I recently analyzed reader patterns and engagement trends across the calendar year for my newsletter and thought I’d share the key things I learned with other writers, as some of these findings may be universal.

Some background: my newsletter is focused on advice and ideas for a well-lived, happy life and I publish weekly. 80% of my readers are based in the US, the rest are spread amongst 77 other countries. Writing is a new career for me—I previously worked in finance and nonprofits and did not have a mailing list. I currently have 3,500 subscribers. My goal is to build an audience to help secure an agent and book deal.  

Here are 6 things I learned:

1. 1,000 subscribers seems to be a magic number: I needed more than 1,000 subscribers to glean meaningful trends—I did a similar review in December last year, but there wasn’t enough data to analyze. Also: it was when I reached 1,000 subscribers that engagement in terms of Likes and Comments started to take off.

2. Best months for open rates: January through May; September/October.

3. Slow months for open rates: May/June/August and November/December (I took July off but assume open rates were low then, too).

4. Strong content is worth publishing during slow months: while my instinct is to hold off on publishing my best content until readers are most engaged, a piece I wrote on travel tips in August was picked up by a blogger with a large following, which led to many new subscribers and a higher profile for my newsletter.

5. Taking a break is not necessarily bad for growth: I took the month of July off and expected to lose subscribers, but the opposite happened, and my numbers grew. In fact, I find that when I publish during the highest engagement months, I reliably lose some subscribers every week (my assumption is that people are paying more attention to both what they do and don’t like).  

6. What’s most popular may surprise you: I was looking for insights about specific topics my readers like (ie. midlife, travel, parenting), but instead, I found that my subscribers have clear preferences for certain types of content. In my case, this fell into 3 buckets: advice (especially in list form), personal essays, and shopping recommendations.

I’d love to know if other Substackers have found similar patterns or other helpful insights – please share! And if you have any questions, ask away!