Here's what I know about most of our readers: you're not a marketer.
And you don't want to be one.
You're a creator, teacher, coach, consultant, author, or an expert with real work to do.
Some of you are building your Substack around a full-time job and a dozen other responsibilities.
Your job is NOT to test every button Substack ships.
And frankly, Substack ships a lot of buttons.
If I'm honest, I lost count somewhere this year 😅.
Look at the last twelve months alone: audience-specific sections, segmenting, tags, Creator Match, drip sequences, and a handful more I'm already forgetting.
My partner Philip recorded a whole video this week just breaking down the newest ones, and even he had to choose which to cover.
Most creators get this wrong.
They see a new feature, feel a small jolt of "wait, should I be using that?", and add it to a mental list that never gets shorter.
The to-do list grows every week. Their publication doesn't.
Here's what I want you to hear: the skill that actually grows a publication is not keeping up with updates and platform changes.
It's knowing what to ignore.
Every new feature gets one question from me: Does this help me get in front of the right people, turn readers into subscribers, or turn subscribers into buyers?
If it clearly does one of those, I'll test it.
If it doesn't, I let it sit.
And most of them just sit.
Worth Your Time This Week
→ What to Write About on Substack (to Actually Grow). My new video on finding the overlap of audience, problem, and angle so the right readers recognize themselves in one sentence.
→ Substack's newest features, broken down. Philip walks through what shipped recently and what's actually worth your attention.
→ I audited a Substack with 5,000 subscribers. A real teardown of what was working, what wasn't, and what to fix first.
→ Want a Substack publication that grows on its own?. A total video breakdown.
Here's to being an expert, not a full-time button-tester,
Sinem