Welcome to our new interview blog series, where we sit down with successful newsletter creators to chat about the inspirations as well as the secrets behind their newsletters.
Today’s guest is Lucy Werner, a Public Relations expert and author dedicated to helping small businesses shine. After 20 years of experience and a successful career at London’s top creative agencies, Lucy relocated to rural France, where she now balances her third maternity leave with running the Hype Yourself newsletter.
She is now on a mission to support solopreneurs in growing their audience through the power of PR, by sharing creative ways to secure press and unlock new income streams.
Her newsletter, as you can imagine, is packed with her best tips, valuable insights, and proven PR strategies!
In our chat, she tells us how she doubled her subscriber base in a year, the tool behind her newsletter growth, how much she earns from it and her evolving approach to community building and monetization.
So, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy our conversation!
What inspired you to start Hype Yourself?
I started in PR from a work experience placement at 17. Then I continued to pursue a career in some of London’s Top PR & creative agencies before starting my own boutique agency. I wanted to make PR affordable for small business owners who didn’t have huge budgets but deserved the big agency thinking.
It was hard to make that a profitable business and I wrangled for a long time to be able to offer PR support that was more engaged than a one-off course or workshop. I started off writing books but the newsletter format combined with a monthly live element really works for me as a medium to nurture hundreds of businesses.
What can readers expect when signing up?
I offer a weekly PR recipe, a quick prompt you can run with that week to make incremental steps forward. I also share my own musings from going from agency owner in London to newsletter writer in rural France.
I also create a quarterly directory of newsletters and podcasts looking for guests.
Example of a Weekly PR issue from the Hype Yourself newsletter
What made you choose Substack as a newsletter tool, and how do you like it?
Originally price. I was paying over $100 a month for an existing list on Mailchimp which I wasn’t doing anything with during maternity leave so I knew I needed to trim the costs there. I had also been playing with writing 100 articles on Medium to see if I could make an income from writing. Substack seemed the answer to marry the two.
I watched an introductory talk from Farah Storr on Substack on how you could monetise a newsletter and her advice was to turn on paid straight away.
As I had an existing audience, I told them what I was launching with a pilot price and hit bestseller status in the first month. The best bit about Substack is the recommendation function.
I have grown exponentially through my network recommending my publication. It is however lacking in segmentation tools and you can’t drip feed a welcome sequence or easily send out bespoke emails to a select data set.
How many subscribers do you have now, and what are your best strategies for growing your list?
I’ve nearly doubled in the last year. Pre-Substack it took me four years to get to about 4,700. After one year on Substack I’m now at 9,150 free and 420 paid. I know that most of my subscribers come from outside Substack so I focus my time on daily promotion on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Where time allows (outside of three children under 7, moving to a new country and learning a new language) I also pitch for traditional press articles, podcasts and guest writing to boost my profile.
I also teach for universities and accelerators and write non-fiction business books so I always mention my newsletter and bring a lot of my new connections over.
Could you share how much you are currently making from Hype Yourself?
With Substack, you can in theory have two pricing tiers, a regular tier and a “founding member” tier (which allows readers to pay more than the listed price as an extra show of support).
For now, I’m still perfecting my regular tier so I only have that on. It is $10 a month or $100 a year. Some months perform better than others, but after Substack and Stripe take their cut, I usually make about $2,500 a month.
How long does it take to put together a new edition and what does that process look like?
I typically spend 8-16 hours a week writing and another 7-14 hours replying to comments, checking in with the community, editorial planning, and admin. I write the newsletter all on my own. I have paid for external editorial consultations and Substack growth support, but essentially, the rest, the words on screen, are all for me.
I have a specific format for certain pieces such as weekly PR Recipes for my paid community and the free to read The Hype monthly. The personal essays or sharing of my own story are as my creative energy feels at the time of writing.
How do you keep your subscribers engaged and encourage new paid subscriptions?
I am constantly tweaking and refining the format for subscribers, talking to them, gathering feedback and creating resources based on the challenges they are facing. The PR recipes and the lives are often shaped around what my audience asks me about.
My personal pieces are more me sharing a piece of me and tend to have a higher conversion rate, which I think is testament to the fact that. This newsletter article on pricing is a good example of that.
When I create a resource that I know my paid audience will love I make sure to share it far and wide. The biggest open secret is to really know your audience, their language and their challenges.
Example of a personal piece from the Hype Yourself newsletter
Do you regularly analyze your stats and use this data to improve your strategies?
Always. Some of which the Substack provides, and others I have sought outside support. I worked with Amanda Hinton to do a data pull and editorial analysis so I can clearly see what is getting the most engagement, what is generating the most income and what content tanks. The goal being to try and double-down on what works.
What advice and tips do you have for someone looking to start a newsletter and earn money from paid subscriptions?
Less is more. Don’t feel like you must keep adding tools, meetings, exercises and whistles. It can be super overwhelming for the person on the other side.
Example of a free edition of the monthly Hype Yourself newsletter
Is there a newsletter creator who inspires you?
I attended a paid workshop by David Hieatt of The Do Lectures which was what kickstarted my journey in 2019 to start, so he was my original business inspiration.
Where can we find you?
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Thank you for talking to us, Lucy!
Liked this? Check out our interview with the Friday Freelance Tip founder—a newsletter to help freelancers grow!
And if you have a favorite newsletter creator you'd like to see featured, please leave a comment–it might be our next pick.
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