Shadowing Practice: Substack for Beginners: The Complete 2026 Tutorial - Learn English Speaking with Video

Substack isn't just another newsletter platform, it's the place where most new writers are making their first dollar online right now.

And in this video, I will show you exactly how it works and how you can take advantage of this opportunity.

Look, everyone is talking about Substack right now, and maybe you've heard it's where writers are growing their audiences rapidly.

Or maybe you're just tired of posting into the void on social media

and you want readers who actually care about your work.

Well, here's what nobody explains.

Substack is actually three platforms in one.

And if you don't understand all three aspects, you are leaving money and readers on the table.

My name is Sinem Gunel.

I've been writing online since 2018.

I've built an audience of over 80 ,000 followers on Medium.

I'm running a newsletter with over 30 ,000 subscribers on Kit.

And I've launched the WriteBuildScale publication on Substack in 2024.

Since then, we've grown to over 20 000 subscribers with more than 800 paid members

and over the next few minutes you are going to understand

exactly how substack works not just the basics everyone is talking about

but the actual system

that separates the 99 who quit from the one percent of writers who built thriving writing businesses online

and stick around until the end

because i'm going to show you the one substack feature nearly nobody uses correctly so here's what we're going to cover today.

First, what Substack actually is versus what people think it is.

Then I will walk you through the three -layer system, your profile, your publication, and the secret social layer.

And after that, we will dive into the dashboard, the money side, and finally the exact growth playbook that actually works right now.

Now, first things first, I want you to forget everything you know about newsletters.

Because calling Substack a newsletter platform is like calling YouTube a video storage website.

Technically it's true, but it's missing the whole point of the platform.

Instead, think of Substack as a hybrid between medium email service providers like Kit and short form platforms like Twitter,

but also much more than all of that.

Let me show you what I mean.

When you write on Substack, you're not just sending emails, you're building a solid foundation because you own your audience and your content.

This means you can easily take your work anywhere else republish

and leverage what you're building for years

or even decades unlike medium where only the algorithm

and boost nominators decide who is seeing your work

or social media where you're one algorithm change away from invisibility

substack is giving you direct access to your readers inboxes think

of substack as a three -layered cake layer one is your

newsletter this is what goes into your readers inboxes layer two

is your publication this is your home on the web

and layer three is the discovery network that consists of notes recommendations

and sometimes even search most writers only use layer one

and that's why they struggle to grow

so let's master all three of them we're starting with your profile versus your publication

because this is where 95 of beginners mess up immediately.

So pay close attention.

You have two separate entities on Substack.

Your profile, this is you as a person, think of it as your profile on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

See how mine shows my face and my bio, which explains what you can expect from me as a writer and my publication.

This profile follows you everywhere on Substack.

When you comment on something, when you publish a note, when you engage with others, people see your profile.

And through your profile, they can then check out your publication.

Now here's a quick tip almost nobody mentions.

Your profile picture shows up in tiny sizes in most places.

So make sure you use a clear headshot that is really recognizable.

Now let's move on to your publication.

This is your brand, your newsletter, your business.

See how Rifle Scale has its own logo, its own about page.

It's navigation bar.

It looks like an own website, and this is where your actual content on Substack lives.

Now, here's why this matters.

You can have multiple publications on Substack under one profile.

There are literally writers running three different newsletters, one on productivity, one on parenting, and one on fiction writing, all from the same profile.

That's not necessarily what I would recommend doing unless you have a ton of time on your hands, but it's an option you have.

Now for your publication here's what actually matters.

Your publication name needs to be either SEO friendly

and very clear such as the productivity newsletter

or it needs to have some sort of memorable brand name like right bill scale.

What matters most is that you don't use your personal name as your publication name.

Well unless you are famous and you know that it's not going to do any harm.

If that's not the case you really want to keep your profile and and your publication name separate.

The next thing is your navigation bar.

This is prime real estate and most people ignore it.

At write .skill, we have different pages that serve different purposes.

We run our podcast on Substack and we also link to this YouTube channel.

We'll link to our flagship program, Substack System, and we have an extensive about page where we describe our paid tier in detail.

