Is Your Substack Actually Growing? How to Read Your Stats

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make on Substack is measuring the wrong things.

A Note gets five likes, so they assume it failed. An article gets fewer comments than expected and suddenly they think nobody is reading. But Substack is not built like Instagram or TikTok, and some of the most meaningful engagement on Substack is often invisible.

In this week’s video, I walk through the three statistics pages I pay the most attention to and explain how I interpret them strategically rather than emotionally:

• the overall growth tab

• individual post statistics

• Notes analytics

The goal is not to obsess over individual spikes or viral moments. The goal is to understand whether your work is gradually reaching more of the right people over time.

The overall growth tab is one of the most useful ways to understand whether your visibility efforts are actually creating results.

This page shows where your traffic and subscribers are coming from:

• the Substack network

• Notes

• recommendations

• Google search

• external websites

• social platforms

• direct traffic

• chats and live videos

One of the most important mindset shifts on Substack is understanding that growth is usually cumulative, not explosive. A single viral Note can create a temporary spike, but long-term growth comes from consistent visibility and discoverability over time.

This page is especially useful if you are using outside platforms like YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, podcasts, or your website to guide people toward your Substack. It helps you see whether those efforts are actually translating into traffic and subscribers.

The post statistics page is often the most encouraging section for newer writers.

Visible engagement on Substack can sometimes feel low compared to traditional social media. Many thoughtful readers never leave comments or click like, but that does not mean they are not deeply engaged with your work.

One of the most valuable statistics available on individual posts is repeat opens.

If someone opens a post four or five times, that tells me something very different than a quick email open. It usually means they are returning to the content, rereading it, thinking about it, or actively using the information inside it.

That kind of engagement matters far more to me than a quick like.

Substack allows you to see not only open rates and traffic sources, but also how readers are interacting with your content over time. For many writers, this becomes an important reminder that readers are often much more engaged than the visible metrics suggest.

Substack recently improved Notes analytics significantly, and the newer statistics provide a much clearer picture of discoverability and reach.

Instead of focusing only on likes and comments, you can now see:

• impressions

• profile visits

• subscriptions generated

• audience breakdowns

• how many non-followers are seeing your Notes

This is important because Notes is designed primarily around discoverability, not performance metrics.

A Note with relatively few likes may still be helping new readers discover your profile and your publication. If your impressions and profile visits are gradually increasing over time, that is often a much more meaningful signal than visible engagement alone.

The key question is not: “Did this Note go viral?”

The better question is: “Is my work gradually reaching more of the right people?”

One of the most important things I want people to understand about Substack growth is that sustainable growth usually feels quieter than people expect.

A single post or Note may perform unusually well, but what matters far more is the long-term trend:

• Are more people discovering your work?

• Are your posts getting opened more consistently?

• Are more readers subscribing over time?

• Are the right people finding you?

Those gradual improvements are often much more meaningful than short bursts of attention.

As your archive grows, your visibility improves, and your understanding of the platform deepens, those small improvements begin compounding over time.

That is the kind of growth I pay attention to most.