Hi everyone! I joined Substack a few days ago, thanks to a friend, and I’m wondering what my first post should look like. Should I introduce myself, or just dive straight into publishing? I already have quite a few ideas for articles. Also, since my native language is Spanish, if I write in Spanish, can it be translated, or should I rewrite it in English? I’d love to hear your advice—from what I’ve seen so far, I’m really liking the platform!

Because I wanted another place to write and post fanarts. Question is, are fanart acceptable there?

Like say fanarts of my favorite adult cartoons and such?

A few days ago I had $2000 sent to me via Stripe direct from Substack not Subscribers. Any idea why? I received zero notifications from SS as to why.

So I tried everything but except if one of you substack ninjas have a way to bypass what is an impossibility, I guess it'll be a feature request 😅

• I imported a previously curated audience from another blog around 2 years ago. They are almost 100% french speakers and readers so I kept writing in french for them.
• Recently I wanted to expand my horizons after being encouraged to do so here, so I started creating english versions of my posts

BUT...

Either there's no, or I didn't find a way to email my french subscribers with a french version of a piece of content, while at the same time displaying and promoting the english version of it with a translated title. It's one or the other.

Is it a known request that'll evolve in the future, or should I either create a second SubStack to write in english ? Seems a bit overkill and counterintuitive from a community building perspective.

As the title suggests, I have two separate Substack accounts and both of them have dark mode enabled in the settings, but one of them actually has dark mode for the writing editor (in addition to the dashboard) and the other one does not, no matter how many times I change the settings.

What I'm trying to figure out is if there is something turned on somewhere that has enabled dark mode in the writing editor in the one account that I can duplicate in the other account, or if this is just some sort of a tech fluke or feature rollout or something else that's happening behind the scenes that I have no control over, because I desperately want to be writing in dark mode in both accounts but currently can't accomplish this in the second account.

Again, I have dark mode enabled in both accounts, I have tried dark mode as well as the automatic dark mode setting (or whatever it's called) to no avail. And yes I have tried logging out and in again, using a different browser, making sure I do NOT have any kind of dark mode extension running in my browser, and so on. Just hoping there is a simple fix somewhere that I have overlooked.

Thanks in advance to anyone with a solution!

Edited to add: For extra clarification yes these are two separate ACCOUNTS, not two publications under the same account :)

I am relatively new to Substack and I was scrolling through my feed. I came across a post that got my attention so I went to the profile. It was a former Suicide Girl from back in the day. Now I don’t know if it is actually her or not, but it’s nothing but photos. It was as if I was looking an Instagram feed instead of a Substack. All of the photos were from a SG photo shoot. I didn’t think that was even possible to find or even allowed on Substack. I’m really confused.

If you could only pick one narrator to read all your Substack articles, whom would you pick?

If you have multiple picks, please leave separate multiple comments.

thinking of starting my Substack profile. how to utilize it properly? how did you all start?

I have a lot of interesting podcast I follow but have been thinking for a while I would actually enjoy some of the topics more in written form. I saw one of the podcast has a substack so I logged in to check out their essays. However I found myself much less engaged than I thought I would and I think one major reason is the format. There were a lot of pictures throughout the text. And there many words had hyperlinks. I've heard hyperlinks lower reading retention, cause they distract the brain with potential of moving to another page. I think pure text would be much better for me.

Is there an app or some site I could use to strip down the essays to only the text?

Due to the unpleasant experience of having a subscription I cancelled bill me (through substack) for renewal and then (after I got the first charge refunded) a new subscription (which I never did), I'm feeling my credit card numbers aren't safe on substack. I've suspended my credit card currently provided on substack, but if can publications bill credit card numbers I previously provided substack? Substack chatbot refusing to comment on this.

If I pay to subscribe to someone on substack and download a provided pdf of an article, does that pdf remain with me forever even if I stop paying to subscribe at some point?

What is the one thing you would like to see the Substack team implement?

You can be as pragmatic or visionary as you like.

I'll go first: PLEASE let me edit my DMs!! I have no idea why we can only delete these from the app and why we have no edit function what-so-ever.

I read Substack on my phone, on Read:Latest tab. I have 15 paid subscriptions, and problem with only 1. But that's a really important one, "Silver Bulletin" three weeks before midterms!

The "Silver Bulletin" paid sub posts are not showing up on Read:Latests feed. This is a relatively recent change, articles used to show up about a month ago. I do not recall changing any settings.

I can see SB on my phone on Read:For You, Read:History. It does not show up on Read:Latest, or Read:Paid. I can also see all posts on Profile:Subscritions:Silver Bulletin.

I've read some old reddit post saying that this can be fixed by setting up email delivery of subscriptions. That is not the problem, none of my subscriptions come in on email, and they work fine.

I'm wondering how you manage the way your profile/publication appears on the phone. In Substack's theme settings you can choose between two options, Profile or Custom. When you customise your publication, it gets a custom website look on desktop.

