My current stats from the last three days are these:
7416 views and 700 new subs
Top view sources are:
Direct - 2577 views, 1211 users, 112 new subs
Email - 1807 views, 1376 users, 28 new subs
Substack App - 1712 views, 873 users, 145 new subs
Bill Rice jr substack - 649 views, 260 users, 38 new subs
At the very bottom of the "Traffic by Source" table are these two categories: "email-upsell" and "substack dot com", which have no "views" or "users" listed, however these have brought me lots of subs. The "email-upsell" brought 61 subs and substack dot com brought 256 subs.
Also there have been lots of views from various search engines, with a very high "new sub" percentage in comparison to the user amounts. For example from the search engine duckduckgo I got 58 users and 23 new subs. Maybe these were the people who were searching for "vesa reports", and possibly also those subs that just came from "substack dot com" actually came through the substack search, and these are the people that caused the words "vesa reports" to trend.
I was taking credit for at least 100 of your new subscribers, but this metric says my readers only gave you 38 new subscribers. I wrote one story about your site and I also cross-posted your recent article where you give suggestions on how we can raise awareness of the embalmers' clots.
If 30 percent of my readers/subscribers saw my first article on you (or the article I cross-posted), that means 2,269 of my readers went to your site and 38 became subscribers.
This would equate to a conversion ratio of 1-in-60 of my readers becoming subscribers to your newsletter.
If 1-in-60 of my non-subscriber readers became subscribers, I would get 38 new subscribers with every article!
As noted, I now get 1.3 new subscribers with every article.
Unless Steve Kirsch cross-posts one of my articles and then I get 368!
You can see that I would be over-joyed if I got 38 new subscribers per article. As I've recently documented, hundreds of fairly-new liberal Substack newsletters are getting hundreds or thousands of new subscribers with every article they post.
I'm speculating that there is some kind of clandestine amplification service happening. On Blue Sky, you can advertise your own profile to get subs and choose starter packs of feeds. Something like that is happening but it's not transparent.
These substack statistics are indeed very strange, and I don't know how to interpret them correctly.
For example, what does the "Direct" mean ? Could be someone coming to the site from a browser bookmark, but I'm sure it means a lot more than that. I have made threads in forums that didn't get as many clicks as I thought they should generate, but the "Direct" metric does show an increase, so I think some of the traffic shows up in there.
And what gets priority when determining where the subscribers or just the "views" came from? "Substack App" is listed as a source. So if someone read the article that you wrote using the Substack App, and then he clicked the link to go to my page, will the statistics register the source as "bill rice" or "substack app"? Or will it be "Direct" or the mysterious "Substack" category at the bottom ?
So it's really confusing.
I guess we just have to trust our own observations. The fact is that when you first made that "Substacker from Finland" post, I got 100 new subs as a result. And then some days later when Steve Kirch reposted it, I got 700 new subs in 3 days. Right now I have 931 subs.
Without your post I would surely still be at 80 something subs. So no matter what the statistics show, your post gave me 800 new subs. :D Some credit goes to Steve Kirch of course, but he didn't write the article, he just shared it. :)
I don't know how you have the time to do these analyses, but I sure appreciate them. (I restacked with a similar note.) Looking forward to commentary here...
Thank you, Jenna. As noted, you once cross-posted one of my articles back when I was getting one new subscriber per article. After your cross post, I suddenly got 41 new subscribers. I'm trying to figure out why I can still get (many) subscribers when your readers see one of my articles, but not with my other articles. And thousands of non-subscribers are seeing every one of my articles (I think, but maybe not?).
Maybe most of those thousands of non-subscribers who read your every article are actually your "Followers" ? Didn't you mention that you actually have over ten thousand followers in addition to your subscribers ? So the followers read your posts often, but they don't subscribe, because there is no point, they're already following you, and can see your posts when they login to Substack.
This might explain the poor "post reads vs new subs" ratio that you have been talking about. And then, when someone does a cross-post, you suddenly get many new readers, who aren't your subs or followers, and this is why you then get a lot more new subs.
