75K Substack newsletters analyzed

get ready for "the" report

Newsletter Circle is the newsletter for newsletter creators.

👉 Every Sunday, you will read the unique journey of a different newsletter creator and learn more about how to start, grow and monetize your own newsletter.

👉 Every Wednesday, you will read articles and the list of curated resources to level up your newsletter business.

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Hey everyone,

A while ago, I mentioned that I was analyzing thousands of Substack newsletters.

Since then, I’ve expanded the data and increased the number of newsletters analyzed from 49K to 75K.

I’ll start publishing parts of the report in July.

Let’s have a look at the revised version of a few initial findings:

• 87% of newsletters are in English.

  The second most common language is Portuguese, followed by Spanish, French, Italian and German.

• 23% of the newsletters disclose the number of subscribers they have on the landing page.

  51% of these 17,400 newsletters have subscribers between 1,000 and 2,500.

  16% has 2,500 - 5,000 subscribers, which is the second biggest group.

• 36% of newsletters offer a paid plan.

All of the above figures include both active and inactive newsletters. However,

• 44% of all newsletters sent their last issue before April 1st, indicating a potential of over 33,000 inactive newsletters.*

• What is even more striking is that almost half of those potential inactive newsletters can be classified as new launches. So, they joined the newsletter graveyard shortly after the launch.

So, in the upcoming report, I’ll delve into the details of active and inactive newsletters separately and look for the following:

• Publishing frequencies

• List sizes for paid & free subscriptions

• Pricing details for paid newsletters

• Regular publishing behaviors

• Age of the newsletters

• List sizes

• Categories

• Preferred social media channels

• Usage of “recommendations” features

• Usage of Substack Notes

I’m super excited about this report. It will include so many unique insights and I believe it will be a gold mine for you to: 

• understand the space you’re part of

• explore other creators' behaviors and strategies

• identify opportunities in the market

If you want to be notified when I launch the report, join the waitlist using the link below.

As a creator who often talks about consistency, I’m currently being a bit inconsistent with my publishing schedule.

I’m in a transition period with upgrades and additional projects for newsletter creators. Besides the Substack report, here are a few other projects I'm working on:

• Developing a distribution plan for the report

• Building my website

• Creating lead magnets

• Managing outreach campaigns

• Onboarding a summer intern to support ongoing tasks

I’ll also share the detailed distribution plan of the report and my outreach efforts in detail.

Long story short, I appreciate your understanding if I miss a few issues. Rest assured, I’m still working hard for you! There are insightful interviews and articles in the pipeline, so stay tuned.

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👉 Do you want to reach 2,500 newsletter creators & enthusiasts?

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That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.

See you next week.

Ciler

Find me on Twitter

Find me on LinkedIn

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📌 P.S. I’ve switched from Substack over to Beehiiv (here). But don’t worry; you don’t need to do anything; I will manually add you to my Beehiiv list if you subscribe here. This is just for you to know :)

And don’t worry; you will receive the new issues only from “cilerdemiralp.beehiiv.com”, no duplications.