I now have 6,000 total subscibers!

While I greatly appreciate this support … ever the cynic, I think this number should actually be far higher by now. Is my Spider Sense accurate?

One reason the future might be bright for Substack authors is our competition in the mainstream media might soon be as extinct as the dinosaurs.

With this article, I’d like to share some good news and some bad news.

I’ll start with the good news:

Yesterday, my Substack newsletter surpassed 6,000 total subscribers! 

This is one of those round-number milestones that’s worth celebrating. Thank you to all 6,000 people who saw fit to subscribe to my newsletter. I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect that 6,000 total subscribers puts my newsletter in the top 1 percent of Substack authors via the “total subscribers” metric.

Now for the bad news:

It took me 20 1/2 months to reach 6,000 subscribers. The reason I’m not hosting a parade to celebrate is that, at one point, I thought my newsletter would be well past 10,000 subscribers by today’s date. 

The “bad news” is that my growth rate in subscribers has dropped off a cliff in recent months - or really, as you will see, for more than a year.

My purpose in writing Part 1 of this 2-part dispatch is to ask other “veteran” Substack authors if they too have noticed this same trend and to explore possible reasons our growth rate might have slowed by such a significant percentage.

Documenting the change in trends

Substack provides newsletter authors an excellent tool that graphs writers’ total and paid subscribers over time. From these charts, I can see how many subscribers I had on any date since I started my newsletter - which, for me, was September 23, 2022.

Since I now have slightly more than 6,000 total subscribers, I was curious how long it took me to reach my first 3,000 subscribers (half of today’s total).

The answer is that it took me 6 1/2 months to surpass 3,000 subscribers, which I did on March 17, 2023.

At that point, I was averaging 542 new subscribers every month.

Based on this growth rate (if I continued to average 542 subscribers every month), I thought I might reach the impressive metric of 10,000 total subscribers by the middle of March 2024. Instead, my total subscribers had grown to only 5,703 by March 15 of this year.

While I averaged 542 new subscribers the first 6 1/2 months of my Substack, in the last four months (February-May of this year), my newsletter has averaged only 115 new subscribers/month.

In fact, between Feb. 1, 2024 and May 31, 2024, I added only 460 total subscribers - which is 82 subscribers fewer than I was averaging every month in the first 194 days of my Substack.

Going from 542 new subscribers/month to 115/month is a drop-off of 427 subscribers/month - a decrease of 79 percent. (Gulp).

Here are the number of new subscribers I added in the last four months:

February: 140

March: 151

April: 61

May: 108

Here are the number of subscribers I added in the first four months of my Substack newsletter:

Note: I started my Substack from zero subscribers on Sept. 23, 2022. The following figures show my total subscribers on the 23rd of each month.

First month (10-23 to 11-23): 702

Second month (11-23 to 12-23): 379

Third month (12-23-22 to 1-23-23): 888

Fourth month (1-23 to 2-23): 626

Comment:

By Feb. 23, 2023, I already had 2,589 total subscribers, which translates to 647 subscribers/month in my first four months.

As you can see, I was already almost half-way to 6,000 subscribers in just my first four months as a Substack writer.

This, in retrospect, is when I might have gotten cocky and thought I’d easily have 10,000 subscribers by the 16th to18th month of my Substack. (Memo to self: Don’t get cocky).

Total subscribers is actually not the key metric for Substack authors such as myself (those of us who have no other source of income and work on their Substacks at least eight hours every day). The key metric is “paid subscribers.”

Per my research or educated guess, I think my percentage of paid subscribers is higher than a typical Substack author. As of earlier this week, 292 of my 6,000 Substack subscribers were “paid subscribers.” 4.86 percent of my subscribers (about 1 in 21) are “paid” subscribers.

Note: The number of “paid subscribers” my articles generate every month has also fallen off a cliff. For example, in May, I netted only two (2) new paid subscribers. For context, over the life of my Substack, I’ve averaged 14.2 new paid subscribers/month. (On a brighter note, I’ve added three new paid subscribers so far in June).

If I had reached 10,000 total subscribers and maintained this paid ratio of 4.86 percent, I would now have 486 paid subscribers (instead of the 292 I had as of June 7th).

On average, a Substack author nets approximately $42 per annual subscriber. (Substack and Stripe keep about 13 percent of an annual subscription of $50 to $60.)

What this means to me is that, at one time, I thought I might have 194 more paid subscribers by this point, which would translate to $8,150 in extra revenue for the Rice family.

For what it’s worth, I’ve always thought 1,000 paid subscribers was the magic figure (or goal) for Substack authors such as myself. An author who has 1,000 paid subscribers would net at least $42,000 in income from his newsletter business. 

While this is not an impressive salary for many people, it is enough money to provide for a family of four if you happen to have a school-teacher spouse (like I do) and the family combines these modest incomes. (Substack trivia: The net income of a a school teacher in Alabama is about 15 percent more than an ultra-successful Substack author - those with at least 1,000 paid subscribers).

Why this matters or why such analysis interests me ….

For the past 20 months, I’ve been very interested in two questions:

Can a conscientious, competent and hard-working Substack author make a living from Substack?

Note: To me, it’s vitally important that Substack remains popular with readers and that this platform continues to attract talented citizen journalists. This provides the world at least one source of analysis, research and commentary that counters the propaganda produced by MSM non-journalists. 

What do Substack trends tell us about the long-term viability of Substack as a platform for full or part-time freelance journalists?

Recently, two other questions have increasingly begun to interest me:

Is it possible something different or new is going on with Substack authors, especially those like myself who routinely write about taboo topics that might threaten the establishment?

That is, has something changed that altered the “reach” - or growth rate - of my Substack newsletter?

My answer to the last two questions is, “I don’t know” … but I can say my Spider Sense is fully activated.

Question: Would the people and organizations that are running our world today - people who are keenly interested in creating and controlling all “narratives” - be interested in, perhaps, harpooning the reach or influence of writers who are challenging our rulers’ control or questioning their supremely-important “authorized” narratives?

This is a rhetorical question, but my answer - based on copious evidence from the last four years is - “damn straight they would” … or might.

In considering the hypothesis that unknown forces might be “throttling” or suppressing the reach of articles written by mavericks such as myself, I need to play Devil’s Advocate and consider other possibilities that might explain my now dramatically-lower “growth rate.”

To be continued …

One reason my growth or readership rate might have gone down is my articles might be too long. So, for that reason, I’ll expound on these questions in Part 2 of this series, which will further explore Substack trends - good, bad and peculiar.

While it took me a lot longer than I thought it would, I at least made it to 6,000 total subscribers, which is worth noting.

Again, a sincere thank you to to all the generous readers in America (and the world) who allowed me to reach this milestone. It’s been a long, strange (and fun) trip … and also a team effort!

I’m humbled that more than 6,000 people have clicked the above button.

Also, I didn’t mention all the very kind readers who use the Ko-Fi “gratuity” link to support this newsletter. My wife, the tech expert in our family, set up this link about eight months ago. All Pay Pal donations go straight to Carrie’s device!

https://ko-fi.com/billrice