One solution is to use Notes to activate your Followers into restacking your posts and articles.
One advice that I've read here, is that you should also restack your older articles with notes from time to time, because a lot of people haven't read them, and seemingly the algorithm still likes such notes. But I don't know how true this is. Could work, who knows.
Thanks for the tips, Vesa. I’ll follow your advice. Maybe most of my non-subscriber readers are “Notes” readers or “followers.” The key to subscriber growth still seems to be … the cross-post from a well-known author. I just learned I have 15,000 “followers” and 7,980 subscribers. I guess there might be major duplication in these two numbers, but I’m not sure. The most important metric is “Page Views” - that tells us how many people our articles are reaching.
Thank you a wonderful insight provided into the machinations of Sub S … insofar as your writing ability.. I say keep at it, you definite have a talent and material well worth the time to read what you publish.. From a personal perspective I find your writing insightful and educational and have subscribed to your posts resulting the cross post Steve Kirsch who I have followed for some time, Steve like yourself is blessed with a great analytical mind and more so the unique ability to convert what for most would be a foreign language into a readily understood medium… thus the educational element, something for a lay person and one not so gifted with numbers and their interpretation as both yourself and Steve, is greatly appreciated and to be thankful for…
Interesting and salient observations. Another reason I continue to publish articles on "strange Substack metrics" is I actually don't know what's happening or how or why this is happening.
My hope is that my readers and other Substack authors can "crowd source" possible explanations.
One conclusion I've made: Even if there are no "nefarious" ops taking place to suppress the reach of contrarian authors, the bottom line is the same. My team of skeptical writers is not reaching nearly as many readers/citizens as we once did .... or our growth has flat-lined and won't grow significantly in the future.
So, given these conclusions, do we have a Plan B or a work-around? Answer: No.
My Substack, which is about libraries and museums, is free because my FT job--teaching history of books--does not allow outside employment without a lot of explanation. I look at the metrics and I get one or two new subscribers a day. I have 1,422 subscribers. The benefit to me of doing a Substack is that I can use what I post in my teaching. I usually have footnotes which only about 1/10 open. Also, I suspect not many people would pay and I would rather have the information available to people.
A post I did the other day was about the librarian who served the Manhattan Project and then became the Director of Libraries at the University of Chicago-- my title was ATOMIC LIBRARIAN-- https://kathleenmccook.substack.com/p/atomic-librarian . It had 738 views.
Bill, I just want to point out that you "contrarians" are still considered GOLD to those of us who follow you. I get forcefed the standard bs at every turn, but actually need to seek out contrarians, and when you are found, its 1849 California! I rarely pass one of your articles without a good once-over. I say this to point out that I'll bet the Reichs and Mayor Pete's columns don't get nearly the ACTUAL READERSHIP PENETRATION that you and Steve and those on OUR side do. Your marginal value per column has got to be several times greater than the bad 👎 😉 guys. You dig?
I didn't want to depress myself or seem like I'm a "whiner," but I didn't mention, arguably, my most-important Substack metric.
Since the end of August 2024, my paid subscriber number has plummeted from 311 to 270. In a year, maybe less, I'll be below 200 paid subscribers.
I should note that I added four new paid subscibers in the past week, but I've now lost one of those. I'm now at 273 "paid."
About six months into my Substack, my paid subscriber trends told me I would be at 1,000 paid subscribers by the fall of 2026. I think I got a little cocky. I now realize the veracity of the disclaimer "Past performance doesn't guarantee future performance."
While I didn't get into it in this lengthy analysis, I also wonder how my embalmers' clots story - with an assist from a Steve Kirsch cross-post - generated enough traffic on Substack to make the "trending" list for at least two hours. My story only got about 8,600 reads. I know Steve has 260,000 subscribers but I doubt any of his stories have ever affected the algorithms enough to trigger the coveted "trending" designation.