These links in our navigation bar help us consistently make sales

because people see them since they're prominent

and a lot of people click through the navigation bar as their first action steps on a publication

and you really don't want to waste this precious space okay

now let's get to the part where things get really exciting remember

when i said substack has a social layer that's notes and

if you're not using notes on substack you're literally being invisible

and here's why when you publish a newsletter mostly your existing subscribers will see it

because it will show up in their inboxes.

But when you publish notes on Substack, the algorithm can show it to thousands of potential readers who have never seen your work or profile before.

But here's what everyone gets wrong.

They use notes like they would use Twitter, for example.

They post random thoughts, tweets, arguments.

And on Substack, most of that is just noise, because right now people love that Substack is still different from platforms like Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn.

So here's what I recommend doing on notes instead.

Follow the 3 -2 -1 formula.

Every week, try to post three valuable notes.

These can be full of tips, insights, or frameworks.

Then do two engagement posts.

This can be questions, polls, or discussions.

And once a week, try to do at least a soft promotion, either of your paid tier, of a paid piece of content, or anything else that you're currently working on.

Now, here's another feature that's pure gold, restacking.

This is like retweeting, but even better.

When readers restack your post with a comment, it goes to their audience with their comment.

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And one restack from the right person on Substack can literally

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lead to dozens of new subscribers for you without you doing any extra work.

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Now, how do you get restacks?

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You make your content restackable.

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Every post you write, think of creating a screenshottable moment, create something that people want to share with their audiences.

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And there are two ways I want you to think about restacking.

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You want to make sure that you have these bits

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and pieces in your content that are restackable so that people want to share your work with their audiences.

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But you can also use this feature to show up in

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your own notes feed more frequently by restacking your own or other people's content as well.

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Now that's nodes and I want to share with you the other primary type of content that you will create on Substack.

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Your posts, which are also your newsletters, your emails.

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Now one of my favorite things about Substack is that the user interface is really simple, clear and clean.

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This means it's really straightforward to write your first couple of posts on the platform.

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If you are brand new to the world of online writing, you can easily create a new post, plug in your title, and start typing.

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And although the interface is really clean, you have a lot of formatting options to make sure that your pieces are visually attractive to the reader.

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You can use dividers, add images, buttons to encourage people to subscribe if they come across the post on Substack and are not subscribed to your work yet.

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And of course, you can also add a paywall

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if you are running a paid tier and want to lock certain parts of your content.

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Now, another of my favorite features on Substack is

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that you can look into the behavior and engagement of your readers when you open your subscriber list.

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Because what you see there is not just email addresses.

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You also see who your most engaged readers are, who your paid subscribers are, and who might be a potential customer in the long run.

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You can set up different filters to select only your paid subscribers, for example ball.

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You could also use this filter to email only your paid subscribers, or you can go into the filter and only select people who have been commenting on your work lately.

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And you can also filter simply by their activity status.

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For example, you could say that the activity status is five stars.

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This will be your most active subscribers who open and read most of your emails.

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And since those are your loyal readers, you can make them different offers.

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You can reach out and say thank you for their support

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and you can really get created with different types of campaigns that speak to different groups of your audience members.

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Now let's get to one of the juiciest topics, monetization.

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One of the most frequently asked questions among sub stackers is

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when should i go paid

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but that's the wrong question the right question is what should i charge for

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if you know what you want to charge for you can reverse engineer

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and decide on the best time to launch your paid tier

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because here's the truth you can turn on paid subscriptions from day one

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if that's what you want to do

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but how you do it determines whether you make five fifty

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or five thousand dollars a month

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and there are three primary monetization models on substack there is

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the paywall model where some of your content is free

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and you have premium content behind the paywall there is the support model where everything is free

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and paid is optional when people want to support the creator

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and there is the community model

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which means free subscribers get your content paid subscribers get community access of course you can also mix

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and match and use a combination of these three options at right bill scale, for example, we have a variety of different content types

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that go behind our paywall so that there is a major difference between our free and our paid content.

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For example, we offer live workshops where only our paid members can join live or receive the recordings.

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Or we offer in -depth guides with PDFs and workbooks for our paid members.

