Thanks for the comment! The algo seems to go totally wonky sometimes, and then all bets are off. For the "normal" times, though, you should be able to improve it substantially. Let me know how it works out.
Good question! I've been contemplating that one and need to run some experiments, but past experience tells me that the best way to get subscribers is to expose as many people in your ideal audience as possible to your content and then offer them an incentive to subscribe. You have to make it so that it's more attractive to become a subscriber than it is to sit on the sidelines. This would apply to followers as well as non-followers.
This presumes your followers are in your ideal audience. They may not be and may be following you for other reasons. Some of your followers may not be ideal candidates for subscribers.
wow Thanks for the reply, all good suggestions, I think I need to find out what to offer subscribers that others havent, seems everyone has the same old, same old benefits and maybe leaving possible subscribers on the sidelines as well. It would be great if you took on the task to figure out about the followers list on substack, instead of substack saying here you go have at it… The followers list is a tool and should be able to use it, instead of sitting on the sidelines.
Sorry about the two colors, I did something that made it happened and can’t figure out how to undo it. LOL
Looks like you figured it out. You need a space after a full stop (.) or the system assumes it's a URL and hyperlinks it. I noticed you're using sections because you actually have several newsletters going on with what I assume is very different content. That means your finance people won't necessarily subscribe to your other content. By definition then, you have multiple ideal audiences, so you're going to have followers who don't subscribe.
True… but if you think on it manifesting money is one part of the magick essence, I talk about daily life and how to improve it by using magick tools such as intuition, candles and crystals. Candles and crystals are a huge industry that brings in alot of money including herbs. Some may think its cra cra talk but I have had alot of experience and receive good results in working with these tools. Magick is fun. and can easily be incorporated into daily life. Im basically balancing the two. Like you say, they are not quite in balance yet. Im still trying to figure out the puzzle pieces and how they work in the program and connect them together. Cool tip, I will remember that. I never did proper grammar before but now with ai, it helps clean it up alot. Though I do spell (the word spell is a magick word all its own) some words in different was to drawn attention to my notes and or articles.
I get the connection. Only time will tell if your followers and subscribers get it. When you make sections, you effectively create a divide because people can subscribe to them independently. So the content might be related in your mind, but the structure of the newsletter indicates it's separate. Something to ponder and track when thinking about conversions from follower to subscriber, that's all.
Thank you so much, Kurt, for all of this. I have no idea how to discover any of this on my own, but I can follow directions and yours are perfect. I will enjoy the peaceful seaside shush of curated Notes now.
I believe this post is great for discovery and notes. but if you already have a list of substacks that you are following, there is a better way to group them by category.
The good old RSS protocol. Every substack has a secret URL to convert a newsletter into a RSS feed. From there you can use any RSS aggregator to group your favourite substacks by whatever category you want
Yes! For organizing newsletters and RSS content in general, RSS readers are a good way to go. RSS has kind of fallen out of favor (and RIP Google Reader), but Feedly is useful. Thanks for the idea.
This is great! Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. In addition to the great tips I also find it very refreshing to find a post about Substack which is not about growth but about how to make the reader's experience more joyful. Will go now and try out a few things.
Replace [username] with your username, which is also referred to as your handle.
You can then unfollow each one in the list.
To unsubscribe from publications, go to: https://substack.com/settings and you will see "Subscriptions." From there, you can unsubscribe from each publication.
I just wanna create an action light item list that kind of defines an item for every day. And then has a whole group of membership that checks in once that’s been completed. Does anybody think about that?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean or how it's relevant to what we're talking about here in this post, but if my guess is right, it sounds like a collaborative to do list or project tool (Todoist, Monday, Asana, Click Up, etc.) would be the thing for that.
Kurt SOOO glad I found you! Beautifully written and completely helpful. 🙏 thank you! I talk about “curating your feed” for socials sooo much. I believe it’s crucial for platform enjoyment AND mental health. 🦋
Ironically I use some of this to discover sheet music for my studio and never thought about applying it here. 🎹
Now my mind is reeling to reverse engineer this for discovery… 😜
Anyway, wonderful to find you AND to learn. ☺️ Hope your day is fab!
That's genius way of using Google advanced search Kurt! Beautiful!
Thank you! It saves me a lot of time.
Yes I never tried advance search in my life! Thanks for opening my eyes!
You're welcome. I use it all the time.
Came from Reddit, subscribed :)
Awesome! Thank you so much!
only on substack do you have to go outside of substack to properly search for stuff on substack 🤣
my feed is still not perfect, so will give a few of these a go, thx for such a comprehensive summary
Thanks for the comment! The algo seems to go totally wonky sometimes, and then all bets are off. For the "normal" times, though, you should be able to improve it substantially. Let me know how it works out.
ok this is cool but how can we utilize our follower list and covert them to subscribers ? Thanks
Good question! I've been contemplating that one and need to run some experiments, but past experience tells me that the best way to get subscribers is to expose as many people in your ideal audience as possible to your content and then offer them an incentive to subscribe. You have to make it so that it's more attractive to become a subscriber than it is to sit on the sidelines. This would apply to followers as well as non-followers.
