Find your best Notes
How to find the Substack Notes that brought you free and paid subscribers, impressions and replies in WriteStack, and how to use them to write more Notes that work.
Open Notes Performance: by default it ranks every Note by Free Subs, highest first, over All time. The top cards are the Notes that grew your list the most. Switch the sort to Paid Subs to see which Notes brought paying readers.
This needs Notes analytics, which is on the Standard and Enterprise plans. See Notes analytics.
Steps
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Open Notes Performance in the sidebar.
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In the sort menu, pick the outcome you care about:
Goal Sort by More free subscribers Free Subs More paying subscribers Paid Subs More reach Impressions More people checking out your profile Profile Visits More conversation Comments or Restacks -
Set the date range. All time finds your classics. Last 30 days or Last 90 days shows what works with your audience now.
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Narrow it down with a Category (one of your tags) or Search notes... to compare Notes on one topic.
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Open Full breakdown on a top card to see where its reach came from and who saw it.
Your best Note in a period
On Statistics, the Impressions section shows Best note: the impressions of your top Note in the selected range. To see which Note it was, open Notes Performance, pick the same date range and sort by Impressions. On the Statistics chart you can also click any point to list the Notes published in that period, sorted by impressions.
The What notes drove section shows the total Free subs, Paid subs and ARR attributed to your Notes in the range, so you can see if this month beat the last one.
Use them to write more
- Look for the pattern, not the Note. Sort by Free Subs and read the top 10 together. Look at the first line, the length, the topic and whether there was a link or image.
- Compare by tag. If you tag your Notes by topic or format, filter by Category to see which kind converts best.
- Reuse a winner. Click a card to open the Note in the note editor, rework it, and queue the new version. A badge on the card warns you when the same or a similar Note was already posted in the last 4 weeks or is scheduled.
- Ask the Coach. The Coach can read your Notes statistics and suggest what to write next based on what worked.
- Mark what you changed. On the Statistics chart, use Add annotation on the day you changed something (a new format, posting time or topic) so you can see its effect later.
Limits
- Subscriber numbers are what Substack attributes to each Note. WriteStack doesn't recalculate them.
- Data refreshes at most every 8 hours, so a Note posted this morning may not have its final numbers yet.
- A new Note has had less time to collect impressions. Compare Notes over the same range, or use Avg per note on Statistics.
Notes analytics
What the Statistics and Notes Performance pages show for your Substack Notes (impressions, interactions, free and paid subscribers, audience and surface mix), where the data comes from, and how to filter it by date.
Posts Statistics
What WriteStack's Posts Statistics page shows for your Substack newsletter posts (subscribers, ARR, open rate, email traffic, delivery, views, likes, free and paid subs per post), how open rate differs from email traffic, and the extension version it needs.