This is my first exposure to your work. It's great to get so much insight as to how substack works and how channels fare regarding subscriptions and funding. Without this, one wonders whether to upgrade to paid or not, there being so many channels being recommended and so much information being disseminated and not knowing how well or poorly the authors are doing. Thank you.
Fascinating summary of your work as an independent journalist who does extremely deep dives into myriad "conspiracy theories." Your 10,000 "subscribers" is an impressive milestone. However, as you point out, your paid subscriber figure (only 46) is odd. I also look at the numbers of "likes" and "Reader Comments" to attempt to gauge how many real human being subscribers are actually getting and reading our articles. IMO, your comments and likes should be much higher given your (alleged) 10,000 subscribers.
Thanks for highlighting the "Medical Assistance in Dying" stories, which, unfortunately, I had missed. (As I've told you, I am a subscriber and do not get your stories in my email.)
I'd also bet a great deal of my scarce disposable income that those Nazi flags were planted by government agents - which, if true, tells us everything we need to know about our "trusted" government agents, who actually specialize in creating and dissimenating false narratives.
You are one of the most thorough citizen researchers/journalists on Substack and you freely admit your proclivity to seriously consider whether certain conspiracies are factual.
Also, thanks for giving me 90 minutes to discuss the topic of "curious metrics on Substack" in one of your recent Rabbit Hole podcasts. In three years as a Substack author, I've only been interviewed for about three or four podcasts.
Freedom of speech is, of course, crucially important and must be protected, but I've concluded that "Freedom of Reach" is just as important. I think the Powers that Be know that if they can throttle or suppress the "reach" of certain "dissident" authors, they know they'll never be exposed as the "evil" characters that many really are.
It's almost impossible for a real "thermo-nuclear truth bomb" to be detonated simply because enough regular citizens aren't exposed to so many shocking, narrative-debunking truths.
Hi Bill, it's odd/ironic that i just now saw your comment today (Nov. 28) and am not even sure when you posted it (since I didn't get Substack notification that you commented, surprise, surprise).
Anyhow, thanks for your comments and for being a great guest on my podcast. You did an admirable/thorough deep dive on Substack's shenanigans. And all authors on this platform ought to be grateful for that work.
The game is definitely rigged. Maybe we now need to resort to a strategy of GUERRILLA JOURNALISM to level the playing field.
P.S.: If ever you Substack riggers (founders) are reading this comment, then perhaps you should reset the game board for this platform, lest it be destined for the dust bin of history.
Hi Dan, well done on reaching 10,000 subscribers. And more than that well done on your resilience in the face of relentless censorship. I have no doubt at all that you are being throttled on Substack. In mid-October 2021 I hit my first, and LAST, viral article. It was about a brave Australian policeman who quit the force in protest at the COVID-totalitarianism and went out on the front lines of the protest movment. I shared his statement about why he did it. It went viral and in 5 days I had over 30,000 views, mainly from Facebook shares. And then it stopped. It fell off a cliff to zero. Bang. Dead. In that 5 days I had added hundreds of new subscribers.
But ever since the day that it stopped my Substack has crawled along. Facebook started shadow banning me, and threatened me numerous times. Until I got so frustrated with the Facebook Nazis that I locked my account and literally stopped any real sharing on the platform - there was ZERO point it went nowhere. Twitter was the same. I only have 962 people following on that platform, and links to Substack are never engaged. I am guilty of losing impetus to do what you have done which was to keep pouring it out. Another thing that I have noticed with Substack over a long period of time is that every time I send out an article, and pick up a few new subscribers I also seem to lose a few at the same time. So it either cancels out the gains or just craws along. And I've few subscribers who've paid, which considering I don't post often that is fair enough - though a few people sent me tips on the Kofi platform. Total paid subs out of nearly 700 - 4 at the height but it's dropped down to 2. I came to the conclusion that due to the vicious censorship of the Silicon Valley tyrants that there is literally NO MONEY IN TELLING THE TRUTH on Social Media. Or at least there is no money in telling the truth about the Evil that rules Mankind. As a result I am looking around for new ways to reinvent. myself and stay safe in the age of multinationals terrorism. We are simply living with the same evil that attacked all the colonies but since WW2 they've managed to take it global.
My conclusion: With or without nefarious "reach suppression" operations, the Substack "paid subscription" model doesn't work for full-time INDEPENDENT investigative journalists and researchers. We better be thinking about Plan B or Plan C as Substack, for now, is the best tool or platform we have to share contrarian content.
