Substack now helps you to comply with writers earlier than subscribing to them

Substack now helps you to comply with writers, providing a approach so that you can hold tabs on what a author is doing with out having to subscribe to their e-newsletter. Whenever you comply with a author, “you possibly can keep updated with what they’re studying, liking, publishing, and subscribing to — via the Notes feed and on their profiles,” Substack says in a weblog publish.

Substack is probably finest often known as a e-newsletter platform the place writers can generate profits from getting individuals to join paid subscriptions. However the platform has additionally been dabbling with extra conventional social networking options corresponding to its tweet-like Notes, and a comply with button appears like Substack stepping much more toes into the social networking waters.

The corporate stresses that follows, that are free, are meant to help writers as they construct out subscription networks. “Following helps writers develop their viewers through the Substack community, which is already residence to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most dear readers,” Substack argues. “We constructed this function to assist maximize — and never change — subscriptions, which is able to all the time be an important sort of relationship on Substack.”

However now, Substack writers might have the added burden of serious about methods to transform followers and non-followers into subscribers. (Substack is promising that sooner or later, it would “make ‘upsells’ to subscriptions simpler” via notifying followers about “trending posts and different milestones.”)

Final week, Substack’s co-founders mentioned that they wish to make the platform a greater place for readers, not simply writers. The corporate has already launched a handful of options to encourage studying issues immediately on the platform, together with cellular apps and the power to deliver RSS feeds to your Substack feed.

For individuals searching for a brand new place to learn textual content and publish some microblogs given the final degradation of X / Twitter, the comply with button is likely to be a helpful function to see what writers are as much as with out clogging up your electronic mail inbox with newsletters.