Thanks to the help of my readers, my list of alternative media All-Stars has grown significantly. This growing list proves the # of authors on “our side” dwarfs the list of Substack’s Statist authors.
Totality of Evidence News (By Just Call Me Jack): 2,500+
Note: This author no longer publishes many original articles, but makes a good number of posts in “Notes.”
Post from Nov. 2, 2024:
Sub-headline: “Totality of Evidence will remain live, but updates will not be frequent.” The author noted his need for a larger income:
“A few months ago, I shared that I couldn't sustain my website updates without a steady income. I’m truly grateful to everyone who has supported me through Substack or Buy Me a Coffee; your contributions have help to keep TotalityofEvidence.com live and updated and allow me to pay a few bills.
“However, despite those who generosity donated, the funds raised have not been enough to create a full-time income—totalling just only a few thousand dollars is no longer sustainable for my personal needs.”
My comment: This is one of my worries about the Substack subscriber model, which does produce (a much-appreciated) supplemental income for most authors. However, only a tiny percentage and number of writers can make income that might approach the salaries of “mainstream” journalists and editors.
I never intended to make a living on substack, i just wanted to document the plandemic, and us the stack to share with others. I had no time, or bandwidth, for marketing.
Its hard now, as i have established a website platform that has captured the plandemic journey...which is still unfolding, but with a 12 hr/day job (what was i thinking!) I can't possibly keep up. Even writing this takes me away from work...though i did manage to launch a new page today on Totalityofevidence.com
I just found another newsletter I should have added to today's updated list:
** Madhava Setty (“An Insult to Intuition”): 5.7K+
I have now added this newsletter via the edit function. The list is now 137 newsletters and I added one more with "at least 5,000" subscribers.
I can see the list is going to continue to grow. The "Health-Politics" ranking on Substack does NOT include many of these newsletters. For example, my own, Simulation Commander, Mark Oshinkie and many others.
I got started on this project - which grew and grew - when I learned that Robert Reich has 520,000 total subscribers - more (by a large number) than any author on "our" team (except for Matt Taibbi). I noted in one article that Reich might be the "King" of the liberal Substack newsletter authors.
That's not so. I later learned that documentary film-maker Michael Moorer has 720,000 total subscribers.
One trend at my own Sustack site I'm trying to quantify is my "rate of (total) subscriber growth."
I just surpassed 7,000 total subscribers which motivated me to research how long it took me to reach 1K subscribers.
Here's my data (I started my Substack on Sept. 23, 2022 - a little less than 2 1/3 years ago):
Subscriber levels: How long it took to reach each 1,000-subscriber milestone:
0 to 1K subscribers: 52 days
1K to 2K subscribers: 34 days
2k to 3k subscribers: 77 days
3K to 4k subscribers: 96 days
4K to 5k subscribers: 196 days - end 1-5-24 (Note: when trends began to noticeably change)
5K to 6K subscribers: 142 days
6k to 7K subscribers: 217 days
- It took me 86 days (less than 3 months) to reach my first 2,000 subscribers
- It took me 359 days (approximately 12 months) to reach my last 2,000 subscribers
My best 34-day period was between 11-15-22 and 12-19-22, when I added 1,000 subscribers.
It took me 217 days - 6.4X longer - to generate my last 1,000 subscribers (6-8-24 to 1-12-25)
***
- In the first 3 months of my Substack, I averaged adding approximately 690 total subscribers/month.
- In my last three months (before my recent spike)*, I averaged adding only 95 total subscribers/month (a decrease in my newsletter's rate of subscriber growth of 86 percent).
*Note: 10-7-24 to 1-7-25: I added 285 subscribers in three months (=95/month).
***
From a financial perspective, why this matters ...
- If I had continued to average 690 new subscribers/month, I would now have 19,320 total subscribers. Instead, I now have 7,022 total subscribers.
Also, if my "paid ratio" was my current 4.15 percent, I would now have 802 paid subscribers. Instead, I have 288 paid subscribers.
If I had 802 paid subscribers, my gross annual revenue would be approximately $44,110.
At 288 paid subscribers, my gross annual revenue is approximately $15,840.
Another interesting Substack-provided metric is "30-day views."
In the past 30 days, my Substack has received 131K "page views." This means I am averaging 4,367 page views per day in the last 30 days.
This is up 12.6K from the previous 30 days.
This number is no doubt inflated by the number of stories from other Substack authors that I cross-post. So all of these "reads" aren't people reading my original stories.
In the past 30 days, I published 13 of my own original stories. So I post an original story about every 2.3 days ... or at least three original stories/week - which is about my average since I started this newsletter 2 1/3 years ago.
