615: Local Newsletters: $200k from 18k subscribers

0:00:03 – 200 grand a year from a local email newsletter.
0:00:05 What’s up, what’s up, Nick Loper here.
0:00:07 Welcome to the “The Side Hustle Show,”
0:00:09 part of the entrepreneur podcast network.
0:00:12 It’s the business podcast you can actually apply.
0:00:15 Lots to love about starting a newsletter business.
0:00:17 Low overhead, scalable, sellable,
0:00:19 like “The Hustle Morning Brew,”
0:00:21 both selling for eight-figure exits.
0:00:22 Now, today’s guest has a unique take
0:00:24 on the newsletter business,
0:00:27 focusing on his hometown, Annapolis, Maryland,
0:00:30 becoming a pillar of the community along the way,
0:00:32 and making great money at the same time.
0:00:36 From nappetownscoop.com, Ryan Stedin.
0:00:37 Welcome to “The Side Hustle Show.”
0:00:40 – Thanks, Nick, that was a fantastic intro.
0:00:42 Definitely make me sound more impressive than I am.
0:00:44 – A gift people pumped up because, stick around,
0:00:46 you’re gonna learn how Ryan grew his subscriber base
0:00:49 to roughly half the town’s population, huge,
0:00:51 how he monetizes the business,
0:00:53 and the logistics of putting out
0:00:56 a high-quality newsletter five days a week.
0:00:58 Now, your listener-only bonus for this week
0:01:01 is my big list of 75 newsletter niches
0:01:03 thinking beyond just local newsletter strategy,
0:01:06 but how you can apply some of Ryan’s strategies
0:01:08 to a newsletter side hustle of your own.
0:01:11 You can download that for free at the show notes
0:01:12 for this episode.
0:01:14 The easiest way to get there is just follow the link
0:01:16 in the episode description.
0:01:17 I’ll get you right over there.
0:01:20 Now, Ryan, you had this kind of fun celebrity moment
0:01:22 showing up to a local charity event,
0:01:23 and it starts to hit you
0:01:25 ’cause people keep asking for selfies.
0:01:26 Can you tell me about that?
0:01:30 – Yeah, so it was June, 2021.
0:01:34 I went to a local event run by our Rotoract Club,
0:01:37 which is like the Rotary, but for younger people.
0:01:41 We probably had six or 7,000 Instagram followers
0:01:43 at this point, probably a similar number
0:01:44 of newsletter subscribers.
0:01:48 But for some reason, or somehow I got invited to this thing.
0:01:50 I got there right on time, which I never do.
0:01:53 I’m always late, but I walk in right on time,
0:01:55 and there’s not that many people there.
0:01:58 I don’t recognize anybody except the organizers
0:02:00 of the event, but they’re busy.
0:02:03 And so I walk out into the back deck
0:02:05 of this venue that they have.
0:02:08 As soon as I exit the door, I heard my name,
0:02:09 and I looked to see if I know anybody,
0:02:11 and I don’t recognize anybody on the porch.
0:02:13 There’s only like three people on the porch, but–
0:02:15 – That’s always a great moment when you’re like,
0:02:17 oh shoot, you’re scanning through the mental roll.
0:02:18 How does this person know me?
0:02:22 – Oh no, there wasn’t even any recognition at all.
0:02:24 I looked at him and I was like, it wasn’t,
0:02:25 oh shoot, I can’t remember their name.
0:02:28 It was, how on earth does this person know who I am?
0:02:32 And so then I walk over, ’cause I’m curious,
0:02:35 and they’re like, you’re the Naptown scoop guy.
0:02:37 Can we take a picture with you?
0:02:38 And I was like, what?
0:02:40 This has never happened before.
0:02:42 We’re about a year in at this point.
0:02:46 Started August 2020, this is now June 2021.
0:02:47 So that was as soon as I walked in.
0:02:49 And then that happened like a dozen more times
0:02:52 at that one event over the next two or three hours.
0:02:54 I’ve become friends with a lot of the people who did ask
0:02:57 ’cause they really were the big fans of the thing,
0:02:58 of the newsletter.
0:03:01 But that was an aha moment where I was like, wow,
0:03:04 people know this, they want to know me,
0:03:07 and I also need to go to every single thing like this
0:03:10 that I ever can find because this is great marketing.
0:03:13 Not only do the people that are there know me,
0:03:14 but more people are learning about it,
0:03:17 especially ’cause there’s like this snowball effect
0:03:19 where if somebody walks out and somebody asks
0:03:21 that person for a picture,
0:03:22 everybody’s looking around like, wait,
0:03:23 who is that person?
0:03:24 Should I? – Yeah, totally.
0:03:26 – And so I would notice after going to these events
0:03:28 that our subscriber count would jump a little bit,
0:03:31 but it was pretty funny to see that in the beginning.
0:03:33 – You get recognized out in the wild.
0:03:35 It’s almost like the TV news anchor
0:03:38 for a younger generation, perhaps,
0:03:41 where you start to get some positive notoriety
0:03:43 in the community, like you become a well-known person.
0:03:44 I think that’s kind of a cool,
0:03:47 and maybe if that appeals to you as a listener,
0:03:50 that’s a side benefit of starting this thing.
0:03:52 You really have a pulse to really have,
0:03:55 become a voice in the community.
0:03:56 So nobody else was doing this.
0:04:00 So summer 2020 is when you get the inspiration to start this.
0:04:02 Nobody else was doing it or they weren’t doing it well.
0:04:04 And so you come in, talk to me about the early days,
0:04:08 like how do you get these initial 100,000 subscribers,
0:04:10 102,000, not 100,000 subscribers,
0:04:12 but like the first people to send this to.
0:04:14 – Yeah, not very complicated.
0:04:16 A lot of people, for their first newsletter,
0:04:19 they’ll just send it to their family and friends.
0:04:21 I did not have any family and friends that lived in Annapolis.
0:04:26 I grew up about 45 minutes away from Annapolis.
0:04:28 My uncle had lived there,
0:04:30 and that’s why I knew it and loved it,
0:04:32 but he had since moved away
0:04:35 and only spends a couple of months a year there here now.
0:04:36 So I don’t really have any friends or family
0:04:37 to send this to.
0:04:38 I just was like, I’m gonna try this.
0:04:39 I think it’s a good idea.
0:04:41 So I just started running Facebook ads,
0:04:43 and that’s how I got all the subscribers.
0:04:46 I got 70 subscribers for the first one.
0:04:48 I think we had 150 for the second one,
0:04:50 and I can’t remember how many we had after that
0:04:52 for each individual newsletter,
0:04:55 but I do remember those first two,
0:04:56 and that was really encouraging,
0:04:57 ’cause when you first set the first one,
0:05:00 it was like 80% open rate, super high.
0:05:02 Then the second one was a little bit less,
0:05:04 but doubled in subscriber count,
0:05:07 and so that was just really good early traction,
0:05:09 and that was only once a week that I was sending,
0:05:10 and I think it was every Wednesday,
0:05:12 but I only did that for two weeks on Wednesdays,
0:05:15 and then I realized that if I was ever gonna make
0:05:16 any money on this,
0:05:17 then I would need more advertising
0:05:18 than just one day a week.
0:05:19 That’s kind of what I tell people
0:05:22 about the nature of podcast advertising.
0:05:23 Like it’s pretty tough to build
0:05:25 a full-time income off of it,
0:05:27 ’cause it’s this game of amplitude.
0:05:30 How many people can I reach and frequency?
0:05:31 How often can I reach them?
0:05:34 It’s like, well, if you’re just doing one show a week,
0:05:35 that’s gonna be tough.
0:05:37 You gotta have a really big audience to make that work.
0:05:38 Same thing here.
0:05:41 If it’s gonna be a monetized with ads model,
0:05:42 they gotta send more often.
0:05:44 I get more impressions that way,
0:05:46 but running Facebook ads,
0:05:50 did you have a budget or a cost per subscriber
0:05:52 that you were comfortable with out of the gate?
0:05:53 At that point, absolutely not.
0:05:56 There was never a value of each subscriber
0:05:59 where I knew as long as I get them for this much money,
0:06:01 I can still make profit on them.
0:06:03 I have then figured it out,
0:06:06 and the number ended up being around $7 per subscriber.
0:06:07 I don’t even know what it is now
0:06:09 ’cause we don’t do any Facebook advertising
0:06:11 ’cause we kind of hit critical mass
0:06:13 where they started to get really expensive to get.
0:06:15 But in the beginning,
0:06:17 and this was just kind of picked out of thin air,
0:06:19 I was like, let’s just keep it under $2 a subscriber.
0:06:22 If I can keep it under $2 a subscriber,
0:06:24 I have a couple thousand dollars
0:06:25 that I can invest in this thing.
