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I Analyzed My Substack Niche and Built an App - Now You Can Too
I Analyzed My Substack Niche and Built an App - Now You Can Too
Published: February 23, 2025 URL: https://buildtolaunch.ai/p/substack-niche-analyzer-app Engagement: 35 likes, 13 comments, 2 restacks Word count: 718
Joining Substack felt like stepping into a completely new world for me. Initially, I thought about writing beyond just programming — topics like childcare, gardening, cooking, and travel intrigued me. But then I wondered:
- Are there others writing about these topics?
- How can I find out how popular a niche is based on subscriptions?
- Can I learn from the top-performing newsletters?
- How crowded is my niche in the Substack ecosystem?
I had so many questions. That's when I started looking into a systematic way of retrieving insights to make informed decisions.
Since it was relatively easy for me to gather and visualize the data, I thought — why not build a tool to make this information accessible to others? And so, this project was born.
The Tool Plan
I wanted the tool to do four key things:
- Display important metrics that matter to me.
- Allow me to combine and intersect different keywords to see how the data shifts.
- Provide detailed insights about my own newsletter — especially understanding Substack's tiered data structure.
- Show me the top-performing newsletters so I could understand my competitive ceiling.
Technical Design
I decided to store all retrieved data in my database. This way, I wouldn't be at the mercy of Substack's API — if they ever change their schema or restrict API access, my tool would still function.
For the tech stack, I wanted to keep things simple. I had previously struggled with backend-frontend hosting setups. This time, I decided to try Next.js with Vercel, known for its smooth deployment experience. Everything was seamless — until I deployed the app. The Substack API worked perfectly on my local machine but wasn't returning the correct results on Vercel. That was an unexpected hurdle.
How It Works
The dashboard is designed with a left-right panel layout, making navigation intuitive.
Newsletter Analytics: Displays various data visualizations to analyze trends.
My Newsletter: Allows users to search for detailed insights about their own newsletter.
Member Analytics: A feature I built primarily for my own use — I was curious about how coding, web development, and product-related newsletters affect trends. Users can perform union searches (combining multiple keywords) or intersection searches (narrowing down to common results).
One thing you may notice from the screenshots is that certain newsletter fields seem off — for example, the tool might show zero AI-related newsletters when there are obviously many. This discrepancy is due to how Substack organizes and indexes keywords.
Additionally, since Substack's API isn't designed for large-scale use, it likely applies rate limits on shared hosting or deployed projects. To work around this, I decided to fetch keyword and newsletter data locally and store it in the database.
Try It Out!
Substack Explorer — Find and track the best newsletters in your field.
Finding the Substack API
A lot of people have asked me where I found the Substack API. Honestly, I just asked AI to help me. But to save you the hassle, I created a small collection of API endpoint documentation.
Check out the API docs at substackexplorer.com/api-docs.
Feel free to explore, and let me know if you find any corrections or additions!
Enjoy exploring, and happy writing on Substack!