Latest / Solopreneur Sessions with Fexingo: One-Person Businesses, Freelancing, and Independent Work / How One Freelancer Built a Business on a Weekly Client Newsletter
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this freelance web designer I've been following for a while. She's been sending a weekly newsletter to her clients for three years. Not to the public, just to people she's worked with or wants to work with. And she told me that newsletter now brings in about sixty percent of her new business. Her annual revenue last year was around three hundred thousand dollars. Luna: Wait, a newsletter to clients? Not a blog, not social media, just an email list of people she already knows? Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes it so interesting. We've done episodes about a single blog post or a viral reel, but this is different. This is about building a quiet, consistent channel that compounds over time. She started it in early 2023, just after a dry spell where she had to chase every lead. She decided she was done with that. So she made a list of every client she'd worked with in the past five years, plus a few people she'd met at conferences, and she started sending them a weekly update. Luna: But what's in it? Like, here's what I did this week? That would get old fast. Lucas: Yeah, that's the trap most people fall into. She figured out early that nobody cares about her project updates. So she flipped it. Each email is a short case study of a problem she solved, but framed as a lesson. For example, one week she wrote about how she cut a client's page load time in half by compressing images. That's it. Two paragraphs. A before and after screenshot. And then a one-line takeaway: 'If your site feels slow, this is worth checking.' Luna: So she's teaching them something useful, not selling. That makes sense. But how does that translate to new business? Lucas: Right, so here's the mechanism. She told me that about once a month, a client forwards one of her emails to a colleague and says, 'This person fixed my site, you should talk to her.' She also tracks replies. Every email ends with a simple question: 'Got a project that needs this? Hit reply.' And she says about five percent of her list responds to any given email. Half of those become actual conversations. Over a year, that's roughly forty inbound leads, and she closes maybe ten of them. Luna: Ten new clients a year from a list of, what, a hundred people? Lucas: She started with a hundred and twenty. It's now at about four hundred, mostly through referrals and a few people who found her site and asked to be added. But the key is the list is all warm contacts. They've either worked with her or been referred by someone who has. So her close rate is way higher than cold outreach. She told me she closes about a third of the conversations that start from a newsletter reply. Luna: That's insane. Cold email is like one or two percent. So she's basically built a machine that keeps her pipeline full without any cold outreach. Lucas: Exactly. And the cost is just her time. She spends about ninety minutes each Sunday writing the email. No editing, no scheduling tool, just a simple text email with one image. She says the imperfection is part of the charm. It feels like a human wrote it, because one did. Luna: I love that. But what about the content? How long does she keep this up without running out of ideas? Lucas: That was my question too. She has a simple system. She keeps a running list of every problem she solves during a client project. Even the tiny ones. When she's stuck for an email, she picks the most recent one and writes it up. She says she's never missed a week in three years, and she's got two hundred more ideas in her backlog. Luna: So it's not about being a thought leader. It's about documenting what you're already doing. Lucas: Exactly. She's not trying to be a guru. She's just showing her work. And that builds trust. Her clients know she's competent because they've seen her solve problems for three years straight. When they have a new project, they don't shop around. They just reply to the last email. Luna: I want to know about the numbers. What are the open rates and click rates? Because I imagine those are pretty high. Lucas: She shared that with me. Average open rate is around sixty-eight percent. Click rate is about fifteen percent. Compare that to the industry average for marketing emails, which is something like twenty percent open and two percent click. Luna: Whoa. That's a huge difference. But it makes sense because she's emailing people who already know her. Lucas: Right. And she's not selling anything. She's just sharing a lesson. People open it because they know it'll be short and useful. She even has a rule: if an email takes longer than two minutes to read, she cuts it in half. Luna: That's a good rule. So what's the actual revenue breakdown? You said sixty percent of new business comes from this. How does that work in dollar terms? Lucas: She breaks it down like this. She has three service tiers: a five-thousand-dollar landing page project, a fifteen thousand dollar full website, and a thirty-thousand-dollar ongoing retainership. Last year she closed four retainers, six full websites, and eight landing pages. That's about two hundred and forty thousand from new business. Of that, she attributes about one hundred and forty thousand to conversations that started with a newsletter reply or a referral where the person mentioned the newsletter. Luna: So the newsletter is basically her sales team. And it costs her ninety minutes a week. Lucas: Plus a little time for the occasional one-on-one call with someone who replies. But yeah, that's the whole funnel. No ads, no social media strategy, no SEO. Just a weekly email to a tiny list. Luna: I'm curious about the downsides. Is there any risk to this approach? Lucas: One thing she mentioned is that it works because she's a solo freelancer. If she had a team, the personal voice would be diluted. Also, she has to be careful not to overpromise. She only writes about problems she actually solved. So she's never tempted to fabricate case studies. And there's a risk of becoming complacent. She told me that sometimes she gets so many replies that she doesn't have to pitch for a month. But she still sends the newsletter every week, because she knows the moment she stops is when the pipeline dries up. Luna: That's the discipline part. But it also sounds like a pretty resilient business model. I mean, she owns her audience. She could take them anywhere. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a huge advantage. She's not renting attention from an algorithm. She owns the list. We've talked about that before, how email lists are the only channel you truly own. But she's taking that to an extreme, and it's working. Luna: So what would you say to a solopreneur listening who's thinking, 'Okay, I want to try this. Where do I start?' Lucas: She has a specific advice for that. Start with a list of ten people you've worked with. Not a hundred. Just ten. Send them a short email every week for a month. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just one lesson from a recent project. After a month, ask for feedback. Then keep going. She says the first few months are the hardest because you get almost no replies. But if you stick with it for six months, you'll start to see the compounding. Luna: I like that. It's low-risk and low-cost. You just need a little consistency. Lucas: And that's the thing that separates it from all the other channels we've talked about. A single viral post is a spike. This is a slow, steady drip that builds a moat. And for a solo business, that moat is everything. Luna: It also seems like this approach would work for any service business, not just web design. Copywriters, consultants, even accountants. Lucas: Absolutely. The core is the same: share one useful thing you learned from a recent client project. That's it. The format doesn't matter. She uses email, but you could do a voice memo or a short video. The key is the consistency and the specificity. Luna: And speaking of consistency, I think that's one of the reasons I love this show so much. Every week, we get to dig into a new story and come away with something we can actually use. And it's because of listeners like you who support the show that we can keep doing this ad-free. If these episodes have helped you in your own work, and you want to keep them coming, consider buying us a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It genuinely keeps the lights on. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small gesture that makes a big difference. And we don't say it often, but it matters. So thank you for that. And back to the newsletter. One more thing I want to mention is how she measures success beyond just revenue. Luna: What do you mean? Lucas: She told me that the newsletter has also changed how she positions herself. Before, she was just 'a web designer.' Now she's known as the person who sends that great weekly email. Some clients even mention it in their initial inquiry. It's become part of her brand. And that's a soft benefit that's hard to quantify but really valuable. Luna: That's a good point. It's like she's built her own little media brand around her service business. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a great place to be as a solopreneur because it gives you leverage. You're not just selling your time. You're building an asset. And that's what we should all be aiming for. Luna: So, Lucas, what's the one thing you want listeners to take away from this episode? Lucas: I think it's that you don't need a huge audience or a viral moment to build a thriving solo business. You need a small group of people who trust you, and a way to remind them of that trust every week. A simple newsletter can do that. It's not flashy, but it works. And if you start today, in a year, you might have your own pipeline. Luna: That's a great note to end on. Thanks for joining us, everyone. We'll see you next week.