Hi Ivan. Thank you for your assessment on all this which certainly corroborates this platform's misdoings. You are right about everything you said. I hope you can "reinvent" yourself, so to speak, to let others hear your voice. Have you considered getting a presence on NOSTR, specifically Primal like me? (https://primal.net/p/npub1thhfcrj0shrg7t9qw22d8gcf6a59lxg7fd7mc7zjyaq900wa4cuq0l4zdh). I like the interface which is actually quite similar to that of X, but need to be more active on that platform and engage more with participants there. I suppose if more and more of us migrate to that platform in lieu of X, it could perhaps grow to be a force since it is decentralised and, in theory, not censorable. Thoughts welcome.
X is really shitty in that it has never allowed an embed feature for Substack posts, as it views the platform as its competitor. Musk and his X platform are highly controlled by you know who. So, they are duplicitous in that they are actually part of the censorship media complex while claiming to be beacons of free speech. What an absolute farce. Their "freedom of reach" equals nothing less that CENSORSHIP.
Facebook's censorship might be even more important. Facebook has more than 1 billion users. It's audience is "regular people" - Rotary members, housewives, PTO volunteers, small business owners, civic leaders, etc. That's the audience that has to realize they've been scammed by dozens of bogus scare-mongering narratives.
I've had my FB account suspended at least four times and any link from Substack I've shared on FB usually gets zero "likes" and "reader comments" so I don't think hardly any of my 1,900 FB followers are seeing those stories or essays.
Facebook allows longer posts than X, which is also potentially important if you want to present more details in your content. But this doesn't matter if nobody is seeing your posts.
I've had exactly the same issue on FB - nothing shared directly from Substack gets seen. But articles shared as as a post seem to do okay for many activists.
I think that when FB started selling advertising space a couple of years back they changed the algorithms completely to block external links. Facebook's real business has never been social media. It is advertising. Thanks for their sole digital real estate with over a billion viewers, they are the biggest advertising company in the world and have wiped out almost all local and national advertising companies because they own the media. It's. either work through their platform and give them part of the action or there is a desert. It's the same digital monopoly model rolled out in every industry you can think of - advertising, booking travel, taxis, deliveries, Netflix (the new global Hollywood), Uber-Grab, Temu-Amazon - etc.
Hi Dan, thanks for that. I'll certainly reinvent myself. Have done it multiple times.
I didn't know about NOSTR so I'll check it out. I perused your posts on your link - you're really doing some top notch work mate. I have an idea for a new type of media platform - pay-by-view with micro-payments, which could shut out the globalists, and also eliminate their ability to read the stats, if I ever get it fleshed out and up and running it would give great writers like you a platform where we might be able to monetize great work. No ads. No multinational dictating policy. Free running algorithms to let the crowd decided what it likes and does not like. What goes viral and does not go viral. Freedom of Speech meaning Freedom of Reach. Like you I am not a fan of X. I keep it open because I chat to Grok often. I just posted a comment on your article about David and Goliath, and while I really like the message you were imparting which was empowering I have a unique view of that story - see what you think of it. Cheers mate.
Congratulations Dan Fournier on gathering 10,000 subscribers around you on Substack. You certainly have been innovative, resourceful and very energetic with your "Inconvenient Truths." I have been banned from X but from reading your comments that may not be such a bad thing.
I too have been following Bill Rice Jr.'s commentaries on the past history and future direction of Substack. I have been following the Bari Weiss and her Free Press/CBS/Larry Ellison/Tik Tok saga. Check out, for instance,
Anthony, thank you very much for reading some of my articles. Also, thanks for highlighting the evolving Bari Weiss story, which might be significant for 3-D chess reasons.
Hi Anthony. Thanks for your comments and links. You have an impressive repertoire of articles on GR which I will need to check out.
I actually submitted many more articles to GR via Prof. Chossudovsky and had even invited him to be a guest on my podcast. But, strangely since over a year now I never get a response to my article submissions to him and his assistant which I find very strange. Not sure why, or if some of my email messages are actually being directed to black holes in cyberspace. If ever you have a contact at GR through which I can submit my articles, please let me know. You can always let me know via my email at dfournier@protonmail.com
Prof. Chossudovsky is dealing with cancer of some kind. As I understand it, he carefully continues his role at Global Research.ca but within a more circumscribed working pattern than before. Sometimes he publishes something he borrows from my Substack but less so now than formerly. Check out my Substack collection if you get a chance. What topics do you most like to address when you are interviewed. Are you interested in the whole Bari Weiss/CBS/Larry Ellison set of developments involving Substack. I think the future of Substack is an issue that should be publicly addressed. My sense is that Bill Rice is wary of getting into the Gaza genocide issues. How do you see it?
