Your Substack data can tell you what's happening. I help you figure out what it means for the publication.

A one-time editorial and audience intelligence audit for established publications that need to know what to change, protect or investigate next.

1k to 191+K  Subscriber range analyzed

The Gap Nobody Talks About

Substack shows you numbers. It doesn’t show you what they mean for your writing.

Your dashboard tells you how many people opened last Tuesday’s post. It doesn’t tell you that your free readers haven’t viewed a single page of your archive in six months. It doesn’t tell you that the people who found you through Notes behave completely differently than the ones who came from your website. It doesn’t tell you that your paid subscribers are 3x more active than your free list — and what that gap means for every editorial decision you’re about to make.

I’ve spent the past 18 months inside the raw CSV data of Substack publications across every size and niche — not the dashboard summaries, the actual subscriber-level behavior. What I’ve found is a set of patterns that change how you think about what to write, who you’re writing for and how your publication actually grows.

An editorial partnership puts those patterns to work for your publication specifically — linking your audience data to your public-facing content so every strategic decision is grounded in what’s real, not what you’re guessing.

Most creators can feel that something is off. This is where we figure out what it is.

When a Data Audit is useful

Some publication decisions are too consequential to make from instinct alone — and too editorial to answer with a dashboard.

A Data Audit is designed for moments when you need to understand what your audience is actually doing before you decide what comes next.

It can be especially useful when:

• Your publication is changing. You’re considering a pivot, changing your cadence, introducing or rethinking paid, narrowing your editorial focus or redesigning what you publish.

• Growth has changed and you don’t know why. Acquisition, engagement, conversion or readership feels different — but the top line numbers aren’t telling you what changed.

• You’re considering publishing less — or differently. You want to know what your audience behavior suggests is worth protecting before you pause, cut or restructure something.

• The platform is changing around you. New discovery surfaces, Notes, recommendations, AI tools or other Substack changes are affecting how readers find and interact with your work, and you need to separate platform noise from signals inside your own audience.

• You have a strategic question your dashboard can’t answer. You can see the metrics. You need someone to look across subscriber behavior and editorial patterns and tell you what they mean together.

Substack Publication Case Studies

From real publications. What the data revealed — and what changed.

Case Study 1

Size: 7,654 free subscribers | Niche: Wellness & contemplative practice

WHAT THE DATA SHOWED

Free readers averaged 0.02 post views — virtually zero engagement. Nearly 8,000 people had signed up, but almost none were reading. Paid subscribers showed only modestly better engagement. The conversion rate sat at 0.76%.

WHAT THAT ACTUALLY MEANT

The publication had become digital maintenance — people subscribed to an idea of the work without engaging with the work itself. The recommendation was to fundamentally reshape the model into something that felt alive and generative rather than obligatory. The problem wasn’t the audience. It was the container.

Case Study 2

Size: 191,000+ free subscribers | Niche: Media & mindfulness

WHAT THE DATA SHOWED

78% of the free list — over 149,000 people — had zero post views in 30 days. They were opening emails (6+ per month) but never clicking through to the publication itself. Meanwhile, paid subscribers were 3x more active and those who did upgrade converted fast — within 26 to 34 days. Over 60% of the free list came from a single Substack discovery channel.

WHAT THAT ACTUALLY MEANT

The subscriber count looked like a success story. The engagement data told a different one — a massive audience consuming passively in the inbox, never encountering the archive, the community, or the full depth of the publication. The strategy shifted to archival re-engagement campaigns, restructuring the free-to-paid content ratio and building deliberate click-through behavior into the email experience.

Case Study 3

Size: 23,000+ free readers | Niche: Consciousness & contemplative practice

WHAT THE DATA SHOWED

96% of free readers — over 22,000 people — were completely passive. Yet paid subscribers were deeply engaged: 20+ post views over six months, 6+ active days per month and a fast 50-day upgrade timeline. Reader shares were the single largest paid acquisition source, outperforming every other channel. The creator’s existing audience (from books, teaching and a personal site) converted at a higher rate than Substack-native discovery.

WHAT THAT ACTUALLY MEANT

The newsletter was competing with the creator’s own ecosystem — books, courses, video, live events — without answering the question: why this, specifically? The data showed that people who already knew the creator’s work upgraded fast and stayed engaged, but passive readers needed a reason to choose the newsletter over everything else. The strategy became about defining the publication’s unique editorial purpose — not as another channel, but as its own container. When you already have a platform, your newsletter has to earn its own reason to exist.

The Data Audit — $750

A data-informed, editorially grounded read on what’s happening inside your Substack publication — and what I think you should do next.

I analyze your publication and subscriber data ahead of time, looking for meaningful patterns across subscriber behavior, editorial performance and audience growth.

Then we meet for a 60-minute presentation and working session where I walk you through what I found, what I think it means and where I’d focus next.

Your audit includes:

• A review of your publication + subscriber data before we meet

• A 60-minute presentation and advisory call walking through the patterns I found

• A Google Doc summary of findings, including subscriber behaviors, editorial patterns and the most important opportunities or friction points

• Recommended next steps based on what the data suggests about your publication

This isn’t a dashboard report or a generic list of benchmarks. I’m looking for the relationships in your data that can change an editorial or audience decision.

You leave knowing what I see, why I think it matters and what I’d do next.

It starts with your data.

Book a Data Audit and get a clear understanding of what’s actually happening inside your publication — and where to go next.