I used to get many more monthly "page views" because Citizen Free Press used to routinely link to my articles, which boosted my readership tremendously.
However, it's been many months since "Citizen Kane" linked to one of my articles.
FWIW, my first article ("The Top 100") has, so far, generated about 5,850 "page views." The article was shared 77 times and cross-posted 33 times. I appreciate the shares and cross-posts, which significantly boost my readership.
Lately, my "open rate" has been between 33 and 34 percent of my subscribers. For some reason, my open rate used to be significantly higher - from 43 to 50+ percent. I think the "Open Rate" of almost all Substack authors has dropped significantly in the past year or so.
Also, FWIW, my "paid" subscriber number (net) is still 288. However, every new free subscriber is a potential future "paid" subscriber. If my paid ratio remains at least 4 percent, 100 new total subscribers will, at some point, create four (4) new paid subscribers - which is $200 (gross) for my family.
And, as noted in my prior article, one of the main reason all of us publish a Substack newsletter is to reach as many readers as possible. You never know which of these subscribers could be particularly influential ... So all subscribers are important and appreciated.
As I also noted, "making money" is clearly not the main motivation for Substack's contrarian authors. Reaching as many people as possible might be the main motivation. More important is reaching the RIGHT people. This is where censorship programs enter the picture. The Powers that Be don't want our team of authors to reach the right people.
My Nutrition Matters Substack https://nutritionmatters.substack.com has 887 subscribers and about the same number of followers, who don't get the articles as emails. One or two people offered to take up paid subscriptions, which is great.
I don't do this for money, but to raise awareness of the need for proper vitamin D supplementation, such as 0.125 mg (5000 IU) a day for average weight adults, in order to attain the 50 ng/mL 125 nmol/L circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D the immune system needs to function properly.
I write about other aspects of nutrition and the origins of SARS-CoV-2, but by far the most important, easily corrected, nutritional deficiency is vitamin D3.
Are synthetic supplements really necessary? I try to eat a large organic free range egg for breakfast every day. Is that enough Vit D for an aging hippy retiree with Big P-Harma phobia?
I bet and hope you make it. However, all authors who are writing content like you write are very important to our cause, which is to push-back against expanding authoritarianism and untruths (bogus narratives).
If you want to keep up on the L.A. fires, Chris Bray lives in Pasadena, has done some on-the-ground reporting, and probably will have more in coming days.
Well done! You have certainly grabbed this runaway bull by the horns and are off to a great start. I don't want to increase the burden of work but I do have a tiny suggestion to make!
I am not subscribed to some of the accounts you have listed, so it occurred to me that most of us may find this list even more useful if you could convert the names on the leaderboard into tags for the authors (by adding the @ symbol and selecting from Substack's list).
Then, as newbies find your list, they can quickly and easily subscribe to all the Contrarians and we can all subscribe to each other!
I bet this would boost the subscriber numbers exponentially and help us form a united, mutually supportive team.
Great idea, Frances. Or, I could add links to every newsletter (but that might be too many links in one article?) I also want to reach out to all these "Top 1 or 2 percent" Contrarian authors and try to get a good email for them.
It occurs to me that there is strength in numbers and "our side" needs to be able to better coordinate and communicate with each other. Any message we want to send out in mass to the public would have a greater impact if large percentages of these authors sent out the same message at roughly the same time.
For example, I recently wrote an article suggesting someone could lead an effort to raise money to pay for billboards across the country that raise awareness about the "white, fibrous clots" embalmers are routinely finding.
If 100 of my soon-to-be 150 newsletter authors got behind this fund-raising project and used their subscriber bases to help raise money for this project, it might actually be possible.
I've also thought of several other projects that such a data base would help with.
One thing I'm sure of: The "leaders" of our world don't want "our side" to get better organized or coordinated .... so this growing list/project is probably perceived as a "threat" to these villains.
Developing into fund-raising for specific investigations is a brilliant sideline, especially if it draws attention to neglected matters such as those awful fibrous clots.
I like that idea a lot.
Ooh, while I have your attention you might want to add to your list @Laura who writes Normal Island News in brilliant satire. She is hugely popular in UK because she writes pretending to be Laura Kuenssberg, the very famous Queen of BBC propaganda. Laura currently has well over 60,000 subscribers following her acid wit.
Thanks. I'll check out Trish's site and add it to the next round of updates if her newsletter has at least 1,300 total subscribers. I hope readers continue to provide newsletters I may have missed. My guess is that this list will end up being, at least, "The Top 150 Contrarian Newsletters." This updated leaderboard should end up being a good resource for people who want to better "weaponize"/utilize our troops.
