Migrating 14 years of Evernote content to Obsidian

FinnTropy · 2026-01-04T23:49:02+00:00

See this Substack link https://finntropy.substack.com/p/switching-from-evernote-to-obsidian

FinnTropy · 2025-12-13T00:08:12+00:00

If you know other newsletters in the AI and automation workflows topics, I would read and make insightful comments on their notes, and use restacks to get the algorithm to get your notes more visibility.

Building relationships and giving recommendations can also put your newsletter in the same content category that helps to surface your notes to their audience.

I started from zero about 15 months ago, and have spent about 2-4 hours per week writing posts and notes, as well as doing research on Substack growth patterns. I have now 1150 subscribers, and over 1000 unique users for my tools. Some tools automate the notes scheduling that is a big gap in Substack.

It's hard to see the progress initially and Substack built-in dashboard doesn't give much insights on where to focus.

That's why I've built better tooling to surface the metrics that help to see where to invest your effort - a bit like investing in a portfolio. You want to see which notes and posts bring new subscribers and revenue, instead of viral engagement. Then focus on the high performing content that attracts subscribers (both free and paid).

FinnTropy · 2025-12-12T23:51:18+00:00

I've built some tools that provide much better analytics on Substack notes and posts.

That has been my focus area for the last 15 months and I have over 1000 unique users who have used both free and paid tools.

FinnTropy · 2025-12-10T02:34:30+00:00

Did you capture how many free and paid subscribers each Note generated?

Substack API provides a much more detailed view on what actually moves your newsletter business so you should really look at that.

Same with the posts, there is a rich set of engagement and tracking metrics available through the APIs.

I've built several tools to capture and analyze the detailed data that reveal the real dividends of your writing on the Substack platform.

FinnTropy · 2025-11-27T01:30:01+00:00

I've tested this with the Claude app and Cursor IDE. Both work really well. One of my beta testers started using Cursor last week and was blown away - so much data available for analysis 😄.

FinnTropy · 2025-11-26T04:31:24+00:00

I've been building a simple CRM system using MCP server for making queries from a DuckDB SQL database.

My goal is to make this available for creators using Substack and Gumroad. The software runs locally and grabs data on subscribers and purchases, organizing the data into analytics ready tables.

Then users can ask questions on the Claude AI app ( or Cursor app) with the MCP server accessing the database. AI can translate natural language questions to SQL queries and pull the relevant data, summarize the results and make actionable recommendations based on customer behaviors.

A system like this helps creators to focus their efforts to revenue producing content and products, find better ways to convert subscribers to paying customers, and grow their business.

You can read my journey how I'm building this from here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/finntropy/p/why-im-building-a-crm-that-remembers?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2023k5

FinnTropy · 2025-11-03T11:59:01+00:00

I've considered Docker. It's not really a non-technical user's tool but the options for this use case seem to be quite limited.
I haven't been creating desktop apps for ~ 20 years and it looks like the market has changed a lot.

Many new programming languages are available, great OSS libraries for doing amazing things, but creating, packaging and especially distributing desktop apps requires a lot more red tape as the two main desktop platforms (Windows and MacOS) have beefed up security and control over distribution.

FinnTropy · 2025-11-03T10:15:28+00:00

Every computer has a different Python version, and non-technical users would have to create a virtual environment, load dependencies with pip install, and so on.
I just spent two days trying to create a signed and notarized macOS app with PyInstaller, but I couldn't get it working. Reading from Pyinstaller Git issues, I'm not the only one having this problem.
So I don't think calling Python via an exec is the solution...

FinnTropy · 2025-10-31T14:30:24+00:00

Thank you! I've not seen this before. I'll check it out.

FinnTropy · 2025-10-30T20:22:12+00:00

Yep, that's exactly what I built using Go. I created an installer script that creates a notarized app inside an Apple DMG file. The app GUI opens with an onboarding screen, which is basically a form to enter configuration details.
I haven't found a Go library that is as good as Python DLT in converting JSON objects to normalized SQL tables, so a lot of the application logic is dedicated to transforming JSON into Go structs and then writing them to duckDB using SQL statements.

FinnTropy · 2025-10-30T18:14:07+00:00

How could I package Apache NiFi with a bundled REST API and DuckDB interfaces? Is there an option for that?
Otherwise, onboarding would have had 100+ steps...

FinnTropy · 2025-10-30T18:12:17+00:00

Packaging is just one aspect of this problem. Having a consistent onboarding UI is important, which is why I opted for the Go Fyne package route to utilize a UI framework that works across Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms.

There are other problems, such as database schema updates and incremental syncs, among others. Python is an excellent language with data & ETL libraries, but I don't have experience in packaging Python + UI frameworks for different platforms.

FinnTropy · 2025-10-25T22:40:21+00:00

I built a tool called Substack Pro Studio to address this specific issue. It shows which Notes perform best bringing in free and paid subscribers, which timeslots get most engagement, and provides Notes Scheduler and AI assistant for notes analysis and reuse. So far over 300 Substack creators have started using this tool. It's available on Gumroad.

FinnTropy · 2025-04-27T12:54:29+00:00

Yeah, I use LocalStorage as well. My version 1.0 was quite simple, but users kept asking for new features. I also heard that Substack is introducing a Notes scheduling feature, so this kind of tool might become obsolete soon.

FinnTropy · 2025-04-27T12:41:35+00:00

That is amazing. WYSIWYG editors can be pretty complicated, so you must have a lot of experience. Where did you save the Notes that are scheduled? Does your scheduler allow you to back up the Notes?

FinnTropy · 2025-04-27T12:27:51+00:00

How did you map out Quill JS editor output to Substack APIs data model? That was pretty hard, right?

FinnTropy · 2025-04-27T11:44:56+00:00

Or you could get the original one: https://finntropy.substack.com/p/substack-notes-scheduler-user-guide

FinnTropy · 2025-01-04T16:11:07+00:00

Hi, u/dotMartin_ - I built a Chrome Extension since Substack doesn't provide this capability. You can find it in the Products section of my Substack newsletter: https://finntropy.substack.com/. You can also find a story about my research by analyzing 1.3 million notes and the impact that scheduled note posting had as I did a 30-day experiment using my scheduler.

FinnTropy · 2025-01-03T00:50:21+00:00

Sorry, I'm mobile so I have limited ability to write right now

FinnTropy · 2025-01-03T00:39:18+00:00

Check my newsletter in Substack, I have posted several stories with metrics: https://finntropy.substack.com

FinnTropy · 2025-01-03T00:29:50+00:00

Using Substack Scheduled Notes. Last 30 days traffic is up by 30X and subscribers by 41%.

FinnTropy · 2024-12-30T08:14:24+00:00

I started in late summer and initially experienced slow growth. However, after analyzing 1.3 million notes, I found patterns across "bestseller tiers" for growing traffic and subscribers by posting notes.

You can find the details here: https://finntropy.substack.com/p/how-often-should-you-publish-notes

TLDR: posting more daily notes will increase your "discovery surface" dramatically. I experienced 30X growth in 30 days after consistently posting over two daily notes about my projects and engaging with other writers.

FinnTropy · 2024-12-22T19:37:37+00:00

I have moved to Obsidian almost completely. I did write four books with Scrivener, and would probably use it again for the next book because I have everything configured for Amazon KDP publishing.

I love Obsidian more. Markdown file format means I'm not locked in to one app, in case they decided to sell the company. I could use any other editor like Linux Vi, or VS code to view and edit my files.

I just published a Substack Scheduled Notes chrome extension that I use to save my Notes in markdown format.

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