Why Every Other Social Media Platform Is Working Against You (And Notes Isn't)

The algorithm that actually wants you to grow and why the Notes Bootcamp doors close in 2 days

Apr 05, 2026

I was one of the first writers invited into Substack’s Product Lab to test Notes features before they went public.

I remember the moment I posted my first Note. No one cared. I was talking into the void. Hearing crickets.

But then a few months in sharing notes about my live as working mom with two kids in the house, working in the evening to make that part-time Online Writing Club working… my phone lit up with a notification I had never seen before.1

“Your Note Made You $112”

I was one of the first writers to report about this feature. To tell my community: something is happening here. Something different. Something worth paying attention to.

You could see exactly how much money your Note made you.

Not likes. Not re-stacks. Money.

For every writer building a side hustle beside their 9-to-5. For every retiree living on social security who wants to earn something from their words. For every mom at a kitchen table at 10pm who just needs to know it’s working. This changed everything.

And if you want to learn exactly how to make it work for you…

The Substack Notes Kickstarter Bootcamp opens in 1,5 days.

April 7–10.

9 spots left.

One of them is yours with

KRISTINAFRIEND

you’ll get it for $159 to make it super affordable for you.

Grab your spot now!

But first…let me tell you why Notes is unlike anything you’ve tried before.

The Platform That Was Quietly Working Against You

December 2020. I started writing on Medium.

I poured everything into it. My stories, my marketing expertise, my late-night hours after my first baby was finally asleep.

I became a Medium Top Writer.

And then I learned the hard truth that every Medium writer eventually learns:

The moment you include a link to your newslette…your reach drops.

Medium doesn’t want you taking their readers somewhere else. So the algorithm quietly punishes you for trying.

I did everything right. Built the audience. Wrote the posts. Grew the following.

But the list? The email list I actually owned?

That was always one algorithm change away from disappearing.

Medium is a beautiful platform. I still love it. But it was never designed to help you build something yours.

And that’s the problem with every platform that came before Substack Notes.

LinkedIn penalizes you for adding links to posts. So you hide them in the comments and we all do it, and we all know it’s ridiculous.

Instagram? Same game. TikTok? Same game.

Every platform is a landlord. You build on their land. You follow their rules. You pay rent in the form of your content, your time, your audience.

One algorithm change and it’s gone overnight.

Then Substack Notes Changed the Rules

Substack’s head of machine learning Mike Cohen said something that stopped me in my tracks2:

“The goal is to get people to discover, subscribe, and ideally pay. That’s how we built the feed.”

Not time spent on platform. Not ad clicks.

Actual subscriptions to your newsletter.

On Medium, a link to your newsletter hurts your reach.

On Substack Notes, that link is the entire point.

Everything lives on one platform. Your Note leads to your newsletter. Your newsletter leads to paid subscriptions. Your paid subscriptions show up directly in your Notes now.

I visualized this for you:

What I loooooove: No hiding links in comments. No algorithm working against you.

Just:

here I am, here’s my work, here’s how to read more of it.

And unlike the infinite scroll of social media, designed to trap attention, never to reward it, newsletters have a beginning and an end. Readers choose you. They invite you into their inbox. That trust is worth more than any viral moment on any other platform.

The data backs this up:

only 39% of people trust content found on social media.
68% trust content from newsletter writers they follow.

That’s not a small gap. That’s a completely different relationship with your reader.

But Here’s What Nobody Tells You About Notes

Most writers come to Notes and make the same mistake.

They procratinate, overthink and then try to sound polished or even worse… let AI generate their notes (based on the best performers)

Performing a version of themselves they think people want to read. And nothing happens.

Because Notes doesn’t reward performance.

We saw this so often inside the Substack Notes Bootcamp with bootcampers who went from zero to up to 40,000 subscribers with one year.

One viral note can generate thousands of likes and re-stacks but still only converts a handful of subscriber or lots of subscribers but not paying ones.

So often I see my Beyond members or bootcampers just haveing a handful of likes and getting 5 paid subscribers. Why?

Notes rewards YOU.

“The YOU-ier the better.”

That phrase comes from my Notes Bootcamp co-host Karen Salmansohn — bestselling author, 2M+ books sold, featured on Oprah, CNN and TIME — who will show you exactly how to find your writer DNA and your writer thumbprint.3

In a world where trust is at an all-time low, attention is at an all-time high, and the average human attention span is now 8 seconds, shorter than a goldfish, the only thing that cuts through is specificity.

