My Brutal Thoughts On Substack After 7 Months (And Growing to 1,700+ Subs)

The future of online writing will be decided in 2025.

Author’s shirt choice? Y/N

I joined Substack in 2023.

But I did nothing with it. At the time, the platform was still new. Many of the best features, such as Notes, were still a year or so away. I posted a few times but decided to double down on M3dium.

But then, in July 2024, I decided to come back.

I’d hear of rumbles of a change. A lot of writers were switching over to Substack from Medium. Algorithm and distribution changes altered writer payouts and views. Even with 84,000 Medium followers, it was time to diversify.

Here’s my brutal thoughts on Substack after 7 months…

Substack solved a real business problem for me.

I had a functioning sales funnel.

But one thing was missing: short-form writing.

For the last 5–6 years, I focused only on long-form writing. I am good at writing 600–800 word articles. But now, I wanted to add short-form fuel to my top of funnel.

I had a couple of options:

• Threads.
• Twitter (or X).
• Substack Notes.

I had a few writers tell me about the Notes feature on Substack. It was the platform’s version of Twitter.

But I still did my research.

After experimenting:

• I found Twitter confusing and hard to grow on.
• I found Threads UI/UX difficult.

I opted for Substack Notes.

When a platform creates a new feature, they will prioritize the feature. I could get incredible reach and engagement on Substack Notes by repurposing long-form content.

This led to more sales, customers, and clients.

I also had a platform where I could test short-form ideas. I’d post a seed of an idea on Substack. See what traction it generated.

Sometimes, they stayed as seeds.