Cover Photos - Do You Need Them?

A cover photo is optional on your Substack welcome page. Should you have one?

Hi there,

Hope you are enjoying the start of your week. I spent last week breaking all my own rules for Substack. Like my rule about posting regularly, which is an absolute MUST for growth, as I said, literally a week ago…. totally didn’t follow my own advice these past few days.

Also, I don’t have a cover photo or logo on my welcome page.

Is a cover photo a must?

I checked out the welcome pages of some successful Substack publications to find out whether they had cover photos. The welcome page is the web page a new reader sees when they visit the main URL of a Substack publication. 

To see how your welcome page looks to a non-subscriber, open an incognito or private/inprivate window in your browser, then navigate to your main URL (https://[yourpublicationname].substack.com).

All the welcome pages I visited had a cover photo, but they were each quite different. For example, Platformer has a huge logo, Sinocism has a tiny logo and AI Supremacy has a picture of a brain.

I like that the layout is consistent, so you can tell they are Substack publications, but each has its own ‘personality’.

Looking at the images above, you can see that Sinocism’s page (top right) has a slightly different layout than the others. This has been achieved by using hiding the publication’s name and description on the welcome page and using an image in their place.  The headline “Get Smarter About China, plus the small logo above it and the testimonial underneath it are all part of a single image file. 

If you want to follow Sinocism’s lead and replace your publication’s name with an image, you’ll find the option to hide the name and description in the ‘Cover photo options’ sub-section of the Basics section of your publication settings.

If you are still new to Substack, don’t fret about cover photos. You won’t find one on the welcome page of this publication, for example (use an incognito window to see it). I honestly don’t think the lack of an image is causing me to miss out on subscribers. Regular posting is more important.

A cover photo is a nice-to-have, not a must-have. Setting a cover photo that you are happy with could take you hours. If you are short of time and have to choose between working on a cover photo or writing a new post, I recommend you prioritize posting.

Have a great week.

Karen

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