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Now, let's talk about pricing for a minute.

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Most sub -stackers charge $5 to $10 per month and encourage monthly upgrades.

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What we recommend doing instead is setting your monthly tier to be a little more expensive

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and making your annual tier more attractive so

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that you can keep people in the loop for a longer period this is a win -win

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because they get a discounted rate and you get more touch points

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and opportunities to actually serve your readers

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but here's the key you need to position paid subscriptions as

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a transformation not just more information don't say get access to paid posts instead say something

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that will show them what they are missing out on

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if they don't upgrade all right now let's get to the

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part you actually came for let's talk about how to grow on sub stack

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when starting at zero your first stage this is your foundation

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this is where you want to get from zero to 100 subscribers in this phase you want to make sure

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that you are set up for success you want to optimize your profile including your bio your picture and ensuring

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that it's really clear what you're doing for your readers you

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also want to nail your publication basics such as the name

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the logo the about page ideally you also start a little start here section

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so people know what to do when they come across your work

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and in the best possible case you create three pillar posts

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that are really representing the kind of work you want to do on Substack.

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This will convince your early readers to subscribe and follow your content.

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Now, once that's tackled, you enter what we call the warm lounge phase.

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Here, you want to already spread the word.

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You can import any contacts that you have from other platforms.

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You can share your work on social media and announce that you now have this publication.

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And ideally, I recommend

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that you subscribe to at least five different publications in your

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niche to see the best practices of other creators on the platform as well

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and at this stage you also want to start to connect

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leave at least five comments thoughtful comments on other people's notes

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and start to connect with them and also make sure

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that you are showing up on notes at least once per

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day this should get you to the first 50 to 100 subscribers

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if not your positioning might be off and it might not be clear why people should actually pay attention to your work.

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In the next stage, you want to get from 100 to 500 subscribers.

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This is the phase where you already have some social proof.

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And it's time to accelerate.

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It's time to build up on the strong foundation that you have built.

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What you can start doing here is leveraging guest posts and collaborations, for example.

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You can find publications with similar topics and similar audiences and offer to write a guest post for them.

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You really want to focus on how you can provide the best possible value to their audience.

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And when you do that, you can also leverage Substack's recommendation feature.

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Because when someone subscribes to you, Substack automatically shows them other publications that they might also be interested in.

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And if you get recommended by the right publications, you will literally grow with the right subscribers on autopilot.

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Now you can start to gather recommendation partners by just recommending others first.

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They will get notified and if they like your work they might just recommend you back

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but you can also build these relationships intentionally in notes comments

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or in your private messages you can directly ask publications of similar sizes

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if they want to do recommendation swaps at right build scale

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we have gained 7 000 subscribers just through recommendations this is

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massive now before we wrap up let me save you months

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of frustration here are some of the mistakes i see on the platform every single day

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and why you should avoid them mistake number one is the

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typical perfectionist trap you might be busy writing one perfect post per month instead of a good post per week

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but the truth is that frequency beats perfection

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and your judgment of a piece might not be the same

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as your audience's sometimes you have to ship something before it's a hundred percent perfect in your judgment

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so you can get feedback and iterate.

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Mistake number two is the closed loop.

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If you only send emails on Substack and never post on notes, it's basically like having a store without a sign outside.

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The shop is there, but nobody knows about it.

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Notes can really be your discovery engine on the platform, so don't miss out on them.

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Mistake number three is being unapproachable.

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Real human connection and social proof matters.

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People want to see the person behind the publication on Substack.

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Even if you don't want to share too much of your personal life, you want to make sure you sprinkle in some personality across your work

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so people can connect with you on a deeper level.

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Mistake number four is treating Substack as a one -way street.

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Never engaging with other writers and ignoring the fact that these are actually people on the other side of the screen.

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Substack is a community.

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And the writers who grow fastest are the ones who comment, restack, and build relationships.

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And mistake number five is to make a generic promise.

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You don't want to say something like, subscribe to my newsletter.

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Nobody wants to subscribe to a newsletter.

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Instead, you want to give your readers a good reason to

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care about your work by focusing on how you can truly help them.