0:06:28 I’d quit my job and saved a lot of my salary.
0:06:29 I’d only worked for one year
0:06:32 before I ended up doing this out of college.
0:06:35 So I had saved up about $25,000.
0:06:39 I was like, honestly, I’m 20 at that point, 23 years old,
0:06:42 but it quickly became apparent
0:06:44 that it would be not a total failure
0:06:47 and that even if I did spend all the $25,000 on it,
0:06:50 I’d probably be able to make that back with advertising.
0:06:52 And so at a certain point,
0:06:55 I just kind of sent it and spent it all on advertising.
0:06:57 I mean, almost all of it.
0:07:00 – Okay, do you see that as the most viable path
0:07:01 outside of friends and family
0:07:04 trying to acquire subscribers that way?
0:07:05 – Well, viable is different
0:07:07 ’cause it depends on if you could sell advertising.
0:07:08 It’s definitely the easiest and fastest.
0:07:11 And I think it’s what I recommend.
0:07:13 Anybody who wants to start a local newsletter,
0:07:15 but in terms of another way,
0:07:16 you can get a lot of subscribers pretty quickly.
0:07:18 It would be local Facebook groups.
0:07:20 It’s harder ’cause you have to earn the trust of the admins
0:07:22 and then do it in a way that’s not annoying
0:07:25 ’cause the internet hates self-promotion.
0:07:28 And a lot of groups like that have rules against it,
0:07:30 but that’s a really good way to get a lot of subscribers.
0:07:32 I learned that by accident
0:07:34 because somebody posted my newsletter
0:07:37 in one of those groups and we got 625 subscribers
0:07:39 overnight and I was like, what’s that about?
0:07:41 – Yeah, that’s a nice spike.
0:07:42 – I found out where they came from
0:07:43 and I was like, that’s amazing.
0:07:45 That’s how we do more of this.
0:07:47 – Instead of paying two bucks a piece, yeah.
0:07:49 – Yeah, so is it the most viable?
0:07:51 I don’t know, that depends on your ability to sell advertising,
0:07:53 but is it the fastest and easiest and what I recommend?
0:07:54 Yes.
0:07:58 – Okay, and so the $2, that was kind of the target metric,
0:08:00 especially early on, and then the $7–
0:08:01 – Yeah, but I just pulled that out of thin air,
0:08:03 so definitely don’t take the $2 as gospel.
0:08:07 – Sure, and then the $7 was your kind of estimate,
0:08:09 lifetime value, where did that number come from?
0:08:12 – Yeah, that was like a very conservative lifetime value.
0:08:16 That was assuming that they opened half of the emails
0:08:20 and stayed for only one year reading
0:08:22 based on our current advertising rates.
0:08:25 So not all those things turned out to be true.
0:08:27 They stayed for far longer than one year.
0:08:31 The open rate guess did stay about the same.
0:08:33 Be have tells us it’s 63 or 65% now,
0:08:35 but I think that’s a little high
0:08:38 based on some things that I think Apple tracking
0:08:39 that most people probably know about,
0:08:42 or if they don’t, can’t trust open rates as much anymore.
0:08:43 But that was what that was based on.
0:08:46 So the value was actually higher,
0:08:48 but I was pretty conservative in the beginning with it
0:08:51 just ’cause I didn’t have a lot of money to spare.
0:08:53 – And do you remember what the ad looked like
0:08:57 in terms of image, call to action, how was that set up?
0:08:59 – Yeah, so I tried a bunch of different ones.
0:09:01 You mentioned something earlier
0:09:05 about being this voice for the young people.
0:09:07 It’s actually not really the young people
0:09:08 that read this newsletter.
0:09:11 It’s mostly women over the age of 45.
0:09:14 That’s really like our prime target demographic.
0:09:15 They absolutely love it.
0:09:16 And we have young people too,
0:09:18 but I tried a bunch of different ads.
0:09:20 The best performing one is just this
0:09:23 like pretty attractive woman looking down on her phone.
0:09:24 I don’t even think she’s looking at her phone.
0:09:25 And she’s holding her phone
0:09:26 like she would be looking at it,
0:09:30 but then she’s smiling and looking straight away from her.
0:09:34 And then I think we put a little text over that
0:09:37 that just is like an overlay graphic that said,
0:09:39 I always know what’s going on in Annapolis.
0:09:41 And then there were a couple of different pieces of copy
0:09:45 that we put in the actual text of the ad
0:09:47 that you can do on Facebook.
0:09:48 But those changed a lot.
0:09:53 The image did not change once I figured out what worked.
0:09:56 So I spent, I think I spent like 12 to $15,000
0:10:00 of our Facebook ads blasting this picture of this woman out.
0:10:02 And that was the ad that worked.
0:10:04 So I like to think if she ever shows up in Annapolis,
0:10:06 this stock photo model,
0:10:09 she’ll, everybody will like kind of recognize her.
0:10:11 Like they’ll know that they see her there.
0:10:13 But they won’t be able to remember where,
0:10:16 ’cause it was just a random ad like three or five years ago.
0:10:18 But they won’t just like think she’s a stranger.
0:10:20 And I just hope that she visits
0:10:22 and gets like all these like weird side looks.
0:10:24 ‘Cause everybody kind of recognizes her,
0:10:25 but nobody really does.
0:10:26 I would think that was hilarious.
0:10:29 But yeah, that was the best ad we just,
0:10:32 and honestly, that was like one of the first ones I ran.
0:10:34 Kind of found success on it pretty early.
0:10:36 You don’t really need to overcomplicate
0:10:38 the ads to grow a local newsletter.
0:10:39 It’s a free thing.
0:10:42 And basically anybody in your town can read it.
0:10:44 The best thing to do is just figure out
0:10:47 which demographic response to the ads best and cheapest.
0:10:49 And also then turns into readers
0:10:51 and then just hit those people hard.
0:10:53 So eventually we just stopped targeting men,
0:10:55 stopped targeting women under 40.
0:10:58 We always only targeted within 10 miles of Annapolis.
0:11:00 And that’s also why I chose the radius that I chose.
0:11:02 We only cover things within 10 miles of Annapolis.
0:11:04 ‘Cause at the time I haven’t looked in a while,
0:11:06 but I’m pretty sure it’s probably still this way.
0:11:09 That was the smallest radius that you could target
0:11:12 on Facebook without actually putting in specific zip codes.
0:11:15 And I found that when I put in specific zip codes,
0:11:16 it was just more expensive.
0:11:20 I don’t know why, ’cause I was targeting the same people
0:11:23 if I was doing 10 miles versus uploading all the zip codes
0:11:24 in, but yeah, so that’s why I chose 10 miles.
0:11:27 It was the shortest Facebook radius I could pick.
0:11:28 So that’s just what I chose to cover.
0:11:31 – Okay, I love this line of she’s looking at her phone.
0:11:33 I always know what’s going on in Annapolis.
0:11:36 I could see that working across any number
0:11:36 of different towns.
0:11:39 And it’s like, in my case, I always know what’s going on
0:11:43 in Sammamish and rely heavily on just like our local
0:11:46 neighborhood subdivision kind of Facebook group
0:11:48 for just the latest on the rumor mill.
0:11:51 It’s like, okay, we could go a little bit broader
0:11:52 and do something.
0:11:54 I think that’d be fascinating to test out.
0:11:58 So the paid ads, the local Facebook group is very organic.
0:11:59 Sounds like other people were posting it.
0:12:01 Hey, this is a cool resource.
0:12:02 Go sign up over here.
0:12:04 Anything else that was juicing subscribers,
0:12:07 anything to like incentivize, share it with a friend,
0:12:10 send it to 10 people and get a t-shirt like not a spark.
0:12:12 Is it spark loop or what’s the built in
0:12:14 like referral system type of thing?
0:12:18 – In the beginning, I got a viral loops.
0:12:19 – That’s the one.
0:12:22 – At Sumo lifetime subscription deal.
0:12:26 I think I paid 300 bucks once.
0:12:29 And as long as I never had more than 20 or 25,000 people
0:12:33 on my list, I could use viral loops for free then forever.
0:12:36 That was before any of the newsletter platforms
0:12:39 had the referral program stuff built in.
0:12:41 Now, the only two that I would recommend using,
0:12:43 which would be Be Hive or ConvertKit,
0:12:45 they both have one built in.
0:12:48 So it’s not as big of a deal, but at the time,
0:12:49 it was kind of hard for me to do it
0:12:54 ’cause it required viral loops and Zapier into MailChimp
0:12:57 and it was a little bit expensive.
0:12:59 – Yeah, I wouldn’t have been worth it
0:13:00 without having the viral loops deal.
0:13:02 But now that they’re all built in,
0:13:04 it’s totally worth it and you should do it from day one.