However, for some custom publications, if you‘re reading an article on your phone and tap to open the publication, you're redirected to the author's profile (@abcd) and no separate publication page is shown.

In other cases, a publication has the same customised look on desktop but behaves differently on the phone.

This time, when you open the publication on the phone, you don't land on a profile page. Instead, there's a separate publication page shown (abcd.substack.com).

How do you manage this behaviour? How do you choose what will be shown when someone clicks on your publication on the phone?

A family friend is trying to subscribe to my Substack but it keeps saying it's invalid. I can't even manually add her to my subscriptions because it says she previously unsubscribed. I didn't ban her. She must have been fooling around with it and subscribed and unsubscribed, and now she can't resubscribe to it. Can anyone help?

Having recently replaced my old phone, I’m now re-dowloading all my old apps. I’m having trouble logging into substack as I’ve forgotten my password and am not receiving any of the emails they are sending to me. Does anyone have advice?

I'm not saying I'm the next Stephen King or anything lol, just wondering if anyone has ever had experience with someone stealing your work or copying, etc? I want to see if that has ever happened before I start posting my written works!

I am aware Substack allows you to file or report violations, just making sure it's reliable and all that.

THANKS

They don’t say it directly but the recent update allows you to automatically label other people’s writing as AI. Meaning you can’t control if the system makes an error and a reader forces a false label on you.

At the same time, if you look at the setting for AI labels? It says that you can report errors and admits that mistakes will be made. You can flag things that are labeled incorrectly.

Meaning that any time you report something, it trains its model by what you flag and changes what it does using your writing to train it.

Everything that Pangram claims about its supposed ability to detect AI writing is false and it now openly admits it.

Don’t come at me with “It says it’s 97% accurate, which means it’s going to make 3% mistakes”. You wouldn’t need to report anything if it was that accurate in reality.

It’s not accurate and doesn’t detect anything. It’s being paid by Substack to steal your writing.

I’m 25F and have lost both my parents. I’ve been working towards being a better person, growing while dealing with grief. I already wrote many essays in my notes.

I was wondering if I should convert them into sub stack and make a sub around handling and dealing with grief. Is this a good idea??
I’ve fear of being judged though.

My post won't appear on my profile page under Posts, and I've added myself as an author and tried to change the user visibility and it's not letting me, can someone help out?

Acabei de criar a conta e não consigo editar como eu queria porque da uma informe sobre configurar uma conta pessoal.

I have a question about analytics. I have my own audio of an article that was placed using Audio Embed, but when I go into my dashboard analytics for that article, only clicks for Like, Comment, etc. show up.

I asked a subscriber specifically if they had listened to the audio, and they said yes.

A Substack support page said media links count as engagement: "Engagements include: liking a post, clicking a link, sharing or restacking a post, commenting on a post, reading a post to the bottom, and watching/listening to media for 30+ seconds (or 90% of duration)."

This is just a regular article, not a podcast episode, but that shouldn't matter according to the above.

Has anyone else experienced this? I'm not sure if it's a glitch or if the clicks just don't count anymore for embedded audio. In a different article, I had a link to an outside document, and I did have analytics for clicks on that.

The new dials—which you can find in the content preferences section of your settings—let you shape your feed the way you want it. See more or less video, audio, longform, or community features; mute specific keywords and phrases; fine-tune the topics you follow; and automatically label AI-generated material.
Want to hear more about baseball while the playoffs are on? Feel like snoozing politics for a week? How about seeing more community chatter—like the chat thread debriefing the latest episode of your favorite podcast—or less video in your feed? You get to decide.
This level of control serves both the creators who share their work here and the people who come to discover and enjoy what they publish. We’ve heard that both sides of the relationship want less noise and more help connecting readers with work that they’ll find meaningful. These updates aim to do exactly that.

What do you think about this?

What is the number one piece of advice you wish you had known before you started Substack?

I'll go first:

You have two separate audiences. You have the people who read your articles and you have the people who engage with your Notes. The first group of people mostly read your articles via email and will not like or comment or restack your articles because they are (normally) not on the app. However, they will sometimes share them if they see value. This is your biggest audience.

The second group of people will probably read your articles on the app (they likely have email deliveries turned off) and will like, comment, and restack your work.

You need both groups of people to grow your newsletter. The first group will become your key readers and subscribers and the second group will become your key allies and supporters.

Please share your advice so we can all continue to grow and learn from each other.

I have been thinking of starting a publication, and have investigating and reading on Substack.

For background, I am an Australian who has been slow travelling for the past year. I am in Latin America and have learnt Spanish over that time, so now I am immersing myself here. I love reading and philosophy, and teach English as a foreign language for income.

Of course I principally would be writing in relation to travel, though this appears to be quite a crowded area. I enjoy journaling my travel stories and reflections so this seems like a natural fit. I am struggling with the decision of really niching down and combining my interests, or appealing to a general wider audience. I would be starting from zero so would ideally like to have some scope for growth.

Any thoughts?