Are you using these five Substack URL extensions?
The right link in the right place can make a real difference.
Most people share their Substack homepage link and leave it at that.
But did you know that there are five URL extensions that Substack quietly offers, and each one drops people into a different part of your publication?
Depending on what you’re looking for at any given moment, the right link in the right place can make a real difference.
All you have to do is write your Substack domain followed by the relevant extension, so yourpublication.substack.com/extension (though you won’t need .substack if you’ve purchased your own domain name).
Here are all the extensions and when to use them.
/welcome
Add /welcome to your Substack URL and you get a clean, distraction-free page: your logo, your tagline, and a single email box. The only other thing is a custom ‘Skip’ button (which I’d strongly recommend changing).
There is nothing else to click on and nothing else to read. Send people here when your sole goal is getting them to subscribe, because sending them to your main page does not prompt them to subscribe — that’s a website, not a subscription form.
Check it out: thefreelancewritingnetwork.com/welcome
/subscribe
The /subscribe page shows your free and paid tiers side by side, with all the benefits of upgrading listed out. It does the selling for you before anyone’s even arrived at your page.
You can use this one when you’re running a paid push, promoting on social, or linking from anywhere you want people to immediately see what they’d get if they started handing you money.
Check it out: thefreelancewritingnetwork.com/subscribe
/newsletters
If you’ve split your Substack into sections, /newsletters shows all of them in one place.
Someone landing here can see exactly what you cover so they know what bits will interest them most.
It’s useful if you run a multi-topic publication and don’t want to lose readers who like two of your five sections but not all of them. It will have a link to settings at the top of this page, so readers can hit that link to opt in and out.
Check it out: thefreelancewritingnetwork.com/newsletters
/account
This one is a little different because you would only share it with existing subscribers, not new ones.
The /account page lets readers manage their subscription settings. This is great for allowing readers to choose which sections they receive. I send lots of emails through the FWN, so readers can choose exactly what content they receive each month, rather than having to receive all or none of it.
If someone’s about to unsubscribe because they’re getting too much, pointing them here might keep them around.
Of course, they might just use it to unsubscribe completely. And that’s fine!
Check it out: thefreelancewritingnetwork.com/account
/archive
The /archive page is a straight chronological list of every post you’ve published, newest first. That’s it.
It’s ideal when you want to send someone somewhere to get a feel for your writing before they commit, or when you’re chatting about your newsletter and want to say, ‘Here, have a look at what I cover.’
Check it out: thefreelancewritingnetwork.com/archive
None of these require any setup. They’re already live on your Substack right now.
The only thing to do is start using them instead of defaulting to your homepage every single time.
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I do have sections, but the 'newsletters' extension shows me a page with 'Page not found' at the top, and then a list of posts (basically, the same as 'archive', but with an error message).
Thank you for all these good suggestions. To be honest, I had no idea about this.