How much the top 25 paid Technology Substack Publications are making
A look at Substack's Technology Newsletter leaderboard and the baseline of how much each newsletter makes per month
Substack has many different categories of newsletters.
One of these categories is "Technology".
Top Technology Substack Publications
Substack publishes is the Leaderboard of the Top Technology Publications here => https://substack.com/leaderboard/technology/all
If you scroll down, you can see the top 25 Substack Technology Newsletters according to Substack.
Substack notes[1] that "All of our categories except "Staff Pics" are automated based on a writer's performance on Substack with factors including total number of paid and free subscribers and frequency of publishing."
Top PAID Technology Substack Publications
So you can look at the automated list and filter by "Paid" => https://substack.com/leaderboard/technology/paid
Looking at this list, we can then try to figure out how much they make per month.
Since Substack does numerical categories of "hundreds", "thousands", "tens of thousands" of paid subscribers, it's hard to calculate exact numbers.
What we can do however, is to use the base subscriber numbers as
- hundreds = 100
- thousands = 1,000
- tens of thousands = 10,000
to get a baseline (floor) of what these publications are making.
Together, the top 25 Technology Substack newsletter publications together make (as a baseline/floor) around $352,000 a month.
Interestingly, 24 get paid in US Dollars ($) and 1 gets paid in British Pound Sterling (£).
The list and what they make
Let's take a look at who they are and what they make as ranked by Substack:
$150,000 a month: "The Pragmatic Engineer" by Gergely Orosz
$10,000 a month: "Platformer" by Casey Newton
$19,000 a month: "Newcomer" by Eric Newcomer
$6,000 a month: "Thinking about..." by Timothy Snyder
$50,000 a month: "SemiAnalysis" by Dylan Patel
$3,000 a month: "Fabricated Knowledge" by Doug O'Laughlin
$9,000 a month: "Computer, Enhance!" by Casey Muratori
$10,000 a month: "Uncharted Territories" by Tomas Pueyo
$12,000 a month: "Exponential View by Azeem Azhar" by Azeem Azhar
$8,000 a month: "Technically" by Justin
$10,000 a month: "Bismarck Brief" by Samo Burja
$5,500 a month: "Degen Code" by BowTiedDevil
$15,000 a month: "ByteByteGo Newsletter" by Alex Xu
$1,500 a month: "The GameDiscover.Co newsletter" by Simon Carless
$8,000 a month: "Pirate Wires" by Mike Solana
$1,500 a month: "Refactoring" by Luca Rossi
$2,500 a month: "Dr. Pippa's Pen & Podcast" by Dr Pippa
$5,000 a month: "Garbage Day" by Ryan Broderick
$2,000 a month: "Zero to Hoodie Substack" by BowTiedCyber
$10,000 a month: "The Profile" by Polina Pompliano
$5,000 a month: "The official Ryan McBeth Substack" by Ryan McBeth
$1,500 a month: "UX Movement Newsletter" by Anthony
$500 a month: "Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky" by Steven Sinofsky
$2,000 a month: "The Memo by LifeArchitect.ai" by Dr Alan D. Thompson
£5,000 a month: "Invisible Women" by Caroline Criado Perez
Interesting to see that the Substack automatic ranking algorithm definitely takes into account more than just money being brought in per month. As an example, #4 ($6,000 a month: "Thinking about..." by Timothy Snyder) brings in much less than #5 ($50,000 a month: "SemiAnalysis" by Dylan Patel).
Substack uses these lists to provide recommendations to readers what other publications they might like so it’s worth thinking about how to get on this list and start ranking higher.
In the next issue we’ll take a look at how many times per week(month) these publications are publishing to get a sense of how often they “provide value” to their subscribers/readers.
Until next time,
Sebastian
References
[1] https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/5999320475412-What-are-Substack-leaderboards-