Robert Reich continues to blow up on Substack

Mr. Reich just added 5,000 more subscribers … in one day and 25,000 in 10 days!

With this story, I was going to run another picture of Mr. Reich, but decided this book cover better expresses my concerns about the reach of people who think like this Substack All-Star does. We ARE engaged in “a battle for America.” That’s why I write these articles.

In recent articles, I’ve developed my hypothesis that the growth rate of many “Contrarian” Substack authors has slowed dramatically. I know my numbers have (see below).

However, unlike “our” team of writers, liberal All-Stars on Substack seem to be experiencing record or eye-popping subscriber growth.

For example, Robert Reich.

When I first researched Reich’s subscription numbers (on Jan. 7), Reich’s newsletter had 518,900+ total subscribers.

Nine days later - on Jan. 16 - his total number of subscribers had grown to 537,900+.

In a period of nine days, Reich’s total subscriber numbers grew by 3.66 percent.

Here's Reich’s recent subscriber numbers and increases:

Jan. 7: 518,900+

Jan. 16: 537,900+

= + 19,000 total subscribers (+3.66 percent)

But, wait, there's more!

Jan. 17 (today's numbers): 540,900+

Second update (Jan. 17 this evening): 542,900+

Comment: Reich’s total subscribers increased by 5,000 in one day and have grown by 25,000 in 10 days!

Third update (January 23): Reich now has 583,000 total subscribers! So he has added approximately 65,000 total subscribers since I started checking his numbers on January 7th - 17 days ago.

***

For context, on my list of 137 "Contrarian" authors, only 46 newsletters had a total of at least 22,000 subscribers.

Expressed differently, Reich acquired more total subscribers in 10 days than 89 of the “Contrarian” authors I identified achieved in YEARS.

Note: And these are the “star” writers for “our” team.

For more context, it took Reich only about five or six days to acquire more subscribers than my newsletter has reached in 28 months (7,070 subscribers).

To provide additional context from my own newsletter, I also recently experienced a significant spike in total subscribers (no doubt because my “Top 137” story was shared so often.)

However, this brief spurt of growth was atypical or anomalous.

My total subscriber numbers:

Jan. 7: 6,951

Jan. 16: 7,068

= + 117 (+ 1.68 percent)

Even with a significant spike, my growth rate (1.68 percent) was 54 percent smaller than Mr. Reich’s (now more than 3.66 percent).

However, more typical is my subscriber growth the prior nine days:

Dec. 30, 2024: 6,929

Jan. 7, 2025: 6,951

= + 22 (+ 0.317 percent)

Note: Excluding my recent atypical spike, Mr. Reich’s growth rate is at least 11X greater than my growth rate.

In the past nine months or so, in most months, I’ve averaged adding between 30 and 60 new subscribers per month. In my first year as a Substack author, I had many WEEKS where I added 400 to 800 subscribers in a seven-day period.

So, unlike Mr. Reich, my growth rate has slowed dramatically.

I wonder how many “Covid Contrarian” authors on my list have been experiencing subscriber growth of 3.66+ percent every nine days or have added 5,000 subscribers in one day … or 65,000 subscribers in half a month?

My strong hunch: Probably not many (if any).

For the vast majority of Covid Contrarians, I believe their rates of subscriber growth have slowed dramatically.

I KNOW the subscriber growth rate of Mr. Reich is growing rapidly by eye-popping numbers.

Anyway, this observation/trend is very interesting to me and is perhaps telling us something important (and disconcerting) about Substack.

Other areas I want to explore with analysis of subscriber trends …

Note: In the days to come, I’ll add more observations and extrapolations in the Reader Comments beneath this article.

For example, I want to analyze/compare the number of “likes” different newsletters generate - expressed as a ratio of total subscribers.

While Mr. Reich’s articles produce extremely-large numbers of “likes,” do his articles (with 543K subscribers) produce a higher percentage/ratio of “likes” than my articles (at 7,000 subscribers)?

Generally speaking, do the articles of “Covid contrarians” produce more “likes” and “reader comments” than the Statist/Status Quo authors?

I also want to look at the numbers of a few of the “Covid Contrarian” All-Stars and see how their subscriber growth rates compare to the growth-rate numbers of Substack’s liberal All-Stars.

For example, are the newsletters of Alex Berenson and Steve Kirsch growing at the same rate as Mr. Reich’s? I don’t think so.

Thirdly, I want to explore the validity of the assumption that “more subscribers begets even more subscribers.”

My earlier (erroneous) assumption was that growth spurts produce even greater growth spurts in the future.

While this assumption definitely seems to apply to Mr. Reich, it no longer applies to my own Substack.

I can actually document or quantify the stark reversal in my own subscriber growth rate.

I can do this because I created my own metric - “Story Reads required to produce one new subscriber.”

In the first 10 or so months of publishing my newsletter, each story I posted generated far more new subscribers than the stories I’ve produced in the last 10 or so months.

I suspect Mr. Reich’s ratio with this metric is dramatically different than my own (as well as dramatically different than the majority of authors on my “Contrarian” list).

*** (My readership levels would be significantly lower except for loyal readers who use this button … or authors who use the cross-post button to boost my “reach.” As others have noted, “freedom of reach” is just as important as “freedom of speech.”) ***

Questions that interest me:

What changed, if anything, on Substack?

Note: I’ll offer a few theories, including the popular theory that the market of “Covid Contrarians” has become over-saturated, resulting in throngs of “conservative” readers deciding to “unsubscribe” to many newsletters … or opting to not add more newsletters to their subscription lists - which already include more newsletters than these users could possibly read.

Why are at least some liberal authors (who never challenge any authorized narratives) doing much better producing new subscribers? I have some theories that might answer this question.

As always, reader feedback is greatly appreciated.

I’ll even allow subscribers to Mr. Reich’s Substack - or Dan Rather’s (414K+ subscribers) or Bob Dunning’s (“thousands paid”) to opine at my site … for free.

(I still daydream that I could add 1,600 paid subscribers in a couple of weeks - just like liberal columnist Bob Dunning did).

One-time Ko-Fi donations greatly appreciated!