I almost didn’t write this one.
Because every “Substack tips” article out there says the same five things.
Write consistently. Engage with your niche. Use Notes. Blah blah blah.
You’ve read it. I’ve read it. We’re all tired.
So here’s what actually changed on this platform in the last year, and what you should do about it. No recycled advice. Just what’s real right now.
Rule 1: Your followers might not even see your Notes anymore
This one caught a lot of people off guard, myself included.
Substack quietly flipped how the Notes feed works.
It used to show you stuff from people you followed. Made sense, right? You follow someone, you see their posts.
Not anymore.
In late 2025, Substack changed the algorithm so the feed no longer prioritizes content from people you follow.
Now most of what shows up comes from creators you’ve never even heard of.
Here’s the weird part. This is actually good news if you’re small.
Your Notes can now reach completely new audiences without you doing anything extra, because the algorithm is spreading discovery around instead of just serving your existing bubble.
But if you built your whole strategy around “my loyal followers will always see me,” that’s gone. Your old subscribers might not catch your Notes anymore.
Which means you can’t lean on loyalty alone. You have to keep earning attention every single time you post.
What to actually do: stop writing Notes like private messages to your regulars. Write them like you’re talking to a stranger scrolling past for the first time.
Because that’s who’s mostly seeing them now.
Rule 2: A picture or a clip beats plain text, whether you like it or not
I’m a writer. Words are my thing.
I resisted the visual push for a long time too.
But the numbers don’t care about my feelings. One in three Notes now includes a photo or video, and that share keeps growing.
Substack even redesigned their media tab into a scrollable feed built for this exact kind of content.
You don’t need a camera crew.
A screenshot of a quote, a photo of your notebook, a 20-second phone video of you talking through an idea. That’s enough.
The point is you’re breaking up the wall of text that the algorithm now treats as less scroll-stoppy.
Rule 3: Restacks are the new currency, not likes
Likes feel nice. They don’t do much.
A restack is different.
When someone restacks your post, it lands in front of their entire audience with their name attached, like a personal recommendation. That kind of endorsement travels.
One good restack from someone with a decent following can genuinely double your reach in a day.
So here’s a practical move most people skip: at the end of a piece, don’t just ask people to “like and subscribe.” Ask them, plainly, to restack it if it helped them.
Say it in normal words.
“If this saved you some time, a restack helps more than you’d think.”
People respond to specific, honest asks a lot more than generic ones.
Rule 4: Substack wants to be a TV channel now, and that changes distribution
This part genuinely surprised me.
In January 2026, Substack launched Substack TV, an app for Apple TV and Google TV, so people can watch creator videos and livestreams on their actual television.
They’re not stopping there either.
There’s a Recording Studio for producing video and audio content, and livestream tools that keep getting upgraded.
Substack even uses AI to automatically pull short highlight clips out of longer video recordings, so creators can repost them to Notes or to YouTube Shorts.
You don’t have to become a video creator overnight. I’m not one either, and I still write words for a living.
But you should know the platform is pouring resources into video and live content, and that usually means the discovery feed starts favoring it.
Even one short video introduction of yourself, sitting in front of your camera for two minutes, tends to build more trust than another wall of text ever will.
Rule 5: Free-to-paid conversion is way lower than the gurus tell you
This is the one nobody wants to say out loud.
Free-to-paid conversion on Substack usually sits around 2 to 3 percent.
That means if you’ve got 1,000 free subscribers, you might get 20 to 30 of them to actually pay you.
I’ve seen creators quietly quit because they expected 10 or 15 percent conversion, based on some screenshot they saw on Twitter. That screenshot was probably one outlier account on a good month, not the norm.
Knowing the real number changes how you plan.
If you want $500 a month from paid subs at $8/month, you need roughly 60-65 paying subscribers. At a 2.5% conversion rate, that means you need somewhere around 2,500 free subscribers first.
That’s not a discouraging number. It’s just the real one, so you can actually plan your growth instead of guessing.
Rule 6: Don’t put all your eggs in the subscription basket
The creators doing well right now aren’t relying on paid subscriptions alone.
