---
aliases: ["Articles Per Week"]
Is A: Measure
Belongs to: "[[responsibility-content-production]]"
Unit: "articles"
---
# Articles Per Week

Articles per week is the primary output metric for [[responsibility-content-production]]. It measures the cadence of published newsletter essays and directly reflects content production capacity. Consistency in publishing is the single most important factor for audience trust, retention, and growth. Missed weeks erode subscriber engagement and reduce the inventory available for [[responsibility-sponsorships]].

This metric is tightly coupled with [[measure-subscribers]] growth and [[measure-open-rate]]. A steady publishing cadence builds habit formation in readers, which is the foundation of a healthy newsletter business.

## How it's tracked

Counted weekly based on published newsletter issues. Each distinct essay or curated edition counts as one article. Republished or cross-posted content (e.g., LinkedIn adaptations) does not count. The count is logged in the monthly tracking spreadsheet and reviewed during the [[procedure-weekly-newsletter]] workflow.

## Targets

- **Minimum**: 1 article per week (52/year). Missing a week should be exceptional.
- **Target**: 1.5 articles per week on average (including bonus mid-week posts). Roughly 75-80 articles per year.
- **Stretch**: 2 articles per week during high-output quarters (e.g., when running [[24q2-10-pillar-articles]]).

## Notes

- Quality matters more than quantity. A single high-quality essay that drives engagement and shares is worth more than two mediocre posts. Use [[measure-essay-quality-score]] as the balancing metric.
- Publishing cadence tends to drop during periods of heavy project work (e.g., [[25q1-laputa-v1]]) or travel. Pre-writing a buffer of 2-3 essays helps maintain consistency.
- If the rate drops below 1/week for two consecutive weeks, treat it as an escalation and assess bandwidth allocation across responsibilities.