Your specific voice. Your specific story. Your specific way of seeing the world.

You.

Or as Karen told me:

“The weirder, the better!”

What a Writer Thumbprint Actually Looks Like

My Notes Bootcamp co-host Ellen Scherr is one of the most powerful examples of this I’ve ever seen.

She’s a psychotherapist. A midlife truth-teller. And her Notes are so distinctly, unmistakably her that people screenshot them and send them to friends without even thinking about it.

511 likes. 44 restacks.

Because it was true. Because she lived it. Because every woman who read it felt like Ellen reached through the screen and said: I see you. I know that pain. Me too.

That’s a writer thumbprint.

And then there’s Nora In New York I featured yesterday. 4

She posted a Note about her father, who lives in Hungary, 8,000 kilometers away, who checks the weather in New York every single day. Just to know what the sky looks like above her.

I told you it would go viral.

It’s now at 2,929 likes and 144 comments.

One small, true, specific detail. One universal feeling. That’s it.

Nora is going to be in the Notes Bootcam not just as a bootcamper but as a rockstar on our Friday session. An example of what happens when you stop trying to sound like a writer and just are one.

These are the voices you’ll learn from inside the bootcamp. Incredible, unique, human voices.

Because we all grow when we understand ourselves better as writers.

I’m still in the middle of finding my own voice. And that's completely fine. What matters is that I'm doing it. What matters is that you start doing it too.

My Story (The Real One)

December 2020. First baby. Identity completely reshuffled.

I started writing on Medium because I needed something that was just mine.

Became a Top Writer. Built a following. Loved every minute of it.

But I always knew: the moment I added a link to my newsletter, my reach would drop. Medium wanted me on Medium. Not building something elsewhere.

Then I found Substack. Then Notes launched. And I was in the product lab, testing it before most writers had even heard of it.

I watched it grow from a small experiment into the most writer-friendly growth tool on the internet.

In January 2024 I turned on paid subscriptions for the first time.

I had zero paid subscribers. Zero earnings.

I also had a newborn, a toddler, a kitchen table for a desk, and about 45 minutes a day if I was lucky.

Today the Online Writing Club has 18,000 subscribers. Top 15 #International publication globally on Substack. 65% of my subscribers found me through Substack’s Network effects.

Built part-time. In Germany. With two kids asleep in the next room.

Notes didn’t just grow my newsletter. It made me believe my story was worth telling.

And now I can see exactly how much each Note earned me. That notification still makes me smile every single time and when I check my Dashboard and my Growth I can see how much $$$$ Notes makes me every single month!

With Ellen and Karen this is also happening. Notes becomes the #1 growth engine.

9 Spots Left. One Is Yours.

It’s April.

8 months left in 2026.

Every day you don’t show up on Notes, someone else is building the audience you could have had.

They’re getting discovered. Growing their email list. Converting readers into paid subscribers. Watching that little earnings notification light up their phone.

You’re still scrolling. Still overthinking. Still asking: is it too late?

It’s not.

But the doors close in 1,5 days.

🎉 Substack Notes Kickstarter Bootcamp

April 7–10 | 8 AM PT, 11 AM ET Daily | $299

4 days. Live. Hands-on. Zero fluff.

Three hosts who started from zero and built their audiences. 135,000+ combined subscribers. 1M+ combined reach. Featured in Oprah, CNN, TIME, AOL.

Kristina God — Substack Product Lab member, Top 15 #International newsletter globally, mompreneur who built 18,000 subscribers part-time from Germany

Karen Salmansohn — bestselling author, 2M+ books sold, will help you find your writer DNA and thumbprint so your voice cuts through in a world starved for trust. A few days back she became a bestseller.

Ellen Scherr — psychotherapist and midlife truth-teller whose Notes prove that being human, specific and real is the most powerful writing strategy alive. She went from bootcamp grad in late summer 2025 to viral Notes writer with 21,000 subscriber and became a bestseller a few weeks back!

Plus Nora in New York — Bootcamp grad and rockstar , whose Note about her father checking the weather just hit 2,000 likes. That’s your writer thumbprint in action.

Inside the Bootcamp: