Substack leaderboards don't work the way you think
Smarter Substack | Mar 4 , 2026
Most creators chase Substack leaderboard rankings without understanding what they actually measure — or whether they matter at all.
Today’s 3 resources dig into the mechanics behind leaderboards, a system for turning one Substack Live into a week of content, and the 5 shifts you need for a thriving paid tier.
🧠 Strategy
Substack Leaderboards Demystified: The Exact Criteria and Whether They Matter — Casandra Campbell breaks down how the Top Bestseller, Rising, and New Bestseller boards actually work. Key insight: Top Bestseller ranks by annual recurring revenue (not subscriber count), Rising updates every few hours and is highly volatile, and leaderboards are a reflection of growth, not a driver of it.
🛠️ Tools & Features
Substack Live Is Growing Newsletters in 2026 — Carrie Loranger turned one live session into an email, a podcast episode, YouTube shorts, LinkedIn posts, six Notes, and a full newsletter post without recording anything new. This guide covers how to set up your first live, whether to go solo or bring a guest, and the exact repurposing workflow that turns one hour into a week of content.
📈 Growth
5 Proven Ways to Build a Bestselling Substack Publication — This piece covers five shifts that lead to Bestselling publications. The framework: get specific enough that readers can describe your work in one sentence, create more entry points through Notes and Chat, build shareable moments into every post, study what already works, and don’t quit before compound growth kicks in.
P.S. Most Substackers treat their publication chat as an afterthought and miss out on one of the biggest conversion drivers. The Substack Publication Chat OS is a complete system to turn your subscriber chat into a powerful asset.
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This was excellent! So helpful!