💵 I changed my mind about pricing...

6 lessons learnt as I approach one year since turning on a paid newsletter

Hiya 🌊! I’m Lucy from Hype Yourself. I chat about self-promotion and creative living. If you are new to this page, pop your email below to ensure you receive my posts.

Photography by Caro Cuinet Wellings

Hiya hypers,

In May, I publicly announced that I was hiking up my prices substantially.

Today, I’m decreasing the subscription again.

One of my values is transparency, and I’ve been publicly building my paid newsletter, so I wanted to be honest with you about the thinking behind this.

It was not a decision I took lightly, and I need to rectify my mistake regarding the higher-tiered pricing with some of my readers.

Just as I share a win, I want to share learnings in real-time in case it helps you.

I’ve noticed others have also moved to a higher monthly over an annual payment plan, and of course, it might work for them, but I want to tell you why it wasn’t working for me.

Lucy x

Here are the six lessons I’ve learnt since a price increase

1. My audience didn’t want to join for a year

I had hiked it to £150 a year / £20 a month so a 40% discount if you came annually. I thought this would be a no-brainer for people to come for the year. .

Surprisingly, it went the total opposite way.

Before the price hike, I had a 50/50 split between annual and monthly.

After the price hike, it was weighted 60/40 towards monthly!? Not what I expected at all. I didn’t want you, the readers, paying more monthly, which was what was happening.

I wanted people to come annually, as building momentum and consistency with your promotion takes time. So, I wanted that time together to help you make promotional muscle memory.

2. I need to be clearer with my messaging

I went from saying I had a Substack newsletter to membership to, in part, justify the monthly cost.

My audience, some of whom were paid subscribers, asked questions about whether the membership was new or something different.

I don’t currently offer co-working or set office hours. I do have a live class with me every month, and I try to be as reactive and engaging as possible with my community, but I began to feel like the title of “membership” was confusing things.

3. I want to grow, but I also want everyone to have access to the resources they need

I am ambitious. I obviously wanted to grow my Substack to be a revenue stream, but the main goal of my Hype Yourself platform was to make DIY PR affordable for as many people as possible.

PR is more than just pitching to a journalist, and there are so many other ways to do this, but I felt that many people in my audience, who can do the quick actions, were not feeling like they could afford to upgrade.

4. Higher prices can (and did!) fuel a creative block

If I'm honest, I wasn’t expecting anyone to pay £20 a month; I was expecting them to pay £150 a year.

The £20 a month attracted a different type of customer, often part of a bigger team. I was worried they wouldn’t want to read my personal essays or insights, and I went overboard on trying to give business value for the first two months which led to a decrease in customer retention and engagement.

Mentally, that number of £20 a month kept stifling me.

5. Analyzing data can confirm your gut feelings

I paid

Amanda B. Hinton

for a bespoke editorial and data audit and tell me what she found.

It solidified my hunches. I have always found it easier to convert people from my Instagram or LinkedIn, but I was now putting off anyone who didn’t really know me on Substack, which, for now, is where I am housing my newsletter. It doesn’t make sense to ignore this audience if this is where I currently live.

Yes, revenue was increasing, but it energetically didn’t feel easy. Historically, the growth was a lot more natural, and I think my creative output also reflected that.

6. Intentional discounts have a time and place

I had taken quite a public stance on not doing discounts on Substack.

In part because I had seen some big-name writers offer what I felt were massive price slashes. When a newsletter is too cheap I feel it devalues your writing and pulls everyone down. I also don’t think it’s very respectful to early adopters of your work.

To that end, I know I will never discount my newsletter to less than my pilot pricing which I offered my first supporters – they got me to bestseller status, which consequently helped me to continue to grow. I want to honour that special relationship with them and make sure their pricing always remains exclusive.

However, I do recognise that occasional sales or exclusive offers do work well for helping to get new people onboard.

What happens next?

I am having a day less childcare than I was anticipating this academic year and want to make the offering super transparent for us all.

To that end, I’m having a little Autumnal clean with an editorial overhaul.

Starting with my weekly PR recipes coming out on a Monday — you can see what the first one is like here. The goal is to have me sat down next to you, giving you one easy PR recipe a week to apply to your newsletter, book or business.

I still plan on giving the juicy behind-the-scenes and personal essays but they’ll get a bit of structure to them. And don’t worry — those delicious quarterly directories of opportunities to pitch yourself won’t be going anywhere either!

And because I like to swing big, I’m setting an audacious goal of hitting 500 paid by my first paid-versary in 37-days.

Now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, what questions do you have for me? How can I be helpful?

P.S. 🚨If you became a paid subscriber after May 12th 2024, you should have had an email from me with options, including a pro-rata refund or a complimentary subscription moving forward. I got into an editorial / admin pickle whilst I was away for a personal trip in London this week so if it looked like it wasn’t from me or you didn’t get one please email me directly or hit reply to this and I will fix you 👩🏻‍💻.