Creators mostly know Substack as a long-form newsletter platform. But with its Notes feature, the company has taken the plunge into short-form, discoverable content. And now, it seems like Notes might be even more discoverable across the internet.
In a post celebrating the feature’s first birthday on April 16, Substack Co-Founder Hamish McKenzie described it as a “growth machine.” McKenzie also announced several new features, including the ability to embed posts elsewhere online. Here’s what you need to know.
What are Substack Notes?
For all intents and purposes, Notes are essentially Substack’s own version of a tweet. In the past year, it’s proven to be a decent money-maker for creators hoping to reach new audiences.
In his recent post, Substack’s Co-Founder McKenzie claimed that in the past 30 days, the feature has generated more than 3,000 paid subscriptions and 230,000 free subscriptions.
The post also claims that Substack creator David McIlrory amassed $8,000 worth of subscriptions with one eight-word Note. Another Note celebrating the launch of the newsletter Zeteo raised close to $2,000 in subscriptions.
Can you embed on Substack?
Now, it looks like Substack wants to take the feature further, as McKenzie revealed that Notes can be embedded on external websites.
The co-founder also noted (if you’ll pardon the pun) that these embeddable notes are also compatible with Substack’s video player, which means that it will now be possible to post multimedia Notes.
“We hope that these external embeds will help writers’ notes get more reach and recognition outside of the Substack network,” McKenzie wrote.
This isn’t the first change Substack has made efforts to become creator-friendly. Earlier this month, the platform announced its integration with Spotify Podcasts.
But sadly, despite all these creator-friendly changes, it’s difficult to forget the company’s recent disastrous response to creator concerns about neo-Nazi newsletters. Unfortunately, mud sticks on the internet.
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