0:13:06 But Facebook ads were the number one driver.
0:13:08 – What was the incentive tiers that you have on there?
0:13:09 – That’s what I’m about to say.
0:13:11 Facebook ads were the number one driver.
0:13:14 Referral program was probably the number two.
0:13:17 And I always tell this to people for any newsletter,
0:13:20 any free newsletter, that the first level should always,
0:13:22 it should be the only one that you ever care about
0:13:25 the first incentive because 90, first of all,
0:13:28 only like 10% of your readers will ever do any referring
0:13:32 and 98% of those, not exaggerating,
0:13:34 will never get past the first level.
0:13:37 So really only put thought into the first level,
0:13:38 not saying to just ignore the second and third,
0:13:39 but they really don’t matter that much.
0:13:41 And I say second and third ’cause that’s all I have,
0:13:44 but some people do four or five or more.
0:13:45 I don’t think you should do more than five.
0:13:48 So on that note, your first one should be free
0:13:50 and easy for you to fulfill.
0:13:54 It should be automated if you can
0:13:55 or as automated as possible.
0:13:58 So like, you don’t wanna be sending people stickers,
0:14:01 but you don’t wanna be having to put that in an envelope,
0:14:04 write an address or print out a label
0:14:05 and stick it on there.
0:14:06 You just don’t wanna have to do that
0:14:09 ’cause if you get a newsletter of 100,000 people,
0:14:10 you might have a thousand people that are referring
0:14:12 and or at some point you will
0:14:14 and that’s a lot of sticking stuff in envelopes.
0:14:17 So you wanna make it as easy as possible for you
0:14:18 and you wanna make it free,
0:14:19 but then you also have to think about
0:14:23 what’s actually desirable for this audience.
0:14:26 And I don’t remember where I heard,
0:14:27 well, I remember where I heard it,
0:14:29 but I don’t remember where he heard it.
0:14:31 Sam Parr, you’ve already brought that up to hustle once.
0:14:33 He said he one time was talking
0:14:35 to an old school newspaper publisher
0:14:37 and he said, “What’s your secret?”
0:14:39 And he said, “Names, I print names whenever I can.”
0:14:44 And so I do that, I print names whenever I possibly can.
0:14:46 You got some kid at the local high school,
0:14:48 got some scholarship,
0:14:49 then their name’s gonna be in there,
0:14:51 no matter how short it is.
0:14:52 We’re talking about the lacrosse team
0:14:54 that won the county championship.
0:14:57 Three of the girls on the team got hat tricks in the game.
0:14:58 We’re definitely gonna put their names in there
0:15:00 ’cause their parents are gonna read it and love it
0:15:01 and probably share it with their friends.
0:15:04 So on that note, I went for the referral program.
0:15:07 The first incentive was if you got three people
0:15:09 to join the newsletter,
0:15:10 then you got happy birthday wish
0:15:13 to the top of the newsletter on your birthday.
0:15:17 And that was incredibly popular.
0:15:19 It still is.
0:15:22 I stopped doing it because it’s been hard
0:15:23 to get referrals now.
0:15:24 Like you said, in the intro,
0:15:26 we kind of have almost half the town.
0:15:28 So finding people who don’t actually read it
0:15:29 is getting harder.
0:15:31 – Yeah, and if you’re only targeting women over 40,
0:15:33 it’s like, I imagine the other half of the town
0:15:35 is not fitting that demographic.
0:15:36 – Well, that’s who I was only targeting and advertising.
0:15:39 I’m happy if they read and I would love them.
0:15:40 – Sure, sure.
0:15:41 – But I wasn’t going after them
0:15:43 to build the core subscribers.
0:15:44 That is what I tell people now though,
0:15:45 they’re like, “How do I get referrals?”
0:15:47 And I’m like, “Honestly, ask men.”
0:15:50 Like ask the men in your life if they read the newsletter
0:15:52 because 75% of our audience is women.
0:15:55 So if you want referrals, don’t ask your girlfriends.
0:15:56 Ask your dude friends.
0:15:57 – Yeah, they’re already subscribing.
0:15:58 – Yeah, they are.
0:15:59 That’s the low hanging fruit.
0:16:00 If you want the easy referrals
0:16:02 and you want to gain the system, go after the men.
0:16:03 – Okay, so this was tier one.
0:16:06 Happy birthday wish at the top of the newsletter.
0:16:10 – Yeah, and we’ve done, I think we’ve done hundreds of those.
0:16:13 – Okay, that’s great. – People still ask for them.
0:16:15 Even though, so I’ve recently stopped doing it
0:16:16 and instead of doing that,
0:16:19 I said you can now join our private Facebook group
0:16:21 for first level referrals only,
0:16:22 which I don’t actually do anything with
0:16:24 and definitely need to do more.
0:16:26 But I think at some point,
0:16:29 and I haven’t figured out the way to do this yet,
0:16:32 that’s easy ’cause again, I’m all about easy.
0:16:35 I want to start selling those birthday shoutouts.
0:16:37 You know, like they do on the scoreboards
0:16:39 at sporting events.
0:16:40 – Right, right.
0:16:42 Pay 40 bucks, get your name on the jumbo tron type of deal.
0:16:43 – Exactly.
0:16:45 And so people love the birthday shoutout so much.
0:16:46 I think I could start selling them,
0:16:48 but I don’t want to sell more than two a day.
0:16:52 And I haven’t found a good system or integration
0:16:54 with, I use APR for a lot of things
0:16:56 where I can basically automate that,
0:16:58 but only limit it’s a two per day.
0:16:59 I haven’t done that.
0:17:01 I want to figure that out ’cause I do think we could make
0:17:03 maybe a couple of extra thousand dollars,
0:17:05 but we stopped doing that as the first level,
0:17:08 but it was wildly successful for three and a half years.
0:17:09 – Love it.
0:17:11 – And like I said, the second and third levels
0:17:12 don’t even really matter.
0:17:14 A lot of people get the first one.
0:17:16 Nobody really gets the second or third one.
0:17:18 And then you’ll have some people on the,
0:17:20 it’s just like a bell curve, right?
0:17:22 You’ll have some people on the complete other end
0:17:24 of the spectrum who get hundreds and hundreds,
0:17:26 maybe thousands of referrals.
0:17:27 And then you’ll have to figure out something
0:17:28 to do really nice for them.
0:17:33 Like we have one woman who has 625 referrals.
0:17:35 And she was the one who put it in the Facebook group.
0:17:37 She was the one that put it in the Facebook group,
0:17:38 which is how I’m lucky that she was,
0:17:40 ’cause that’s how I figured out where they all came from.
0:17:42 Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to know.
0:17:43 I would have seen that they came from Facebook
0:17:45 with our Google Analytics, but I wouldn’t have been able
0:17:47 to know who put them there or what page
0:17:48 or wherever they were.
0:17:50 So I saw her referrals jump overnight
0:17:52 and I was like, what’s her name?
0:17:54 I can’t remember.
0:17:56 I went to high school with her son,
0:17:59 which also helped reaching out to her.
0:18:02 But she got 625 referrals overnight
0:18:05 and I got her a gift card to her favorite restaurant.
0:18:07 The next best one is 120.
0:18:09 And we didn’t do anything incredible for that.
0:18:11 We could have, probably should have,
0:18:14 but she’s still super happy to support.
0:18:16 But she did just email me yesterday,
0:18:17 or this morning, actually, and ask,
0:18:20 can I have a birthday shout out for my daughter Florence?
0:18:22 And I was like, yeah, absolutely.
0:18:23 If you gave us 120 referrals,
0:18:24 even though we don’t really do that anymore,
0:18:26 you can absolutely have one of those
0:18:28 ’cause I’ll do anything for you.
0:18:30 – Yeah, okay, so that was tier one.
0:18:32 Was it just one, you prefer one friend
0:18:34 to get the initial shout out
0:18:35 or this now the private Facebook group?
0:18:37 – No, I’m greedy.
0:18:38 So I made the first level three.
0:18:40 Gotta make it an attainable number,
0:18:43 but you can push it to benefit yourself.
0:18:45 Like a lot of people do one and that’s fine,
0:18:46 but you can get away with three
0:18:48 and a lot of people will still do it and reach it.
0:18:50 And they’re not gonna say it’s too many.
0:18:51 Nobody says that.
0:18:53 I think if you only do one as the first incentive,
0:18:55 you’re kind of cheating yourself out of more growth
0:18:57 that you could get for pretty much free.
0:18:58 I wouldn’t do any more than three,
0:19:00 but I would definitely not do one.
0:19:03 – I like it from the standpoint of
0:19:05 heading through one subscriber into two.
0:19:07 Like this is an example from years ago on the show.
