How To Grow Your Substack Newsletter Using Data

Help to shape the future of Substack analytics—take my 2-minute survey

I started my Finn’sights newsletter in May 2024 without a clear idea of what I should focus on.

Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash

Initially, I brought my 23 email subscribers from Medium and wrote an article about Surprising Insights from Top Authors’ Dashboard, which received 28 views and one new subscriber. I expected more, so I kept writing on Medium.

Initial growth burst

I wrote 17 articles from August to September, and my subscriber count grew to over 200. I also added a few Gumroad digital products to my portfolio and reflected on the lack of engagement in How to Pivot When Your Digital Product Falls Flat. 

I started having conversations with other creators and found that building relationships is where the actual growth happens.

Those conversations were eye-opening. They reminded me that I’m not creating in a vacuum; there’s a whole community out there, willing to share their wisdom and experiences.

Slow growth period

In October, my 9-to-5 job took most of my time and energy, and I could write only two articles. Still, I addressed the pain points by writing Chrome extensions that allow other creators to pull their Medium and Substack data for analysis.

I built two data pipelines to pull large-scale Medium and Substack data to understand growth dynamics and the factors influencing growth.

I spent weeks collecting millions of Substack posts and notes, analyzing the patterns and relationships across over 13K newsletters in different bestseller categories, and distilling the results into simple, actionable guidelines.

I shared the data with my fellow creators, such as

Yana G.Y.

who has written brilliant analysis, and built other tools using the data.

My two most popular articles are directly addressing the two biggest challenges that Substack creators are facing:

• Growing subscribers

• Converting free readers to paid subscribers.

How Often Should You Write to Grow Your Paid Subscribers?

How Often Should You Publish Notes to Grow Your Paid Subscribers?

Breakthrough moment

My real breakthrough happened in mid-November when I first learned about a big pain point: lack of scheduled Notes in Substack.

I wrote a new tool, Substack Scheduled Notes, and published it on Nov 30, 2024. In the following 60 days, my subscriber count has grown by 90%.

Today, I have 495 subscribers, which is a mind-blowing figure. To put this in perspective, I wrote on Medium for two years and got 23 email subscribers.

Finn’sights Subscriber Count (by the author)

What next?

I love working with data and creating tools for my fellow writers. I want to offer insights that help you grow based on facts and data.

With this in mind, I created a Substack Growth & Analytics Survey to identify the key challenges and pain points of Substack creators and solopreneurs.

With your help, we can all learn how to grow our newsletters and subscribers more effectively. Please take this quick 2-minute survey:

I appreciate any help you can provide.

I’ll publish the results in an upcoming article. Your data provides a clear roadmap for solving future problems. It will also give you new perspectives from the creator community.

PS. Here is a preview of one of the survey questions - 23 responses so far

Substack Growth & Analytics survey (by the author)