It’s that time of the month again when I share numbers, graphs, and insights straight from my dashboard. Also, probably the last time.
With three months behind us, we now have enough data to talk about our first quarter. One interesting thing that happened in August is that one of my articles totally skewed the data and any point of reference I had… which I’m not mad about.
If anything, it makes things more interesting.
Let’s see what I have for you today.
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Table of contents
A recap and where we’re at (June, July, and August, 2026)
The numbers for month three only (August, 2026)
The journey or “strategy” that I followed, if you want to call it that
The results, insights, and things I learned
What’s next?
Author’s note ✍
It has only been three months since I started working on this newsletter. To be honest, I first created this account in 2024 or 2025, and then never logged back in again.
This year (2026), I had promised myself that I would go back and start actually using it in October. And well, as you can see, that happened way sooner.
While I was struggling with self-doubt and my need to be “ready”, I had to begrudgingly remind myself that the earlier I start, the earlier I make mistakes. And the earlier I make mistakes, the earlier I can refine, learn, and improve things.
We’re now in September, not October. There are 100+ of us here, 12 articles written, a big number of notes that I don’t even want to think about, and genuine connections with other writers.
If you’re struggling with indecision (as I was), this may be your sign to just start and imagine where you’d be in three months. Because if I had decided to stall until October, well, we probably would’ve never met.
As always, thanks for your support. Hope you like this one.
A recap and where we’re at
Before we get into the August data, let’s look back at the whole quarter with data from June, July, and August.
Narrative Baggage’s first quarter numbers look like this:
Subscribers: 144
Views: 6k
Open rate: 33.09%
As you can see, I had a steady growth, little by little, instead of big spikes.
When it comes to the quarter views, I had many spikes that mostly correspond to when I posted an article. One of the spikes at the end of August is the tallest and most menacing one.
Yes, that’s the one from the article I mentioned earlier.
Overall, I’m very satisfied with this quarter. When I started Narrative Baggage, I had two initial goals.
The first one, less important, and one that is more quantitative, was to get 100 subscribers by the end of the year. We’re now in September and more than halfway done to get to 200. So, check.
The second one, the most important, and also more qualitative one, was to connect with people, to have a community, and to have great conversations. This one is always going to be a work-in-progress. But I can say that we’re making great progress!
Now, let’s go into specifics for August.
The numbers for month three only (August, 2026)
Now, here’s what the numbers look like at the end of August for Narrative Baggage and in comparison with July:
Subscribers: 142 (up 51%)
Views: 3.38k (up 135%)
Open rate: 33.2% (up from last month)
This month, subscribers increased, and views doubled from 1.44k to 3.38k, which means either my notes or my articles are reaching more people in the vast world of Substack.
Open rates also increased to 33.2%, better than the 29.75% in July, which may mean new subscribers are engaging more with the content. Still, some of you have mentioned that open rates are often unreliable because you don’t open my emails, but read my articles from the app.
I appreciate you mentioning that. Maybe the open rate is better than I think.
The journey or “strategy” that I followed, if you want to call it that
You already know my strategy.
I post at least two notes daily and one article weekly. In August, though, I posted 89 notes… somehow. Don’t ask me how. I just know that 62 of those notes I scheduled. The others are probably from things I really wanted to share on the spot.
When it comes to articles, I posted five:
Self-insert characters: how to do them right and why nobody is above it
How to write banter: why is not just a romance thing and what it does for your story
A random Substack comment and who gets to call themselves a writer (THIS is the one that skewed the data)
Each of these was out on Sundays at around 6 am PT.
For notes, it seems like this month I was looking a lot into tropes.
I also posted funny notes.
Washing dishes continues to be, indeed, the bane of my existence.
I was also tempted to choose violence because one past weekend felt like nothing.
One of my notes was inspired by a guest’s appearance (my sister).
And some of you came up with very funny responses.
I’m having way too much fun adding these notes, so let’s wrap it up with this last one.
In August, I also posted my first short story, The Greatest Swordsman (go check it out!):
This is a story that I promised myself I would work on when my book (the one I’m currently writing and the one that takes priority) was finished. But it seems like some stories have a way of coming back and asking for their own space.
The results, insights, and things I learned
The most glaring thing first, and it’s that the biggest peak of this month (and also the whole quarter) was because of the article about who gets to call themselves a writer.
Here’s also a screenshot of its overview. As you can see, the article generated around 605 views and 76 likes, having only been released on August 23.
On average, my articles get around 200 views, so this piece did the job of three pieces.
Here’s the breakdown in engagement of all August pieces:
I thought the “self-insert character” and “how to write banter” articles were going to lead this month. But I was sorely mistaken.
It also surpassed the July articles:
And the June articles:
The “narrative voice” article was reigning as the one with the most engagement in my little Substack corner. I honestly thought things were going to stay like that for months to come.
And now, I’m not sure if any of my future articles are going to dethrone “who gets to call themselves a writer”.
It was an article that resonated with many of us. Because we’re all writers, and being a “writer”, using the label, is something that most us do without knowing how we go it, and some of us don’t use, even though we are.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try and write a piece at the same level.
Where did visitors come from?
The unique visitors graph tells us that many people landed on my publication on August 23 because of a certain article. You know which one.
As usual, most of you came from Substack. But some came from actual organic search, like Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Ecosia.
Shout-out to the person who came from Ecosia 🤘
I used that search engine so much when I was in school and before I sold my soul to Google.
Now, naturally, because some searches were from organic search, I went ahead and checked my Google Search Console to see if maybe we’re ranking in any keywords or queries.
And well, we are.
No clicks from any of these queries, but when it comes to positions, we’re ranking #8 for “are self insert characters bad” and others.
Mind you, all of those positions are averages directly from Google.
Google search results are often personalized, so if you type any of those keywords, my publication may not appear in the position that this table says. But close.
Either way, I needed to do the search to see it, and on the second page of Google, at position 16 (I counted), was Narrative Baggage.
What did my subscriber growth look like?
The most subscribers I got during August in a day were four.
And again, most people came from Substack (80.39%), some others were already reading my articles or notes and decided to give me a chance, so they subscribed (17.65%), and last but never least, there’s a person who came from an unassigned bucket (1.96%).
I know I said before that I was going to try to plug a Substack extension here to give you better data and more info. But the ones I found, I didn’t like or didn’t show the data I wanted to pull.
This is probably the last data-driven wrap-up I do. My initial thought was to make these articles until we made it to 100 subscribers. With that done, I’m thinking of doing wrap-ups, but more on updates about my book or what I’m learning. We’ll see.
What’s next?
Next up, I’ll keep doing research to bring you articles on craft and some essays. Some of you have provided topics or questions that you’d like me to do research on, and rest assured, I’m working on it.
That said, if you have other topics you’d like to see in this publication, my comment section or DMs are always open. Thank you for sticking around.
And scene
If you made it this far, you’re probably one of those readers who 100% their book. So, thank you for bearing with me until the end :)
If you found this article helpful (either as a writer or a lurker), consider following along as I figure out how to actually write that book.
And if there’s a writing topic you’d like me to write about, drop it in the comments.
Was this post helpful? What have you learned in your writing journey and as you grow on Substack?
Take care and keep writing. ✍️
I think your outlier article got so much engagement because it was something that related to pretty much all of us. Perhaps I'm not interested in banter (though I personally did read that article!) but I AM a writer and therefore...
It seems that things most people can relate to, rather than simply things people are interested in, generate most engagement.
And before I do my usual thing and forget social niceties - well done on a successful month!
Congratulations on another successful month!