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The risks and rewards of going solo: Will Hayward's relaunched Welsh political newsletter takes off

Author and journalist Will Hayward was one of a group of experimental paid Substack newsletters launched by regional publisher Reach plc last year. But in September, he decided to take the plunge and go it alone. The catch? He couldn’t take his newsletter with him.

Just 7 weeks after relaunch, Hayward already has more subscribers and more revenue than he was making on The Will Hayward Newsletter under Reach. 

This week on The Publisher Podcast, Hayward discussed why he thinks the new newsletter is surpassing expectations, what lessons he’s taken from working at a larger publisher to apply to his own newsletter, and the pros and cons of personal branding.

People are willing to pay

The Will Hayward Newsletter was originally launched in November 2023 while Hayward was Welsh Affairs Editor at WalesOnline. He approached a senior editor asking to launch a personal Substack, and was instead encouraged to do so as part of Reach’s wider experiments with reader revenue.

Over 10 months at WalesOnline, The Will Hayward Newsletter was well-received. “It had a lot of subscribers and lots of people who were willing to pay,” Hayward said. In July, the newsletter beat competition from major publications like Bloomberg and The Economist to win Best Politics Newsletter at the Publisher Newsletter Awards, 

When looking to go solo, Hayward’s instinct was that people would be willing to support independent coverage. 

“When I’m saying, ‘Can you give money to Reach to help fund this,’ people do feel a bit less ownership of it,” he theorised. “It did well [under Reach], I think it was one of the most successful paid newsletters. But now when it’s me saying, ‘Look, this is what I do, if you fund me I can do this, if you don’t, I can’t,’ people are feeling like they’ve got that ownership of it.”

He designed the new newsletter - also called The Will Hayward Newsletter - with several different subscription tiers. There is free content, as well as monthly and yearly subscription options. But it is the ‘Founding Member’ option with a pay-what-you-want box which has surprised Hayward the most.

“Some people have been incredibly generous with their donations,” he explained. “Just general members of the public who have valued what I’ve done previously, or value what I’m doing now, which has been really, really moving and taken me aback.”

Hayward’s newsletters run to around 3,000 words on average, with approximately half of that above the paywall. He noted that this gives free subscribers a lot, but he wants to target the majority of people in Wales who aren’t at all engaged with Welsh politics, rather than paywalling everything. “I prioritise content which I think will be more accessible to people above the paywall, because I’m trying to build this long term,” Hayward said.

Less than two months in, the newsletter is already  at the point where it pays enough to live. “You don’t need millions of people to read it for it to be quite profitable,” he explained. “You just need to know what you need to earn, and have a target for it, and work out what your contingency plans are if you don’t hit it.”

Personal branding as a blessing and curse

Although it is crystal clear who writes The Will Hayward Newsletter, Hayward has mixed feelings about having it tied so strongly to him personally. “If I’d been starting from scratch, I would not have called it The Will Hayward Newsletter,” he acknowledged. “But because the previous one was called The Will Hayward Newsletter, and I wanted that subscriber base to come across with me, that’s why I had to do it.”

“I’ve always been quite uncomfortable with how much I’ve tied it to me. But actually, at a time when there’s a lot of misinformation, and everyone with a phone can pretend to be a journalist… I think a lot of trust can come from building a personal brand. Whenever I do stories, I always try and show my working, and I always try and say what I don't know as well as what I do.”

The Substack newsletter Hayward wrote at Reach has now been rebranded to The Journal, and is no longer a paid-for newsletter. For publishers, apart from the clear downsides of talent leaving, Hayward still thinks there’s a place for centering individual personalities in order to build reader revenue streams and trust.

“If you have individual personalities who readers like, actually [personal-led newsletters are] really good for not just building revenue, but building trust and driving traffic because they’re coming to a particular person,” he said. “Obviously you’re then putting a lot of your brand within individuals, which is inherently risky. But that’s what TV’s done since time immemorial…”

A market for coverage

Another reason Hayward thinks his newsletter is flying is because of the genuine need for coverage of Welsh politics and issues. “There are some incredible journalists in Wales, but it’s a fairly limited media landscape,” he said. “So you get all the advantages of feeling like a local, regional reporter, but with the bonus that you’re reporting on a nation and national government. 

“It has all the money and issues a national government has, but with that sense of attachment that you wouldn’t get within a region, if you’re covering Liverpool or Manchester, for instance.”

Hayward, who spent eight years covering Welsh affairs for Reach, said he noticed a real uptick in interest in Welsh politics during Covid, which he described as an “awakening of devolved consciousness.” 

“For the first time, people in Wales could see the actual decisions that were being made in Wales that are affecting their lives,” he outlined. “For some people, that was a fantastic thing. For others, they hated it. But it’s a genie which I don’t think is going to go back in the bottle.”

The right timing

The Will Hayward Newsletter version II may have got off to a strong start. But Hayward was clear before relaunch about his goals and what would make the newsletter sustainable in the long term. He set a deadline of May 2026 - the next Senedd (Welsh Parliament) election - as the likely high point of interest in Welsh politics and affairs. “If I can’t make it work now, it isn’t going to work,” he emphasised.

Hayward also made sure to set aside enough money to be able to go six months without earning: advice that other solo newsletter writers have given before. This takes the pressure off the early months, but has also given Hayward focus. “The mentality has been, everything I do has got to be towards growing it for six months, and then I’ll see where I’m at,” he said.

As many others have echoed, there’s a great deal of extra work which comes with launching and running a solo newsletter. Insurance, administration, sponsorships and marketing are just a few weighty additional tasks which have to be factored in around the actual journalism. 

Hayward said that although many could follow in his footsteps, and he is by no means the first, it’s still tough. “My life would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t done this, but I’m glad I have,” he explained. “That’s nothing against Reach, it’s just I think I was ready, and I was in quite a good position because I don’t have kids, I don’t have dependents. So it’s quite easy for me to take that risk.”

As awareness grows about the governance differences both inside and outside Wales, reporting becomes all the more important, particularly because there are so few covering it. “We’ve got three or four main news-specific platforms that focus on Wales, but for a country of over 3 million, that’s pretty small,” Hayward said. “I looked at what I had and what I thought I could offer, and felt like there was a market for it.”

Studies have found that few publishers convert more than 10% of their audience to paying subscribers. But mitigating churn and fostering retention is challenging in today’s landscape. So what are media and publishing companies to do?

Find out what the leading causes of subscriber churn are, why first-party data is the key to growth and profitability, and what strategies you can employ to retain subscribers and reduce churn in BlueConic’s free resource, A Publisher’s Guide to Mitigating Churn and Increasing Subscriber Retention.

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