This is weird to me. Plus, I'd always assumed the "embalmers clots" was definitely a taboo subject. Is it possible, in the near future, this won't be a thermo-nuclear subject anymore?
Thank you for this interesting post and for your writing over the years.
We're among those eyes-glazed-over non-math geeks (third grade teacher made us HATE MATH, long story!). That said, we appreciated your analysis.
Our free Substack sees:
- Steady (but limited) growth in Followers (most of our posts are Substack Notes, with a weekly emailed summary to subscribers)
- Flat subscription growth since ~May 2025 (subscriber numbers go down by a few after every weekly emailed newsletter summary, then climb a little during the week)
- Little reader engagement or sharing on social media (we're intentionally not on social media, so cannot self promote)
- Famous people with large readerships do not cross-post or share our work on Substack or social media. (The one time that happened, our subscriptions jumped up, but no leaps since.)
There's so much competition on Substack now -- so many writers, so many email bombarded readers (hence, our once-weekly emails with occasional midweek bonuses for in-depth topics).
The flat or dropping numbers are discouraging to writers who are trying to share non-mainstream truth about vaccines, health, politics, and other heterodox topics. Maybe readers are burned out. Maybe our work is lousy. We don't know.
We can only hope more people are reading our posts than the system is recording.
It is not just substack overload, it is information overload.
What happened to me this morning.
I was considering following you because of the important information voice, especially needed in the deep south.,
I found you through your work on clots and the recent link to Vesa's work tracking down clots on various social media was significant that it shows other areas are finding the clots. Hopefully more and more areas will find them.
I became a paying subscriber.
In looking at your substack I was reminded about Dr McMillan. I had not looked at his work for many months, maybe a year. In searching for him I came across Gerald Pollack. He is the one who has worked on EZ water, or what A Midwestern Doctor calls Crystal water. Here is a link to an elementary interview of Pollack on EZ water, a fourth phase of water, which is the kind of water in our bodies.
I have been struggling to understand Zeta Potential from AMD, A midwestern Doctor, who thinks that the key to health is fluid flow in the body which is related to zeta potential. After thinking about it for 3 years, I sorta get it. It has been in the background but surfaces now and then as it did this morning by this interview of Gerald Pollack.
The Secret Role of Water in Health | Gerald Pollack
I found this substack through Laura Krasner and her work with Tom on clots.
My personal overload is global politics and wars. There are several new youtube videos every day and there are so many that I can watch interviews in real time. This has led to substacks on politics, international relations, and lots of reading from Russia. They have very sophisticated dialogue - Putin can hold 4 hour press conferences at a high intellectual level, meet with high school students and have an intellectual dialogue with quantum physicists, and more. The ideological rejection of "the other", the evil, Russian empire is a rejection of a 1,000 year old civilization. The rejection of Iran is the rejection of a 3,000 year old civilization. Religion is key, but the messianic stance of the USA Empire is going against the move to a multipolar world and Trump's tariffs and mafia disrespect of other governments is accelerating the decline of the US Empire. Japan, Korea, and others are moving manufacturing to countries to avoid US tariffs. Tariffs are a form of taxation,.
I believe that many of the larger influencers in the anti-vaccine/medical freedom movement are actually controlled opposition.
They are purposely oversaturating their audiences with insignificant and inconsequential content, pushing people to disengage from the topics at hand entirely.
That's odd. I've had 452,654 views from June 1st 2024 to April 30th 2025, when Substack began blocking new posts; with a maximum of 6 subscribers. Add this to your next report entitled "The Truth Doesn't Pay", Crime Pays!
My current stats from the last three days are these:
7416 views and 700 new subs
Top view sources are:
Direct - 2577 views, 1211 users, 112 new subs
Email - 1807 views, 1376 users, 28 new subs
Substack App - 1712 views, 873 users, 145 new subs
Bill Rice jr substack - 649 views, 260 users, 38 new subs
At the very bottom of the "Traffic by Source" table are these two categories: "email-upsell" and "substack dot com", which have no "views" or "users" listed, however these have brought me lots of subs. The "email-upsell" brought 61 subs and substack dot com brought 256 subs.
