I removed the tactic behind my fastest Substack growth to see whether original content could replace it. I ended up publishing more, reaching fewer people, and discovering my real bottleneck.
This is such an honest breakdown. It's so easy to get caught up in vanity metrics on Substack by watching the subscriber counter tick upward feels like validation, but as you pointed out, a number doesn't tell you if anyone is actually sticking around.
Stopping the blind transactional loop is crucial because it forces you to face your real baseline. At the same time, I’ve found that finding those rare, high-quality connections hidden inside those threads - rather than just farming numbers - can still lead to genuine, highly engaged readership.
Looking forward to seeing how your targeted experiment pans out with Subshack!
The problem isn’t necessarily the thread itself, it’s treating every interaction there as growth. A few genuine connections can be far more valuable than dozens of reciprocal subscribers.
That’s actually one of the things I want Subshack to help surface better: which interactions lead to real readers, not just bigger numbers.
I’ll definitely share the results once I have enough data to make the comparison meaningful.
This is such an honest breakdown. It's so easy to get caught up in vanity metrics on Substack by watching the subscriber counter tick upward feels like validation, but as you pointed out, a number doesn't tell you if anyone is actually sticking around.
Stopping the blind transactional loop is crucial because it forces you to face your real baseline. At the same time, I’ve found that finding those rare, high-quality connections hidden inside those threads - rather than just farming numbers - can still lead to genuine, highly engaged readership.
Looking forward to seeing how your targeted experiment pans out with Subshack!
Exactly — that’s the nuance I’m seeing too.
The problem isn’t necessarily the thread itself, it’s treating every interaction there as growth. A few genuine connections can be far more valuable than dozens of reciprocal subscribers.
That’s actually one of the things I want Subshack to help surface better: which interactions lead to real readers, not just bigger numbers.
I’ll definitely share the results once I have enough data to make the comparison meaningful.