A Substack Primer for Noobs

Cuz, now that I've even using it for two whole weeks, I'm an effing expert!

A friend asked,

What is Substack and how does it work?

And next thing I knew, I’d compiled what amounts to a Primer that I imagine others might benefit (if it finds its way through algorithm). So:

What is Substack?

If Facebook and Instagram are crack and heroin, then Substack might be methadone. It seems to serve a lot of the same functions, but with a higher signal-to-noise ratio. That the platform is based on subscriptions rather than advertising makes a world of difference. For that reason alone, it seems there has been an exodus from some of the older social media platforms to Substack, especially in the past month,

How does it work?

Substack started out as a publishing platform for e-newsletter writers - content creation and email list management under one digital roof.

You can have ‘free’ subscribers or paid. The minimum for paid subs is $5/months or $30/year.¹ Getting paid subscribers is a dark art unless you are a very high profile writer like Heather Cox Richardson, who boasts nealry 2-million subscribrers and makes a substantial living from her Substack.

Like just about any other business, even on Substack 20% of the contributors earn 80% of the revenue. But that’s better than the feudal model at Facebook² etal, where 0% of contributors earn any revenue, and the oligarchs who own the plantation make it all.

As near as I’ve been able to figure so far, Substack has three essential functions:

1. Posts:

The primary content-creation feature of Substack is “Posts.” That is the ‘newsletter’ service that the platform launched in 2017. Your Posts will be mailed directly to your Subscribers inbox and appear on your ‘external’ Home Page (see below).

2. Notes:

In the past year (?) Substack has added a more familiar “social media” -type component, – “Notes” – which enable short form entries like what you’d put on FB or IG, where “Posts” is a good word processor for the longer/more substantive essay-like content.

3. Chat:

In the past 24 hours I’ve determined that there is a third useful function called “Chat” which is an open dialog between the writer/publisher and all their subscribers or followers. If an account you have subscribed to is popular, the chat function can generate a lot of notifications, so you might want to mute it, which is easy enough to do. Just look for the ‘three-dot-menu’ in the upper right corner.

Getting Started: Your ‘Home’ Pages

You create an account in the usual way: email address, password, verification, yada yada. Once your account is established, you basically have two “Home Page”s.

One ‘Home Page’ is like the old Facebook ‘wall’ or ’newsfeed’ that shows the content you have subscribed to or follow, and mixes in a bit of what Substack’s algorithm thinks you should see or wants you to see. You get to that Home Page by clicking on your profile photo/icon in the upper right corner and deleting “Home.”

There is a menu of icons on the left for “Inbox,” “Chat” “Notifications” and “Search” and below those is the orange “+” button that you click to start creating content.

If you select “Note” you get a small window to create a quick note (like a Facebook or Instagram ‘post’).

If you select “Post” then a larger window opens that is essentially a simplified word processor. You create your posts/newsletter feed in that word processor window.

I would even go so far as to say that there are actually two ‘Home’ Pages: There is the ‘Internal’ Home Page, where you regulate what you see and read, and the ‘External Home Page,’ which is what other users see when they go looking for your content

The other ‘Home Page’ is the Dashboard, where you manage your own content and how that content appears to others. You get to your Dashboard by choosing the button in the upper right corner of the previously describe ‘Home’ page.

There are a lot of options under the ‘Settings’ tab that determine how your ‘external’ Home page appears to your subscribers or followers.

One nice feature of the Post creation window is it is constantly Auto Saving. If your laptop crashes, you can pick up right where you left off.

Because of the multiple functions that Substack offers, the User Interface takes some getting used to, but like everything else in the virtual world, “it’s intuitive – once you know how to do it.”

However:

Help Is Just A Click Away!

In the Dashboard there is an “Ask Support” chat window in the lower right corner that I have found very useful. It seems to know the User Interface really well. You can ask questions in common English and it knows a precise answer about 90% of the time.

A Couple of Random Asides:

The friend whose query triggered this post is an artist who posts a lot of her paintings on other social media. So I added that even though Substack started primarily as a platform for writers, I do see that there are a lot of artists, painters, photographers etc. who maintain Substacks. Whatever your interests, this forum is growing so rapidly that any new user should be able to find some like-minded fellow travelers – just not, probably in the first twenty minutes.

And under the general heading of “who am I to judge?” I have found that a lot of the writing I encounter here seems like it could use a good editor (i.e. over-written by half or more). Maybe some day they’ll add an “AI Editor” tool. The first critique should be “Dude, you just packed 800 words of content into an 8,000 word Post!”

Here’s What I’ve Come Up With So Far:

click the Title/Image above, then click “Skip” to see my ‘external’ Home Page

I’m still noodling with the branding. “Incorrigible Iconoclast” is what I used for a while as a Facebook profile line. This morning I woke up thinking I might as well say "Narcissistic Know-It-All.” Either shoe fits… 🤪

But Wait… There’s More!

There is a crap-ton more to Substack than what I’ve highlighted here. I hope this will serve as a “tip of the spear” for new users who are wondering which icon to click on next. Maybe it will prove to be of sufficient value that it will find a place in the algorithm. Who the hells knows.

If you found this useful, I hope you’ll…

Or even…

Thank you for your time and attention!

1. I have suggested elsewhere and will repeat here, I think it would useful if Substack offered the option of charging lower paid sub rates. $5/mo over even a handful of subscriptions ads up fast.

2. That link is to an item I wrote on my own website in 2014 entitled We Are All Vassals and Peasants Now. Nice to see the rest of the peasants are finally catching on and leaving the Lords’ Estates to plow their own digital fields.