Also there have been lots of views from various search engines, with a very high "new sub" percentage in comparison to the user amounts. For example from the search engine duckduckgo I got 58 users and 23 new subs. Maybe these were the people who were searching for "vesa reports", and possibly also those subs that just came from "substack dot com" actually came through the substack search, and these are the people that caused the words "vesa reports" to trend.
I was taking credit for at least 100 of your new subscribers, but this metric says my readers only gave you 38 new subscribers. I wrote one story about your site and I also cross-posted your recent article where you give suggestions on how we can raise awareness of the embalmers' clots.
If 30 percent of my readers/subscribers saw my first article on you (or the article I cross-posted), that means 2,269 of my readers went to your site and 38 became subscribers.
This would equate to a conversion ratio of 1-in-60 of my readers becoming subscribers to your newsletter.
If 1-in-60 of my non-subscriber readers became subscribers, I would get 38 new subscribers with every article!
As noted, I now get 1.3 new subscribers with every article.
Unless Steve Kirsch cross-posts one of my articles and then I get 368!
You can see that I would be over-joyed if I got 38 new subscribers per article. As I've recently documented, hundreds of fairly-new liberal Substack newsletters are getting hundreds or thousands of new subscribers with every article they post.
Something is "off."
I'm speculating that there is some kind of clandestine amplification service happening. On Blue Sky, you can advertise your own profile to get subs and choose starter packs of feeds. Something like that is happening but it's not transparent.
These substack statistics are indeed very strange, and I don't know how to interpret them correctly.
For example, what does the "Direct" mean ? Could be someone coming to the site from a browser bookmark, but I'm sure it means a lot more than that. I have made threads in forums that didn't get as many clicks as I thought they should generate, but the "Direct" metric does show an increase, so I think some of the traffic shows up in there.
And what gets priority when determining where the subscribers or just the "views" came from? "Substack App" is listed as a source. So if someone read the article that you wrote using the Substack App, and then he clicked the link to go to my page, will the statistics register the source as "bill rice" or "substack app"? Or will it be "Direct" or the mysterious "Substack" category at the bottom ?
So it's really confusing.
I guess we just have to trust our own observations. The fact is that when you first made that "Substacker from Finland" post, I got 100 new subs as a result. And then some days later when Steve Kirch reposted it, I got 700 new subs in 3 days. Right now I have 931 subs.
Without your post I would surely still be at 80 something subs. So no matter what the statistics show, your post gave me 800 new subs. :D Some credit goes to Steve Kirch of course, but he didn't write the article, he just shared it. :)
I don't know how you have the time to do these analyses, but I sure appreciate them. (I restacked with a similar note.) Looking forward to commentary here...
Thank you, Jenna. As noted, you once cross-posted one of my articles back when I was getting one new subscriber per article. After your cross post, I suddenly got 41 new subscribers. I'm trying to figure out why I can still get (many) subscribers when your readers see one of my articles, but not with my other articles. And thousands of non-subscribers are seeing every one of my articles (I think, but maybe not?).
Maybe most of those thousands of non-subscribers who read your every article are actually your "Followers" ? Didn't you mention that you actually have over ten thousand followers in addition to your subscribers ? So the followers read your posts often, but they don't subscribe, because there is no point, they're already following you, and can see your posts when they login to Substack.
This might explain the poor "post reads vs new subs" ratio that you have been talking about. And then, when someone does a cross-post, you suddenly get many new readers, who aren't your subs or followers, and this is why you then get a lot more new subs.
One solution is to use Notes to activate your Followers into restacking your posts and articles.
One advice that I've read here, is that you should also restack your older articles with notes from time to time, because a lot of people haven't read them, and seemingly the algorithm still likes such notes. But I don't know how true this is. Could work, who knows.
