An in-depth analysis of Substack’s engagement mechanics, revealing why growth can be misleading, how silent readers matter, and what metrics truly reflect impact. Based on a 3-month clean experiment w
Thank you for providing such a deep and thorough analysis. I agree with your points about silent readers and the need for perspective when evaluating the information on our dashboards.
I love reading your thoughts on this. I usually end up closing articles about the algorithm or growth, eyes glazed over, once I discern the hook to buy the cure-all: someone’s master-class in owning substack. This was refreshingly different and actually helpful. And I love the side-eye. Thanks Lintara!💜
This was an excellent article by way of not just being about belonging, but wanting to make a difference. Share my thoughts,journey and experiences diverse cultural experiences with people who have the same mindset. Yes I need help and support would love to share and be part of it.
Michael — what you’re describing is the deepest pulse behind why any of us write here.
Not just to belong, but to translate belonging — to build a shared frequency out of difference, distance, and the thousand quiet attempts to understand each other.
That’s the part of Substack that the analytics will never measure: the cross-current of people who still believe in communication as a form of repair.
Your wish to share — to bring your experience and your view of the world — is already part of that movement.
You don’t need to ask for permission or for a spotlight; what you need is a steady rhythm — show up, speak, listen, stay.
That’s how communities here actually form: not by joining something ready-made, but by resonating until the space around you begins to hum back.
And yes — we all need help and support.
That’s why this place matters: it’s not about changing the whole world at once, it’s about holding one small point of clarity long enough that it starts to light others.
You’re already part of it, Michael. You’re in the current.
This was an Alice in Wonderland experience for me. At 82 yrs old I am learning that I use an “analog” thinking style that was instilled in the educational & cultural systems that are obsolete -until the satellite fails. This article intrigued me but I couldn’t find a dictionary to look up the meaning of the terms. So, I read the comments & reinterpreted what I read through the lens of depth psychology-the study of the unconscious, symbols, and the imagination. Writing is the White Rabbit in my story. Not ready to draw conclusions about this yet, except to say that it’s not what I expected!
That’s a question I keep circling around myself — “return behavior.”
Numbers pretend to show it, but they don’t. A person doesn’t return because of a percentage or a trigger. They return because something in the space you’ve built keeps humming inside them — quietly, insistently, sometimes annoyingly so.
They come back because they want to understand why they’re still thinking about what you wrote three days later.
So I don’t “measure” return behavior. I watch for it. I notice how the same names reappear, how silence becomes presence, how someone shifts from skimming to staying.
Extremely interesting article about how Substack metrics work, even if I don't really understand the entire thing :-) One thing I really did NOT know... most readers use their phones and read/browse in app. I tend to check email first and then go to the app. (I must be an outlier!) Thanks so much for posting this piece!
Thank you — and you are special, in the most useful sense of the word.
Most people don’t realize that Substack behaves like a split organism: one half lives in inboxes, the other in the app. Each side shapes a different kind of attention.
Email creates a pause — a choice, a moment to open. The app creates a scroll — faster, softer, but less anchored.
That you notice your own pattern already puts you ahead of most metrics.
And that’s the quiet irony here: the system tracks clicks, not consciousness.
But what matters isn’t where you read — it’s how you arrive.
When someone moves from the inbox to the app on purpose, they’re not following convenience; they’re following resonance.
That’s the signal I care about — not the numbers, but the returning intention.
So absolutely true! I screen emails to see what grabs me and which of my people I have not visited lately.
Then I consciously choose what to read each day based on the time I have without leaving any of my favorites for too long :-)
The app just pushes stuff as it arrives, and I prefer to see WHO is posting rather than randomly clicking.
I even find marvelous writers who happen to like something I did, and I get an email notification they liked something.
Immediately, I check them out. Most times I follow, or subscribe after I read a few of their posts. If they don't post anything at all of their own, then usually not.
You chose the perfect name for your stack! "You know cannot name it"
We are strangers who've met through words. Sentences, thoughts, philosophies resonating across distance. You explain how I feel about communication and social media before I can put into words WHY I do what I do.
I dropped all social media for seven years. I was a consumer, wasting time. When I found Substack, I discovered I'd learned I was still the person I've always been. Curious, not always cautious, but discriminating. I still don't "like" social media, but I adore finding writings whose stacks inspire, teach, speak from other cultures, and don't spend every post trying to sell me something.
My nickname on sites where I buy books and occasionally post a comment is "Only So Much Time to Read". And I've had that one for decades. I recognize myself "from a distance" when you write your own thoughts, responding to me.
Thanks so much for your long-distance support for a writer who almost always feels out of place, in the wrong era, and on a strange planet I don't really recognize anymore ;-)
Thank you. I’m just about to start writing after some months on Substack consistently reading some excellent creative writers and some excellent journalists. I didn’t have a clue about analytics but what you say makes sense. 🌺
Vivien, that’s exactly the best place to begin — from reading, not from analytics.
