What I’ve learned in 80 days as a Substack author

The ‘metrics’ have exceeded my expectations and (I think) are important in the macro picture.

That’s me on the far right, pondering the future, which wasn’t what I expected. The tall guy in the middle is my “little” brother who also went into the newspaper business. Danny, on the left, was too young to be drinking that Budweiser, but he turned out fine … I just found this picture in my photo files and needed a picture to run with this story.

I’ve now been a “Substack author” for 80 days. I thought my readers - as well as other budding or prospective Substack authors - might be interested in a “by-the-numbers” analysis that shows the growth of my newsletter.

From my own story, I can now make some observations that might be telling us something important about the macro picture, especially for those of us who want to see Substack play an even larger role in producing much-needed changes in society.

I started from zero (actually from 1) ..

1 - Substack visits to my site as of September 23, the day before I published my first article which aptly enough was on “Moving the needle.” (Note: That one visitor was my wife, who read my “coming soon” blurb).

163 - “Total visits” my first article generated on September 24.

Comment: I was off and running (pecking).

17,183 - Total visitors to my Substack on September 28, 2022.

Comment: In just six days, I went from one visitor to more than 17,000 visitors! I don’t know if this was beginner’s luck or if someone somewhere is pulling for me.

Actually, I know the source that is most responsible for me being able to quickly attract such a large audience - Citizen Free Press (CFP).

I love “back stories” …. here’s a quick one:

A person I’ve never met at CFP saw my article (a book review of The Real Anthony Fauci) and must have liked it enough to link to it.

For any writer who wants to reach a lot of people (and perchance “influence the narrative”), half the battle is writing what the author thinks is a worthwhile article. The other half of the battle - even more important really - is finding someone at a news site with a much bigger audience who thinks their readers would enjoy the same article.

For years, I was writing articles I thought were pretty good and original, but nobody would run the articles. Trust me. This is deflating for writers like myself.

Occasionally an “alternative media” site would publish one of my articles, which made me feel better, although 90 percent of these sites don’t pay freelance writers.

And then, one day, I decided that I needed to start my own Substack site because this is where all the great and important writing is taking place these days.

But even once you’ve done this, your “success” is entirely dependent on someone else “picking up” your articles. I don’t know who at Citizen Free Press decides what articles to promote at their “aggregator” site … but whoever these people are, they’re doing God’s Work as far as I am concerned.

Once upon a time I thought, “Maybe one day The Drudge Report will link to one of my articles and one of my articles will really go viral.”  Then Drudge sold out and I knew my type of journalism/commentary would never appear at the “new” Drudge …

But then - the free market still works! - Citizen Free Press came along and started doing the job Drudge abdicated. Today, every month, Citizen Free Press reaches tens of millions of viewers around the world. Very few Internet sites attract more “traffic.”

Today, seven of my articles have been picked up by The Citizen Free Press.

It’s like I went from being a member of the junior varsity to the Big Leagues in the span of two months. For decades, the “talent scouts” had ignored my fast ball until one “scout” I don’t even know said, “This guy can bring it pretty good. Let’s give this guy a chance in the Show …”

So what has this meant to me?

169,791 - That’s how many “visits” my fledgling Substack site has now gotten from Citizen Free Press in about 2 1/2 months.

Thanks to Substack metrics, I can put this figure into context …

250,000 - Total number of “visits” to Bill Rice, Jr.’s Newsletter in the last 80 days.

Comment: In other words, 67.9 percent of my total audience to date can be explained by the fact that a few strangers at Citizen Free press liked a few of my articles. Regarding my “total visit” number, this is one-quarter of a million people, which is more people than the largest city in my state.

More context …

Before I became a “freelance writer,” I worked in different capacities at three local newspapers. As coincidence would have it, all three newspapers had about 3,000 paid subscribers. So if two people in each subscriber household read one of my articles, I was reaching - at most - 6,000 people with my journalism.

When my story on Derek McIntosh (who died from the Covid vaccine) was recently picked up by Citizen Free Press, I reached more than 73,000 readers in two days. That is, I probably reached more readers with one article published at my Subtack than I reached in 20 years working at those three traditional newspapers.

Here’ another readership number:

125,000 - The approximate number of Zero Hedge readers who read my article (“Our Emperor has no Brain”) which I first published at my Substack site and then emailed to the “Tylers,’ who decided to run it. Note: Those 125,000 readers don’t show up in my metrics as the Tylers just copied and pasted my article so their readers didn’t have to click on my site to read it.

So between my Citizen Free Press articles and this one Zero Hedge article, I reached about 295,000 people (granted some of these “visits” are duplicates).

I’m not Steve Kirsch or Alex Berenson and I’m no where close to being able to feed my family with Substack income, but still … if you are a writer and you want people to actually read your stuff, how could you not be be encouraged by such numbers?

The rest of my numbers …

1,364 - Total subscribers of “Bill Rice, Jr’s. Newsletter” as of December 12, 2022.

Comment: This might not sound like a lot, but I think it’s a pretty good start.

Eighty-one days ago this number was zero. I’m averaging 17 new subscribers every day (510 news subscribers per month). I love extrapolations or projections, so this might mean that in 365 more days I’ll have 6,223 new subscribers … which will bring my total subscribers to 7,587.

Except I think I’ll have even more subscribers than this … because more subscribers begets faster subscription growth.

