How Anne-Kathrin Gerstlauer Built More Than a Consulting Business Around Her Newsletter, TextHacks

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When you see a tactic work for another newsletter, it makes sense to try it yourself. You never know until you try, right? But no experiment is guaranteed to succeed. 

Case-in-point: TextHacks, a newsletter by Berlin, Germany-based writer and consultant Anne-Kathrin Gerstlauer.

Launched in early 2022, TextHacks goes out to more than 15,000 readers. Every week, Anne-Kathrin sends tips on how to become a better, more effective writer. Issues of her newsletter — which she refers to as “episodes” — cover topics like how to craft an effective LinkedIn post, how to work with a group to create effective communications, and best practices for AI prompts to strengthen writing.

Anne-Kathrin’s newsletter has succeeded in generating business for her communications consulting business, so she’s tried a few growth tactics, which she’s had to learn are not one-size-fits-all. After seeing the success of referral programs in the U.S., she launched a referral strategy of her own. Refer a few friends and you’d get a complimentary paid subscription; share it with 50 friends and you’d get a free consulting call with Anne-Kathrin.

But not only did it not take off, some readers wrote to her to tell her how much they disliked the referral program.

“People were not interested in that,” she said. “They were like, ‘We share it if we like it.’ It’s a German mentality thing.” Lesson learned: marketing measures that are common in the U.S. may backfire in other cultures.

But here’s the good news: By testing out lots of different ideas, Anne-Kathrin’s discovered plenty of tactics that have worked well for her newsletter. As she’s grown her email list, she’s been able to use TextHacks to build her consulting business, where she shares her communications expertise with companies, newsrooms, and universities. (She said she’s now booked out several months in advance.) She’s launched a paid subscription — €5 per month for bonus content, with about 100 readers paying for a subscription. She’s launched advertising in her newsletter, which brings in additional revenue.

And she’s unlocked an unusual new revenue stream: Three companies are paying to license her content — taking her original work and resending it to their employees as a company-wide newsletter. She said it’s a part of the business she believes can grow. (The tactic is so innovative, she was named a finalist for the first-ever Inbox Awards.)

There’s a lot to learn from what Anne-Kathrin built with TextHacks. So in the latest edition of the International Inbox — a series where we profile newsletter operators and businesses around the world — you’ll hear from Anne-Kathrin about:

• How she makes money from a newsletter where most of the content is available for free.
• What she’s found that her audience, based mainly in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, responds to — and what they don’t.
• Tactics that have helped her grow her email list.
• The surprising lessons she’s learned about revisiting your best content. 
• What type of newsletters are most likely to land with a German audience.

(This interview has been edited and condensed.)

Tell me about why you started TextHacks.

My first goal was to use a newsletter as a marketing tool to reach a broader audience. I come from a journalism background, but I also do workshops and consulting outside journalism. I didn’t have that much of a network there, so I thought maybe I should write a newsletter like everybody in the U.S. already.

My goal was small. I was like, “If I had 1,000 subscribers one day, that would be amazing. If I reach a new audience, that would be great, too.” That was the start, and then I had 1,000 within the first few weeks, and I started to realize: This is bigger than a small marketing tool. Now it’s become my own medium.

How do the free subscribers bring you money?

I get five times more requests for workshops than I did before. My inbox explodes every Monday that I send out the newsletter — so I’ve been able to triple my prices and choose what to work on. I’m booked out now months in advance. That was a milestone for my business, the biggest I’ve ever had. That brings in tons of money.

I also have advertising. I don’t have an ad every week, but every once in a while. That brings in decent money as well, as I have a pretty interesting target group. People are like, “Where can I find people who work in journalism, marketing, public relations (PR)?” so they come to my newsletter because I have trust. I can charge pretty well for my ads, so that brings in extra money as well. Somebody from a big journalism company asked if they could buy parts of my newsletter — they wanted to buy a year of the newsletter to send it again within their company. 

That was a major deal, and I realized, “That is my new business goal, to expand this to other companies.” I’ve had a second company sign up for it, so that’s where I want to grow the business now, too. 

That’s so interesting — you’re essentially licensing your own newsletter content to other businesses so they can republish it within their own internal newsletters. Can you tell us a little more about how you figured out how to charge for that sort of thing?