Thanks for the tips, Vesa. I’ll follow your advice. Maybe most of my non-subscriber readers are “Notes” readers or “followers.” The key to subscriber growth still seems to be … the cross-post from a well-known author. I just learned I have 15,000 “followers” and 7,980 subscribers. I guess there might be major duplication in these two numbers, but I’m not sure. The most important metric is “Page Views” - that tells us how many people our articles are reaching.
Thank you a wonderful insight provided into the machinations of Sub S … insofar as your writing ability.. I say keep at it, you definite have a talent and material well worth the time to read what you publish.. From a personal perspective I find your writing insightful and educational and have subscribed to your posts resulting the cross post Steve Kirsch who I have followed for some time, Steve like yourself is blessed with a great analytical mind and more so the unique ability to convert what for most would be a foreign language into a readily understood medium… thus the educational element, something for a lay person and one not so gifted with numbers and their interpretation as both yourself and Steve, is greatly appreciated and to be thankful for…
Just saying
Kia Kaha (stay strong) From New Zealand
Thank you very much. Hold the fort way down in New Zealand!
My one 800 plus view Note. Notice the subject publication...
https://substack.com/@jwminva308234/note/c-130598358?r=db4nq
Interesting and salient observations. Another reason I continue to publish articles on "strange Substack metrics" is I actually don't know what's happening or how or why this is happening.
My hope is that my readers and other Substack authors can "crowd source" possible explanations.
One conclusion I've made: Even if there are no "nefarious" ops taking place to suppress the reach of contrarian authors, the bottom line is the same. My team of skeptical writers is not reaching nearly as many readers/citizens as we once did .... or our growth has flat-lined and won't grow significantly in the future.
So, given these conclusions, do we have a Plan B or a work-around? Answer: No.
My Substack, which is about libraries and museums, is free because my FT job--teaching history of books--does not allow outside employment without a lot of explanation. I look at the metrics and I get one or two new subscribers a day. I have 1,422 subscribers. The benefit to me of doing a Substack is that I can use what I post in my teaching. I usually have footnotes which only about 1/10 open. Also, I suspect not many people would pay and I would rather have the information available to people.
A post I did the other day was about the librarian who served the Manhattan Project and then became the Director of Libraries at the University of Chicago-- my title was ATOMIC LIBRARIAN-- https://kathleenmccook.substack.com/p/atomic-librarian . It had 738 views.
Thanks. What a cool Substack.
Bill, I just want to point out that you "contrarians" are still considered GOLD to those of us who follow you. I get forcefed the standard bs at every turn, but actually need to seek out contrarians, and when you are found, its 1849 California! I rarely pass one of your articles without a good once-over. I say this to point out that I'll bet the Reichs and Mayor Pete's columns don't get nearly the ACTUAL READERSHIP PENETRATION that you and Steve and those on OUR side do. Your marginal value per column has got to be several times greater than the bad 👎 😉 guys. You dig?
Thanks, Mike. I don’t get nearly as many comments as I used to and few commenters get more than 2 likes. This is another change.
From 8000 subscribers, 8 people commented on this story in 12 hours.
I didn't want to depress myself or seem like I'm a "whiner," but I didn't mention, arguably, my most-important Substack metric.
Since the end of August 2024, my paid subscriber number has plummeted from 311 to 270. In a year, maybe less, I'll be below 200 paid subscribers.
I should note that I added four new paid subscibers in the past week, but I've now lost one of those. I'm now at 273 "paid."
About six months into my Substack, my paid subscriber trends told me I would be at 1,000 paid subscribers by the fall of 2026. I think I got a little cocky. I now realize the veracity of the disclaimer "Past performance doesn't guarantee future performance."
While I didn't get into it in this lengthy analysis, I also wonder how my embalmers' clots story - with an assist from a Steve Kirsch cross-post - generated enough traffic on Substack to make the "trending" list for at least two hours. My story only got about 8,600 reads. I know Steve has 260,000 subscribers but I doubt any of his stories have ever affected the algorithms enough to trigger the coveted "trending" designation.