They’re running courses, coaching calls, digital products, affiliate deals, and sponsorships alongside their newsletter.
Think of Substack less like your store and more like your storefront window. It’s where people discover you and decide to trust you.
What you actually sell them doesn’t have to live inside Substack at all.
A simple starting point: pick one thing you already know how to do that other writers on your topic struggle with.
Package it as a small paid resource, $15 to $40 range, something specific and useful. Not a giant course. A focused fix for one problem.
That’s usually the first real income most creators see, long before subscriptions catch up.
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No paywall. No mandatory subscription. No holding the best ideas hostage behind a premium tier.
If this issue gave you an idea worth trying, saved you time, or simply made you think differently, you can help keep THP going.
Rule 7: Bigger players are moving in, so niche down harder
Something’s shifting quietly in the background.
Media companies, think tanks, academic institutions, and B2B organizations are starting to launch their own Substack publications as owned-media channels, using the subscription model to build direct revenue outside of advertising.
That means the “general newsletter about life and business” lane is getting crowded fast, by people with actual budgets and existing audiences.
Your move isn’t to compete on scale. It’s to go narrower than feels comfortable.
Not “personal finance,” but “personal finance for people who quit their corporate job at 30.”
The tighter your angle, the harder it is for a big institutional account to out-write you on it, because they’re built for broad appeal and you’re not.
Rule 8: Readers can smell AI writing from a mile away now, and they’re annoyed by it
This one’s personal for me.
I write with AI tools most of the time, for research or a first pass. Most serious creators do now.
But there’s a specific flatness readers have gotten really good at spotting.
Same rhythm every paragraph. Same fake-humble “here’s the truth nobody tells you” opener. Same three-item lists with a summary sentence tacked on.
Your comments section will tell you if readers noticed. Mine has, more than once, and it stings a little every time.
The fix isn’t avoiding AI tools entirely.
It’s putting a real, specific, slightly messy detail into every piece that only you could know.
A number that’s oddly precise. A mistake you made last Tuesday. A joke that only makes sense if you actually did the thing.
That’s the part no model fills in for you, because it didn’t live your week.
What I’d actually do this week
Skip trying to fix everything at once. Pick two things from this list.
If I were starting today, I’d start asking for restacks directly instead of hoping people do it on their own.
Everything else can wait a month.
Substack changes fast enough that whatever’s “new” today will be normal by the time you’ve mastered it anyway. Just don’t fall for the idea that you need every feature.
You need the two or three that actually match how you already write and who you’re writing for.
That’s the part nobody tells you.
Not because it’s a secret. Just because “do less, but do it on purpose” doesn’t make for a very exciting headline.
HOW CAN I HELP YOU?
Want to build something online but don’t know how, or don’t have the time?
I can help you build and grow your online business.
1. LinkedIn: I can write your posts, manage your account, and help you grow your audience.
2. Newsletter: I can start, write, grow, and monetize your newsletter.
3. Digital Products: I can turn your idea into a digital product and get it ready to sell.
Want to work together? → Work With THP
Prefer to do it yourself?
I’ve also built tools that can help you do it yourself:
1. Substack Note OS - The system I used to grow my newsletter to 13,500+ through Substack Notes. Get 437 ready-to-use Note templates, the strategies behind them, a content calendar, performance tracker, and the original viral Notes they’re based on.
2. OPENED - Write great newsletters that actually get opened. Get 150+ subject-line frameworks, newsletter psychology, proven angles, swipe files, and a diagnostic system to understand why your open rates are low.
3. 30 Digital Product Ideas - Stop wondering “What should I sell?” Get 30 researched and validated product ideas, with proof of demand, pricing, difficulty, tools, and a step-by-step plan to get your first customers.
It feels like it’s slowly becoming the same as every other platform and that makes me sad 😔
Thank you. I’m new here and wondered why, with 100+ followers, the response to my notes was on average 1-2 likes… mostly none. Feels a bit lonely on my page, even when I reach out to writers with positive feedback on their articles… I’m wondering if it’s really all it looks to be with my home page filled with positive notes of people so in love with Substack… even that and all seems sus.