the end of the post. It might look like this:
C
Chat:
One of Substack’s community features to engage with your subscribers.
It can be paywalled and a perk for paid subscribers.
Top tip:
It’s very hard to get the chat going because really only your subscribers reading on the app will use it. If you’re being read primarily in email, it could be crickets.
Don’t take it personally if people don’t engage.
I suggest waiting until you have a very vibrant comments sections (more than 50 comments/post) before starting the chat.
Casual posting format for quick updates and conversations with subscribers.
Collaboration:
One of the many things that makes Substack so special is the Substack network.
Your Substack is your tiny corner of the internet universe yet you’re part of an amazing group of writers, creators, and visionaries and can experience tremendous growth by collaborating with them.
Ways to collaborate include guest posting, crossposting, appearing on podcasts, and more
CTA = Call to Action—marketing speak for converting paid subscribers, i.e., helping them upgrade to paid by explaining the value of your paid subscription.
The default on Substack is what comes up with the subscribe button with a caption—do not use. Why? Well, it’s not terribly convincing and it’s overused.
Custom Domain
You can opt to use a custom domain name instead of substack.com.
Top tip:
If you’re new to Substack and don’t have a very clear branding strategy, keep your URL .substack.com and preferably your name. Why? Because more people will google your name than the title of your Substack.
Use this feature sparingly. All direct emails go into all your subscribers’ inboxes, even those who’ve opted not to hear from us by opting into push notifications. Basically, we’re bugging people when we do this.
Dashboard > Subscribers > Click the Select all box under All subscribers. In a greyed-out box, it will say 50 selected. Go to the Select all box and click Select everyone. Click email. You can choose from a whole bunch of filters.
Engagement on Substack means having a vibrant email list of subscribers who comment, like, restack, share, participate in the chat, buy your books and services, etc.
Having an engagement strategy means creating ways to engage and (therefore) retain your subscribers, i.e., prevent them from unsubscribing.
F
Founding Member:
A third pricing tier.
Top tip:
Unless you have a very good reason to use a third tier or are getting tons of founding members, I suggest turning it off.
It confuses people because “founding” signifies a one-time donation and on Substack it’s ongoing.
Even if you rename it, “founding” appears on Substack’s defaults.
It creates one more thing for people to read in what we want to be a seamless subscription process.
G
Groups:
“Groups” is a layout option that will order your posts according to tags you set up instead of in chronological order.
Top tips:
Groups use tags and TAGS ARE NOT HASHTAGS. We don’t use hashtags on Substack.
All posts with that tag appear in that group on the homepage.
Growth
The two main drivers of growth on Substack are Notes and recommendations. Mentions are also valuable. (See below.)
H
Hero post:
A hero post is a pinned post on your homepage that welcomes people.
It typically has an image (preferably) of you or some other signifier that we’re on yourSubstack. It might be a more essayistic version of your About page, your About page verbatim, or an orientation post to orient your subscribers to your Substack.
Hyperlinks
To hyperlink text:
Highlight the word or phrase first.
Click the hyperlink on the top menu bar.
Paste the URL.
To hyperlink images
Click the image once.
You’ll see a bluish outline.
Scroll up to the top menu bar, click link, and insert the URL.
For color rather than underlined hyperlinks:
Change it in your settings:
I
Importing:
You can migrate subscribers and content from other platforms to Substack—subscribers via a CSV.
A phrase used by writers and creators to signify the act of cutting precious sentences and parts of a post that aren’t actually working despite the fact that we think they’re amazing.
L
Leaderboards:
We have two—
The leaderboard on your publication to gamify sharing your Substack among your subscribers.
Top tip: This was pretty much a bust. I recommend turning it off in your dashboard settings because it adds an extra step when people try to subscribe (and pay!) for your Substack.
What other platforms call “tagging.” (Substack tags are not hashtags!) Mentions are key to connection and publicity on Substack. In my meetings with Substack, they made it very clear that mentions should be used often though not with abandon.5
N
Notes:
Notes is the #1 driver of growth on Substack.