Pricing was pretty difficult, as I knew of no such deal ever made as a reference point. I did not look at hours spent for me on that task, for me it was important that compensation was based on the value of my work the last few years. (I also did an estimation with ChatGPT on how much my newsletter was worth overall, and the value it might bring to a company.) Of course, it was hard to find a specific number. 

So I did two other things: Putting a price on a single episode, compared to the prices of reselling articles in journalism or the corporate world, and asking a ton of acquaintances the same question: How much money should I charge? The answers were much higher than I expected. I then settled on an average of those numbers while also putting a price tag on a single episode that I found reasonable. I ended up with a generous five-figure deal for one year and a three-figure number for single episodes as an orientation for future deals. 

At the same time, I’m offering different price points. Companies can buy single episodes as they were published or customized episodes with examples from their company at a higher price. In addition, they can advertise publicly about this partnership as that gains them trust while hiring — if you work for us, you also get the TextHacks newsletter. Some companies combine the partnership with job ads in my original newsletter. 

What does the actual newsletter look like for an employee?

Companies select the episodes from my list of episodes and choose those that relate to their area of expertise. Some come from journalism, some have a political background, so not every episode works for every company.

I’m editing out the intros and outros from each episode that don’t make sense for the company, or putting new examples into the episodes. And the company then sends out the episodes like an internal newsletter. So every Monday or Tuesday, every employee gets the branded TextHacks newsletter.

How do you segment your time in terms of how much you dedicate to your newsletter?

It depends on the week. I normally batch, so I don’t write every week, but I sit there for a day and write four to five episodes on that day. The emails and the sponsors are not that much work. What is more work is something I learned from Inbox Collective: I have a welcome email where I have to answer all the people writing to me with questions. That’s one to two hours a week. Half a day or a day per week goes directly into the newsletter.

I send it out on Monday. I try to have it finished by Friday. Sometimes that works; sometimes I sit there Monday morning [needing to write the day’s email], but I try to free whole days for it. If I see a day in my calendar where I don’t have many meetings, I’m like, “This is a writing day.” Then I sit there and try to write as much as possible. I always have a thousand ideas because my work influences my newsletter. People ask me questions [and I go]: “Oh, that’s an interesting topic. I should write that down in my newsletter as well.” Sometimes, I come home, sit there, and write it down within 10 minutes because I talked about it with a client.

At the same time, because of the newsletter, I have content for my clients already ready because I did a whole episode on this topic, and I have to get it into a presentation. It’s a full-circle moment most of the time. It doesn’t feel like that much work. Every once in a while, I try to squeeze in a whole day where I focus. 

It’s more difficult to get time off to think about the newsletter’s strategy. I’m trying now to do that with friends. We think about topics like, “What is my strategy with the newsletter? What’s my next step?” That’s pretty hard if you have this daily business that brings in money immediately versus your newsletter that brings in money indirectly. You also want it to grow, but it’s difficult to prioritize it at times.

How far in advance do you plan the subject matter?

Sometimes, I have it stacked for the next few weeks. I also have guest episodes. Some guests request that it be published on a certain day, so sometimes I have it weeks in advance.

When people do guest episodes for you, do you compensate them?

No, they want to get my audience. Those are either friends of mine who owe me a favor anyway or some people who come to me who want to sell their books, sell their programs, sell themselves. I don’t actively reach out to people I don’t know and tell them, “Please write for free.” People come to me.

It’s more difficult sometimes to decide whether to give them a guest episode or not because I try to have the quality on a certain level, but with guest episodes, I can’t control it that well. It’s sometimes difficult to decide whether it’s worth a guest episode if somebody wants to do marketing in my newsletter.

Tell me about your growth strategy and what you found works and doesn’t work.

In the beginning, I did the guest episodes because I thought that’s where my growth would come from. I’ll have famous people in my newsletter, and then they’ll share it [with their readers or followers]. But that did not bring in that much.

The pieces I write are pretty shareable because I give all the information that I have. I don’t put out something you have to click somewhere, or have the better stuff at my workshop. [What’s in the newsletter is] the best I can do on this particular subject. Then people recommend it. I can see on a certain day when 30 people from one company signed up — somebody shared it on their Slack. I ask people to share, but I don’t do it much.

