Improve Your Newsletter With This Data

👋 Today, we’re looking at a report stacked with MAD insights about the Substack landscape.

Intro’s stacked with puns aside, let’s dive in! 🚀

Gutting The Substack Landscape

This week’s Revenews is written by Ciler Demiralp, who writes the (awesome) Newsletter Circle, over to you…

Substack has more than 35 million active subscriptions, including more than 3 million paid subscriptions. There are thousands of writers who get paid and the top 10 authors on Substack collectively make $25 million per year.*

Intrigued by these usage statistics, I analyzed publicly available data from 75K Substack newsletters and created a free comprehensive report.

My objective with this report:

• Provide a clearer picture of the Substack landscape and its users

• Explore newsletter operators’ behaviors

• Identify opportunities within the newsletter market 

In this article, I’ll cover key highlights about paid subscriptions. For the full analysis, you can access the report for free.

Get the free report

🤔 How Many Newsletters Offer Paid Subscriptions?

Of the 75K newsletters analyzed, 35.7% offer a paid subscription. 

This means there are 27K paid newsletters and 48K free newsletters.

While only 36% of all newsletters offer paid subscriptions, this ratio increases to 50% among active newsletters.

How to interpret: Substack’s business model relies on paid subscriptions, taking a 10% commission on transactions, so it actively encourages creators to activate paid subscriptions. However, free content still dominates the platform.

P.S. Data for the report is pulled on May 10th. Newsletters that published their latest issue within the past six weeks (between April 1st and May 10th) are classified as “Active.”

🧮 Does the Paid Subscription Ratio Vary by Subscriber Range?

We have subscriber number information for 12K active newsletters.

When we zoom into paid subscription ratios across subscriber ranges, we see it increases as the list size gets bigger.

Paid subscriptions are highest among newsletters with 100K+ subscribers (75%), followed by newsletters with 20K-50K subscribers (74%).

How to interpret: Creators tend to grow their audience to a certain size before activating paid subscriptions. Substack suggests that 5%-10% of free subscribers typically convert to paid**, but many creators share lower conversion rates, particularly with smaller lists. This could discourage newer or smaller newsletters from monetizing early, as they focus on the growth and mastering other aspects of running a newsletter business.

🏃 How Active are Paid Newsletters?

Among the 75K newsletters analyzed, nearly half are inactive.

• 57% of free newsletters are inactive.

• Only 24% of paid newsletters are inactive, the lowest rate.

This means 6,500 inactive paid newsletters, which is still a significant number.

How to interpret: While paid newsletters are less likely to go inactive, creators may abandon their newsletters if their revenue doesn’t justify the effort or if they switch to other platforms.

📝 Publishing Frequency of Paid Newsletters

Paid newsletters tend to publish more frequently than free ones:

• 27% of paid newsletters publish weekly, compared to 21% overall and 18% for free newsletters.

• 22% publish multiple times a week, versus just 8% of free newsletters.

• 5% of paid newsletters publish daily, compared to 2% for free ones.

How to interpret: Paid newsletters often include exclusive content to retain paid subscribers, driving the need for higher publishing frequencies. Additionally, creators use free content strategically to convert free subscribers into paid ones.

These might lead to higher publishing frequencies.

🤑 Average Paid Subscription Prices

Among active paid newsletters, the average subscription prices are:

• Avg. Monthly Price: $10

• Avg. Yearly Price: $96

• Avg. Founding Price: $310

How to interpret: Many creators adopt the standard subscription model of offering two months free with annual plans.

🎢 Price Variations Across Subscriber Ranges

Subscriber number information is available for 7,557 newsletters out of  20,247 active paid newsletters.

Compared to the overall average:

• Avg. yearly price is relatively higher among newsletters with 5K-10K and 50K-100K subscribers.

• Avg. founding price is relatively higher among newsletters with 5K-10K, 20K-50K and 50K-100K subscribers.

How to interpret: Monthly subscription prices are relatively stable across subscriber ranges, suggesting that creators prioritize audience growth and converting free subscribers over increasing prices.

🧹 Price Variations by Publishing Frequency

Among 20,247 active paid newsletters:

• Daily and monthly paid newsletters charge relatively higher subscription prices compared to the overall average.

• Avg. Founding Price of bi-monthly newsletters ($690)  is more than double the overall average ($310).

How to interpret: Monthly newsletters may charge more because they deliver in-depth research or unique perspectives, requiring more preparation time. On the other hand, newsletters publishing multiple times a week often justify membership prices through frequent updates, even if the content isn’t as deep.

Additional Findings from the Report

• 87% of the newsletters are in English. 

• 82% have less than 10K subscribers.

• Running a newsletter is a solo business. 

95% of active newsletters are run by one creator, which is valid for both free and paid ones.

• 69% of all newsletters use Substack’s ‘recommendation feature’ and recommend at least 1 other Substack newsletter.

• 56% of all newsletters shared at least one post on Substack Notes.

• X is the most shared social media link by newsletter creators, representing 33% of all shared links.

Final Note

As Newsletter Circle, I’ve been conducting in-depth Q&As with newsletter operators since January 2023. These one-on-one interviews reveal what it takes to build a successful newsletter business. However, it’s equally important to look at the bigger picture, which led to this report.

I hope you find this report useful and that it sparks new ideas and opportunities for you.

Link to Report: “2024 Understanding Substack Landscape Report”

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