I would definitely like to have you back on Gabriel, as there's no shortage of technocratic tyranny to tackle.
Also, a BIG THANK YOU to you for having pointed me to Igor's article on the Blue Whale Symbology I mentioned in this post. Had it not been for your action, that heinous video would have stayed up much longer.
When I started my newsletter, Substack said 5 to 10 percent of subscribers would be "paid." At one time, about 4.8 percent of my subscribers were paid - which is far higher than the norm, per my research. I'm now down to about 3.3 percent paid.
I think 99 percent of Substack authors (with at least 1,000 total subscribers) have a paid ratio of under 1 percent, or under 2 percent.
I've lost about 45 paid subscribers in the last year. I peaked at 311 paid and am now down to, I think, 264.
At one time, I was on pace to have 1,000 paid subscribers by the end of 2026 . To me, 1,000 paid subscribers is the Magic Milestone. You can make a living via Substack if you have 1,000 paid subscribers. Now, by the end of 2026, I'm sure I'll have fewer than 200 paid subscribers.
That is, I don't think Substack is going to be running in growth testimonials from Bill Rice, Jr.
That’s still phenomenal Bill! Keep up the good work. I may do a series of shorter articles at some point (perhaps trying AI initially). The bar is set pretty high by the few I follow, plus I don’t feel like I have a handle on Venezuela and other actions the current administration is taking. Nothing to offer above and beyond what I’m currently reading in other words. Cheers
This is my first exposure to your work. It's great to get so much insight as to how substack works and how channels fare regarding subscriptions and funding. Without this, one wonders whether to upgrade to paid or not, there being so many channels being recommended and so much information being disseminated and not knowing how well or poorly the authors are doing. Thank you.
Fascinating summary of your work as an independent journalist who does extremely deep dives into myriad "conspiracy theories." Your 10,000 "subscribers" is an impressive milestone. However, as you point out, your paid subscriber figure (only 46) is odd. I also look at the numbers of "likes" and "Reader Comments" to attempt to gauge how many real human being subscribers are actually getting and reading our articles. IMO, your comments and likes should be much higher given your (alleged) 10,000 subscribers.
Thanks for highlighting the "Medical Assistance in Dying" stories, which, unfortunately, I had missed. (As I've told you, I am a subscriber and do not get your stories in my email.)
I'd also bet a great deal of my scarce disposable income that those Nazi flags were planted by government agents - which, if true, tells us everything we need to know about our "trusted" government agents, who actually specialize in creating and dissimenating false narratives.
You are one of the most thorough citizen researchers/journalists on Substack and you freely admit your proclivity to seriously consider whether certain conspiracies are factual.
Also, thanks for giving me 90 minutes to discuss the topic of "curious metrics on Substack" in one of your recent Rabbit Hole podcasts. In three years as a Substack author, I've only been interviewed for about three or four podcasts.
Freedom of speech is, of course, crucially important and must be protected, but I've concluded that "Freedom of Reach" is just as important. I think the Powers that Be know that if they can throttle or suppress the "reach" of certain "dissident" authors, they know they'll never be exposed as the "evil" characters that many really are.
It's almost impossible for a real "thermo-nuclear truth bomb" to be detonated simply because enough regular citizens aren't exposed to so many shocking, narrative-debunking truths.
- Bill Rice, Jr.
Hi Bill, it's odd/ironic that i just now saw your comment today (Nov. 28) and am not even sure when you posted it (since I didn't get Substack notification that you commented, surprise, surprise).
Anyhow, thanks for your comments and for being a great guest on my podcast. You did an admirable/thorough deep dive on Substack's shenanigans. And all authors on this platform ought to be grateful for that work.
The game is definitely rigged. Maybe we now need to resort to a strategy of GUERRILLA JOURNALISM to level the playing field.
P.S.: If ever you Substack riggers (founders) are reading this comment, then perhaps you should reset the game board for this platform, lest it be destined for the dust bin of history.
Hi Dan, well done on reaching 10,000 subscribers. And more than that well done on your resilience in the face of relentless censorship. I have no doubt at all that you are being throttled on Substack. In mid-October 2021 I hit my first, and LAST, viral article. It was about a brave Australian policeman who quit the force in protest at the COVID-totalitarianism and went out on the front lines of the protest movment. I shared his statement about why he did it. It went viral and in 5 days I had over 30,000 views, mainly from Facebook shares. And then it stopped. It fell off a cliff to zero. Bang. Dead. In that 5 days I had added hundreds of new subscribers.