0:19:10 This is Tiffany Aliche, the budgetista,
0:19:13 and she was running her 30 day live richer challenge
0:19:15 and objective number one, day one,
0:19:16 go find yourself an accountability partner.
0:19:19 Like, boom, I just doubled my enrollment.
0:19:20 And it was like super smart.
0:19:22 More with Ryan in just a moment,
0:19:25 including the tools he uses to run the newsletter
0:19:27 and how he manages to compile and curate
0:19:30 a compelling read every weekday right after this.
0:19:33 Being an entrepreneur and being able to work remotely
0:19:35 definitely has its perks.
0:19:38 I’ve recorded podcasts everywhere from Vietnam to Italy,
0:19:40 drafted newsletters from Japan,
0:19:42 hosted mastermind meetings from Spain,
0:19:43 ended up being the middle of the night
0:19:46 to get to US business hours,
0:19:48 and outlined courses in Mexico.
0:19:51 The common thread of all of these trips though,
0:19:52 is Airbnb.
0:19:54 We love being able to get exactly what we’re looking for
0:19:58 in a place to stay and have a more local experience
0:20:01 than staying in some giant hotel chain.
0:20:02 And you know me, I’m always thinking about
0:20:05 the next side hustle idea, the next income stream, right?
0:20:07 And one that’s at the top of the list
0:20:10 is hosting our place on Airbnb while we’re traveling.
0:20:12 That way the house doesn’t have to sit empty.
0:20:14 We could use the income to help pay for the trip.
0:20:17 And we’ve heard from several successful Airbnb hosts
0:20:18 on the show.
0:20:20 And what’s interesting is a lot of them started
0:20:22 with almost that exact strategy,
0:20:25 running their place or even a spare room
0:20:26 while they’re out of town.
0:20:28 Taking inspiration from that,
0:20:31 you might have an Airbnb right under your nose.
0:20:34 In fact, your home might be worth more than you think.
0:20:38 You can find out how much at Airbnb.com/host.
0:20:41 That’s Airbnb.com/host to find out
0:20:43 how much your home is worth.
0:20:46 As business owners, we understand that good design
0:20:49 and product packaging can be key to growing your business.
0:20:50 And if your sales are lagging,
0:20:52 a rebrand might be part of the solution.
0:20:55 Still, it can be really challenging to figure out
0:20:57 how to even start the process.
0:20:57 If you’re asking yourself,
0:21:01 “Ah, is a rebrand really worth the effort and the cost?”
0:21:03 You’re gonna wanna check out a recent episode
0:21:06 of a great podcast called “This Is Small Business”
0:21:08 with Andrea Marquez that walks you through
0:21:10 the process of figuring this out.
0:21:12 The episode is called “How Good Design
0:21:14 Can Help Increase Sales,”
0:21:16 where I learned that design is so much more
0:21:18 than just aesthetics.
0:21:19 It impacts user experience.
0:21:21 It impacts brand perception.
0:21:23 And ultimately, it impacts business growth.
0:21:26 This is small business is full of practical insights
0:21:28 that you can apply to your business right now.
0:21:30 And it answers so many of the kinds of questions
0:21:32 that all entrepreneurs have.
0:21:34 Like, how to build your marketing strategy,
0:21:36 how to use email lists to increase revenue,
0:21:39 and tips to accelerate small business growth,
0:21:40 along with tons more.
0:21:42 So follow “This Is Small Business,”
0:21:46 an original podcast from Amazon, wherever you listen.
0:21:48 – All right, so today you’re sending with Beehive.
0:21:50 Initially, it sounded like it was MailChimp.
0:21:51 Today, Beehive.
0:21:54 What else is going on, tools and tech-wise,
0:21:55 to put all this stuff together?
0:21:59 – So, Beehive is probably the most important
0:22:01 because we use it to send,
0:22:03 actually send the emails and store the email addresses.
0:22:05 But second most important,
0:22:07 and it would be a close second is Notion.
0:22:11 I kind of live and die in Notion.
0:22:15 It is the source of pretty much everything.
0:22:17 It’s where we do all of our content for the newsletter.
0:22:20 It’s got a calendar in there that everything we’re doing.
0:22:22 It’s where we do all of our content planning
0:22:23 for social media.
0:22:26 It’s where I keep all my standard operating procedures,
0:22:28 my style guide for the newsletter,
0:22:30 which is really cool because it can be really interactive
0:22:33 and fun for someone to read the style guide,
0:22:34 which is usually boring.
0:22:36 So that’s a good thing to have in Notion
0:22:38 ’cause it’s just all the different blocks you can add
0:22:40 are really, really cool.
0:22:41 Literally, I keep everything in there.
0:22:45 Third most important would probably be Newspaper Manager,
0:22:50 which is a pretty old appearing software
0:22:54 that just tracks our advertising inventory and acts as a CRM.
0:22:58 I think if I were better at technology,
0:23:00 better at coding software production
0:23:04 and stuff like that, I would probably make my own
0:23:05 and I would probably try to sell it
0:23:07 and I would probably stop publishing local newsletters
0:23:09 ’cause there’s way more money in selling software
0:23:11 to the people who do these things than actually doing it
0:23:13 because I think this software–
0:23:14 – Yeah, so it travels into the gold rush.
0:23:16 – Exactly, exactly.
0:23:18 – Here’s the next side hustle, here’s the next thing, yeah.
0:23:20 – Yeah, I just don’t know how to do it,
0:23:22 which can be figured out but needs money
0:23:25 that I don’t have to invest in it yet, but I still want to.
0:23:27 But it’s a good piece of software.
0:23:28 I was about to say it’s a great piece of software.
0:23:29 It’s not a great piece of software.
0:23:30 It’s a good piece of software.
0:23:31 But–
0:23:32 – Because the great one is coming.
0:23:34 – The great one is coming and it’s gonna be called
0:23:36 who knows what, but I’m gonna make it.
0:23:38 It’s really important because we limit our inventory
0:23:42 every day, we have five ads of three different kinds
0:23:44 and there can only be one of the top two
0:23:46 and three of the bottom two or the bottom one
0:23:48 and we can’t sell more than that each day,
0:23:50 otherwise we’re screwed ’cause we can’t just add another page
0:23:54 like a magazine can, we just have a set thing.
0:23:56 Before I was keeping track of all the ads in Notion
0:24:00 and that was not good because it didn’t have any inventory
0:24:03 limiting ability and it just wasn’t the right.
0:24:06 There wasn’t a CRM, it wasn’t good for selling ads.
0:24:08 So that’s probably our third most critical piece of software
0:24:11 but that’s like, I don’t even remember how much
0:24:15 I pay for it anymore ’cause I don’t look at the bill too often
0:24:17 but it’s several hundred dollars a month
0:24:20 and I’m like, I could build this piece of software
0:24:22 ’cause I know exactly what it needs to do
0:24:26 because I’m doing it, I’m living this life.
0:24:27 When I was looking for one, I was like,
0:24:28 I know exactly what this needs to do,
0:24:30 I know exactly what piece of software I’m looking for
0:24:34 ’cause it’s such a specific need that when I find it,
0:24:35 I’m in, like I got it.
0:24:37 There’s one out there called Sponsy
0:24:39 that is selling software just like that
0:24:41 for they’re focused on newsletters
0:24:45 but at the time, it just wasn’t powerful enough.
0:24:47 I think they’ve added a couple more features now
0:24:50 that are more powerful but at the end of the day,
0:24:52 there can definitely be more than one of those.
0:24:55 – It talked to me about the content side of things
0:24:58 because it is a free newsletter.
0:25:00 The content has to be excellent
0:25:02 to get people to continue to open it
0:25:04 and continue to stay subscribed
0:25:06 and be able to view the ads
0:25:07 or eventually get into ad sales.
0:25:10 But if I’m starting out and I wanna do this for Sammamish
0:25:13 which is population 65,000,
0:25:15 like similar sized town, a little bit bigger, like, okay.
0:25:18 I don’t know if anybody else is attempting to do it here.
0:25:20 Maybe it’s like ripe to come in
0:25:21 and see that market opportunity.
0:25:24 The challenge is doing it daily and I guess you mentioned,
0:25:27 well, when I was starting out, I did it once a week
0:25:28 and then I moved to three days a week.
0:25:29 I guess you could scale it up
0:25:33 but like consistently coming up with great content.
0:25:35 That’s all local focused.
0:25:37 I’m curious, one, how you source all that stuff
0:25:39 and then how you put it together
0:25:41 and do it every day of the week.
0:25:43 – It’s easier than people think.
0:25:45 At least it is now after three and a half years
0:25:47 of doing it, coming up on four.
0:25:48 – It’s become a habit, yeah.
