14 Comments
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Dorothy Sander's avatar

I'm new to Substack. I left 220k followers on Twitter, 150k on Facebook for exactly the reasons you describe. I built a following over 15 years on all the major platforms just to generate the occasional book sale. I told myself I was doing it for altruistic reasons and that income didn't. But what does matter is my time, my writing and meaningful connection. . . Community. It existed for a short time early on in social medias history. But no more. I am inordinately grateful to be here. Now. The last algorithm shifts on FB killed my page completely after 15 years of building organically. FB doesn't like people who don't take the few pennies they earn from writing and giving them back to them. So I'm all in here. It's sanity. I have time to write and read, meet new people and build a meaningful community without endless hours of searching for just the right image or quote or turn of phrase to capture a few extra followers who won't be back tomorrow. Thanks for all your information, insights and guidance. I read as many as I can!

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Dr Alex Kennerly Vasquez's avatar

Agreed and likewise – I got blocked and banned off of all the platforms because I talk about health and nutrition and immunity, and of course that became a taboo topic at the start of the globalist plan. Hopefully this platform will stay true to it’s founding ideas

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Hazel Montserrat's avatar

Love the idea of notes being the town square! I’m here for it! And the coffee shop with friends. Definitely what it feels like. I love how you broke this down. It’s very affirming how I’ve been moving. This definetly feels good to my soul. On Substack I feel like I can breathe and share my heart.

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Dr Alex Kennerly Vasquez's avatar

Thanks this was a really excellent piece

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James Colistra's avatar

I really appreciated this post, I plan to follow a similar strategy.

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Chris Peden's avatar

How do we know that our Substack won't delete our subscriber list?

I bought your course.

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Mary McGillis's avatar

Thank you for a great guide, Wes! ❤️❤️❤️

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Meera Menon's avatar

Thanks for the detailed breakdown but I'm not ready yet to give up my sovial mefia accounts as I've my close friends, relatives, cousins, university graduate and post graduate class mates neighbors and my former as well as my current employers and colleagues there with whom I shared the same office room and work life and social life etc etc besides my followers who followed my posts for the last 10 years plus.

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Paulina Martinez's avatar

Thanks for sharing this! I’ve only been here a short while and I’m still figuring out how everything works. I really like the idea of Substack as a kind of town square, a place where everyone meets. ✨

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Tee The Goddess King's avatar

Thank you im new here and this article was very helpful.

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Talisa's avatar

appreciate these so much - thanks for sharing!

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Rose's avatar

I wish the icon that says "Notes" was easier to find. Every time I comment on someone's post, which I do a lot, I always tick the box that says share to Notes as well. Has that moved my subscriber numbers? No. Have I had interesting conversations on Notes? No. I know everyone praises Notes and says that's the place to be, but I have no clue what would press that magic button where subscribers can't wait to sign up and make comments. It feels like a closed shop.

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JK Forest's avatar

On the surface, Notes looked like another infinite scroll. That triggered the instant revulsion learned on other platforms. However, a digital town square would be great so long as it doesn’t turn into another way to cancel people.

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Morpho's avatar

Yeah… the town square… ok, I guess

I tell people that the literary platform is an actual Internet café. Notes is the cafe area, for mixing and mingling- as you say - located right in front of The Stacks - the space where we can peruse an author we meet in the cafe and get to know their literary mind more intimately.

Going along with the town square analogy does not adequately represent the hard working literary creations in The Stacks

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