But ever since the day that it stopped my Substack has crawled along. Facebook started shadow banning me, and threatened me numerous times. Until I got so frustrated with the Facebook Nazis that I locked my account and literally stopped any real sharing on the platform - there was ZERO point it went nowhere. Twitter was the same. I only have 962 people following on that platform, and links to Substack are never engaged. I am guilty of losing impetus to do what you have done which was to keep pouring it out. Another thing that I have noticed with Substack over a long period of time is that every time I send out an article, and pick up a few new subscribers I also seem to lose a few at the same time. So it either cancels out the gains or just craws along. And I've few subscribers who've paid, which considering I don't post often that is fair enough - though a few people sent me tips on the Kofi platform. Total paid subs out of nearly 700 - 4 at the height but it's dropped down to 2. I came to the conclusion that due to the vicious censorship of the Silicon Valley tyrants that there is literally NO MONEY IN TELLING THE TRUTH on Social Media. Or at least there is no money in telling the truth about the Evil that rules Mankind. As a result I am looking around for new ways to reinvent. myself and stay safe in the age of multinationals terrorism. We are simply living with the same evil that attacked all the colonies but since WW2 they've managed to take it global.
My conclusion: With or without nefarious "reach suppression" operations, the Substack "paid subscription" model doesn't work for full-time INDEPENDENT investigative journalists and researchers. We better be thinking about Plan B or Plan C as Substack, for now, is the best tool or platform we have to share contrarian content.
You know my plan C.
Next year I’ll start working on making it reality.
Hi Ivan. Thank you for your assessment on all this which certainly corroborates this platform's misdoings. You are right about everything you said. I hope you can "reinvent" yourself, so to speak, to let others hear your voice. Have you considered getting a presence on NOSTR, specifically Primal like me? (https://primal.net/p/npub1thhfcrj0shrg7t9qw22d8gcf6a59lxg7fd7mc7zjyaq900wa4cuq0l4zdh). I like the interface which is actually quite similar to that of X, but need to be more active on that platform and engage more with participants there. I suppose if more and more of us migrate to that platform in lieu of X, it could perhaps grow to be a force since it is decentralised and, in theory, not censorable. Thoughts welcome.
X is really shitty in that it has never allowed an embed feature for Substack posts, as it views the platform as its competitor. Musk and his X platform are highly controlled by you know who. So, they are duplicitous in that they are actually part of the censorship media complex while claiming to be beacons of free speech. What an absolute farce. Their "freedom of reach" equals nothing less that CENSORSHIP.
Facebook's censorship might be even more important. Facebook has more than 1 billion users. It's audience is "regular people" - Rotary members, housewives, PTO volunteers, small business owners, civic leaders, etc. That's the audience that has to realize they've been scammed by dozens of bogus scare-mongering narratives.
I've had my FB account suspended at least four times and any link from Substack I've shared on FB usually gets zero "likes" and "reader comments" so I don't think hardly any of my 1,900 FB followers are seeing those stories or essays.
Facebook allows longer posts than X, which is also potentially important if you want to present more details in your content. But this doesn't matter if nobody is seeing your posts.
I've had exactly the same issue on FB - nothing shared directly from Substack gets seen. But articles shared as as a post seem to do okay for many activists.
I think that when FB started selling advertising space a couple of years back they changed the algorithms completely to block external links. Facebook's real business has never been social media. It is advertising. Thanks for their sole digital real estate with over a billion viewers, they are the biggest advertising company in the world and have wiped out almost all local and national advertising companies because they own the media. It's. either work through their platform and give them part of the action or there is a desert. It's the same digital monopoly model rolled out in every industry you can think of - advertising, booking travel, taxis, deliveries, Netflix (the new global Hollywood), Uber-Grab, Temu-Amazon - etc.
Hi Dan, thanks for that. I'll certainly reinvent myself. Have done it multiple times.
I didn't know about NOSTR so I'll check it out. I perused your posts on your link - you're really doing some top notch work mate. I have an idea for a new type of media platform - pay-by-view with micro-payments, which could shut out the globalists, and also eliminate their ability to read the stats, if I ever get it fleshed out and up and running it would give great writers like you a platform where we might be able to monetize great work. No ads. No multinational dictating policy. Free running algorithms to let the crowd decided what it likes and does not like. What goes viral and does not go viral. Freedom of Speech meaning Freedom of Reach. Like you I am not a fan of X. I keep it open because I chat to Grok often. I just posted a comment on your article about David and Goliath, and while I really like the message you were imparting which was empowering I have a unique view of that story - see what you think of it. Cheers mate.
