85 Comments

Could you share more about your methodology? How do you get a number like 63% correlation between writing quality and success? Quality defined by who? 63% of what?

How do you quantify whether a newsletter has an authors unique voice?

Or 22% made comments that made people think. Do you know the full comment history of these 100 stacks? How do you know whether people were “thinking” as a result? What was the auditing/tracking process?

Would really like to hear what “countless hours analyzing” means in real terms.

Hint: (an AI wrote this)

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Thank you. My experience perfectly aligns. I'm closing my 6 month and I have 1140 subscribers (400 imported).

What are your favorite newsletter examples in terms of strategy?

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This is great information, Wes! I skimmed through it for now, but tomorrow I plan to take my time and dive in deeper. From what I’ve seen so far, this is truly sage advice. Please continue sharing this kind of valuable perspective!

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Thanks for the kind words! It means a lot to me. Hope you find this post helpful when you dive in.

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Thank you and I definitely did.

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Thanks so much for this. I just passed 20 subscribers and am starting to pick up some speed. I've been on the platform for about 4 months but pivoted my whole topic at the three month mark. This gives me a good blue print to follow to keep growing and how to arrange my posts/content going into 2025

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Congrats! Keep going 👏🏼

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Thank for the article! I wonder: How did those newsletters track which opening lines grabbed attention?

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Perhaps the biggest take-away for me was that each post doesn't have to strictly adhere to the main topic of the post. It can be "embroidered" with little asides which give more scope for enlivening the whole thing. My posts are about writing, but I am beginning to think it would be good to include various bits about my background, or day to day life, that would engage people more and make them interested in how my memoir/self help book is coming along. And my journey to find a publisher. All grist for the mill, as they say. Thanks for an enlightening post!

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Great tips. Thanks for sharing!

Interesting take on niching down vs. overlapping topics.

Regarding quantity vs. quality… couldn’t agree more.

With AI these days, quantity is easy…and it shows.

Focus on quality

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Perhaps this is why Investing Lawyer subscribers grew from 420 to 1100 in a week?

Yes, +150%.

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Excellent advice. These seven patterns make sense, yet some were a surprise. Thanks for sharing your analysis!

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Good insight 😌. Can I translate part of this article into Spanish with links to you and a descripción of your newsletter?

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Would you shoot me an email saying this --I have a good pub that I would LOVE to have translated. One story or many. Fatastic! mkpelland at gmail

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Thanks! I haven't seen it yet--will check spam folder

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Hi, Wess.

Will be a translation into Spanish, then?

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Interesting thanks. I'm interested in shorter creative nonfiction prose/poetry works. Do you have any insight on how this genre is going down on substack?

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I am the Queen of "Tell it in 50 Words", writing stories of exactly that length. I'm not entirely sure what to do with these, but I would like to put them, and perhaps some poetry together into a book. Self publishing, here I come! (Traditional publishers would be aghast, I think.)

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Have a look at a Medium Pub called The Shortform.

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Excellent insights! I am not surprised by the one specific point. Focus

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Great article Wes, thank you 🙏🏻 I love how the value in this post has kept it alive for almost 4 months 😱 Have you seen any other patterns / changes since then ..

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Showing up consistently matters more than perfection.

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All the tips are gold backed by the data - and the data never tells the wrong story.

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Thank you for the helpful tips! I’m open to collaboration to help shift paradigms and reduce harm: for health/ well-being and connection with nature with artful views…for flora, fauna, food, farming and freedom!

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