How writer recommendations unlocked growth for Joseph Politano
We invited Joseph Politano to share how Recommendations allowed him to go to full-time on his Substack Apricitas Economics.
What questions do you have for Joseph? Leave them in the comments and we’ll ask Joseph live at this week’s Investing Happy Hour on Twitter Spaces.
Publication at a glance
About: Apricitas Economics is a chart-packed, data-driven newsletter about economics, finance, and business.
Started on Substack: June 2021
Launched paid subscriptions: September 2022
Free subscribers: 18,000+
Paid subscribers: 340
Schedule: Two posts a week, at least. One free post on Saturday morning and one additional in-depth piece at least once a week too since going paid.
Post types: All of my articles are structured as a narrative based on data in economics.
Empirical questions from academic literature: How do inflation expectations affect inflation?
News on the current state of the world: How are interest rate hikes affecting the economy?
Discussion about the data itself: Why are different measurements of the US economy telling opposite stories?
Meaningful growth moments
Starting on Substack. I started as a way to build a writing portfolio, get better at data analysis, and share my long-form thoughts on economics. I had virtually no audience when I started out. Nine people signed up on the first day, three of whom were my parents and girlfriend. My Twitter following numbered in the low triple digits at the time.
The first viral post. I made a conscious decision to have strict, self-enforced deadlines—one post had to go out at 9:30 am every Saturday, no matter what. I’ve stuck to that rigidly since starting, and being consistent has been the number one factor in maintaining a strong relationship with my audience. On November 10, 2021, I had a piece on inflation data go semi-viral, netting me 250 subscribers in four days (a 50% increase in my total subscribers!). I got lucky this was so widely shared, but it was the five months of consistent writing that put me in a position to get lucky in the first place.
Getting into the swing of things. This phase wasn’t about one viral post anymore, it was about a long series of posts where I built trust by delivering the answers and topics people were looking for. I used that trust to create space for the interesting, important, underappreciated topics few people were writing about. After building trust with your audience you can share the interests and topics you think are important but they might not have cared about otherwise. You can use your trust as an author to convince them it’s important.
Recommendations. Other Substackers recommended my newsletter, and those recommendations brought me new readers who may otherwise have never seen my newsletter. More than 8,000 people have subscribed from the almost 80 publications that recommend Apricitas, which are both extremely humbling figures to me. One of the best audiences to have as a writer is other writers, and that’s especially true on Substack. Being a one-person publication allows you to dig deeper and “niche down” in ways that are much more difficult in bigger outlets. This means you can help other writers and journalists by digging into the nitty-gritty and letting them repackage and re-synthesize for their own audiences.
Read more: Recommendations is a cross-promotion feature provides a way for writers to promote and discover each other on their own terms.
Taking the leap to write full-time. Over time, my newsletter evolved from a fun, little passion project to a good personal portfolio to a rapidly growing community. By mid-2022 I realized there was so much more I wanted to write about that I simply wouldn’t have time to publish while Apricitas was a part-time operation. In September I took the leap and decided to make writing the newsletter my full-time job, and I’m extremely grateful to now have hundreds of paying subscribers!
Read more: Guide to going paid
What questions do you have for Joseph Politano ? Leave them in the comments and we’ll ask Joseph live at this week’s Investing Happy Hour on Twitter Spaces.
Join us for Investing Happy Hour with Joseph on Wednesday at 2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. ET.
yayyyy joey
Thanks for having me on, it was my pleasure!
If any readers have any questions be sure to leave them in the comments so we can answer them on Wednesday's Spaces!