Website directories - which ones are worth it?

I've been working on my newsletter (One Percent Wiser) for a few months now. I have experimented with a few different tactics to gain my first subscribers, and one of them was to submit to as many newsletter directories as possible.

I have submitted to 15 different directories (let me know if I am missing any!), full list in the screenshot attached.

It's been a couple of months, so was it worth it? Let's take a look at where my subscribers have come from:

I will save you the trouble of tallying it up, the directory winners are:

Inboxreads → 12
Indiehackers → 12
radletters.com → 4
newsletters.co → 1
inboxstash → 1
substack.com → 1

As with many things in life there seems to be a bit of a power law dynamic going on here. Most of the directories haven't brought a single subscriber, and Inboxreads and Indiehackers have brought the majority.

Obviously there are a few flaws with the analysis here: my sample is very small, it's only been going a few months so I don't have much of a track record, and probably I could have done better copy or changed the category I submitted to which may have attracted more readers.

So if you have a newsletter and haven't submitted to any directories yet, maybe I can save you some time and suggest you just go for Inboxreads and Indiehackers and skip the rest.

I hope this is helpful for someone and if you liked this feel free to check out my newsletter One Percent Wiser (the topics I cover are entirely different to the subject of this post!)