23 Comments

Karen Bracken

Karen Bracken

just now

I have a substack that I have had for over 2 years. It goes out 7 days a week. As of today when I try to reply to a subscribers comment on my substack I get a form that asks me to create my profile and I cannot leave a reply. What's up??

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BTW, that is the best all time sketch from Python. I linked to it in this post aptly titled "Can We Argue?"

https://riclexel.substack.com/p/can-we-argue?r=bcx26

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Feb 16, 2022·edited Feb 16, 2022Author

I'm amazed that so many people visited and commented on this post while Substack was having network issues: https://substack.statuspage.io/incidents/crqtxj13ylwm. Did you encounter any problems today in getting Substack pages to load?

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yes- literally at the exact moment I was commenting here! I was unaware of the issues page - I subscribed to the alerts, thanks for the heads up

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Feb 16, 2022·edited Feb 16, 2022Liked by Sub Pub

I like Substack. The prospect of starting a website, having an email list client, promoting essentially out of nowhere with no community was daunting. I’ve found a lot of good people here and quite a few cross promotion opportunities. It’s great. There have been steady improvements to the interface which I’ve been here a short enough time to perceive it’s constant.

I will admit the free speech wrangling distresses me. There are certain people who will always have to fight structures to be heard. On the other side there will always be phobic opinions and I guess it’ll be that way on every platform on every corner of the world.

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Hi Chevanne, totally agree with your comments. Just subscribed to you platform. You got me at your About page. The I read the Love Deluxe post. Sounds like love spread the pleasure/pain around. Maybe there might be a collaboration between us?

thanks and can't wait to read more of you

Ric

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Thank you! 🥰

Yeah, we could collaborate. You can email me at theflare@substack.com

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I've been Substacking for 6 months and love how Substack encourages readers to subscribe. Compared to setting up my own email infrastructure, on something like MailerLite, it's super easy to ask people to sign up, show an archive of past posts and schedule content. Setting up webpages to complement a newsletter is time consuming and (more) expensive without substack.

When I go paid, that whole process will be way easier with Substack compared to a normal email service provider. All the infrastructure is already there for promoting the benefits, showing the different subscription plans to readers, requesting and processing payments, which is awesome.

Complaint: I'd love to be able to get money a different way than Stripe, because I'm in Australia but want to charge USD to my subscribers. Stripe will only pay out to me in Australian dollars but their currency exchange rates are terrible. They also levy a high fee for "offshore" payments. As a result, I end up with a much lower proportion of the gross subscriber revenue than a US-based writer.

Also: templates! Please!

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I love Substack - I went through the GROW Sessions and it has helped me. My first post was 12/30/20 and I have over 550 emails and 25 paid subs. I always want more, but am learning to be happy with slow and steady growth. Substack has improved. The sections ability has changed my platform. Still learning how to use and apply the metrics. If anyone has a handle on that , please help me! I am a total novice there.

I love the actual real diversity - OF THOUGHT. And Substack is standing up to the crybullies. It's not a racist haven if you can read Steven Beschloss here.

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I’ve been on Substack for over a year and seen many improvements to the platform. I do wish they would include a way to categorize or tag my content. I post a broad range of historical content. Categories would be a useful search feature for my readers.

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cool platform, I love history - you have the same format, all you need are the sections

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Have you tried adding sections? search settings for sections, super easy, then go back and edit each post to send to the section you want it in. check out my Substack, I just did it last week. You can also re-format the look, I chose magazine syle, bc like you, my writing is all over the place

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I tried what you suggest - but I'm only offered the chance to create new Newsletter or Podcast to host within my Substack. Not really what I want to do. Maybe you have more options, because your Substack is a paid subscriber option?

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I think sections are available in both free and paid newsletters. Substack has a useful guide to sections at https://on.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-publication-sections.

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I thought that too, but try this: click add a new section, then click newsletter. Fill out the name and when it is created, find a post you want to move to the new section and edit it, when it asks which section choose the new one

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Thanks for the tip. I saw the Sections option. But I thought it meant that readers would subscribe to individual Sections rather than the entire Substack. I guess I was wrong.

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you can give them the option to opt out of a section when emailed, but they can click on the section and find it

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Feb 15, 2022·edited Feb 15, 2022Liked by Sub Pub

I have been on Substack for < 6 months.

(1) I have seen STEADY improvement in the editor.

(2) I have requested help twice and both times communication and service very good.

(3) I have used a few of their writer support forums and am generally satisfied.

(4) I have been pleasantly surprised by the Substack GO program.

All in all, I am happy with my choice. I have never Blogged or Newslettered before but have grand plans. Thus far I have been satisfied in most ways. The free-tier statistics are not that great. I am growing a following and think that the support I get for a free-tier is pretty good.

I think that discovery of content is not particularly impressive. I post 3X per week and I prefer to dwell on how far I have come. I wish for more options in the Editor but minimalist has in fact led me to focus more on my writing.

Functions that I think would be knock it out of the park

(1) Specific guidance on Digital Rights Management

(2) Ability to full justify text on left and right border

(3) Ability to anchor text around graphics

(4) The ability to place multiple images horizontally

(5) Ability to place multiple buttons on the same line

(6) I post in advance and would love a gadget to manage currently scheduled posts as a group

(7) Bundled writing support like Grammarly would be AWESOME

(8) Allow the creation of true templates

https://markdolan.substack.com/archive?sort=new&r=dfh66

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What do you mean by “guidance on Digital Rights Management? If you’re looking for a way to protect your assets on the Internet, join the millions of other content creators in that quest.

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What I mean is guidance on what is fair use in use of others materials. I hear this from many in other environments. An easier mechanism to do proper attribution of other content like music for example. I don't care what people do with my stuff at this point.

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To the list of formatting improvements I'd add the ability to insert drop caps. What's very funny is a heard a podcast interview a ways back with of one of the founders where he said that for a while drop caps was the most requested feature!

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I'm happy here at Substack. I'm especially happy with the way the staff tries to take care of our needs. The Thursday Office Hours are a treasure. It feels like a real community (but not a club).

If I have problems I can usually get an answer from support. So far, no real complaints.

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Yes ditto on Thursday Office Hours. When I started attending on the regular I stopped feeling so much like a lone astroid.

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