This Is Why No One’s Reading Your Substack Notes

It’s not the algorithm's fault. It’s that most of your Substack Notes probably read like a sales funnel.

I found a novel in a secondhand bookshop a few weeks ago. It was worn in a way that made it feel like it had been read a hundred times. And inside the front cover, someone had written a name and a phone number in blue pen.

And I don’t know what I was thinking, but I called it.

A woman picked up. I asked if the name sounded familiar. She said yes, it was her mom’s book.

Her mom had passed away last year.

I asked if she wanted it back.

She paused and then said,

“No. If it found you, maybe it still has work to do.”

That’s it.

I thanked her and hung up.

Haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

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I’ve posted a lot of Notes like that.

Not planned. Not strategic. Just things I notice when I’m out and about enjoying life.

Sometimes it’s a conversation I hear on the bus.

Sometimes it’s a weird conversation in a coffee shop.

Sometimes it’s a book in a secondhand store with a phone number in the front and a woman on the other end of the line who says, “If it found you, maybe it still has work to do.”

That Substack note did well. But so have others.

I’ll post a few lines and close the app. Come back hours later to replies, shares, sometimes new subscribers.

And it’s not because I’m trying to go viral.

It’s because I’m finally letting the small stuff count.

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I used to treat Notes like a drawer.

Somewhere to put the bits that didn’t quite fit. A half-finished paragraph, something I saw on the bus, a sentence I liked but didn’t know what to do with. I’d post anecdotes without thinking much and go back to whatever else I was working on.

Notes back then never felt like the main thing. Just a side project. A placeholder. Something to show I was still here. But I kept doing it anyway. Not every day. Just when I didn’t have the energy to write a full post or when something stuck with me a little longer than it should’ve.

Over time, people replied.

Shared.

Subscribed.

Sometimes in bigger numbers than the actual articles I’d spent all week working on.

I checked my stats one day. Just to see if Notes were actually driving traffic to my Substack. And it turned out 3.3k of my 7,600 subscribers came from Notes. And for whatever reason, that’s what people wanted to read more of.

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If your Substack Notes haven’t got many views yet, I get it.

I spent months posting things that didn’t go anywhere. A line I liked, something I saw on a walk, a moment that stuck with me but didn’t feel good enough to build a whole newsletter around. I’d post it anyway and hope something might come of it.

Usually it didn’t.

But I kept going. And after a few months, I developed a unique strategy to write consistently high-performing Substack notes that often receive thousands of views.

Here it is…