Oh No! How To Not Lose All Your (Paid) Subscribers With ONE ‘Wrong’ Click
Your 10-minute backup plan to avoid the gut punch Lucy Werner (Hype Yourself) faced - because Substack offers zero warranties!
PR expert
from is a mom, book author, PR professional and powerhouse writer from France who had built something most of us dream of—a thriving Substack newsletter,ranked in the Top 50 for business globally,
with almost 13,000 subscribers
earning $3,700+ with her newsletter.
She was this close to hitting her goal of 1,001 paying subscribers.
My buddy
featured her recently and shared this newsletter identity card:
And then, it happened.
She simply wanted to “tidy up” her Substack page.
Here’s what she said:
On Tuesday 6th May, I was just about to draft my post for this upcoming Sunday.
As I looked at my publication page on Substack, I thought it looked a bit cluttered.
I turned on the podcast section a few months back and posted two short videos, but they took up space on the main page, so I thought I would “just” have a little tidy and remove it.
I deleted my podcast in settings in a super relaxed and controlled manner.
Harmless, right? She deleted her podcast section—and in an instant, everything disappeared.
We’re talking every single subscriber.
Every post.
Gone.
No warning. No “are you sure?”
No “danger zone”.
Just… wiped out!
It was a nightmare no creator wants to wake up to.
But here’s the part that gave me goosebumps:
Lucy didn’t quit. She rallied. She went public,
shared her story yesterday (and wow, did it spread), and the Substack community, her friends and super fans showed up for her big time.
More than 500 hearts
200 comments
170 restacks
And it helps! I’ve seen it on Medium with impersonation attacks, hacks or dropping follower numbers, I’ve seen it with no access to my account or Medium support.
The best ALWAYS is to reach out to the platform, find a way to contact a HUMAN there AND also inform your followers (which you can’t take with you anyway) or subscribers (which you don’t want to lose since your list is your most valuable asset besides your personal brand!).
If you’re now checking out her pub:
Her subscriber count is back up—12,000 and growing. She even reclaimed her bestseller badge.
When I tried to tag her publication in this story, I could select one of these: Hype Yourself by Deleted Pub Owner or Lucy.
I’d be willing to bet she’ll see more paid subscribers than ever.
However, it’s not just about rebuilding. It’s about building smart from the start.
Why? Because she showed up with honesty and heart (solo parenting and nursing her kids through a stomach bug (because of course everything always happens at once)) and because her story is a gut punch that shows how fast everything you’ve built can vanish.
It reminded all of us of something simple—but critical:
🚨 Back up your content and data!
Like… today.
Right now.
Before life throws its next plot twist your way.
As a mom I know something wild can happen anytime - not only in the family but also in my part-time online business. Luckily my hubby is a software developer who helped me multiple times and saved my butt!
You’ve got big things to build. Let’s not lose them to one wrong click. Protect what you build!
Here’s how protect your newsletter in 10 minutes max with 5 quick moves
Backup your email list - this is the easiest way and something I recommend all my tribe members from day 1
→ Go to Dashboard > Subscribers > Export CSV
✅ Monthly or even weekly. Make this your non-negotiable. I have a calendar alert that reminds me once per month. Depending your growth per day you could also do it on a weekly basis
Save your Stripe income data:
→ Export a CSV from Stripe
→ You can choose to export Successful Payments, Refunded Payments, Uncaptured Payments, or All Payments
✅ Know what you earn and who’s supporting you. I talked with so many in the Bestseller chat about it who are experiencing the same. Without going into too much details there are sometimes 25+ failed payments, people who want to subscribe and it didn’t go through. There are refunds. There are uncaptured payments.Was talking with
from PubStack about it lately. So my hubby is exporting a csv from our Stripe and also is sending me screenshots.
Subscribe to yourself & add a publication and backup email address
→ Subscribe to your own Substack with a second email and let the email get into a specific folder→ Let your hubby or wife join the list as a backup+
→ Add your family
✅ Instant archive of everything you send.
💡Pro Tips!
If you’ve come so far, here are some more advanced tips and tricks - depending on the time you have:
Mass download your Substack posts and bring them to your own website. As you know I love Substack but I also love to have my own website. So I’d recommend to download all your Substack posts and upload them on your WordPress page.
