This week on The Publisher Podcast by Media Voices, we’re joined by Will Hayward, journalist, author and columnist specialising in Welsh politics. He also writes The Will Hayward Newsletter, which he relaunched in September as a solo newsletter after running it for nearly a year as one of Reach plc’s Substack experiments, where it won Best Politics Newsletter at this year’s Publisher Newsletter Awards.
Since going it alone, he’s built up more than 3,000 subscribers in just seven weeks, with revenues and subscriber numbers now exceeding its previous iteration.
Will talks about his journey into covering all things Wales, what he’s learned working at the UK’s largest regional publisher, and what opportunities he spotted in going solo, even if it meant having to restart his newsletter from scratch.
Here are some highlights, lightly edited for clarity:
Launching and relaunching The Will Hayward Newsletter
Originally, I went to one of the senior people I know within Reach who ran our newsroom and said, ‘I’d really like to start my own Substack.’ As journalists within an organisation, your earning potential isn’t incredible. So I said, ‘Well, could I do this?’ And they said, ‘Why don’t you do it for us within the company, and your salary can increase if that does well?’
That was interesting to me. So I started building up a newsletter and trying to grow it – that was over a 10 month period. It did really well, it won the Best Political Newsletter at the Publisher [Newsletter] Awards. It was really well received, and it had a lot of subscribers, and lots of people who were willing to pay.
I then thought, actually, this is something I’d quite like to try and do myself. So I just made that decision. I won’t pretend it wasn’t nerve-wracking. I wasn’t able to take [the original newsletter] with me, so I launched another one of the same name, and that’s what I’ve been doing since.
Will’s advice to others considering going solo
It’s such a personal thing, because I loved working at WalesOnline, there are elements of it I’m really sad I don’t do anymore. But I don’t think it’s something people should try and do straight out of journalism school.
Having a personal following is massive, that’s very helpful. But I also learned so much from journalists I sat next to, and the editors I had. I had brilliant editors at WalesOnline, people who really got it, who every piece of work they touched, they made better. Working with people like that, and getting stuff through osmosis through them, I think is what gave me the confidence to do this.
I wouldn’t suggest that anyone just ‘takes the plunge’ themselves, [especially] if they haven’t got experience. But if you think it can work, you can back yourself. Because you don’t need millions of people to read it for it to be quite profitable. You just need to know what you need to earn and have a target for it, and work out what your contingency plan is if you don’t hit it.
Balancing free and paid subscribers
I think you’ve got to under promise and over deliver. What I’ve tried to say is, this is what you’re going to get as a minimum. The average length of my newsletter is almost 3,000 words, and of that, I’m putting probably half above a paywall. So you’re getting a lot as a free subscriber.
Part of my rationale for that is, I want people who have subscribed for free to still have a reason to click on it when that email drops. But also Wales has a small number of hyper-engaged people who are very hyper-engaged with Welsh politics, and a huge, huge majority of people in Wales who are not engaged at all. I think it’s really important that people in Wales become more engaged with the country in which they live – I think that’d make a massive difference towards better governance here.
If I stick everything behind a paywall, that makes it hard for them to engage. I don’t write above and below the paywall differently in terms of style, but I prioritise content which I think will be more accessible to people above the paywall, because I’m trying to build this long term.
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