0:25:49 – But even in the beginning,
0:25:51 it was easier than I thought
0:25:53 because after a certain amount of time,
0:25:57 you become the source or at least a source
0:26:01 that people can go to to get their press
0:26:04 for whatever they’re doing or yeah, just that.
0:26:07 So you have to just establish yourself as a source
0:26:09 and then people will start coming to you
0:26:11 and then the hard thing actually becomes,
0:26:12 and I’ve always said this
0:26:13 and I say this to my head of content all the time
0:26:15 that I just hired,
0:26:18 it’s more important what you don’t include than what you do.
0:26:20 It’s more important what you say no to
0:26:21 ’cause like you said,
0:26:22 you have to keep the content excellent every day
0:26:24 so people keep coming back.
0:26:26 So we get sent a lot of things
0:26:28 and I’m not gonna say anything specific
0:26:29 because I don’t wanna,
0:26:31 on the off chance anybody from Annapolis is listening to this,
0:26:33 I don’t wanna get anybody upset
0:26:36 because of saying their events not cool.
0:26:37 But we get sent a lot of stuff
0:26:40 where I’m just like that isn’t gonna go in.
0:26:42 That’s not cool enough.
0:26:44 It doesn’t have broad enough appeal.
0:26:46 Maybe it’s just a very specific group of people
0:26:47 that wanna know this
0:26:50 and we’re sending out to every single person in Annapolis
0:26:52 or whatever, half of it.
0:26:54 But we don’t do any kind of segment thing like that
0:26:57 so we’re giving people specific things they’re interested in.
0:26:59 It’s just like sometimes you gotta decide
0:27:00 that’s not going in.
0:27:01 That’s not cool enough.
0:27:04 That is not broad enough appeal.
0:27:06 But how do we get content?
0:27:08 We just look at a bunch of places.
0:27:10 Probably like 50 websites that we check every day,
0:27:13 some combination of the press release sites
0:27:16 from the city and county and fire department
0:27:19 and organizations like that to the local newspaper.
0:27:21 We still have one of those,
0:27:23 a couple blogs that post stuff,
0:27:25 couple individual people that are posting stuff,
0:27:27 regularly good content.
0:27:29 – Yeah, so it’s a lot of work to kind of scour through this
0:27:31 and compile and just curate
0:27:34 what is the most important or most interesting.
0:27:36 – Yeah, that’s why the newsletter has value.
0:27:39 – Because if you’re going to comb through
0:27:41 all of these things,
0:27:45 understand, or well, even before that step,
0:27:47 pick which of them actually matter,
0:27:50 understand all of them individually
0:27:53 and then summarize them.
0:27:54 That’s a lot of work.
0:27:56 And the average person,
0:27:58 especially the average person who reads our newsletter,
0:28:02 like mom with kids or working professional,
0:28:05 they don’t have three to four hours a day
0:28:09 to read all these stories, decide which ones are important,
0:28:10 and then actually read through them
0:28:12 and understand them enough to tell their friends about them.
0:28:14 This is effectively what we do.
0:28:16 And so that’s why it is valuable.
0:28:17 It’s just, it’s a time saver.
0:28:19 All the information,
0:28:21 in the beginning, all the information we got
0:28:23 was 100% public and anybody could have gotten it.
0:28:27 Now, we are, like I said, the source or a source
0:28:29 where people are sending us stuff.
0:28:30 And sometimes we have to sit on stories
0:28:32 before we can put them out
0:28:34 because the business isn’t ready to announce
0:28:36 that they’re opening yet, but we know about it
0:28:39 and no one else does or very few other people do.
0:28:41 So not everything we’re doing now is publicly available.
0:28:44 Some people are giving us inside scoops,
0:28:46 if you will, pun intended,
0:28:50 or press releases that are not getting sent to everybody else.
0:28:54 I don’t know, but you really just have to get the ball rolling
0:28:56 ’cause you’ll find good content in the beginning.
0:28:58 And as long as you can do that for a couple of months
0:29:02 and stay consistent and be a great source,
0:29:04 then you’ll start getting more content
0:29:06 than you care to handle.
0:29:08 And that won’t be a concern anymore.
0:29:10 Or you’ll go back to something that you did a while ago,
0:29:12 like at any point in time,
0:29:14 I could throw in a link to our stories
0:29:19 of the best coffee shops in town or the best pizza in town.
0:29:22 And even better, I can ask you if you agree with my assessment
0:29:24 or my writer’s assessment of what is the best in town.
0:29:27 So you start to build up your own content
0:29:29 that if you are light on a day,
0:29:32 then you can hand that off or include that.
0:29:33 But also at the end of the day,
0:29:34 if you’re doing an email newsletter,
0:29:36 no one’s ever gonna complain
0:29:38 about getting a shorter email, right?
0:29:39 When was the last time you complained?
0:29:40 – Fair, fair.
0:29:41 – Oh, this email wasn’t long enough.
0:29:43 No, they just wanna get on with their day
0:29:46 or they’re just reading it.
0:29:47 They’re reading it on the toilet
0:29:48 or they’re reading it in the bathroom,
0:29:50 waiting in line for coffee or something like that.
0:29:52 As long as there’s like, I try to make sure
0:29:54 there’s just like one super, super valuable thing every day,
0:29:56 like something that everyone wants to know.
0:29:59 And as long as you keep pretty consistently every day,
0:30:03 something in there, then you’ll become sticky.
0:30:05 – And you’re organizing these in-notion,
0:30:07 kind of as you’re scouring through these 50 different sources,
0:30:09 like, okay, that’s interesting, drag it over here, okay?
0:30:11 That’s interesting, drag it over here,
0:30:14 and then compiling the newsletter from there.
0:30:17 – Yeah, that’s how I did it when it was just me.
0:30:20 Now, I have an assistant that goes through all the sources
0:30:23 and she just does anything that’s related to an app
0:30:25 as she puts it into Notion.
0:30:29 And then I look at that basically as soon as she’s done that,
0:30:30 like, I’m on Do Not Disturb,
0:30:31 so I didn’t get the notification,
0:30:34 but we started recording here at two and it’s 2.56 now.
0:30:36 She probably sent a message around 2.30
0:30:38 that she had done that for the afternoon.
0:30:42 So, I’ll go through as soon as she’s done–
0:30:43 – For tomorrow’s edition.
0:30:46 – For tomorrow’s edition and I’ll assign the stories.
0:30:47 Now that I have two writers as well,
0:30:51 we cut off at 3pm, so anything that comes in after 3pm,
0:30:53 we’ll go to the next day’s scoop.
0:30:55 Today, I’ll look at the afternoon assignments and see
0:30:57 if there’s anything in there that really is important
0:31:00 that can’t wait until Friday and I’ll write it if so,
0:31:03 just ’cause I’m on the podcast during that time
0:31:05 when I normally would be looking at what those stories are.
0:31:07 But I’ve just hired that head of content now
0:31:10 that that’ll be her job is to look through
0:31:12 all those stories, anything that says Annapolis,
0:31:14 my assistant will throw it in there,
0:31:16 and then the head of content will sift through,
0:31:19 like I do right now and decide what’s actually important,
0:31:21 what do we need to include?
0:31:24 What could we include if when we go through this stuff
0:31:25 that we need to include and there’s really not
0:31:29 that many stories, what might not be totally up to standard,
0:31:32 but can definitely, it could fit and we just need
0:31:35 some content ’cause we don’t wanna do nothing in there.
0:31:38 I try to have like eight stories every day, at least.
0:31:40 Something like that.
0:31:43 On a good, busy, real good day, we might have 16
0:31:44 and they’re all really, really short.
0:31:45 Some of them are less than 100 words,
0:31:47 most of them are less than 100 words,
0:31:50 but if I’m at like five,
0:31:52 yeah, maybe I’ll let the quality drop down a little bit
0:31:55 just so I can get one or two more in there.
0:31:56 – Yeah, you said something earlier was,
0:31:59 it’s more important what you don’t include
0:32:02 and this is my like working theory of podcasting too.
0:32:04 It’s like, yeah, the episodes you air have to be great,
0:32:06 but equally, it’s the ones that you don’t air.
0:32:08 They never see the light of day
0:32:09 that you decide not to record.
0:32:10 It’s like, ah, that didn’t quite make the cut
0:32:12 and it sounds like it’s the same thing here
0:32:15 and the other parallel is after a while,
0:32:17 you get a lot of inbound, right?
0:32:19 You get guest pitches or you get story pitches
0:32:21 or stuff that comes to you, but you know,
0:32:22 people say, hey, you ought to talk to so-and-so
0:32:24 and it sounds like the same thing here.
0:32:26 People start to share their events with you
0:32:29 versus having to go out and try and source everything
0:32:32 yourself, so lots of parallels there
0:32:34 and I think that’s pretty interesting,
0:32:36 but lots of work on this curation side
0:32:37 and that’s where the value comes from.