Hope this is of interest - copied from a comment on Dr Peter Breggin's latest stack: -
"No name, for now
21m
FYI:
Here is How Deep State Handles Substack Subscribers
And what you can do about it
Len Ber, MD
Jan 07, 2025
After months of investigations of my Substack subscribers data, as well as Targeted Justice and Ana Toledo, we discovered how subscribers e-mails have been handled.
Someone is logging into the accounts, and deleting existing subscribers from the list, while replacing them with the “dummy” e-mail accounts.
Because of this, the total number of subscribers remains about the same, but real subscribers stop receiving notifications when new articles are published.
If you are a subscriber, please make sure that your account is active, and you are receiving updates. If you have been unsubscribed, please re-subscribe, and let both Substack and the Substack Newsletters know this has happened."
I did see that. In fact, I cross-posted that dispatch. I share his concerns that "funny business" might be happening on Substack for certain authors (especially those who are perceived as a threat to key bogus narratives). If this is true, I'd love to learn HOW the "reach" of these authors is being suppressed. He gives one possible explanation.
It doesn't seem to fit the m.o. of our rulers to NOT engage in shenanigans. My thought is if they think they can get away with it, they'll do it ... and they can get away with it.
Totality of Evidence News (By Just Call Me Jack): 2,500+
Note: This author no longer publishes many original articles, but makes a good number of posts in “Notes.”
Post from Nov. 2, 2024:
Sub-headline: “Totality of Evidence will remain live, but updates will not be frequent.” The author noted his need for a larger income:
“A few months ago, I shared that I couldn't sustain my website updates without a steady income. I’m truly grateful to everyone who has supported me through Substack or Buy Me a Coffee; your contributions have help to keep TotalityofEvidence.com live and updated and allow me to pay a few bills.
“However, despite those who generosity donated, the funds raised have not been enough to create a full-time income—totalling just only a few thousand dollars is no longer sustainable for my personal needs.”
My comment: This is one of my worries about the Substack subscriber model, which does produce (a much-appreciated) supplemental income for most authors. However, only a tiny percentage and number of writers can make income that might approach the salaries of “mainstream” journalists and editors.
Thanks Bill for adding me in.
I never intended to make a living on substack, i just wanted to document the plandemic, and us the stack to share with others. I had no time, or bandwidth, for marketing.
Its hard now, as i have established a website platform that has captured the plandemic journey...which is still unfolding, but with a 12 hr/day job (what was i thinking!) I can't possibly keep up. Even writing this takes me away from work...though i did manage to launch a new page today on Totalityofevidence.com
I just found another newsletter I should have added to today's updated list:
** Madhava Setty (“An Insult to Intuition”): 5.7K+
I have now added this newsletter via the edit function. The list is now 137 newsletters and I added one more with "at least 5,000" subscribers.
I can see the list is going to continue to grow. The "Health-Politics" ranking on Substack does NOT include many of these newsletters. For example, my own, Simulation Commander, Mark Oshinkie and many others.
I got started on this project - which grew and grew - when I learned that Robert Reich has 520,000 total subscribers - more (by a large number) than any author on "our" team (except for Matt Taibbi). I noted in one article that Reich might be the "King" of the liberal Substack newsletter authors.
That's not so. I later learned that documentary film-maker Michael Moorer has 720,000 total subscribers.
One trend at my own Sustack site I'm trying to quantify is my "rate of (total) subscriber growth."
I just surpassed 7,000 total subscribers which motivated me to research how long it took me to reach 1K subscribers.
Here's my data (I started my Substack on Sept. 23, 2022 - a little less than 2 1/3 years ago):
Subscriber levels: How long it took to reach each 1,000-subscriber milestone:
0 to 1K subscribers: 52 days
1K to 2K subscribers: 34 days
2k to 3k subscribers: 77 days
3K to 4k subscribers: 96 days
4K to 5k subscribers: 196 days - end 1-5-24 (Note: when trends began to noticeably change)
5K to 6K subscribers: 142 days
6k to 7K subscribers: 217 days
- It took me 86 days (less than 3 months) to reach my first 2,000 subscribers
- It took me 359 days (approximately 12 months) to reach my last 2,000 subscribers
My best 34-day period was between 11-15-22 and 12-19-22, when I added 1,000 subscribers.
It took me 217 days - 6.4X longer - to generate my last 1,000 subscribers (6-8-24 to 1-12-25)
***
- In the first 3 months of my Substack, I averaged adding approximately 690 total subscribers/month.
