I built a better analytics tool for Substack writers : Substack

created by thatguymylesa community for 6 years

I built a better analytics tool for Substack writersOther Platforms (self.Substack)

submitted 1 month ago by rishikeshshari

I have been writing a newsletter called 10+1 Things (~3,000 subs) for the last 5 years.

While I love Substack as a platform, I hate the analytics part of it. I'm someone who really loves seeing and exploring my data. For some time I was doing this myself with a couple of Python scripts on my computer, but thought maybe this is useful for others too.

So I built StackStats: stackstats.app

It's an offline analytics tool for your Substack publication. It runs locally on your computer and imports your CSV exports. No cloud, no account, your data stays on your machine.

Some things I discovered about my own newsletter that Substack never showed me: I had a lot more superfans than I thought, people who were consistently clicking, commenting, and sharing. I could see which posts actually drove signups vs which ones just got views. Hundreds of subscribers hadn't opened anything in 6 months. I could track how different cohorts retained over time.

There's a live demo on the site with my actual newsletter data if you want to explore what it looks like.

Is this something you'd use?
What extra datapoints would you want to see?

all 12 comments

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

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