🏛️ Substack Newsletter Sponsor Links & Brand Partnership Extractor

Identify sponsored advertiser mentions, brand partnerships, tracking URLs, and promo discount codes across top Substack newsletters.

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🥊 Why This Actor Beats the Competition

Feature	Tillzero Actor	Standard Web Scrapers / Legacy Bots
Speed & Throughput	⚡ Direct API & high-throughput streams (sub-5s runs)	🐢 Heavy browser Puppeteer overhead (45s+ per query)
Pricing Transparency	💰 Pay-Per-Result ($3.50 / 1k items)	💸 Expensive $49–$99/month subscriptions or compute lock-in
Data Quality & Schemas	🛡️ Strictly typed, validated ISO 8601 JSON	❌ Raw messy HTML dumps with missing columns
Bot Protection & Proxies	🌐 Built-in smart rotation and residential resilience	🚫 Frequent Cloudflare/Akamai 403 blocking

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🛠️ Step-by-Step: How to Use

Method 1: Apify Web Console

1. Navigate to the Actor page in the Apify Store.
2. Configure your search parameters in the intuitive Web UI.
3. Click Start to run the scraper and export results to CSV, Excel, or JSON.

Method 2: Python SDK

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("litezero/substack-newsletter-sponsors-scraper").call(run_input={"newsletterSlug": "pragmaticengineer", "maxPosts": 5})

dataset_items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
print(f"Extracted {len(dataset_items)} items!")

Method 3: Node.js SDK

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('litezero/substack-newsletter-sponsors-scraper').call({"newsletterSlug": "pragmaticengineer", "maxPosts": 5});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Extracted ${items.length} items!`);

Method 4: REST API / cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/litezero~substack-newsletter-sponsors-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"newsletterSlug": "pragmaticengineer", "maxPosts": 5}'

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📥 Input Parameters

Field	Type	Description	Default
newsletterSlug	String	Substack publication subdomain slug (e.g. pragmaticengineer, lenny, notboring).	pragmaticengineer
maxPosts	Integer	Number of recent archive posts to inspect for sponsor placements.	20

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📤 Output Data Dictionary & Sample JSON

{
  "newsletter": "The Pragmatic Engineer",
  "postTitle": "Engineering Levels and Compensation Bands in 2026",
  "publishDate": "2026-10-08",
  "postUrl": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/engineering-levels-2026",
  "sponsorName": "Postman",
  "sponsorUrl": "https://postman.com/enterprise?ref=pragmatic",
  "promoCode": "PRAGMATIC20",
  "sponsorBlurb": "Postman helps over 35 million developers collaborate on APIs seamlessly.",
  "adPosition": "Top Header Sponsor"
}

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💡 Top Commercial Use Cases

1. Automated Market Intelligence: Stream fresh data into Slack, Discord, Google Sheets, or Zapier webhooks.
2. Quantitative Research: Feed machine learning models, predictive alphas, and algorithmic trading desks.
3. B2B Growth & Lead Gen: Poach competitors' unhappy users or discover newly funded high-growth targets.