- In my last three months (before my recent spike)*, I averaged adding only 95 total subscribers/month (a decrease in my newsletter's rate of subscriber growth of 86 percent).
*Note: 10-7-24 to 1-7-25: I added 285 subscribers in three months (=95/month).
***
From a financial perspective, why this matters ...
- If I had continued to average 690 new subscribers/month, I would now have 19,320 total subscribers. Instead, I now have 7,022 total subscribers.
Also, if my "paid ratio" was my current 4.15 percent, I would now have 802 paid subscribers. Instead, I have 288 paid subscribers.
If I had 802 paid subscribers, my gross annual revenue would be approximately $44,110.
At 288 paid subscribers, my gross annual revenue is approximately $15,840.
The slowed growth has "cost me" $28,270.
When I started this project on Jan. 7th, Robert Reich had 518,900+ subscribers.
Today, Jan. 12th, I notice that Reich now has 524,900+ subscribers.
In five days, Reich's subscriber numbers grew by 6,000 (1.16 percent).
In a week, he added more subscribers - 6,000 - than about half of the newsletters on my list have ... in total.
So his subscriber numbers are rapidly growing.
Another interesting Substack-provided metric is "30-day views."
In the past 30 days, my Substack has received 131K "page views." This means I am averaging 4,367 page views per day in the last 30 days.
This is up 12.6K from the previous 30 days.
This number is no doubt inflated by the number of stories from other Substack authors that I cross-post. So all of these "reads" aren't people reading my original stories.
In the past 30 days, I published 13 of my own original stories. So I post an original story about every 2.3 days ... or at least three original stories/week - which is about my average since I started this newsletter 2 1/3 years ago.
I used to get many more monthly "page views" because Citizen Free Press used to routinely link to my articles, which boosted my readership tremendously.
However, it's been many months since "Citizen Kane" linked to one of my articles.
FWIW, my first article ("The Top 100") has, so far, generated about 5,850 "page views." The article was shared 77 times and cross-posted 33 times. I appreciate the shares and cross-posts, which significantly boost my readership.
Lately, my "open rate" has been between 33 and 34 percent of my subscribers. For some reason, my open rate used to be significantly higher - from 43 to 50+ percent. I think the "Open Rate" of almost all Substack authors has dropped significantly in the past year or so.
Also, FWIW, my "paid" subscriber number (net) is still 288. However, every new free subscriber is a potential future "paid" subscriber. If my paid ratio remains at least 4 percent, 100 new total subscribers will, at some point, create four (4) new paid subscribers - which is $200 (gross) for my family.
And, as noted in my prior article, one of the main reason all of us publish a Substack newsletter is to reach as many readers as possible. You never know which of these subscribers could be particularly influential ... So all subscribers are important and appreciated.
As I also noted, "making money" is clearly not the main motivation for Substack's contrarian authors. Reaching as many people as possible might be the main motivation. More important is reaching the RIGHT people. This is where censorship programs enter the picture. The Powers that Be don't want our team of authors to reach the right people.
My Nutrition Matters Substack https://nutritionmatters.substack.com has 887 subscribers and about the same number of followers, who don't get the articles as emails. One or two people offered to take up paid subscriptions, which is great.
I don't do this for money, but to raise awareness of the need for proper vitamin D supplementation, such as 0.125 mg (5000 IU) a day for average weight adults, in order to attain the 50 ng/mL 125 nmol/L circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D the immune system needs to function properly.
My long web page https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/ cites and discusses the most important research on the vitamin D compounds and the immune system.
I write about other aspects of nutrition and the origins of SARS-CoV-2, but by far the most important, easily corrected, nutritional deficiency is vitamin D3.
I'm sold on the importance of Vitamin D. You have a neat niche.
Are synthetic supplements really necessary? I try to eat a large organic free range egg for breakfast every day. Is that enough Vit D for an aging hippy retiree with Big P-Harma phobia?
My goal in life is to make this list!
I bet and hope you make it. However, all authors who are writing content like you write are very important to our cause, which is to push-back against expanding authoritarianism and untruths (bogus narratives).
The narrative is the peoples now, as long as there's air in our lungs. Thank you for what you're doing here.
If you want to keep up on the L.A. fires, Chris Bray lives in Pasadena, has done some on-the-ground reporting, and probably will have more in coming days.
Great list. Consider adding https://theylied.substack.com/
Thanks!
Will do. I'll wait another day or two and then do a third-round of updates.
Well done! You have certainly grabbed this runaway bull by the horns and are off to a great start. I don't want to increase the burden of work but I do have a tiny suggestion to make!
