Guides
Substack growth, without the detour.
Original guides for writers who want to grow on Substack by writing better Notes, replying with context and choosing tools that do not post for them. Written from building Subshack in public.
Guide · 11 min readThe best Chrome extensions for Substack writers (2026)Substack has no plugin system, so the browser is where the tooling lives. Every tool here was checked on its store listing on 25 August 2026 — with prices, update dates, and which ones publish as you.Read the guide →Guide · 11 min readGrow on Substack without subscribe-for-subscribe: 5 leversSubscribe-for-subscribe works for a week and then it stops working. Here is the system we switched to — Notes, replies, articles, a domain and search — with the numbers from running it in public.Read the guide →Guide · 12 min read40 Substack Notes templates that get replies (copy-paste)A Note is a small argument, not a small article. These 40 templates give you the shape; you bring the specific. Fill the blanks with something only you could write, and delete the template words afterwards.Read the guide →Guide · 9 min readHow to write Substack Notes that get repliesA Note with 4 000 impressions and zero replies means you were read and nobody felt spoken to. Replies are the one Note metric you control — here is where they actually come from.Read the guide →Guide · 10 min readSubstack growth strategy 2026: 4 channels, hours and paybackMost Substack growth advice is a list of tactics with no arithmetic attached. Here are the four channels that actually work, what each costs in hours, and the number that tells you it is working.Read the guide →Guide · 7 min readSubshack vs Substack Notes schedulers: which do you need?They look like the same category — “Chrome extension for Substack Notes” — but they solve opposite problems. Schedulers fix when you post. Subshack fixes what you post. Here is how to choose, honestly.Read the guide →Guide · 7 min readSubshack vs WriteStack: which Substack extension do you need?They look like alternatives because they show up in the same search. One publishes for you, the other tells you what happened — and only one of them costs money.Read the guide →Guide · 9 min readThe Substack Notes algorithm: what we knowThere is no published ranking model, and anyone selling you the seven signals is describing their own good week. Here is the line between what is known, what is observable and what is a guess.Read the guide →