Interview Date: March 2, 2025
Table of Content
- Meet Lindsay Johnstone
- Newsletter Identity Card
- Tools she uses to run her newsletter
- How she started What Now?
- How she grew over 1,700 subcribers
- Her strategies to become a Substack bestseller
- Personal & professional impact of running a newsletter
MEET THE CREATOR
Lindsay Johnstone is a writer, facilitator and memoir/poetry critic for Glasgow Review of Books.
She also runs What Now?, a Substack Bestseller ranked in the top 40 on the global Parenting leaderboard, with over 160 paid members.
When I saw that she has only 1,700 subscribers and 160 paid members, I immediately wrote to her for an interview to learn more about her newsletter journey and how she reached a 10% conversion rate—which is higher than many other Substack bestsellers!
In our interview, Lindsay shared unique insights about:
- How she started a newsletter post-therapy
- Her step-by-step growth roadmap to 1,700 subscribers
- 4 key actions she took to convert 10% of her subscribers into paid members
- How she utilizes coupons and special, time-bound deals to increase paid members
- 3 principles she leans on in all of her work
Enjoy!
NEWSLETTER IDENTITY CARD
TOOL STACK
- ESP: Substack
- Design of visuals design: Studio Gently, These Are the Days
- Testimonials: Substack Recommendations, Survey Monkey (for Course Participants)
- Payments: Stripe
START
How and why did you start “What Now?” in the first place?
In autumn 2022, I ended a three-year psychotherapy journey asking myself, ‘What now?’ I vowed that I’d replace those thrice-weekly therapeutic hours with something, but wasn’t then sure quite what.
Entered Substack. Post-therapy, I’m holding the necessary space for myself and others entering (early perimenopausal) midlife while very much still figuring things out.
GROWTH
Which strategies did you use to grow over 1,600 subscribers?
0 – 100 Subscribers
To get to 100 free subscribers in the pre-Notes era, I first utilised my existing networks (personal and on Instagram). I asked friends and family first to subscribe, then started sharing my posts on IG using Substack’s shareable images, always including a sign-up link.
I sometimes popped a Question widget into my IG Stories for folk to drop their email address in, which I then added manually to my list. I started subscribing to publications I’d found on the Explore tab on Substack that felt aligned with my own work, for example, Haver & Sparrow by Charlene Storey (a fellow Scottish Substacker!), Creatively Conscious by Claire Venus ✨ and Unpacking by Stephanie Jucar Cooley.
I also commented on people’s posts consistently, supporting their work and building connections on shared interests.
100 – 1,000 Subscribers
Notes launched and this made connecting with readers far easier all of a sudden! My publication grew by showing up consistently here most days (this was before following just Notes was an option) and I shared snippets of life here in Glasgow as well as restacks plus comments from my and others’ posts.
I connected on other platforms with writers and content creators I’d found on Substack to leverage the benefits of community elsewhere.
I recommended two publications a week to my followers on SS and IG that I thought would resonate with my own audience.
I teamed up with other writers and teachers of memoir to lift as we climb. We worked together to ensure that everyone’s posts were commented on and restacked.
In 2024, co-organised two IRL official Substack meet-ups (one in Northumberland along with Claire Venus and one in Glasgow with Neil Scott who writes The Crop). This was helpful in establishing smaller eco-systems within the larger Substack network.
I made sure that my categories were aligned with the work I was publishing, so I moved from Literature to Parenting and Wellbeing.
I leaned into the power of recommendations, writing them for other publications and benefitting from that reciprocity when others recommended mine. To date, over 1,000 of my subs have come from Recommendations.
I was featured by Substack on both IG and in Staff Picks for a few pieces I published around early perimenopause, alcohol and parenting of girls.
Three of my posts achieved the global top spot in Parenting in 2024 and this brought lots of new subscribers.
I wrote guest posts for other publications including Brand Seasons by SarahRobertson and London Lit Lab and invited collaborators to my publication either to write guest posts or to take part in my interview series, The Cost of Caring, where I talk candidly about the intersection between caring and creativity.
1,000+ Subscribers
I collaborated with other writers of memoir for the Substack x Publishing Summit hosted by Russell Nohelty and Claire Venus, chairing a panel on writing memoir on Substack.
I set up a women’s collective, joining Caro Giles, Layla O’Mara and Chloe George to talk live about issues pertaining to midlife women.
I’ve been lucky to be featured in various round-ups by other successful Substack writers including Claire Venus (whose Sparkle on Substack community has been super supportive of my work, too) and sam baker who writes The Shift.
MONETIZATION
When did you launch a paid subscription and how were you convinced that it was the right time for you?
I turned on paid in May 2023, after publishing on the platform for a few months. I know it was the right time for me because I had plans to launch live courses and sessions for paying subscribers, and this felt like the best place to do this.