I also tried to start a referral system, but it completely backfired. People were like, “We recommended you all year, and we did not get a reward. Now you start the referral system and new people get a gift from you.” It’s because I have this service-oriented newsletter. I don’t say anything else other than giving out advice, and I cut the bullshit. That’s why people tell me why they share it so much.

When you originally launched the referral system, what did you have in mind in terms of what rewards people would get and how they would earn them?

The rewards were pretty typical. They could get a paid subscription. If they had 50 referrals, they could get a consultation with me for half an hour, stuff like that. People were not interested in that. They were like, “We share it if we like it.” It’s a German mentality thing. I have to be very careful with marketing measures that are typical in the U.S. that could backfire in Germany. People don’t like it if they feel like you’re doing a trick on them.

I was surprised. I saw the referral system working for so many. I did not see more people recommending it, but I got three or four emails that were pretty pissed off. 

I found it very interesting that some things are cultural. Germans don’t want to be told stuff. I also feel like people think that because the newsletter is free, they can have everything from me and think I am doing it for fun. Many people don’t see a free newsletter as a business model. That’s why I’ve gotten such strong reactions.

I have a friend who’s married to a man from Munich, and we laugh sometimes about how Germans show their disapproval with a judgmental shake of the head.

Now imagine that in an email. I took it very hard. I put so much work into this newsletter, and most people never pay me. Please cut back on your expectations for this newsletter.

On the other hand, I should never forget those were three emails, and there are thousands of people who love the newsletter. When I go to conferences, so many people come up to me that I’ve never seen in my life who are like, “Oh, we subscribed to your newsletter.” That’s so crazy. But still, with the Germans, it’s sometimes hard to sell them something that has anything to do with marketing.

Who makes up your audience? What kinds of companies sign up for TextHacks?

It’s primarily from journalism, marketing, and PR. I find it interesting that it has gotten so broad; there are members of the Parliament who have signed up for my newsletter. Also, a retired teacher who writes for his association’s website. I have some attorneys. I also have people who have studied law and now work in companies. One of my biggest clients works with banks.

I thought my target group was people who write regularly, like marketing, PR, and journalism. Now I’ve found, which is much more interesting for my business, people who write at their job who never learned to write because they studied law. They’ve read all those complicated sentences that nobody understands because they learned it at law school. It’s an interesting target group for my workshops because they don’t know how to write a text, and I can teach them. It’s important for their business that those texts are written well.

In the beginning, I thought that was a problem because you always feel like the newsletter has to have this one specific audience. I don’t have that. There are episodes that go out to people who are not good writers who are starting out. I try to keep the mix, and apparently, it works. People are not bothered if they have one episode that’s not for their liking.

It is working. Sometimes, people say, “How much bigger do you want to grow?” I’m like, I don’t want to grow too big because then I lose my main audience. I have to try to keep that in balance. I want to grow, but not to the point where I have to change the main content of my newsletter.

What type of reader feedback makes you think, “I’m doing what I want TextHacks to do and it’s hitting the way I want it to hit?”

If it inspires people who thought they were not good at writing. I don’t write for the culture section of the people who are so creative, but I’m writing for the people who have to write boring, plain text. Through my hacks, they feel encouraged that they can improve and that they can reach their audience.

In journalism, we write for the smartest people. I try to teach people how to write for everybody. I’ve seen the studies and the statistics — people don’t think you’re smarter because you write in this university style. I try to teach people to write in an easy, plain way, and that’s most important to me. It’s so hard to write in a simple way. Everybody can write a long sentence, but not many people can write a short one.

The most successful episodes were the ones where I summarized all the other episodes. When I hit 5,000 subscribers, I did a special episode, “50 hacks for 5,000 subscribers.” I thought there was nothing new in this episode. Because they had it in one episode and had it curated and could refer it to anybody, those were the most successful ones. Then I did it again for 7,000 subscribers. For 10,000, I did it again.

I found it very interesting how you should repeat yourself because I always thought I had to send something new every week, but people want to have it repeated. Also, those episodes were long. Normally, I tell people, “Please write short episodes.”