Maybe we should keep that idea "down home" for now?
You're the only one that saw this comment. No response from Dan, so he probably hasn't seen it. That'll keep the idea 'down home.' Lol.
Congratulations Dan Fournier on gathering 10,000 subscribers around you on Substack. You certainly have been innovative, resourceful and very energetic with your "Inconvenient Truths." I have been banned from X but from reading your comments that may not be such a bad thing.
I too have been following Bill Rice Jr.'s commentaries on the past history and future direction of Substack. I have been following the Bari Weiss and her Free Press/CBS/Larry Ellison/Tik Tok saga. Check out, for instance,
https://anthonyjhall.substack.com/p/a-peace-deal-for-gaza-what-a-concept
https://anthonyjhall.substack.com/archive
Like you I have published a lot at Global Reseach.ca
https://www.globalresearch.ca/author/anthony-j-hall
Thanks for so generously sharing some of the fruits of your achievements on Substack in recent years. Sincerely, Tony Hall
Anthony, thank you very much for reading some of my articles. Also, thanks for highlighting the evolving Bari Weiss story, which might be significant for 3-D chess reasons.
Hi Anthony. Thanks for your comments and links. You have an impressive repertoire of articles on GR which I will need to check out.
I actually submitted many more articles to GR via Prof. Chossudovsky and had even invited him to be a guest on my podcast. But, strangely since over a year now I never get a response to my article submissions to him and his assistant which I find very strange. Not sure why, or if some of my email messages are actually being directed to black holes in cyberspace. If ever you have a contact at GR through which I can submit my articles, please let me know. You can always let me know via my email at dfournier@protonmail.com
Keep in touch!
Prof. Chossudovsky is dealing with cancer of some kind. As I understand it, he carefully continues his role at Global Research.ca but within a more circumscribed working pattern than before. Sometimes he publishes something he borrows from my Substack but less so now than formerly. Check out my Substack collection if you get a chance. What topics do you most like to address when you are interviewed. Are you interested in the whole Bari Weiss/CBS/Larry Ellison set of developments involving Substack. I think the future of Substack is an issue that should be publicly addressed. My sense is that Bill Rice is wary of getting into the Gaza genocide issues. How do you see it?
I appreciated being part of your Podcast and look forward to hopefully more in the future!
I would definitely like to have you back on Gabriel, as there's no shortage of technocratic tyranny to tackle.
Also, a BIG THANK YOU to you for having pointed me to Igor's article on the Blue Whale Symbology I mentioned in this post. Had it not been for your action, that heinous video would have stayed up much longer.
Congratulations! That's amazing. You obviously nailed the truth!
Thanks Bettina!
Wow gratz ! I got 100 lol 😜 but i am a positive guy! I only need 2 more 0 to get where you at. Joke apart im really happy of your achievement ✌️😎👍
Thanks J-S!
Congrats Dan and glad to have helped a tad. ;)
Dan, my theory is that most of us max out around 3-5 paid. That’s roughly the total monthly cost of a traditional subscription (say, to the WSJ)
When I started my newsletter, Substack said 5 to 10 percent of subscribers would be "paid." At one time, about 4.8 percent of my subscribers were paid - which is far higher than the norm, per my research. I'm now down to about 3.3 percent paid.
I think 99 percent of Substack authors (with at least 1,000 total subscribers) have a paid ratio of under 1 percent, or under 2 percent.
I've lost about 45 paid subscribers in the last year. I peaked at 311 paid and am now down to, I think, 264.
At one time, I was on pace to have 1,000 paid subscribers by the end of 2026 . To me, 1,000 paid subscribers is the Magic Milestone. You can make a living via Substack if you have 1,000 paid subscribers. Now, by the end of 2026, I'm sure I'll have fewer than 200 paid subscribers.
That is, I don't think Substack is going to be running in growth testimonials from Bill Rice, Jr.
That’s still phenomenal Bill! Keep up the good work. I may do a series of shorter articles at some point (perhaps trying AI initially). The bar is set pretty high by the few I follow, plus I don’t feel like I have a handle on Venezuela and other actions the current administration is taking. Nothing to offer above and beyond what I’m currently reading in other words. Cheers