I just entered a chat with a support person at Substack and he agreed that my total changed too much and sometimes it corrects itself in 24 hours. I told him that he has been longer so he agreed to put in a support request for me. We shall see.
Recently, we changed how we show the combined subscriber count for both of your Publications. If you have a subscriber who is subscribed to both of your publications, they'll be counted only once towards your subscriber count, which is why you're seeing a lower number.
Please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to help.
Oh wow, that is bizarre. But thanks for sharing that! I had no idea. I guess thats why my subscriber numbers are dropping like flies on one of my pubs too.
I'm sure you can still share it but the person who receives it will encounter the paywall. If you don’t want them to, maybe chat with the author and see if they can turn on the option for readers to use a one-time freebies option. ??
We can't "get" people to do anything. It's their personal choice whether to follow or subscribe. Followers are following your notes feed and subscribers receive your emails. It's their choice whether they want to subscribe or not. When you publish a new post, hopefully they'll seeing in your feed and be interested enough to subscribe.
Okay, I've been off of Substack for a few days. I just noticed today that my total subscribers fell by 600 subscribers in two days. I have two publications and both come to 1,837 subscribers. Just three days ago, it was 1.8K subscribers. Not it is 1.2k. I checked my subscribers for each publication this morning and they total to 1,837 subscribers.
I have seen this before. Of course, I can't say for sure because Substack keeps me in the dark as much as anyone else, BUT every so often I think they do a sweep of both and spam accounts and remove them. This is a good thing for us, but yah it kinda sucks watching number plummet. My other pub has been losing subscribers for weeks. 😐 Ultimately, we don't want dead accounts on our lists though, so if that's what's happening, it's not a bad thing.
Interesting. How can we identify a spam account and why would a spam account subscribe in the first place? Is a dead account the same as a spam account?
It’s difficult to say precisely how to identify a spam account but it could be one with no profile image and a nonsensical name.
As far as why they would subscribe, that isn’t really a Substack issue, as spammers can subscribe to anything, not just Substack. I have no clue why they’d want to. I’m not sure what they get out of it.
Regarding a “dead account”, can you be more specific? Are you referring to ones with zero stars in your subscriber list? Again, spam accounts are not really a Substack question so it’s hard to say whether they’re the same as any other.
I guess scammers prey on every platform these days. I just saw you mention "dead" accounts. I have no idea. Its good to be aware of that they exist even on Substack.
Great workshop the other day! Wanted to follow up and let you know that the voiceover was moved to The Branding section. But you know what else I can't find? The box that lets you smart crop your images.
I've been having a major problem with my images. I was using the 1456 x 1048 originally recommended but recently updated to the 1200x600 as recommended when you are posting your social media image. Everything was working fine until recently and now all of my images are wonky when they are resized for different things including the thumbnail. I reverted back to 1456 by 1048 and I'm having less difficulty but I'm frustrated. Do you know of anything that happened recently to change images?
My other question is there a way to have a navigation bar link open in a new window? I recently added my client portal link to the navigation bar but it opens in the same window as my substack.
Hi Shelby! Yah I (re)discovered the voiceover thing after the workshop too! Of course they moved it....just to keep everyone on their toes and to keep me looking like I have no idea what I'm doing 😆😆
As for your images, I'm not sure what you're referring to because when I go to your Substack, they look fine to me, except for the ones where the text may not be at the center of the image. Can you elaborate? Regarding smart cropping, I have never used it because it's not smart at all lol. I have always used center cropping.
Regarding the nav bar links opening in a new window, I am not aware of any setting where we can specify a new window. Substack does not have a built-in toggle to force navigation bar links to open in a new tab. All links in the header will open in the same window by default. One of the limitations of Substack as opposed to a regular website, I suppose.
I've always used the center cropping too, but now they are not centering correctly (as you noticed). Yesterday, I went back and changed the images to fix some of the worst ones that were off-center. I can't even find where they moved that center-cropping/smart-cropping setting to, because I wanted to check that it hadn't changed for whatever reason. Do you know where that setting went?
I just entered a chat with a support person at Substack and he agreed that my total changed too much and sometimes it corrects itself in 24 hours. I told him that he has been longer so he agreed to put in a support request for me. We shall see.
So here is their response: Hey Jenn,
This is Mac with Substack Support!
Recently, we changed how we show the combined subscriber count for both of your Publications. If you have a subscriber who is subscribed to both of your publications, they'll be counted only once towards your subscriber count, which is why you're seeing a lower number.
Please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to help.
