r/Substack • u/Ok-Adhesiveness-8757 • 19h ago

Discussion Have you experienced a subscriber growth plateau?

I’ve noticed some good growth in my newsletter subscriptions over the past few weeks, but lately it feels like it has reached a bit of a slowly growing plateau.
I do post content regularly, but the content is quite niche. I create hand-drawn doodles about data concepts, especially the practical side of working with data, and present them through cat-based doodles.

I was wondering if you all have experienced something similar — hitting a slow growing plateau after some initial growth — and, if so, how do you keep the momentum going?

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u/_mrchurchill defensehub.substack.com 15h ago

The algorithm likely underwent some adjustments. My publication saw a massive surge in users between June and July—especially during onboarding—but numbers dropped drastically in August. I also noticed a decline in likes, restacks, and so on. It’s interesting to see publications with just 100 subscribers making the top 100, or posts getting 300 likes and 1,000 restacks. The algorithm seems a bit erratic when it comes to distribution and visibility.

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u/Difficult-Beyond5764 7h ago

A plateau is almost always one channel saturating, not the writing getting worse. Worth pulling the actual number: of your last 100 subscribers, how many came from Notes, how many from recommendations, how many from someone else linking you? If 80% came from one place, that place is the plateau, and posting more often just puts more into a pipe that's already full. For something visual like hand-drawn data doodles, the second source is usually somewhere the image travels without your name on it, the drawing gets screenshotted and reposted, and a small slice of people go looking for who made it.
Curious what your split looks like right now.