Even if you send it out to the same people, people don’t mind repetition because my content is educational. So maybe they read it a year ago, but that was a year ago. They read a lot of stuff a year ago. They may like to read about this topic. I’ve never had anybody complain about something getting repetitive. I mean, I never send out the same issue; I try to find a new format and new examples. Sometimes, I copy and paste whole sections, and there has not been one complaint about that.

How often do you survey your audience?

I do them occasionally, like, “What next topic do you want?” or “What do you want for your paid subscription?” But I have a pretty intuitive feeling for what people want and find the feedback I’m getting from welcome emails or people replying to my news much more useful. The quality of the feedback I get from emails is much better than the ones I get from the polls.

Tell me a little bit more broadly about the newsletter scene in Germany.

The scene is still evolving. It’s not as big as in other countries. We have a language problem [since there are only so many German speakers], so the audience is pretty limited. I will never get 10,000 paid subscribers because my base is not that big. One newsletter that’s interesting, one of the few I know where the publisher can live from the newsletter, is called Social Media Watchblog. It’s existed for many years, and they are subscription only.

What doesn’t work that well are what I call essay newsletters. I’ve had a few friends who tried it out, and they could not convert that many paid subscribers. People say, “I want to start a newsletter and live from the paid subscribers.” I always tell them, “Don’t do it.” People pay you if you can get them their money back. If you write about money or finances, that could work.

There’s still people in Germany who don’t even know what a newsletter is. Sometimes I get asked, “What do you do for a job?” One person was like, “What is a newsletter?”

How does your newsletter promote your consulting work? Do you have a button at the end of each issue that’s like, “Consult with me”?

I don’t say it very much in the newsletter. I have it in the last section of the newsletter, which is small. I say, “You can hire me for workshops. Please click on that link and then you go to my website.” That’s been enough, and I’ve not promoted it more because I get so many emails I can’t do any more workshops anyway.

People come from LinkedIn. Mostly, it’s like, “I have subscribed to your newsletter for a while now, and my company wants to have a consultation. Can you set up a call?” Sometimes, I get it as a direct reply to the email I sent out on Monday. It took me a few months. The first month, nothing happened. The second, nothing happened. Then on the third… it’s like people have to have you in the inbox for quite some time, and then they’re like, “Okay, now I trust you. Now is the time.”

What goals do you have for 2025 in terms of growth or content topics you want to cover?

My biggest goal is to expand selling licenses or spin-offs of this newsletter, so I can make a corporate edition to sell to companies. I would love to cut back on the consulting and earn more money directly from the newsletter, like using the stuff I have and selling it. In terms of growth, I don’t have a goal. Because the growth is going so steady, I will reach 15,000 subscribers in the next month.

I would love to write more again and take the time to write more episodes myself again. And also to target even more people who are not coming from classic publishing jobs but who write, like lawyers or scientists. They also have trouble relaying their stuff to a normal audience.

Five things newsletters can learn from TextHacks

1.) Your newsletter doesn’t have to be its own profit driver — You can monetize your newsletter directly, through things like subscriptions or ads. But you can also do what Anne-Kathrin’s done and use the newsletter to drive readers towards other monetization opportunities, like consulting, speaking, or freelance writing. If you build a loyal audience, that can open up lots of revenue opportunities.

2.) Make sure you have some way to listen to your audience — Many newsletters do that through polls or surveys, but if you’re willing to ask good questions in your emails — and make time, like Anne-Kathrin does, to reply — that can also work. The important thing is that you’re listening to the audience so you always have a sense of what they want and need from you.

3.) If you wrote something good, bring it back! — Don’t be afraid to play the hits again. If you have a great newsletter, see if you can repackage the content in another way, or bring back the format for a future newsletter. You don’t need to do something 100% unique every single time you send an email.

4.) Criticism can sting, but try to put it into perspective —  It’s easy to let one negative email make you forget about the fans you have. Don’t get too down when you get negative feedback — there are lots of readers out there who love your newsletter, even if they don’t reply to every email to tell you so.

5.) Things that work for other people might not work for you — If you hear a good idea, try it with your newsletter and see what happens. It might work; it might not. But if you get in the habit of trying lots of tactics, over time, you’ll discover a series of things that work well for you and your audience.

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