Paid subs, then, were joining a Membership that had a community feel rather than just receiving my words.
What has been the most effective strategy for reaching 165 paid subscribers?
To get to 100, I used a combo of strategies. I was determined to get a Bestseller badge in the first quarter of 2024 as I’d entered the year hovering around the 60 mark having turned on paid in May 2023.
- I first reached out to my personal network and offered a discounted friends and family annual plan.
- Then, I focused on my existing community of free subscribers, who I reached out to individually by email to welcome them, tell them what to expect, and promote my existing offerings beyond the weekly newsletter. This included my online live and asynchronous courses and the way I planned to use Chat for my Membership community (I call it that rather than paid subscriber).
- I also targeted five and four star activity-level free subs and offered them a time-bound discounted rate on an annual subscription.
- I also, for a time, reached out to new free subscribers to welcome them personally and make sure they knew what I was offering I used the email header to include a button that would in written posts, on Notes and on Instagram.
How did you decide what to offer differently to paid subscribers to make it compelling for free subscribers to join as paid members?
This was an evolving process (still is!).
I decided that the majority of my Sunday posts would remain free, but when I started serialising my first memoir as audio, which was published each Wednesday, I decided that this would be a paid Member perk. It also offered me a degree of comfort for a manuscript that I hope to publish in the traditional sense in the future.
So, Members now have access to:
- The complete audiobook
- Behind-the-scenes material
- The whole archive (everything is paywalled after eight weeks unless I’ve set it to remain free forever)
- My more vulnerable writing
- My courses and live sessions (excluding Memoir in a Month and this autumn’s first run of a new course – Life Writing from the Archives, which are both for Founding Members only)
and now I have a monthly “What Now?” Members’ Chat thread on the last Sunday of the month, and have closed comments on my Sunday posts to paid Members only.
You have 10% conversion rate from free to paid subscribers, which is impressive and higher than many newsletters achieved. What are your biggest learnings about implementing a successful paid subscription?
Flexibility and communication. There are many writers and creators here on Substack that I class as my colleagues / peers, and so I offer them a reduced Membership rate and they often reciprocate. At the start, I offered comps but these don’t count towards your paid subscription numbers, and so now I offer coupons or special, time-bound deals.
For example, I gained nearly 50 paid subscribers in one weekend in November 2024 when I launched an offer to sign up for an annual membership for the price of a hardback book (£20) to celebrate the completion of my audio memoir.
This offer was shared widely by those in my community, and I was so delighted by the support that enabled me to open up the membership to so many new readers and listeners.
I often reach out to my most engaged free subscribers offering a 90-day free trial coupon to give them a taster of the Membership with no obligation to stick around beyond that, but find that people tend to once they’ve joined the gang. I also keep an eye on when folks’ annual plans are coming to an end and reach out to offer them a loyalty rate for their next year to aid subscriber retention.
You also have another revenue stream through courses. How do you balance your promotion offers for these products and for increasing paid subscribers?
I tend to do soft promo of these fairly regularly in my Sunday posts and on Notes, with a bit more of a push when something new is coming up. Sometimes I share posts that specifically trail upcoming courses and live sessions, but like to pepper these throughout the year and ensure that my issue-led writing takes priority.
I use custom buttons in my posts, embed links to related posts and have my courses as individual tabs on my homepage, too. I use Notes and also off-platform promo on IG for this as well.
I’m always delighted when another writer/teacher of memoir such as Dr Lily Dunn, Leah McLaren, Anna Wharton or Caro Giles endorses my courses in Notes or in posts.
I regularly direct folks to both my Membership Hub and my Welcome post where I keep subscribers of all tiers up to date on what to expect and what’s coming up.
IMPACT & LEARNINGS
How did building What Now? newsletter contribute to your life professionally and personally?
It’s been a complete game changer in both respects, helping me build both a professional network and a readership. I’m writing a new narrative non-fiction book on premature perimenopause and have built an engaged community here over the past two years that bodes well as I set my sights on print publication.
What would you do differently if you had a chance to start over What Now?
Nothing! I have learned a great deal along the way, including resilience and the ability to pivot when things don’t work as you imagine they might. Everything I’ve done on the platform has offered me opportunities to grow as a writer and as a community-builder.
What would it be if you had the right to give one piece of advice to aspiring newsletter creators?
Community, Creativity and Consistency. These are the principles I lean on in all of my work. If you want to treat your publication as a business or as part of your business, then take it as seriously as you would a job. Show up for your community and remember to demonstrate the same levels of enthusiasm and support for others as you’d like them to show for you and your work.
Build genuine connections and invest time in cultivating relationships with other creators and your own subscribers.
Be responsive. Lean into what your community resonates with and, ultimately, remember that these things take time.
Substack is getting busier and noisier all the time, but don’t let that get you down when the troughs seem to outweigh the peaks. Just keep going. Do your work.
