Building a Profitable Content Engine at HELLO!

From cost centre to revenue driver.

The challenge was a tough one, built I relished the chance to build the video department from the ground up, hiring and leading a team while defining the strategy, formats and commercial model. The focus was simple: increase output, reduce cost, and turn content into something that paid for itself.

Within 9 months, we delivered a 1231% increase in output while reducing costs by 70 percent through in-house production and smarter use of kit and talent. This shift enabled the department to become profitable within that same period.

The 70% cost reduction didn't come from cutting corners, it came from making a fundamental shift in how the department operated. I built the team and kit structure specifically to remove external production dependency, which meant every pound saved went straight back into volume and quality. With this is place, every article on HELLO!'s site, was made to have video. That saw tremendous output and volume, with in turn generated five to six figure ad revenues monthly.

The decision to pursue a dual short-form and long-form YouTube strategy was deliberate: Shorts, especially based upon royal content, drove discovery and subscriber velocity, long-form drove watch time and ad revenue. Those two levers working together is what made the huge uplift we saw on YouTube possible in 18 months rather than five years.

7K to 205K in 18 months.

YouTube became a primary growth engine alongside Hellomagazine.com. I developed a dual strategy across long-form and short-form content, optimised for discovery and retention.

We scaled the channel from 7K to 205K subscribers in 18 months, establishing HELLO! as a serious player on the platform and generating additonal video revenue seperate from the main site.

New verticals. New revenue.

I introduced podcasting as a new vertical, building an in-house studio and launching multiple series, including Spotify-partnered content at launch. This generated over 10M downloads and created a recurring revenue stream.

I also expanded distribution across TikTok and Snapchat, working the social media team and growing TikTok from zero to 150K followers. The TikTok and Snapchat strategies alone generated over 150K in revenue. To scale output further, I led HELLO!'s AI content taskforce for video and audio, implementing tools including ChatGPT and Wochit to streamline workflows.