I am not subscribed to some of the accounts you have listed, so it occurred to me that most of us may find this list even more useful if you could convert the names on the leaderboard into tags for the authors (by adding the @ symbol and selecting from Substack's list).
Then, as newbies find your list, they can quickly and easily subscribe to all the Contrarians and we can all subscribe to each other!
I bet this would boost the subscriber numbers exponentially and help us form a united, mutually supportive team.
Whadyafink?
Great idea, Frances. Or, I could add links to every newsletter (but that might be too many links in one article?) I also want to reach out to all these "Top 1 or 2 percent" Contrarian authors and try to get a good email for them.
It occurs to me that there is strength in numbers and "our side" needs to be able to better coordinate and communicate with each other. Any message we want to send out in mass to the public would have a greater impact if large percentages of these authors sent out the same message at roughly the same time.
For example, I recently wrote an article suggesting someone could lead an effort to raise money to pay for billboards across the country that raise awareness about the "white, fibrous clots" embalmers are routinely finding.
If 100 of my soon-to-be 150 newsletter authors got behind this fund-raising project and used their subscriber bases to help raise money for this project, it might actually be possible.
I've also thought of several other projects that such a data base would help with.
One thing I'm sure of: The "leaders" of our world don't want "our side" to get better organized or coordinated .... so this growing list/project is probably perceived as a "threat" to these villains.
Developing into fund-raising for specific investigations is a brilliant sideline, especially if it draws attention to neglected matters such as those awful fibrous clots.
I like that idea a lot.
Ooh, while I have your attention you might want to add to your list @Laura who writes Normal Island News in brilliant satire. She is hugely popular in UK because she writes pretending to be Laura Kuenssberg, the very famous Queen of BBC propaganda. Laura currently has well over 60,000 subscribers following her acid wit.
I see JikkyLeaks in your list but prefer Moriarty
Thank you Bill.
But wait, there's more!
Wouldja please have a care and not whelm me with more to read?!
Joking. Over, under and whelm away! Great to know we contrarians have more questioning authors to choose.
Do i feel l less alone? Yes! Less crazy? No!
Happy days to you and all your readers. 😎
Another one is Trish Wood, "Trish Wood is Critical."
Thanks. I'll check out Trish's site and add it to the next round of updates if her newsletter has at least 1,300 total subscribers. I hope readers continue to provide newsletters I may have missed. My guess is that this list will end up being, at least, "The Top 150 Contrarian Newsletters." This updated leaderboard should end up being a good resource for people who want to better "weaponize"/utilize our troops.
Hope this is of interest - copied from a comment on Dr Peter Breggin's latest stack: -
"No name, for now
21m
FYI:
Here is How Deep State Handles Substack Subscribers
And what you can do about it
Len Ber, MD
Jan 07, 2025
After months of investigations of my Substack subscribers data, as well as Targeted Justice and Ana Toledo, we discovered how subscribers e-mails have been handled.
Someone is logging into the accounts, and deleting existing subscribers from the list, while replacing them with the “dummy” e-mail accounts.
Because of this, the total number of subscribers remains about the same, but real subscribers stop receiving notifications when new articles are published.
If you are a subscriber, please make sure that your account is active, and you are receiving updates. If you have been unsubscribed, please re-subscribe, and let both Substack and the Substack Newsletters know this has happened."
https://lenbermd.substack.com/p/here-is-how-deep-state-handles-substack?publication_id=1227537&%3Bpost_id=154321311&%3BisFreemail=true&%3Br=d9uy3&%3BtriedRedirect=true&%3Butm_source=substack&%3Butm_medium=email
I might need to add this doctor to my list. I looked at his archives and it seems the vast majority of his articles deal with "Havana Syndrome."
Here's Dr. Ber's numbers, which include "hundreds of paid subscribers."
Len Ber MD (“Homo Interuptis, with Len Ber MD”): 7.5K+
I did see that. In fact, I cross-posted that dispatch. I share his concerns that "funny business" might be happening on Substack for certain authors (especially those who are perceived as a threat to key bogus narratives). If this is true, I'd love to learn HOW the "reach" of these authors is being suppressed. He gives one possible explanation.
Thanks for responding!
Relieved you are aware of possible shenanigans.
Wishing you a great week.
I'm very aware of "possible shenanigans."
It doesn't seem to fit the m.o. of our rulers to NOT engage in shenanigans. My thought is if they think they can get away with it, they'll do it ... and they can get away with it.
Unfortunately, I agree.
Nevertheless, I wish you a really great week!
Thanks for adding this important, intriguing and possibly-germane dispatch. I hope you have a great week too.