Your Friday Substack edge
Smarter Substack | Jun 12, 2026
Substack’s leaderboards are built to trigger a dopamine loop, which makes them easy to obsess over and hard to actually understand.
Today’s links demystify the exact criteria, plus a content-pillar exercise from a full-time Substack writer and a tool that saves you from retyping the same block over and over.
Here’s what’s worth your time today:
🧠 Strategy
Substack Leaderboards Demystified: The Exact Criteria and Whether They Matter — Most creators chase Rising and Top Bestseller without realizing what each board actually measures, then burn out trying to keep a ranking they didn’t earn on purpose. The full breakdown explains what drives each leaderboard — and why obsessing over rankings rarely moves real growth.
🎯 Case Study
I’m a Full-Time Substack Writer. Here’s the Exercise I Used to Define My Content Pillars. — Most full-time Substack stories point to a viral Note or a clever growth hack, but the real answer was almost always three clear content pillars done right. This exercise walks through finding yours, whether you’re starting fresh or one pillar has quietly gone stale.
🛠️ Tools & Features
How to Use the Substack Templates Tool and Why You Might Want To — If you keep retyping the same intros, CTAs, or disclaimers across posts, Templates is the fix most Substackers haven’t found yet. This 9-minute walkthrough shows how to create, save, and drop reusable blocks into any post in two clicks.
🎟️ Free Live Masterclass
How to Become a Substack Bestseller in Less Than 12 Months — The three shifts behind reaching Bestseller status and your first 100 paid subscribers, taught live by the Write • Build • Scale team. Seats are limited and it’s completely free.
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