0:32:39 Like, look, we’re sifting through these dozens
0:32:41 of different sources to bring you the best of the best
0:32:43 and that’s why the newsletter has value.
0:32:45 We’re about to get to the monetization part,
0:32:47 how Naptown Scoop actually makes money
0:32:49 every time they hit send, but first,
0:32:51 let’s take a moment to thank our own sponsors
0:32:53 for helping make this episode free for everyone.
0:32:56 Let’s shift gears and talk about the monetization side.
0:33:00 It sounds like it’s primarily ad monetized.
0:33:02 At what point, like how many subscribers,
0:33:04 how many months in did you start selling
0:33:05 your first ads on this thing?
0:33:08 – I learned from somebody, and I can’t remember who,
0:33:12 that you should be open to it immediately
0:33:16 and so I had a link or like an encouragement in there,
0:33:17 if you want your business in here, let me know
0:33:20 and it was like within the second or third week
0:33:23 that somebody reached out and actually ended up
0:33:24 agreeing to something.
0:33:27 This was a web design agency that wanted to advertise
0:33:30 and I said, I will give you, I think it was five
0:33:33 or six ads, I think it was six ads, six ads,
0:33:36 any time in the next six months, you can use them,
0:33:38 but you have to pay $500 today.
0:33:41 And for some reason, this person said yes,
0:33:44 and so we did that and that was how we made the first money.
0:33:46 I don’t know if I did that again or if I done,
0:33:48 I just started selling like, here’s a four pack
0:33:51 for this many dollars, but it was really quick
0:33:54 that we started selling ads, not a lot of ads,
0:33:56 but enough ads where I was like, okay,
0:33:59 I’m still comfortable spending $1,000 on Facebook ads
0:34:01 this week or a couple hundred dollars on Facebook ads
0:34:05 this week, ’cause I know that at least on some level,
0:34:07 somebody is gonna pay to be in here.
0:34:10 So the magic T word is traction.
0:34:13 I had it and I was like, all right, I have a little bit.
0:34:14 – Let’s do it.
0:34:15 – I bet you that there will be a lot
0:34:18 and I can go all in on this and still spend a bunch
0:34:19 of money on Facebook ads.
0:34:24 It took a while to get meaningful dollars,
0:34:29 like probably many months, but got some right away.
0:34:30 And that’s, I tell people all the time,
0:34:32 if they’re gonna start this thing,
0:34:34 you should always have a link
0:34:36 or an encouragement to advertise.
0:34:38 No matter how many subscribers you have,
0:34:40 just get dollars somehow.
0:34:43 – I like that, including that in the footer of the email,
0:34:46 like your ad here, you’ll see your message inquire
0:34:48 about advertising in future editions,
0:34:49 just to plant that seed.
0:34:52 – Yeah, ’cause a lot of people won’t see it and think of it,
0:34:55 but if you say they can, they’ll think,
0:34:56 oh yeah, maybe I will reach out.
0:34:57 – Yeah, you see it.
0:34:59 Justin Welsh is one of these examples
0:35:01 where you see it like down at the bottom,
0:35:03 there’s a link to book your sponsorship spot
0:35:04 for an upcoming newsletter.
0:35:06 I don’t know if he does any vetting of like,
0:35:08 I’m not advertising that.
0:35:10 There’s like an implied endorsement here.
0:35:12 – Yeah, we definitely did not do a lot
0:35:13 of vetting in the beginning,
0:35:17 but maybe about a year in started actually doing that.
0:35:18 It’s like, I only wanna be associated
0:35:20 with really, really good brands.
0:35:23 – I think it’s illustrative of maybe the type of client
0:35:25 that would make sense, especially at that price point
0:35:28 when it’s like, dude, if you get one new client from this,
0:35:32 like he raises your $500 ad expense and then some,
0:35:34 but curious how you have it priced today.
0:35:37 I think you mentioned we have five different ad slots per day,
0:35:40 I guess probably based on placement and visibility
0:35:41 and structure of those ads.
0:35:44 – Yeah, so three different kinds.
0:35:48 The bottom kind has three each day.
0:35:51 So top one has your logo at the top,
0:35:55 a picture up to 150 words, it’s the first ad.
0:35:57 Unless we have a headline story,
0:35:58 it’s the first thing in the newsletter.
0:36:01 So probably about 60% of the time,
0:36:03 it’s the top thing anybody sees.
0:36:06 Then in the middle, we call it a feature ad
0:36:08 and that has a hundred words of photo
0:36:09 and that’s right in the middle.
0:36:12 And then right near our live music section at the bottom,
0:36:14 which is our most popular thing,
0:36:16 we have three ads we call baseline,
0:36:20 which are text only 70 words and headline and a link
0:36:22 and everybody, all these can be linked.
0:36:24 It’s funny now at the beginning,
0:36:27 those ads I sold that web design guy were headline ads
0:36:30 or what a very early version of those
0:36:33 and it was $500 for six of them.
0:36:35 Now an individual headline ad,
0:36:39 if anybody wants to buy one is $812.50
0:36:42 and it goes down with volume.
0:36:45 If you’re gonna buy 12, then that unit cost goes down.
0:36:48 If you’re gonna buy 24, that unit cost goes down.
0:36:50 If you’re gonna go buy 48, be crazy
0:36:52 and spread those over the next two years.
0:36:53 That unit cost will go down
0:36:56 or we have two advertisers that do that every single week.
0:36:57 They just pay a lot of money,
0:37:00 but the prices are very, very different
0:37:02 from when we first started.
0:37:05 Everything is really just pulling out of thin air.
0:37:07 I just, how much does this cost?
0:37:11 $500 for six ads, everything was just thrown out.
0:37:14 – Is there a rule of thumb for X price
0:37:17 based on every thousand subscribers
0:37:17 or something like that?
0:37:19 – I heard a rumor back in the day
0:37:22 that Morning Brew was charging $70 per thousand
0:37:25 and so I kind of roughly based it on that
0:37:28 and it’s actually still kind of around there, our top ad.
0:37:30 It’s like very loosely based on that
0:37:33 or I don’t think it’s loosely based on that anymore.
0:37:34 Maybe it’s just worked out that way
0:37:37 that it’s still on there.
0:37:38 Once it started stabilizing,
0:37:39 I used to change prices every week
0:37:41 ’cause we would be adding hundreds of subscribers
0:37:43 every week and I’ll be like,
0:37:46 I just sold that to you for 200 bucks for 800 subscribers
0:37:48 and I just had a really good run of Facebook ads
0:37:51 and now we have 1600 and I’m not gonna charge $200 again.
0:37:54 So I would change it every single week.
0:37:56 Then I started changing it, I think like every month
0:37:57 and then it was every couple of months
0:37:59 and now I just change it every year
0:38:02 and it’s not on any kind of,
0:38:04 oh, we have this many more subscribers.
0:38:05 It should be this much more.
0:38:09 Now I just, I’m basically up it on inventory.
0:38:11 If we sell out then,
0:38:12 and it’s like we sell out really easily,
0:38:13 I know it’s too low.
0:38:15 If it’s harder, but we still sell out,
0:38:17 I’m like, okay, we can do a little bump.
0:38:18 If we’re not selling at all,
0:38:19 thankfully this hasn’t happened yet,
0:38:22 then maybe we stay the same or even worse, go lower.
0:38:25 Now it’s not really based on any kind of formula.
0:38:28 It’s just based on feel of,
0:38:32 oh, last year we sold all of these way too easily.
0:38:33 Okay, we’ll double the price
0:38:35 and then we sold them all out again,
0:38:36 but it took longer.
0:38:38 I was like, okay, cool, that’s probably a good number.
0:38:40 That was two years ago, we doubled it.
0:38:43 Last year, we just went up by, I think it was 20%.
0:38:45 This year, probably just go up by 10%
0:38:47 and maybe stabilize somewhere around there
0:38:51 and just upgrade the prices every year by eight to 10%.
0:38:54 – Is it most common to sell like a multi-month package,
0:38:57 like you’re gonna be featured eight times
0:38:58 over the next three months?
0:39:00 Like is that how it’s typically structured?
0:39:02 – I like to sell long packages.
0:39:05 We have people who sign on to be on there
0:39:07 every other week for two years.
0:39:08 We have people who are on there
0:39:10 every other week for one year.
0:39:13 We have some people who are just pretty seasonal,
0:39:16 but they’re on for the same six months
0:39:19 and they’ll sign two year deals for those six months.
0:39:21 I just like that ’cause it’s easier
0:39:24 and also it ups your average client value.
0:39:26 There’s a, I can’t say too much about this,
0:39:29 but there’s a website that I wanna buy right now
0:39:31 ’cause I think I can do a lot better.
