What population size is best for a local newsletter?

My rule of thumb is 100,000 to 500,000 people. I didn't pull that from a spreadsheet. It's where I see people doing what I'm doing actually succeed.

I live in a suburb near Austin of about 300,000 people, which to me is kind of perfect size. Lately I've been saying 200,000 to 400,000 is prime.

Why not go smaller?

The floor exists for two reasons: enough households to build a list from, and enough local businesses to sell to. Below that, both get thin. It's also hard to fill a newsletter. In a city of 100,000, even a once- or twice-a-week send can struggle for enough good content, though events are usually fine.

The floor isn't a hard rule, though. When an operator told me she was succeeding starting at 50,000 people, I called it a great sign. And I've gone back and forth on this myself:

When	What I said
March 2025	200K to 500K in a suburban-ish or smaller-city area is ideal
June 2025	Minimum 100K, call it 100K to 500K
Sept 2025	Normal is 100K to 200K, but I'm leaning smaller for some owners
July 2026	200K to 400K is probably prime

When does a small town make sense?

When the goal is influence instead of ad revenue. If you're in a town of 35,000 and you're the media person, you get more benefit per subscriber. I pitch it as: fewer subscribers, more influence in the community, which is what a local business owner wants anyway.

Small towns also combine well. I've put a couple of 30,000-person cities into one brand. See one town or a whole county for how I do that.

One reported outlier: a Canadian operator in a town of about 60,000 people reportedly makes around $400,000 a year from a newsletter and Instagram run by several content creators. That's effort and a team, not population.

What about a big metro?

Most of us are in smaller markets of 100,000 or 200,000 people. You can grow a decent revenue there, but probably not a million dollars. In a place with over a million people, a million-dollar local media business is much more viable.

The catch with big places: above about 500,000, it gets harder to plausibly be the local brand, and a suburb inside a big metro comes with weaker identity and more competitors. I wrote more on that in suburb vs. standalone city.

What I'd check before picking a market

• Population of the combined area you'd cover, not just one town.
• Whether the area has a clear identity and borders people recognize.
• How many local businesses could plausibly advertise.
• Whether there's enough happening to fill the newsletter every send.
• Who else is already pitching those businesses.