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Look, here's the reality.

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Right now, Substack is having its early YouTube moment.

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The platform is exploding readers are hungry for quality content

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and the algorithm actually helps new writers

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but this window won't last forever every platform eventually gets saturated you can either start now

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when it's still relatively easy to grow or you can wait until next year

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when everyone and their mother has a sub stack

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and let's be honest the writers who are making six figures

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on sub stack today they're not necessarily better writers they just started

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and they figured out the system that makes it work for them.

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And now you know most of the basics as well.

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If this video helped you understand Substack, hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any of the newest videos about Substack growth.

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And if you're brand new to the platform and want the templates, swipe files, and frameworks to get started the right way,

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check out our Substack starter kit in the description box below.

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I'll see you in the next one.

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Esta lección de conversación se basa en el vídeo “Substack for Beginners: The Complete 2026 Tutorial”. Las palabras que más se repiten: substack, publication, paid, subscriber, reader. Este vídeo tiene 242 frases y 3063 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 17:35. El hablante habla a un ritmo natural de unas 174 palabras por minuto, cercano a una conversación cotidiana. El 86 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

15 palabras del vídeo que vale la pena aprender, con su pronunciación y significado:

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
publication sustantivo	/ˌpʌblɪˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/	publicación
subscriber sustantivo	/səbˈskɹaɪbɚ/	suscriptor, suscriptora
reader sustantivo	/ˈɹi.dɚ/	lector, lectora
newsletter sustantivo	/ˈn(j)uzˌlɛtɚ/	boletín de noticias, boletín informativo
layer sustantivo	/ˈleɪ̯ɚ/	capa, tongada
subscribe verbo	/səbˈskɹaɪb/	suscribirse, subscribirse
tier sustantivo	/ˈtɪɚ/	piso, rango
recommendation sustantivo	/ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/	recomendación
filter sustantivo	/ˈfɪltɚ/	filtro
navigation sustantivo	/nævɪˈɡeɪʃən/	navegación, náutica
algorithm sustantivo	/ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/	algoritmo
connect verbo	/kəˈnɛkt/	conectar, empalmar
publish verbo	/ˈpʌblɪʃ/	publicar
stack sustantivo	/stæk/	pila, montón
leverage sustantivo	/ˈlɛv.(ə.)ɹɪd͡ʒ/	palanca, palanqueo

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Palabra	Significado
check out verbo	investigar, chequear
come across verbo	pasarse a
figure out verbo	averiguar, captar
mess up verbo	desbarajustar, desbarahustar
reach out verbo	tender la mano
wrap up verbo	envolver, arrebujar

Gramática en este vídeo

Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:

Estructura	En el vídeo
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — una acción que empezó antes y continúa	I've been writing · have been commenting
Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora	you've heard · I've built · I've launched
Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa	posts, which are · people who have · ones who comment
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace	are not subscribed · are set

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 34 contracciones y formas reducidas, como you're, don't, I've. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

Los sonidos de “th”: algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, thoughtful /ˈθɔːtfəl/, thrive /θɹajv/
Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: publication /ˌpʌblɪˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/, recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/, navigation /nævɪˈɡeɪʃən/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, subscription /səbˈskɹɪpʃən/
Palabras largas — cuida el acento: publication /ˌpʌblɪˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/, recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/, navigation /nævɪˈɡeɪʃən/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/

Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:

s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: stack /stæk/, skill /skɪl/, starter /ˈstɑɹ.tɚ/, swap /ˈswɑp/, straightforward /ˌstɹeɪtˈfɔː(ɹ)wə(ɹ)d/
/v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: navigation /nævɪˈɡeɪʃən/, leverage /ˈlɛv.(ə.)ɹɪd͡ʒ/, discovery /dɪˈskʌv.ɹi/, versus /ˈvɝsəs/, productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/
/z/ — sonora, no /s/: newsletter /ˈn(j)uzˌlɛtɚ/, invisible /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/, visually /ˈvɪzju.əli/, monetization /ˌmɒnətaɪˈzeɪʃən/, optimize /ˈɑptɪmaɪz/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como publication, subscriber, reader.

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.

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