Newsletter Spy: A database of 20,000+ Substack newsletters

Sponsor Hawk

Maker

Hi PH 👋 9 months ago I launched the first version of Newsletter Spy which at the time was just a weekend project. It got far more attention than I expected. Unfortunately, quickly after the launch, Substack changed their website in a way that made it impossible to fetch subscriber counts. As a result, I was no longer able to provide updates and the project fell into hibernation. To my surprise people kept buying access to Newsletter Spy even though I added a big warning that the dataset was outdated and no longer updated. Also at least once a week someone would reach out to me and ask for an update. Thanks to these conversations, I quickly learned that Newsletter Spy could be useful to many people even without exact subscriber counts. So I decided to revive the project. As with v1 the database is useful, for example, if you're looking for newsletters you can book ad slots in. But you can also use it to find leads, analyze competitors or the market as a whole, or to find abandoned newsletters you can acquire. - The Substack database now contains 50,000+ newsletters. Instead of subscriber counts, it now contains metrics like the category rank and the average number of reactions, which usually give a good idea how big a given newsletter's audience is. Also, in contrast to v1, the database is now updated daily. - In addition to the Substack database, there's now also a Revue database. This database contains exact subscriber counts for all newsletters that share this number publicly. - Finally, a third database contains information on newsletters from other major email service providers like ConvertKit, MailChimp, etc. I started experimenting with a machine learning model that predicts the subscriber count, but the results are still meh and should be taken with a grain of salt. However, the database also contains columns like "Fame" (how well known is a given newsletter), "Buzz" (how much are people talking about the newsletter online), "Traffic", Traffic Change" (growing, stagnating, declining) which are more accurate and make it possible to estimate a newsletter's audience size. I'd love to hear what you think, and feel free to ask any questions!

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4yr ago

Nikhil Agrawal

SmallDevTools

@jakob_greenfeld Nice Update Jakob, Good Luck with your launch.

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4yr ago

Ghost Kitty

Kradl

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4yr ago

Aleks Bochkov

Helpdesk by LabiDesk

@jakob_greenfeld This is pretty cool! Congrats!

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4yr ago

Jakob Greenfeld

Sponsor Hawk

Maker

@nikhil_agrawal Thanks Nikhil, always appreciate your support :)

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4yr ago

Stewart Barrett

@jakob_greenfeld This is amazing - I'm torn between wanting to get more great content but having that flooding inbox full of distractions. Excellent work with this and good luck today on the launch!

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4yr ago

Stefan Von Imhof

Alts

He's baaaaack! Newsletter Spy 1.0 was probably my favorite product of 2021. I used it to acquire a newsletter, and reach out to dozens of others for partnerships. Cannot freaking wait to use this. Keep rockin Jakob!

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4yr ago

Jakob Greenfeld

Sponsor Hawk

Maker

@divineprofit Thanks a lot Stefan! Really hope the new version is just as useful.

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4yr ago