This is weird to me. Plus, I'd always assumed the "embalmers clots" was definitely a taboo subject. Is it possible, in the near future, this won't be a thermo-nuclear subject anymore?
Thank you for this interesting post and for your writing over the years.
We're among those eyes-glazed-over non-math geeks (third grade teacher made us HATE MATH, long story!). That said, we appreciated your analysis.
Our free Substack sees:
- Steady (but limited) growth in Followers (most of our posts are Substack Notes, with a weekly emailed summary to subscribers)
- Flat subscription growth since ~May 2025 (subscriber numbers go down by a few after every weekly emailed newsletter summary, then climb a little during the week)
- Little reader engagement or sharing on social media (we're intentionally not on social media, so cannot self promote)
- Famous people with large readerships do not cross-post or share our work on Substack or social media. (The one time that happened, our subscriptions jumped up, but no leaps since.)
There's so much competition on Substack now -- so many writers, so many email bombarded readers (hence, our once-weekly emails with occasional midweek bonuses for in-depth topics).
The flat or dropping numbers are discouraging to writers who are trying to share non-mainstream truth about vaccines, health, politics, and other heterodox topics. Maybe readers are burned out. Maybe our work is lousy. We don't know.
We can only hope more people are reading our posts than the system is recording.
It is not just substack overload, it is information overload.
What happened to me this morning.
I was considering following you because of the important information voice, especially needed in the deep south.,
I found you through your work on clots and the recent link to Vesa's work tracking down clots on various social media was significant that it shows other areas are finding the clots. Hopefully more and more areas will find them.
I became a paying subscriber.
In looking at your substack I was reminded about Dr McMillan. I had not looked at his work for many months, maybe a year. In searching for him I came across Gerald Pollack. He is the one who has worked on EZ water, or what A Midwestern Doctor calls Crystal water. Here is a link to an elementary interview of Pollack on EZ water, a fourth phase of water, which is the kind of water in our bodies.
I have been struggling to understand Zeta Potential from AMD, A midwestern Doctor, who thinks that the key to health is fluid flow in the body which is related to zeta potential. After thinking about it for 3 years, I sorta get it. It has been in the background but surfaces now and then as it did this morning by this interview of Gerald Pollack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69uhpV52U1o
The Secret Role of Water in Health | Gerald Pollack
I found this substack through Laura Krasner and her work with Tom on clots.
My personal overload is global politics and wars. There are several new youtube videos every day and there are so many that I can watch interviews in real time. This has led to substacks on politics, international relations, and lots of reading from Russia. They have very sophisticated dialogue - Putin can hold 4 hour press conferences at a high intellectual level, meet with high school students and have an intellectual dialogue with quantum physicists, and more. The ideological rejection of "the other", the evil, Russian empire is a rejection of a 1,000 year old civilization. The rejection of Iran is the rejection of a 3,000 year old civilization. Religion is key, but the messianic stance of the USA Empire is going against the move to a multipolar world and Trump's tariffs and mafia disrespect of other governments is accelerating the decline of the US Empire. Japan, Korea, and others are moving manufacturing to countries to avoid US tariffs. Tariffs are a form of taxation,.
Blue Sky has a separate application for publication statistics
https://substack.com/profile/22354262-jwm_in_va/note/c-135311082?r=db4nq
https://www.platformer.news/
Ghost, Behiiv, and Button down are other platforms
Bill,
I'm wondering if you can tell the number of people who are reading your posts via RSS feed?
I believe that many of the larger influencers in the anti-vaccine/medical freedom movement are actually controlled opposition.
They are purposely oversaturating their audiences with insignificant and inconsequential content, pushing people to disengage from the topics at hand entirely.
Operation: Boy who cried wolf!
That's odd. I've had 452,654 views from June 1st 2024 to April 30th 2025, when Substack began blocking new posts; with a maximum of 6 subscribers. Add this to your next report entitled "The Truth Doesn't Pay", Crime Pays!