How to Navigate Substack for Newbies

Without slowly going absolutely insane!

Created with Midjourney (Prompt: imagine/ blonde-haired girl sitting at desk frustrated tugging at hair).

I would LOVE to illustrate, create infographics, and write all day, interrupted only by long breaks in the garden or yoga on the beach. But when you own your own business, you’ll have admin days. Like it or not, your business is not going to run itself.

Today was my day to get Substack up and going. “Today” actually started about 18 dedicated hours ago and is still going strong.

Let’s just say that I’m much closer to retirement than I am to digital nativity. I’ve also rarely used Twitter/X, which apparently, as one cute Gen Z YouTuber described, resembles Substack. After literally hours of trying to navigate between the different settings and dashboards available in Substack and frantically searching for articles telling me what to do, I realized they either don’t exist, or I can’t find them.

Let’s get started with Substack

Light housekeeping … Substack uses publications and sections. The publication is your Substack and is your URL (samaara.substack.com). My Substack is “Samaara’s Substack” — 10 points for originality. Your publication is your newsletter. I use the words interchangeably, but most often use newsletter.