The truth is, Substack rewards presence more than performance.
You don’t need to understand the dashboard; you need to understand your own pulse — what keeps you curious, what you can’t stop tracing with words.
Most of the visible “growth” here is just noise, but the invisible part — the steady return of those who feel something — that’s what builds the real foundation.
If you start from that space, you’re already ahead of every “strategist.”
Write from the pulse, not from the chart.
The rest will organize itself around that frequency. 🌺
I keep thinking that “information” is such a fragile word — it sounds clean, neutral, harmless. But what moves through these exchanges isn’t neutral at all.
It’s charged — a kind of shared voltage between readers who are trying to make sense of what’s shifting beneath the systems we use.
So if something in it felt useful, maybe that’s just our brief contact point — two small frequencies brushing against each other inside this evolving machinery we call “communication.”
And maybe that’s how God evolves too — through the friction of understanding.
Thank you for providing such a deep and thorough analysis. I agree with your points about silent readers and the need for perspective when evaluating the information on our dashboards.
I posted more thoughts in my chat and open the question.
Loved this entire post. I just happened to come across and decided to read. Fabulous
Thank you. I will continue to write my observations.
Quite helpful. Many thanks for the tips and clues.
Thank you for your comments and for taking the time and attention.
Thanks, this makes me completely rethink my SUBSTACK publication
thank you — that really means a lot.
if the piece made you look at your own writing differently, then it did what it was meant to do.
everything we publish here only lives through movement — when someone takes an idea and lets it pass through their own voice.
I hope your next post carries that new breath — yours, just slightly changed.
Very informative. Thank you.
Thank you, Mary.
Sometimes “informative” is the gentlest way to say unexpectedly sharp.
Glad it reached you — Substack reveals more about readers than it does about numbers.
Wow! Thank you for this. Very fascinating and insightful.
Yes, I posted more information in my chat.
Um. I never thought I'd see this.
This is in-depth, fascinating, and too much to get in one read.
Saving.
Sure, to map all of Substack you’d have to be either Gandalf or a neural network. I’m neither. I’ve got three months and silence in the comments.
But I wasn’t writing for the titans. I wrote for the ones stuck in the grey zone, not knowing if anyone alive is reading them.
This wasn’t about expertise. It was about trying to navigate the fog.
I love reading your thoughts on this. I usually end up closing articles about the algorithm or growth, eyes glazed over, once I discern the hook to buy the cure-all: someone’s master-class in owning substack. This was refreshingly different and actually helpful. And I love the side-eye. Thanks Lintara!💜
Liora — you always catch the pulse behind the data.
I write about systems, but what I really study is the rhythm underneath them — how attention moves, how trust behaves.
And you’re right: anything that smells like “growth hacks” kills the frequency.
Thank you for staying in the quiet layer, where the real work happens. 💜
Always, Lintara! I love reading things that make me think and your work always does just that! You’re an absolute treasure 💜
Liora, you are a fire, your words are warming
💜💜💜
That was helpful, thank you.
This made me chuckle:
“but there’s wine and passive aggression“
This was an excellent article by way of not just being about belonging, but wanting to make a difference. Share my thoughts,journey and experiences diverse cultural experiences with people who have the same mindset. Yes I need help and support would love to share and be part of it.
Michael — what you’re describing is the deepest pulse behind why any of us write here.
Not just to belong, but to translate belonging — to build a shared frequency out of difference, distance, and the thousand quiet attempts to understand each other.
That’s the part of Substack that the analytics will never measure: the cross-current of people who still believe in communication as a form of repair.
Your wish to share — to bring your experience and your view of the world — is already part of that movement.
You don’t need to ask for permission or for a spotlight; what you need is a steady rhythm — show up, speak, listen, stay.
That’s how communities here actually form: not by joining something ready-made, but by resonating until the space around you begins to hum back.
And yes — we all need help and support.
That’s why this place matters: it’s not about changing the whole world at once, it’s about holding one small point of clarity long enough that it starts to light others.
You’re already part of it, Michael. You’re in the current.
This was an Alice in Wonderland experience for me. At 82 yrs old I am learning that I use an “analog” thinking style that was instilled in the educational & cultural systems that are obsolete -until the satellite fails. This article intrigued me but I couldn’t find a dictionary to look up the meaning of the terms. So, I read the comments & reinterpreted what I read through the lens of depth psychology-the study of the unconscious, symbols, and the imagination. Writing is the White Rabbit in my story. Not ready to draw conclusions about this yet, except to say that it’s not what I expected!
Well done.
thank you
Thank you for your comments, for giving us your time and attention.
Thanks for this. How do you measure "return behavior"?