It’s our internal social media Network.
Unlike other social media platforms that privilege frequency, the Notes algorithm (elegantly) privileges engagement. (Like all things on Substack, this could change.)
It’s also a place to promote your and other Substackers’ Notes and posts. We call this “restacking.”6
O
Open rates:
Much is made of open rates and many a Substack writer and creator has obsessed over them, but they don’t actually tell us much given that people can open and delete the email without reading a word and it counts as an “open.”
The supposed “average” on Substack is 40-70%, but I’ve had clients with much lower and a bit higher.
P
Pages:
Create and add a static page to your navigation bar.
A page will not show up in your post feed. It’s a floating page that can only be accessed via the link.
Dashboard > Settings > Pages (tucked between Navigation and Tags)
Start a new page. It will take you there. Whatever you title that page will be its URL.
You can add it to your navigation bar.
The only way to find a Page is in Settings. It won’t be on your feed or your list of posts.
Paid Strategy:
Yes, you absolutely need one. Turning on paid and using Substack’s default subscribe with a caption will not do it.
Don’t solely do what one person has tried, even if it worked for them. Substack is wholly individual. You need to learn from many successful models, which I’ve distilled into three categories based on the hundreds of clients I’ve helped 1:1 and thousands on Substack Writers at Work. 7
Top tip:
There are three paid strategies that work:
NPR (National Public Radio) Patronage Model = don’t
The Traditional Paywalling Model (which must be done strategically!)
The Service/Teaching Model
Posts:
We have posts, post on our Substacks, and post on Notes. Confusing, I know.
You can put a bit of text at the beginning of each post to ask people to subscribe. A pull quote works well for this.
R
Recommendations:
Substack’s second biggest driver of growth and a very cool way to connect with other Substack writers and creators and suggest other Substacks to your readers.
You can recommend others and they can recommend you.
When people subscribe to a Substack, the Substacks you recommend pop up as suggested Substacks to subscribe to.
Recommendations can appear as blurbs on your Welcome page.
It’s how you share your own and each other’s posts on Substack Notes—much as you would to other social media platforms.
S
Sections:
Sections create separate publications and email lists within your Substack. (AI gives the wrong information about this so be careful.)
To create a new section, go to your publication dashboard, then click on the “Settings” tab. On the Settings page, scroll to “Sections” and click “Add section.”9
Do not use sections to organize and design your homepage or navigation bar; use groups for that (see above).
Settings
Yes, we have three different settings on Substack:
Settings in your dashboard
Settings in posts
Settings in your profile (this should be called “Account”—you’ll find it in the dropdown menu below your avatar)
Your short description is about your publication (vs. your bio/short bio, which is about you—see above).
It’s the first thing web visitors see on your Welcome page (see below), it appears on popups, and it’s visible on Notes when people hover over your name.
How to craft your short description:
When revising your short description, ask yourself:
Who wants to read your publication?
Why do readers want to read your publication?
What do they get (motivation, humor, breaking news, professional development)?
Tags are not hashtags and do not play a role in discoverability.
Tags are a way to categorize your content for design and organization into groups.
“Groups” is a layout option that will order your posts according to tags you set up instead of in chronological order. In the image below, the tag is “Writing on Substack.” All posts with that tag appear in that group on the homepage.
Set up Tags that will act as categories/organizers of your content.
Go back through your old posts, edit, click Update, and create those tags where it says Add tags:
Go to Settings > Brand> Theme > Homepage. Choose Groups.
Add the tags (they should autofill) using the PLUS sign and order them as you like.
You can also do this in Advanced Layouts:
Video
We have three ways to include video:
Video posts, which you can find on the dropdown menu under Posts on your dashboard
Video embeds, which you can find on the menu bar on posts and which can appear anywhere in the post
Pasting the URL of a YouTube video anywhere in the post
Below are additional resources for paid subscribers and Mastermind members to Substack Writers at Work, including How to Write or Revamp your About Page
