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🏡 Newsletter Riches In Your Backyard
3 Local Newsletters Generating 6-Figures And More
Fred Kauber
October 15, 2024
In partnership with
đź‘‹ Welcome
They say charity begins at home, and apparently so does building a lucrative newsletter operation.
Local newsletters - some might call them hyper-local - can make for compelling businesses and so this issue focuses on three related case studies: two are killing it by focusing on one specific city, and the other is building a regional rollup through acquisition to dominate a prominent Northeast market.
There are certainly many ways to build a newsletter business and media company, and I’m looking forward to basking in all of them at the AMO Summit in NYC later today. This issue is a few hours later than it should be thanks to a great opening night cocktail party hosted by Matt McGarry of GrowLetter / Newsletter Operator. It was wonderful meeting with other newsletter operators and industry players at the party (including our Featured Partner Megahit) and I look forward to meeting more at the AMO Summit.
Speaking of events, there are some great upcoming bSK (beehiiv/Substack/Kit) learning events this month:
For additional bSK resources, check out the beehiiv webinar page, the Substack resources page or the Kit training page.
I'm grateful to welcome new sponsor Rewardful and thank them for their support of the many hours it takes to produce this free newsletter. Rewardful is an affiliate marketing software platform built for digital creators and marketers to manage their affiliate programs seamlessly. As I’ve written before, affiliate e-commerce is a powerful monetization lever for newsletter operators and creators.
Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.
Enjoy and see you next issue!
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Principle 1: Make it simple for affiliates to earn money
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đź“° Industry Roundup
3 Reasons To Redesign A Winning Newsletter: The Hustle has millions of subscribers and its acquisition by Hubspot represents one of the largest newsletter M&A deals to date. It seems clear that they have no intention of slowing down, which is why they redesigned the newsletter with three key drivers in mind… Read
A Giant Is Born: Zeta Global’s acquisition of LiveIntent has created one of the largest email/identity ad targeting platforms on the planet, falling just shy of the Big Tech platforms. Newsletter operators need to take notice, as this will be a platform used to serve ads in their newsletters… Read
beehiiv Introduces Custom Paywalls: Paid subscriptions are a key newsletter monetization strategy, but how the subscriptions are implemented and what they offer is as much art as it is science. beehiiv has introduced new custom paywall capabilities that allow for as permissive or restrictive an experience as the operator wants… Read
Kit Reveals Its App Store: Kit has unveiled an app store and corresponding new API to empower third-party developers to unleash their creativity in adding value to the Kit ecosystem. The intention is to facilitate the development of apps that do more than just import subscribers from third-party platforms, and they have some examples… Read
Featured Partner
đź’° Newsletter Ads Are Bought By Sponsors: Find Those Sponsors Among Your Subscribers
Enrich Your Subscriber Data Using LinkedIn & Find New Sponsors!
How much do you know about your subscribers? If you are like most newsletter operators, not as much as you’d like.
That’s a problem for several reasons.
It’s hard to provide content that resonates with an audience that you may not understand as well as you should.
It’s also a problem because one of the greatest sources of potential sponsors for your newsletter are the people that routinely read it…and their companies. Your subscribers can be advocates inside thousands of sponsor companies around the world, if only you knew which those were…
Megahit allows you to do just that by enriching your subscriber data with LinkedIn data that includes a dozen fields such as:
Name
Job Title
Company Name
Annual Revenue
LinkedIn Profile
And Many More!
Stop guessing who your subscribers are and where your next sponsor is going to come from - use Megahit to solve the mystery!
⚒️ Letter Ops
CASE STUDY - How Naptown Scoop Makes $250K: When we think of successful local newsletters, Naptown Scoop readily comes to mind. Here’s how founder Ryan Sneddon’s ad strategy generates $250,000 per year… Read
CASE STUDY - The Secret To Selling Local Ads at BoiseDev: As the name suggests, the newsletter BoiseDev is focused on serving the Boise, Idaho area and is generating sixty percent of its revenue following a digital ad model worthy of its local focus… Read
CASE STUDY - Building The Boardwalk Empire Of Local News: Access Global is acquiring a portfolio of local news sites and newsletters to dominate the Philadelphia and Jersey Shore market. Check out the acquisition strategy building this portfolio … Read
Happy Birthday Trust Fun!: Cael Schwartz was laid off on October 14, 2023. Exactly one year later, he has built his irreverent entrepreneurial newsletter Trust Fun to 16,000 subscribers and is just getting started… Read
đź“° Classifieds
The 16-Word Sales Letter - Are you a master copywriter? Most of us aren’t, and the best way to learn is from a master. Evaldo Albuquerque’s proven but simple copywriting system has generated over $120 million in online sales and is applicable to any niche. Up Your Copy Game
The Newsletter Is The Business (TINTB) - All you need to know about launching, monetizing and selling editorial newsletters. Get smart fast
Megahit - Need sponsors? Find sponsorship leads among your newsletter subscribers using LinkedIn data enrichment. Find sponsors
🧠Get Smart
It’s rumored that life is more than newsletters (gasp), and so we need to seek inspiration from a variety of sources to breathe new life into our newsletter offerings…here’s what I’m reading:
SkipBlast: Daily newsletter chronicling the victories and struggles of a local newsletter operator and online marketer.
Marketing Machine: Twice weekly marketing deep dives and roundups to maximize your marketing channel strategies.
The Affiliate Wire: Weekly tips illustrating how to leverage affiliate marketing in a variety of channels from social to email.
Monetization Monthly - The Online Business Memo: Weekly insights from an expert affiliate marketer and coach that is using all of the marketing and tech tools at their disposal.
AI Daybreak: Daily AI highlights to stay on top of the fastest moving technology arena.
🎉 Just For Fun
Fear Will Keep The Local Systems In Line…
Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.
Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.