That’s an excellent analysis, Finn! It undoubtedly proves my thesis that more frequent posting is linked to more revenue. It might not be the only one factor, but there’s a clear pattern. And thank you so so much for referring to my research!! Means a lot!
man, you never sleep! Another beautiful analysis. I might see a tiny methodical error though. You grouped the blogs as they are now, but that's not how they were when they were gaining audience. To see more precisely what drove the growth, you could track their performance along the time axis and check how the frequency of publications correlated with a certain growth rate. But that's definitely much more work, and who knows, it may yield quite similar results. Now, taking an assumption (not necessarily correct but reasonable) that the behavior of all the authors over time averages out, the conclusions you presented are correct.
It would be cool to collect this data regularly and build a dynamic leaderboard that shows the rate at which different writers are gaining an audience and moving to the next bestseller tier.
Since I have the timestamps of the historical posts, I could plot the publishing frequency as it changes over time. One of the Grafana panels actually shows this detail. Some writers are really consistent year over year, while others have spurts of posting and then slow down.
I'm sure other things matter, too. If I had started writing U.S. politics in a historical context, I could not have replicated Heather Cox Richardson's results - she is the real expert in her field, which is why people like to read her stuff.
However, I'm confident that posting frequency drives engagement and revenues. We could set a statistical hypothesis and calculate the correlation and statistical significance. Perhaps another day...I need to take my dog out now.
It is not as important to consider frequency, as it is with true value. Providing real, actionable advice, tips, information = true value. If you give just one tip and that would undeniably bring results to anyone who impliments the info in their life, they would trust your content and eventually become a loyal follower of your authentic content... for life.
Every Substack page is rendered using one or more APIs. Some are open (public) and don't require authentication, while others require logging in. Because the data is already public, no special requests are needed. I use those public APIs to pull data and organize it in new, exciting ways to analyze, visualize, and produce new insights.
This is time-consuming and requires a lot of thinking and problem-solving, but that is what I love to do. Thank you for subscribing, Larry!
A beautiful, data based article. Recommend to everyone who's asking about the best street to go the extra mile. Wonderful motivational. It works, I'm writing my next post... :-)
I use multiple different (public) APIs to pull the data for categories, publications, and posts/notes.
I agree that (financial) success depends on many variables, and publishing frequency is just one of them. I am collecting engagement metrics for each post and note so we can correlate them with the bestseller tier. Analyzing that view might be exciting. However, I don't know how engagement and quality are associated.
The quality of content is difficult to measure, and I don't know what data elements in posts and notes I could use for that.
At some level, the number of paying subscribers (the bestseller tier metric) is a proxy for the quality of the newsletter's content—who would want to spend money on low-quality content?
Thanks for the advice. I’ve moved from one post twice a month to one a week. Now I’m trying to consistently publish 2x weekly—harder during the holidays, but… Next up is audio posts and 3x weekly for 2025. I doubt I’ll get beyond that consistently, though, but it sounds like a worthy goal.
That’s an excellent analysis, Finn! It undoubtedly proves my thesis that more frequent posting is linked to more revenue. It might not be the only one factor, but there’s a clear pattern. And thank you so so much for referring to my research!! Means a lot!
Thank you, Yana!
Your original work was the inspiration for this project.
man, you never sleep! Another beautiful analysis. I might see a tiny methodical error though. You grouped the blogs as they are now, but that's not how they were when they were gaining audience. To see more precisely what drove the growth, you could track their performance along the time axis and check how the frequency of publications correlated with a certain growth rate. But that's definitely much more work, and who knows, it may yield quite similar results. Now, taking an assumption (not necessarily correct but reasonable) that the behavior of all the authors over time averages out, the conclusions you presented are correct.
It would be cool to collect this data regularly and build a dynamic leaderboard that shows the rate at which different writers are gaining an audience and moving to the next bestseller tier.
Since I have the timestamps of the historical posts, I could plot the publishing frequency as it changes over time. One of the Grafana panels actually shows this detail. Some writers are really consistent year over year, while others have spurts of posting and then slow down.
I wrote a series of articles on Medium - looking at top authors and how they progressed over the years; see https://medium.com/@FinnTropy/list/top-authors-dashboard-13eac417cb24
These are interesting numbers, thanks for sharing! ❤
Do you really think post frequency drives revenue, or could it just as well be the other way around?
I'm sure other things matter, too. If I had started writing U.S. politics in a historical context, I could not have replicated Heather Cox Richardson's results - she is the real expert in her field, which is why people like to read her stuff.
However, I'm confident that posting frequency drives engagement and revenues. We could set a statistical hypothesis and calculate the correlation and statistical significance. Perhaps another day...I need to take my dog out now.
It is not as important to consider frequency, as it is with true value. Providing real, actionable advice, tips, information = true value. If you give just one tip and that would undeniably bring results to anyone who impliments the info in their life, they would trust your content and eventually become a loyal follower of your authentic content... for life.
agreed
FELICES Y GRACIAS CON QUE FRECUENCIA,,,,,, Y HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU WRITE
Thanks Finn and Yana for the inspiration.
I didn’t realize there was an API. Did you have to make a special request?
This was such and interesting and thorough analysis.much appreciation!
Every Substack page is rendered using one or more APIs. Some are open (public) and don't require authentication, while others require logging in. Because the data is already public, no special requests are needed. I use those public APIs to pull data and organize it in new, exciting ways to analyze, visualize, and produce new insights.
This is time-consuming and requires a lot of thinking and problem-solving, but that is what I love to do. Thank you for subscribing, Larry!
Very insightful. Thank you, Yana.
A beautiful, data based article. Recommend to everyone who's asking about the best street to go the extra mile. Wonderful motivational. It works, I'm writing my next post... :-)
Thank you. As the data tells us, you are on your path to 10X outcomes.
😎🤣
This is very interesting!
Which API did you use?
I must add a caveat, though. Success is never the result of a single factor.
On most platforms, quantity makes success more probable, but you need much more than that.
It would be perfect to be able to analyze the quality of the articles and other possible factors
I use multiple different (public) APIs to pull the data for categories, publications, and posts/notes.
I agree that (financial) success depends on many variables, and publishing frequency is just one of them. I am collecting engagement metrics for each post and note so we can correlate them with the bestseller tier. Analyzing that view might be exciting. However, I don't know how engagement and quality are associated.
The quality of content is difficult to measure, and I don't know what data elements in posts and notes I could use for that.
At some level, the number of paying subscribers (the bestseller tier metric) is a proxy for the quality of the newsletter's content—who would want to spend money on low-quality content?
Thanks for the advice. I’ve moved from one post twice a month to one a week. Now I’m trying to consistently publish 2x weekly—harder during the holidays, but… Next up is audio posts and 3x weekly for 2025. I doubt I’ll get beyond that consistently, though, but it sounds like a worthy goal.