0:39:33 I think it’s a great opportunity
0:39:37 and their average, they have way, way more visibility
0:39:41 than I do, way more impressions, way more uniques,
0:39:46 but their average customer value is like one fifth of mine,
0:39:48 which is why I think I can buy it
0:39:49 and do really well with it.
0:39:52 But I’m just always trying to increase that.
0:39:54 I have a dentist client right now
0:39:55 who’s on just once a month
0:39:57 and our standard is really twice a month.
0:40:00 So they’re on once a month, but they’ve been killing it.
0:40:01 They’ve been doing really well with it.
0:40:05 So rather than trying to go sell a new client,
0:40:06 it’s way easier to just sell someone
0:40:08 who’s already selling with you
0:40:10 and increase that customer value.
0:40:11 – Increase their frequency.
0:40:12 – Yeah, I went to them and said,
0:40:14 “Hey, do you guys, it’s been working out pretty well
0:40:15 “once a month, gonna juice it
0:40:18 “and you’ll get a better unit rate
0:40:19 “and you’ll be in there more
0:40:21 “and you’ve already made your money back.”
0:40:23 And then a lot because I know you told me
0:40:25 how many clients you got and I’m kinda guessing
0:40:26 what your average customer value is worth
0:40:28 based on industry comparisons.
0:40:31 And I think I’m probably pretty close.
0:40:32 And so it’s just way easier to make those sales
0:40:35 than to go out and cold call a new person
0:40:35 and get a new one.
0:40:39 So I’m always trying to increase customer value.
0:40:42 And one way to do that is just raise prices every year.
0:40:47 And nobody has ever canceled because of the increase.
0:40:51 We’ve had people that advertised, stopped advertising,
0:40:53 came back for whatever reason.
0:40:55 They came back later, maybe in this case,
0:40:57 two years later and asked for a new proposal
0:40:58 and I told them and they were like,
0:41:00 “Whoa, that’s too expensive for us.
0:41:01 “We can’t do that anymore.”
0:41:03 But they’re also a nonprofit organization.
0:41:04 That’s a little different.
0:41:06 No business, no for-profit business has ever canceled
0:41:08 because we raised rates.
0:41:10 – Was that, so a little bit of inbound
0:41:12 based on the call to action at the bottom
0:41:14 in the early days and then a lot of cold calling,
0:41:17 a lot of outbound sales, trying to get people signed up?
0:41:20 – No, now a lot of cold calling
0:41:21 kinda hit a number where it’s,
0:41:23 I don’t wanna call it critical mass
0:41:25 ’cause that makes it sound like can’t grow anymore.
0:41:28 But this is one of those things I just did really well,
0:41:30 got really lucky with.
0:41:35 I figured that if I could get a really good partner in town
0:41:37 that would just be good.
0:41:39 I didn’t know why, I just knew it would be good.
0:41:42 And there was this guy who was spending money everywhere.
0:41:44 He’s a realtor, spending money everywhere.
0:41:46 I was like, I need to get some money out of this guy
0:41:49 ’cause he’s just putting his money everywhere.
0:41:50 And I bet you I could get a lot
0:41:53 and that would be really good momentum.
0:41:54 And like I said, I just know it’ll be good.
0:41:56 I don’t know why, but I know it’ll be good.
0:41:58 So long story short, we did get him.
0:42:00 A lot of cold calling, finally got a meeting,
0:42:01 finally sold him.
0:42:05 And after that, inbound leads poured in
0:42:08 because it was super validating that this guy
0:42:10 who I said he was spending money everywhere,
0:42:12 and he was, but it wasn’t just that.
0:42:14 It wasn’t like, oh yeah, great, you got that guy’s money
0:42:16 and he’s spending money everywhere, so that’s fine.
0:42:20 He’s the best at what he does, not even close.
0:42:24 He’s the best, like he’s the best anecdotally,
0:42:28 just if you work with him and feel how he makes you feel.
0:42:30 But he’s also the best by number.
0:42:31 He only sells waterfront houses.
0:42:33 He’s the number one individual
0:42:35 in the state of Maryland by a lot.
0:42:36 He’s just absolutely the best.
0:42:38 And so once we got him in there,
0:42:40 it was super validating for us.
0:42:42 And we got a ton of inbound leads.
0:42:44 And I didn’t really do any outbound sales.
0:42:46 I would just kind of take meetings with inbound leads.
0:42:50 And that’s how we got to that 200,000 in revenue
0:42:51 that we did last year.
0:42:55 Now I’ve hired a head of sales who does a lot of outbound
0:42:59 and has been closing a lot of new deals.
0:43:01 He’s only about a month in.
0:43:03 My goal is 350 this year.
0:43:06 That’s looking probably not likely,
0:43:09 but I think we’ll get close to it.
0:43:11 Even if we got to 300, I’d be stoked.
0:43:15 50% growth in a year after not anywhere near 50% growth
0:43:16 would be a good step up.
0:43:19 So yeah, that’s the next step.
0:43:20 But a lot of inbound,
0:43:23 just because we got lucky picking this one business.
0:43:25 And I was like, I know it’ll be good,
0:43:26 but I didn’t know why.
0:43:29 I didn’t think anybody would inbound come inbound from it.
0:43:30 I just knew it would be a good thing.
0:43:32 I knew it would be a good momentum swing.
0:43:34 And it was much bigger than I anticipated.
0:43:37 – Yeah, it’s another example of a type of client
0:43:39 where if I get one lead from this,
0:43:40 even if I get three leads a year,
0:43:43 like if I’m selling a million dollar waterfront house,
0:43:45 like my commission from that races all that expense.
0:43:48 Plus it’s just, it sounds like he wants to be everywhere.
0:43:51 Anyways, and it’s like front and center
0:43:52 in people’s inboxes.
0:43:53 It’s a smart place to be for that.
0:43:54 – That’s even better than that.
0:43:56 His average home price is 2.6 million.
0:43:58 So he’s definitely making his money back.
0:44:00 And then this is the real secret.
0:44:02 We do, for the most part,
0:44:05 we do exclusive advertisers per industry.
0:44:07 If they spend a reasonable amount of money with us,
0:44:09 like we’re not gonna give the $1,500 customer,
0:44:12 $1,500 your customer exclusivity in their industry,
0:44:14 but they’re spending tens of thousands.
0:44:15 – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:44:16 – That’s high for us.
0:44:18 That would be something that warrants exclusivity.
0:44:23 So I do no other residential real estate agents.
0:44:25 And he knows that if he did cancel,
0:44:27 if I said the price is now this,
0:44:28 and he was like, nope, I’m out,
0:44:32 then I would make probably a maximum of three phone calls.
0:44:34 And I would have another real estate agent in there,
0:44:37 probably at the new price or close to it.
0:44:39 And he would never get back in
0:44:41 because we would do exclusive for them too.
0:44:44 And he got it first.
0:44:45 He was the first agent we’ve ever had.
0:44:47 We’ve never had another one.
0:44:50 And he doesn’t want to lose that, I don’t think.
0:44:52 – It sounds like he was kind of the anchor tenant
0:44:54 and ended up attracting others as well.
0:44:55 Like if you had a retail plaza
0:44:58 and you attracted the Walmart or something.
0:44:59 Yeah, very good.
0:45:02 – I call them the white whale.
0:45:06 – Yeah, and you’ve got a lot of inventory to sell.
0:45:10 We’re talking five ad spots a day times five days a week.
0:45:11 And one thing that’s interesting,
0:45:14 even at the 200,000 revenue level,
0:45:16 already at or above this metric
0:45:20 that traditionally heard of in email marketing of a dollar
0:45:21 per subscriber per month,
0:45:23 which for my world and sending once a week,
0:45:26 like that’s pretty high, but sending every day,
0:45:27 like the would pencil out.
0:45:31 And if you get to 300,000 at 18, 19, 20,000 subscribers,
0:45:32 you’re well above that.
0:45:35 And that’s pretty impressive.
0:45:36 And the question…
0:45:37 – I’ve actually never heard that step.
0:45:41 – Oh, I think I’m from Russell Brunson from ClickFunnels.
0:45:44 The question is like, at what point
0:45:45 does it kind of max out?
0:45:48 Like you’re already at half the population.
0:45:51 How much room to grow this thing is there?
0:45:53 And even not to say that it has to grow indefinitely,
0:45:54 but it’s like, okay,
0:45:56 can we get this thing to half a million a year
0:45:58 and then go focus on our software project?
0:45:59 Where do you want to take it?
0:46:04 – Yeah, I think audience is probably pretty close to maxed out.
0:46:06 Like I said, I’m not spending on any Facebook ads
0:46:10 at this point because I have to spend a lot to acquire a reader.