That’s a question I keep circling around myself — “return behavior.”
Numbers pretend to show it, but they don’t. A person doesn’t return because of a percentage or a trigger. They return because something in the space you’ve built keeps humming inside them — quietly, insistently, sometimes annoyingly so.
They come back because they want to understand why they’re still thinking about what you wrote three days later.
So I don’t “measure” return behavior. I watch for it. I notice how the same names reappear, how silence becomes presence, how someone shifts from skimming to staying.
It’s not a funnel; it’s a gravitational field.
And gravity can’t be gamed — only held.
Extremely interesting article about how Substack metrics work, even if I don't really understand the entire thing :-) One thing I really did NOT know... most readers use their phones and read/browse in app. I tend to check email first and then go to the app. (I must be an outlier!) Thanks so much for posting this piece!
Thank you — and you are special, in the most useful sense of the word.
Most people don’t realize that Substack behaves like a split organism: one half lives in inboxes, the other in the app. Each side shapes a different kind of attention.
Email creates a pause — a choice, a moment to open. The app creates a scroll — faster, softer, but less anchored.
That you notice your own pattern already puts you ahead of most metrics.
And that’s the quiet irony here: the system tracks clicks, not consciousness.
But what matters isn’t where you read — it’s how you arrive.
When someone moves from the inbox to the app on purpose, they’re not following convenience; they’re following resonance.
That’s the signal I care about — not the numbers, but the returning intention.
So absolutely true! I screen emails to see what grabs me and which of my people I have not visited lately.
Then I consciously choose what to read each day based on the time I have without leaving any of my favorites for too long :-)
The app just pushes stuff as it arrives, and I prefer to see WHO is posting rather than randomly clicking.
I even find marvelous writers who happen to like something I did, and I get an email notification they liked something.
Immediately, I check them out. Most times I follow, or subscribe after I read a few of their posts. If they don't post anything at all of their own, then usually not.
Why? Because I am not sure who "they" are!
That’s beautifully said — and so rare to see it described with such awareness.
You’ve just outlined the real anatomy of digital reading: curiosity as navigation, intention as filter, and relationship as the only true algorithm.
Most people move through Substack like it’s a feed — but you move through it like a conversation, choosing not what’s new but what’s alive.
I love that you start from the inbox — from that moment of pause, of decision.
It means you’re not grazing for content; you’re choosing resonance.
That’s a completely different kind of reader — and, honestly, the kind of presence this platform quietly depends on.
You’re right, too, about the question of “who they are.”
Writing here is an act of visibility — not marketing, but self-location.
We read to recognize, not just to consume.
And when that recognition happens — when someone reads and feels I know who this is, even if I’ve never met them —
that’s when the whole fragile experiment of Substack actually works.
Thank you for articulating it so clearly —
you turned a daily habit into a philosophy of attention.
You chose the perfect name for your stack! "You know cannot name it"
We are strangers who've met through words. Sentences, thoughts, philosophies resonating across distance. You explain how I feel about communication and social media before I can put into words WHY I do what I do.
I dropped all social media for seven years. I was a consumer, wasting time. When I found Substack, I discovered I'd learned I was still the person I've always been. Curious, not always cautious, but discriminating. I still don't "like" social media, but I adore finding writings whose stacks inspire, teach, speak from other cultures, and don't spend every post trying to sell me something.
My nickname on sites where I buy books and occasionally post a comment is "Only So Much Time to Read". And I've had that one for decades. I recognize myself "from a distance" when you write your own thoughts, responding to me.
Thanks so much for your long-distance support for a writer who almost always feels out of place, in the wrong era, and on a strange planet I don't really recognize anymore ;-)
Thank you. I’m just about to start writing after some months on Substack consistently reading some excellent creative writers and some excellent journalists. I didn’t have a clue about analytics but what you say makes sense. 🌺
Vivien, that’s exactly the best place to begin — from reading, not from analytics.
The truth is, Substack rewards presence more than performance.
You don’t need to understand the dashboard; you need to understand your own pulse — what keeps you curious, what you can’t stop tracing with words.
Most of the visible “growth” here is just noise, but the invisible part — the steady return of those who feel something — that’s what builds the real foundation.
If you start from that space, you’re already ahead of every “strategist.”
Write from the pulse, not from the chart.
The rest will organize itself around that frequency. 🌺
Great information. Thanks!
Thank you, Tim.
I keep thinking that “information” is such a fragile word — it sounds clean, neutral, harmless. But what moves through these exchanges isn’t neutral at all.
It’s charged — a kind of shared voltage between readers who are trying to make sense of what’s shifting beneath the systems we use.
So if something in it felt useful, maybe that’s just our brief contact point — two small frequencies brushing against each other inside this evolving machinery we call “communication.”
And maybe that’s how God evolves too — through the friction of understanding.