That’s one if the reasins why I would never go all-in on Substack. Even legends like Tim Denning always used to publish on their website first and then on Medium. When I saw this I knew I had to export my stories and put them on my website. Although you can’t see all posts on my website I could rebuild my 2500 stories on another platform.
Download your Substack Notes posts. This is not a feature but with (vibe) coding you create a tool that can help you extract your data. This is also smart for anlyzing your (best-performing) posts.
Take screenshots. When my Medium was down or my earnings disappeared from one day to the next once this really helped me. So I’m taking screenshots whenever I can. From earnings and the look & feel of my page.
Automate your backups with Zapier. I also automate my paid subscriber flow or unsubscribe flow (Substack-Circle) also Stripe and Substack.
Bookmark your RSS feed
Lucy is not alone. She’s in good company.
:had Substack cancel paid subscriptions when the subscribers themselves didn’t initiate cancellation.A similar thing happened to me last month. I lost 1500+ readers in one second. There was no danger zone or warning. When I messaged Substack for help, they offered none. Back up your lists friends…
as shared by Lucy:Last night, I started receiving emails from paid subscribers saying their subscription was canceled when they had not initiated a cancellation. I’ve asked them to forward the emails to me, and indeed, they received a cancellation email from Substack. I’ve checked on these folks in Stripe and their cards were not expired. We’re now at 18 of these instances.
A similar thing happened to Chelsey although she still had her publication and data it wiped all her posts).
🔴 One More Thing (that’s so important) & LIVE today! 🔴
I was just recently talking with tribe member
about exactly what happened to Lucy!She wrote a story about how to create your own Terms and Conditions that got me thinking.
Noemi is an ex-lawyer and business coach, shared something on Notes that hit hard:
If you see the warranty section in the Substack terms it does not guarantee Substack is error free. Even huge platforms do not guarantee error-free services, because at the pace of development of platforms errors will occur regardless how much the QA testing you set out to do. We are the CEOs of our businesses and need to understand the advantages and risks that we take on in choosing any tech stack!
She's right.
Platforms don’t guarantee perfection—even the biggest ones with 5M paid subscriptions and more than 50,000 writers earning money like Substack have bugs.
I could tell you thousands of stories from publishing giant Medium!
So we need to protect ourselves, too.
🔴Spontanoues LIVE! If you’ve ever thought “okay but how?” — We’ve got you.🔴
Join me and Noemi live today for a super practical session on:
✨ How to protect your data in 10 minutes
✨How to create your own Terms & Conditions (even if you're not a lawyer)
✨ What to watch for in platform terms
✨ What Substack’s fine print really says about data loss and liability
We’ll be going live later today—right before I take my little boy to soccer ⚽
Because as Noemi shared:
Back-up your work!
Back-up your work!
Look at the terms and conditions before you get on a platform and understand what you are getting yourself into.
Get your own Terms and Conditions to govern the relationship between your and your subscribers, community/chat rules, refunds, warranties, limitation of liability and much more.
🙏🏻REPEAT AFTER ME🙏🏻
I am the CEO of my business.
I know what I’m agreeing to. I look at the terms.
So I back up my work.
And I get my own Terms and Conditions to protect my business, content, and community.
🔴See you in our spontanoues LIVE with on Substack at about 8pm EST!🔴
See you in a bit,
PS Want to stay up to date all things Substack? Join 14,000 writers inside the Club. I have a special Mother’s Day offer. And new annual members will get a 15 min chat & audit with me as add-on 💐💐
PSS Please 🔁🔁restack and help educate other writers on this important backup topic!
Yup! Another two things you should definitely do to protect your publication:
(1) Your second email address? Don't just make it a subscriber, promote it to an admin for your pub. That way if you ever get locked out of your main email account and can't access your Substack account with your main email address you'll still be able to get in and keep the show running until full access is restored.
(2) Add a trusted friend as a team member with Contributor status. That way, if you get run over by a bus* she can send an email to your subscribers letting them know what happened and ask Substack to pause/cancel payments.
(I wouldn't give admin rights unless your friend is very cybersecurity savvy as there's a lot of $$ at stake with a high-earning publication and plenty of chances for cyber-breaches)
(3) Back up your welcome emails separately as they don't get exported when you export your posts.
*is that a weird expression? We use it in Australia all the time but I don't know if it's just an Aussie thing...
omg that's so scary - and a good reminder to back up my work!