Thanks,
Mac
Substack Support
Oh wow, that is bizarre. But thanks for sharing that! I had no idea. I guess thats why my subscriber numbers are dropping like flies on one of my pubs too.
Sorry I’m a bit late!
My question is “If I want to share someone’s article, and it’s behind a paywall, how do I do that? Is there a special way to go about this?”
Presuming I ask them ahead of time of course.
Thank you so so much! 🦋
I'm sure you can still share it but the person who receives it will encounter the paywall. If you don’t want them to, maybe chat with the author and see if they can turn on the option for readers to use a one-time freebies option. ??
Ahhh ok great! I was curious if there was an extra step or something like that.
Thank you so so much for answering on a Sunday! 🦋☺️
How do you get people to subscribe rather than follow?
We can't "get" people to do anything. It's their personal choice whether to follow or subscribe. Followers are following your notes feed and subscribers receive your emails. It's their choice whether they want to subscribe or not. When you publish a new post, hopefully they'll seeing in your feed and be interested enough to subscribe.
Okay, I've been off of Substack for a few days. I just noticed today that my total subscribers fell by 600 subscribers in two days. I have two publications and both come to 1,837 subscribers. Just three days ago, it was 1.8K subscribers. Not it is 1.2k. I checked my subscribers for each publication this morning and they total to 1,837 subscribers.
I have seen this before. Of course, I can't say for sure because Substack keeps me in the dark as much as anyone else, BUT every so often I think they do a sweep of both and spam accounts and remove them. This is a good thing for us, but yah it kinda sucks watching number plummet. My other pub has been losing subscribers for weeks. 😐 Ultimately, we don't want dead accounts on our lists though, so if that's what's happening, it's not a bad thing.
Interesting. How can we identify a spam account and why would a spam account subscribe in the first place? Is a dead account the same as a spam account?
It’s difficult to say precisely how to identify a spam account but it could be one with no profile image and a nonsensical name.
As far as why they would subscribe, that isn’t really a Substack issue, as spammers can subscribe to anything, not just Substack. I have no clue why they’d want to. I’m not sure what they get out of it.
Regarding a “dead account”, can you be more specific? Are you referring to ones with zero stars in your subscriber list? Again, spam accounts are not really a Substack question so it’s hard to say whether they’re the same as any other.
There is no way that I have over 600 dead accounts. My subscriber lists total 1,838 and Substack says 1.2K. Who do I contact to inquire on this?
You can TRY reaching out to support but don't be upset if they never respond. Did you ever read this post: https://unstackit.substack.com/p/importing-email-list-to-substack
I lost over 1000 subs and reached out to support. They didn't care, nor did they try assisting.
I guess scammers prey on every platform these days. I just saw you mention "dead" accounts. I have no idea. Its good to be aware of that they exist even on Substack.
Great workshop the other day! Wanted to follow up and let you know that the voiceover was moved to The Branding section. But you know what else I can't find? The box that lets you smart crop your images.
I've been having a major problem with my images. I was using the 1456 x 1048 originally recommended but recently updated to the 1200x600 as recommended when you are posting your social media image. Everything was working fine until recently and now all of my images are wonky when they are resized for different things including the thumbnail. I reverted back to 1456 by 1048 and I'm having less difficulty but I'm frustrated. Do you know of anything that happened recently to change images?
My other question is there a way to have a navigation bar link open in a new window? I recently added my client portal link to the navigation bar but it opens in the same window as my substack.
Hi Shelby! Yah I (re)discovered the voiceover thing after the workshop too! Of course they moved it....just to keep everyone on their toes and to keep me looking like I have no idea what I'm doing 😆😆
As for your images, I'm not sure what you're referring to because when I go to your Substack, they look fine to me, except for the ones where the text may not be at the center of the image. Can you elaborate? Regarding smart cropping, I have never used it because it's not smart at all lol. I have always used center cropping.
Regarding the nav bar links opening in a new window, I am not aware of any setting where we can specify a new window. Substack does not have a built-in toggle to force navigation bar links to open in a new tab. All links in the header will open in the same window by default. One of the limitations of Substack as opposed to a regular website, I suppose.
I've always used the center cropping too, but now they are not centering correctly (as you noticed). Yesterday, I went back and changed the images to fix some of the worst ones that were off-center. I can't even find where they moved that center-cropping/smart-cropping setting to, because I wanted to check that it hadn't changed for whatever reason. Do you know where that setting went?
Yes it is also now located in the homepage editor...in the posts area of the editor.
Woot! I love these. Happy July!
Hahaa same to you Mary!!