For example, some subscribers share my articles with others (on Substack or via their social media account). The more subscribers you have, the more shares you’ll get, which means the more new subscribers you’ll get.

This time next year I wouldn’t be surprised if my site has grown to at least 10,000 subscribers (maybe many more if I do my job and some of my unwritten articles prove to be as popular as I hope they’ll  be).

So 10,000 subscribers will be more than 3 times as many subscribers as read my articles at any of the newspapers where I previously worked. And, as I’ve shown, for every subscriber I generate, I have 183 times as many visitors who, I guess,  are also reading my articles, which is really the metric writers value the most.

What about “income,” revenue or “paid” subscribers?

This is the question of greatest interest to my wife (for good reason as her income as a high school teacher is actually subsidizing my “save-the-world” journalism efforts.)

32 - Current number of “paid subscribers.”

Comment: In one sense, this number is actually a little disappointing, but I’m not too discouraged. For one thing, I haven’t even asked anyone to subscribe and 32 people have still subscribed.

My thought was I would crank out stories for a couple of months and show my readers the volume and type of stories they might receive from my newsletter then I might ask people to consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

Back to the metrics:

41 - Counting this one, the number of articles I have published in 80 days at this Substack newsletter.

Quick aside: This is one article every other day, which might impress some people, but I used to routinely write five articles every day when I was sports editor of The Troy Messenger.

Twenty five years ago I was writing about Goshen High School’s upcoming football game and everyone in Pike County appreciated my efforts. Today, I’m writing about “crimes against humanity” and my local Facebook page is banned. Yes, the world has changed … and I’ve changed with it.

Substack’s key metric ….

Before I started this site, I researched Substack’s primers on “getting started.” From reading these links, I found that the most successful Substack sites produce about 4 to 10 percent paid subscribers. My ratio currently stands at  2.35 percent (1,369 subscribers/32 paid).

So at some point, I need to get this ratio up to at least 4 percent and get my total subscribers north of, say, 20,000. At 7 percent paid subscribers, in a year or two, I could pay for a family weekend at San Destin (in the free state of Florida!)

One of the most surprising revelations about my Sub-stack project is that 30 of my 32 paid subscribers opted to get an “annual” subscription. These 30 people went ahead and paid Subtack $40/year, of which I net about $34.

When we started this, my wife and I thought 95 percent of my subscribers would get the $5/per month option. But the exact opposite turned out to be the case. I guess people like the 33- percent discount on annual subscriptions … and/or they just want to show their support.

The Macro Substack Landscape and why the MSM can’t be amused …

I’ve read that some Substackers have “thousands” or up to 10,000 (!) paid subscribers. Some Substackers are well on their way to becoming millionaires thanks to this journalism platform.

In my opinion, here’s the key to their success: These writers (many of whom aren’t even “real” journalists) are cranking out stories that the mainstream press won’t produce.

As it turns out, a huge market exists for “contrarian” reporting and commentary. This trend must be perceived as a massive threat to executives and shareholders who own the mainstream news organizations.

My readers don’t need me to tell them these news organizations are already in deep economic trouble. The only significant advertising these “news” organizations really get these days is from Big Pharma, and these media companies are laying off editors and journalists every month.

In fact, truth be told, many of these news organizations must now be depending on “excellence in journalism” grants from foundations like Bill Gates and the Knight Foundation.

So Substack is simultaneously producing two fantastic results:

1) It’s allowing real “independent” journalists like myself (who would never be hired at these places) to find a market for our writing and perhaps even make a living doing this.

2) Substack’s growing popularity is increasingly eroding the influence of the “mainstream press.”

The bad news is most Americans still don’t know about Substack. The good news, though, is that more Americans are discovering this platform every day.

More people are learning they don’t need the New York Times or their state’s largest newspapers to get the most important news. Plus, increasingly large numbers of Americans now realize that the “legacy media” exists only to censor dissent or to block journalism that challenges all the “authorized” narratives.

It took me too long to figure this out, but the real battle for the “hearts and minds” of Americans - and really for our nation’s future - is being waged by a growing legion of Substack writers.

And it’s not just those of us who started our own Substack site, it’s the millions of people who support these Substack authors, and then tell their friends about their favorite sites and make their own excellent comments in the Reader Comments sections.

The simplest ‘solution’ of them all …

If the mainstream media is captured (and is NEVER going to reform itself), simply boycott the mainstream media.

Now that Twitter (might) be allowing more Substack content to go viral and as long as we have aggregators like Citizen Free Press that continue to highlight some of the Greatest Hits from Substackers, “our side” actually can reach tens of millions of people.

Dangerous and dubious narratives CAN be challenged and frauds and crooks might, belatedly, be exposed.

True, I’m reaching “only” a quarter million or so of these people, but - Goodness Gracious -  I was previously only reaching a couple thousand.

Sometimes when I think about corny things like the future of my country, I think the glass is “half empty” and I have to fight off depression. But, other times, I look at some of the “metrics” and say, no, things are actually moving in our direction.

Heck, I’m an example of this. The growing number of readers who are putting aside a few minutes every week to read their favorite Substack authors is another example of this.

We’re now at the end of the year 2022. Let’s see where these Substack metrics are at the end of 2023. Prediction: The Bad Guys - and the editors at your state’s largest newspaper - aren’t going to like those numbers. And whatever disturbs their side is good news for our side.

(A heartfelt thank you to everyone who has read any article I have written in the last 80 days. I’ll try to write a few short ones in the future!)