0:46:12 But we are still getting new readers
0:46:13 because people are telling their friends
0:46:16 or we have SEO content or something like that.
0:46:17 So we’re not totally maxed out.
0:46:19 Like we’re still growing every single day,
0:46:21 even if it’s by one or two email addresses,
0:46:24 it’s bigger every single day.
0:46:26 And most of the time it’s more than one or two,
0:46:28 but it’s probably more like seven to 10,
0:46:29 which is not a lot,
0:46:31 but we’re not doing anything to acquire those seven to 10.
0:46:32 So that makes me happy.
0:46:34 We’re not losing any.
0:46:35 In terms of revenue,
0:46:38 I think it probably maxes out just newsletter
0:46:42 at four to 500,000.
0:46:43 And that’s with everything completely sold out.
0:46:44 So you’re probably never gonna get there.
0:46:46 Probably 400 would be a really good target.
0:46:48 350 is an aggressive target for this year.
0:46:50 400 will definitely be the target
0:46:51 for next year from newsletter.
0:46:53 But then we can start selling Instagram stuff.
0:46:56 We’re selling a lot more Instagram reels now.
0:46:59 And those are pretty good margin things.
0:47:02 It’s not really any work for me.
0:47:04 If I do it right, set it up right.
0:47:05 – Who makes that?
0:47:07 So the company makes those and you post them on the feed?
0:47:08 – Well, those are my favorite.
0:47:09 Sometimes that does happen.
0:47:10 The company’s like,
0:47:11 “Hey, we have a video, can we post it on your feed?”
0:47:13 And I’m like, yeah, it’s a good looking video.
0:47:14 We can post that.
0:47:16 – What do you charge for those?
0:47:17 – I’ll give them a little bit of a discount,
0:47:19 especially if it worked with them on other things
0:47:20 or they’re gonna buy a couple of them.
0:47:22 Like we have a running company that,
0:47:24 running race company that bought a couple of those,
0:47:25 but just had their own video.
0:47:30 I think we charged them like $500 to post each one
0:47:32 because they did two.
0:47:34 Usually it would be 800,
0:47:37 but that also relies on maybe us making a little bit of it.
0:47:41 Now at this point, my standard price for that is 1500 bucks.
0:47:42 If somebody called and said,
0:47:44 “I have my own video, we’ve worked with you before.”
0:47:47 I’d probably go down to a thousand at this point.
0:47:50 But if somebody’s gonna come in and do,
0:47:51 we’re gonna produce something.
0:47:52 I have to go and film it
0:47:54 or I have to pay someone to go and film it.
0:47:55 We have to pay a couple of people to go film it
0:47:57 ’cause in some cases, like when it’s coming up,
0:48:00 I need a video and I need a drone.
0:48:02 So maybe that would be over 2,000.
0:48:06 But based on who it is and their average customer value,
0:48:08 they should make their money back pretty easily.
0:48:09 It’s all about the value that you’re creating.
0:48:11 – What role did Instagram play
0:48:13 in the growth of their business?
0:48:16 – It’s hard to say how many people have come to the website
0:48:18 and converted from Instagram.
0:48:20 But in terms of the growth of the business,
0:48:23 it’s been fantastic because it’s the public validator.
0:48:25 Nobody can see how many newsletter subscribers
0:48:28 that we have every day except me and the team.
0:48:31 And then if anybody gets the media kit, they can see it.
0:48:34 But anybody can go see the Instagram.
0:48:35 They can see how many people follow it.
0:48:37 They can see how many people are actually liking the post
0:48:39 and commenting on the post, which is a good number.
0:48:42 It’s just a great reputation thing.
0:48:45 It hasn’t been a lot of advertising dollars
0:48:46 that people were spending on there.
0:48:48 It hasn’t been a ton of newsletter subscribers
0:48:52 that we’re getting, but it’s a really, really good wow value.
0:48:53 It’s funny.
0:48:54 My newsletter is smaller.
0:48:57 It’s 18,400 compared to 22,000.
0:48:59 But if you know anything about newsletter versus Instagram,
0:49:01 you know that’s much more powerful.
0:49:02 – Totally.
0:49:04 – And newsletter last year generated,
0:49:09 I think like 170 in revenue and then Instagram was like three.
0:49:11 So everybody introduces me though as they’re like,
0:49:11 “Oh, this is Ryan.
0:49:13 He’s got this really big Instagram.”
0:49:15 And I’m just laughing on the inside
0:49:16 because it looks really big.
0:49:17 And it is big.
0:49:19 It’s a big Instagram, especially for our town.
0:49:21 – Yeah, they’ve been a local market.
0:49:23 – But I should have introduced this guy
0:49:23 with the local newsletter
0:49:26 if they were turning about actual power.
0:49:27 Like what you could do with it.
0:49:31 We’re doing a blood drive next week for our local hospital.
0:49:34 And I put it in there today, 6 a.m.
0:49:37 I went to check around, I think 11.
0:49:38 How many spots were left?
0:49:40 There was one spot left.
0:49:45 And so we filled up 35 spots in three hours or four hours,
0:49:47 five hours with just the newsletter.
0:49:50 I didn’t even have time to put it on Instagram yet.
0:49:52 So I do think it’s always funny
0:49:54 when people introduce me as the guy with the big Instagram.
0:49:55 – Yeah, that’s what they could see.
0:49:57 – Actually, the newsletter is the pretty good thing here.
0:50:00 But yeah, it’s not the thing that you can go on and see.
0:50:02 You can go be impressed by 22,000 followers.
0:50:04 You have no idea how many other people
0:50:05 are getting this newsletter that you get every day.
0:50:08 – Yeah, well, this has been fascinating stuff.
0:50:09 You got me thinking about like,
0:50:11 oh, could I do this for Sammamish?
0:50:12 Should I do this for Sammamish?
0:50:15 I know Nathan Berry was starting up something for Boise.
0:50:17 So I was like, well, maybe there’s something here.
0:50:20 You make a compelling case for the local newsletter business.
0:50:23 You can check it out, naptownscoop.com.
0:50:27 You can find Ryan at Life of Underscore Scoop on Twitter.
0:50:28 It’s a good place to follow along
0:50:31 and see what’s going on in the local newsletter business.
0:50:32 Let’s wrap this thing up
0:50:34 with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
0:50:38 – Read the book, How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis.
0:50:41 It is, at the very least, entertaining.
0:50:44 And at best, it could possibly change your life.
0:50:46 It’s just absolutely incredible.
0:50:47 Have you read it, Nick?
0:50:48 – I have heard of it, but have not read it.
0:50:51 – Like I said, even if it’s just for entertainment, read it.
0:50:55 ‘Cause the guy’s a beautiful writer and he’s hilarious
0:50:56 and he’s very interesting.
0:50:58 So he tells this great story about his life.
0:51:02 But if you’re interested in your own business in any way,
0:51:03 it’s probably gonna be your favorite book.
0:51:04 It’s so amazing.
0:51:06 So that’s my tip to anybody.
0:51:09 Read it, read it again.
0:51:12 Buy it if you audible it, which I do recommend.
0:51:14 The guy who reads it has a beautiful accent.
0:51:16 But buy it, physical copy, honestly.
0:51:18 It’s an instruction manual too.
0:51:20 There’s some really amazing things in there.
0:51:22 – All right, How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis.
0:51:24 We’ll link that up for you.
0:51:26 Couple takeaways before we wrap up.
0:51:27 One thing that really stood out was this idea
0:51:29 that momentum breeds momentum.
0:51:31 The more people subscribe to it,
0:51:32 the more of a thing it becomes.
0:51:34 It becomes kind of this self-perpetuating cycle.
0:51:36 The more advertisers you book,
0:51:38 the more people see that people are booking ads.
0:51:41 And it really starts to get that flywheel spinning.
0:51:41 And the other thing,
0:51:44 if you’re gonna do this for your hometown,
0:51:45 you’re gonna have to live it and breathe it.
0:51:49 You’re gonna have to really be the curator of that information,
0:51:51 but good things can really happen as a result.
0:51:54 So again, Ryan, I appreciate you stopping by,
0:51:55 sharing your insights.
0:51:57 Big thanks to our sponsors
0:51:59 for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:52:02 You can hit upsidehustlenation.com/deals
0:52:05 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:52:08 Thanks for supporting the advertisers that support the show.
0:52:09 That’s it for me.
0:52:11 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:52:12 If you’re finding value in the show,
0:52:14 the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
0:52:16 So fire off that text message.
0:52:18 Hey, we should totally start this for our town.
0:52:20 Until next time, let’s go out there
0:52:21 and make something happen,
0:52:22 and I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:52:24 of The Side Hustle Show.
0:52:25 Hustle on.
0:52:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]