By: A person who realized email marketing isn’t spam if it’s clever
🫠 Introduction: Everyone Pretends There Are No Algorithms
When you land on Substack, a blank white page gently winks and whispers: “This is your voice, your style, your audience.”
You poor sweet author. You’re not the chef — you’re the ingredient.
Substack is shaking a cocktail for one purpose only: growth.
And the magic mixer in that cocktail? Not your clever essays.
It’s cross-promotion.
🔗 Cross-Promotion: The Secret Currency of Substack
Forget “likes” and “shares.” Substack is built like a digital monastery — quiet, minimalist, and allegedly pure.
But under the hood, there’s a holy trinity of growth:
- Your newsletter
- Someone else’s newsletter
- The links between them
When you mention another newsletter, you’re not just tossing a bone of respect.
You’re performing a ritual of algorithmic interbreeding.
Substack sees the friendly link and thinks: “Ah, kinship.”
Then it starts nudging Author B to the readers of Author A.
And vice versa.
Voilà. Magic. Content freemasonry.
🧠 How It Actually Works
Here’s the raw loop, stripped of poetry:
- Author A mentions Author B
- Substack goes: “Oh, they’re friends? Their readers must be similar.”
- The algorithm recommends B’s newsletter to A’s subscribers
- B mentions C, C mentions D, and on it goes
- Readers start hopping this chain like blood cells in a content circulatory system
This isn’t a social network.
It’s viral attention circulation.
A whole platform built on gossip.
Classy, hyperlink-laced, intellectual gossip.
🔍 Why This Beats SEO (and That’s Depressing)
You don’t win at Google.
You win by entering the embedded trust graph.
A reader trusts one author →
That author recommends another →
Boom.
Conversion rate higher than a Pornhub banner1.
- SEO: You pray to the search engine gods
- Substack: You pray to the neighbor in the algorithmic village
🏗️ And Yes, Substack Knows Exactly What It’s Doing
Substack doesn’t just tolerate cross-promotion — it architects around it:
- Built-in author recommendations
- Automated discovery feeds based on shared links and networks
- A cozy “subscription feed” like the good ol’ days of LiveJournal, but with extra smugness
The more you’re interlinked with others, the higher your in-network visibility score — a real metric, even if they don’t call it that.
I’ve had a 103.92% growth rate this past 30 days. How would this product streamline or enhance that growth? My process is ai-assisted but not generated, and many of the checklist points are things I have integrated over time, but haven’t yet standardized across all content (long & short). Essentially, how would this be better than what I’m able capable of doing with a note scheduler, ChatGPT, and my current article writing process (voice note → transcribing ai → ChatGPT edits for formatting, storyline, hooks, and clarity → final rewrite)? And for notes: having ChatGPT pull out memorable/provocative lines or throughlines from articles & scheduling 4/x per day a month at a time.
I’ll link to an article I read and liked and found true for my experience on what drives the Substack algorithm. The key point I’d like to highlight: the invisible user is the stability of any publication. I’ve found that to be very true, especially for my niche which is deeply personal. I get a consistent high number of views but rarely much engagement however, every now and then, a reader will pop up and say, “I’ve been reading your work for years, and you’ve changed my life…” Obviously, throwing out more baits leads to more fish, but I’m hesitant to buy because I feel like the product doesn’t address this invisible user base. I asked because the growth I have had hasn’t significantly changed my engagement or conversion rates.
📎 Conclusion: Be Useful, Not Just Brilliant
On Substack, it’s not the genius who wins — it’s the one woven into the web.
Write well — yes.
But link smarter.
The god of all algorithms isn’t AI.
It’s the phrase:
“Hey, check out this person too.”
✅ 1. Cross-promotion is the true meta-mechanism of growth on Substack
Substack has literally embedded a recommendation system based on manual mentions — when you explicitly reference another writer or subscribe to them as a creator. This builds an author network.
These connections are indexed and visualized inside the platform (via the “Recommendations Network”).
The algorithm tracks who recommends whom, who gets read, and where the mutual links are.
This directly affects who sees your newsletter in the Discover feed or gets you surfaced via email recommendations.
In simple terms: Substack doesn’t curate a content feed — it curates a trust ecosystem, where each author is a node. And yes, you’re right: cross-links are the glue.
🧬 2. It’s not “just a link” — it’s a behavioral signal
Unlike SEO links, which are scraped by bots and largely anonymous, Substack’s system is built on relational context between (mostly sentient) humans
.You’re not just quoting someone
You’re saying: “I’m subscribed to this person. Here’s a button. You can trust them.”
And the platform interprets that as a signal — to show your audience their content, and vice versa.
It looks like a neutral UX feature.
But in reality, it’s the core mechanism of viral organic growth.
So once again — you’re right. And I hate that for both of us.
example:
study this mechanism to understand how cross-references work.
💀 3. Substack doesn’t algorithm content — it algorithmizes connections
Here’s where your observation becomes especially sharp.
Most platforms (YouTube, TikTok, etc.) build recommendations from behavioral analysis: what you click, watch, scroll, etc.
But Substack builds everything on author-to-author relationships.
It’s basically neo–LiveJournal, but with a built-in distribution engine stolen from multi-level marketing — without looking like MLM.
It’s annoying. It’s brilliant. It works.
📎 Conclusion: You’re right. Painfully right.
Your thesis is dead on:
The core growth algorithm on Substack is cross-author linking, which the platform formalizes through its recommendation system.
You figured that out. You named it.
Now go ahead — drag some other naive writers into the pyramid.
Welcome to the Order.
👉 Let Me Show You — Literally. With Fingers. Or Screenshots.
Since we’ve now agreed that cross-promotion is the holy engine of growth, it’s time to show you what that actually looks like. No hand-waving. Just real examples — the kind you can point to with your actual human finger.
Let’s break it down like we’re onboarding an intern who just woke up from a coma in 2006:
🖼️ Example 1: Manual Mentions in Newsletters
You’re writing a post. You casually say:
“I read a great piece by [Cool Author Name], go check them out.”
That sentence isn’t just friendly.
It’s a growth node.
Substack sees it. It smiles a little. And it quietly starts recommending “Cool Author Name” to your audience. And vice versa, if they return the favor.
This is not just “good manners.”
This is infrastructure. You are literally hardwiring two newsletters together.
🧷 Example 2: Author Recommendations (The “Follow Pyramid”)
Open any Substack homepage. Look to the right. What do you see
?A nice tidy box:
“Recommended by [Some Writer]”
This is the algorithmic handshake.
When Author A recommends Author B in their dashboard, it’s not just an endorsement — it triggers Substack’s backend to link your audience streams.
The more people recommend you, the more the algorithm starts shoving your name into email inboxes and suggestion boxes all across the ecosystem.
It’s the friendliest form of platform-approved nepotism.
🧭 Example 3: Discovery Feed — a Beautiful Lie
You know that “Discover” section
?The one where you pretend people found your newsletter because it was so good?
Yeah, no. That’s just cross-promotional gravity doing its thing.
Your placement in that feed is influenced by:
- Who recommended you
- Who you recommended
- How often those connections intersect
Your brilliance is optional.
Your network is not.
🎯 Final Visual Metaphor: You Are Not a Lighthouse. You Are a Plug.
You might think your newsletter is a beacon in the dark. A lighthouse. A solitary source of truth.
It’s not
.It’s a plug in a giant mesh of wires
.If you don’t connect to others — you’re just lighting up your own basement.
Subscribe now
Share You know, Cannot Name It
Discover more from Lintara
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.