This presumes your followers are in your ideal audience. They may not be and may be following you for other reasons. Some of your followers may not be ideal candidates for subscribers.
wow Thanks for the reply, all good suggestions, I think I need to find out what to offer subscribers that others havent, seems everyone has the same old, same old benefits and maybe leaving possible subscribers on the sidelines as well. It would be great if you took on the task to figure out about the followers list on substack, instead of substack saying here you go have at it… The followers list is a tool and should be able to use it, instead of sitting on the sidelines.
Sorry about the two colors, I did something that made it happened and can’t figure out how to undo it. LOL
Looks like you figured it out. You need a space after a full stop (.) or the system assumes it's a URL and hyperlinks it. I noticed you're using sections because you actually have several newsletters going on with what I assume is very different content. That means your finance people won't necessarily subscribe to your other content. By definition then, you have multiple ideal audiences, so you're going to have followers who don't subscribe.
True… but if you think on it manifesting money is one part of the magick essence, I talk about daily life and how to improve it by using magick tools such as intuition, candles and crystals. Candles and crystals are a huge industry that brings in alot of money including herbs. Some may think its cra cra talk but I have had alot of experience and receive good results in working with these tools. Magick is fun. and can easily be incorporated into daily life. Im basically balancing the two. Like you say, they are not quite in balance yet. Im still trying to figure out the puzzle pieces and how they work in the program and connect them together. Cool tip, I will remember that. I never did proper grammar before but now with ai, it helps clean it up alot. Though I do spell (the word spell is a magick word all its own) some words in different was to drawn attention to my notes and or articles.
I get the connection. Only time will tell if your followers and subscribers get it. When you make sections, you effectively create a divide because people can subscribe to them independently. So the content might be related in your mind, but the structure of the newsletter indicates it's separate. Something to ponder and track when thinking about conversions from follower to subscriber, that's all.
True, this was very helpful and a fun and informative conversation. Thank you for your help and insights…. So, you gave me an idea for an article…
Thank you so much, Kurt, for all of this. I have no idea how to discover any of this on my own, but I can follow directions and yours are perfect. I will enjoy the peaceful seaside shush of curated Notes now.
You're welcome! Let me know if you have any questions about the process.
I agree!
Thanks for taking the time to put this together - super helpful Especially the Google hack!
You're welcome!
I believe this post is great for discovery and notes. but if you already have a list of substacks that you are following, there is a better way to group them by category.
The good old RSS protocol. Every substack has a secret URL to convert a newsletter into a RSS feed. From there you can use any RSS aggregator to group your favourite substacks by whatever category you want
Yes! For organizing newsletters and RSS content in general, RSS readers are a good way to go. RSS has kind of fallen out of favor (and RIP Google Reader), but Feedly is useful. Thanks for the idea.
Okay Kurt and Giuseppe, I'm smart and a technology immigrant at 75, but you two sent my head for a spin! The RSS feed thingy still makes me dizzy.
Okay, I see the eye roll. Stop it! 🤪
This is great! Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. In addition to the great tips I also find it very refreshing to find a post about Substack which is not about growth but about how to make the reader's experience more joyful. Will go now and try out a few things.
You're welcome! I plan to post more Substack shortcuts and "how to use Substack better" tips in the future.
Thanks for sharing
You're welcome! If you have any questions about the process, let me know.
Thank you! Helpful! Is there a way to unsubscribe to a bunch of people at once? I indiscriminately subscribed a lot before I got how it works.
I'm glad you found it helpful! I don't know of a way to unfollow people or unsubscribe from publications in bulk, but...
To see a list of people you're following, go to: https://substack.com/@[username]/following.
Replace [username] with your username, which is also referred to as your handle.
You can then unfollow each one in the list.
To unsubscribe from publications, go to: https://substack.com/settings and you will see "Subscriptions." From there, you can unsubscribe from each publication.
Thanks for this and other gems. I’d given up trying to find who I was following, concluding there was no way on Substack.
You're welcome! It's weird, but they don't make some of this stuff very obvious.
Thank you! Fantastically helpful!
You're welcome! Let me know if you have any more questions.
Saving this post. Ta.
Thank you Darien!!!!
Thanks! I’m looking forward to trying this.
Awesome! Let me know how it goes.
I just wanna create an action light item list that kind of defines an item for every day. And then has a whole group of membership that checks in once that’s been completed. Does anybody think about that?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean or how it's relevant to what we're talking about here in this post, but if my guess is right, it sounds like a collaborative to do list or project tool (Todoist, Monday, Asana, Click Up, etc.) would be the thing for that.
Simply an amazing read!
Thank you!
So far, step 1 done!
Awesome!
Kurt SOOO glad I found you! Beautifully written and completely helpful. 🙏 thank you! I talk about “curating your feed” for socials sooo much. I believe it’s crucial for platform enjoyment AND mental health. 🦋
Ironically I use some of this to discover sheet music for my studio and never thought about applying it here. 🎹
Now my mind is reeling to reverse engineer this for discovery… 😜
Anyway, wonderful to find you AND to learn. ☺️ Hope your day is fab!
Awesome! Thank you! Curation is essential to finding that balance between being too far inside the filter bubble and chaos. 😆 Enjoy!