What is a cash drop, and does it work for a local media brand?

A cash drop is the MrBeast giveaway done hyper-locally. You stick real money somewhere public, film a short clip that hints at where it is, and post it. People love getting giveaways, and they also love watching other people get them. That makes it one of the most engaging concepts on social media.

How does a cash drop actually work?

The best example I've seen came from Matt Diehl of Eating Baltimore, who I had on my podcast. The clip was about 10 seconds: a close-up of roughly $80 stuck to a post, then a zoom out so you could see it was Baltimore, near the water. If you knew the area, you could figure out where it was.

The production was almost nothing. He trimmed the first second, posted natively from his phone into each app, and set the location tag. The location tells the platform who to show it to, and having the word Baltimore on screen at the start helps too. As I understood it, the video went from around 500 views early to roughly 50,000 within 48 hours, and it ended up past 1.5 million.

Why do these accounts grow so fast?

I first found the idea through a cash drop account in Austin, part of a company that runs them in about 20 big cities. They film cash in their hands, hide it behind something in public, and wait to film whoever finds it. They give away maybe $100 to $500 at a time.

• In mid-2025 the Austin account had gained about 300,000 followers in roughly a year.
• By that fall it was at about 430,000 followers, with posts pulling 2,000 to 5,000 engagements each.
• The filming and editing aren't good. It doesn't matter.

They also have no other way to make money from it. A local media company has a newsletter, a website, events and advertisers. That's the opening.

What happened when you tried it?

I did two with my own money. They got some attention but didn't crush. One detail surprised me: I hid the money in a weird spot and barely showed it on purpose, and someone still found it within 15 minutes. People pay closer attention to a local page than you'd think.

"These cash drops can crush. I know guys who've gotten a million views from the cash drops. But again, only way to make that work is if we can get businesses to give."

How do you get a business to pay for it?

Get the roofer, the dentist or the restaurant to fund the prize and put their name on it: "You just won $250 from [the dentist]." Put their logo on the envelope. From what I've seen, some operators charge the business something like $1,000, keep half and put $500 in the envelope. Those are illustrative numbers, not a rate card.

A few ideas I'd test, none of them proven yet:

• Make it real money. Around $500 for the top prize. A gift card is less exciting than cash.
• Reward more finders. Add $25 gift cards for the second through tenth person. It rewards people who weren't first and gives you more footage.
• Spread the clues across channels. First clue on Facebook Tuesday, second on Instagram Thursday, and the final clue in the newsletter, so you have to subscribe to find the money.
• Keep a rhythm. Small weekly drops of about $100 and a bigger $500 drop once a month, for the same reason a newsletter should send often: you stay in people's heads.

Whatever you do, keep the contest fair and accessible.

Do cash drops attract the wrong audience?

Partly, yes. The people most excited about free cash are kind of the opposite of who reads my newsletters: upper-middle-class homeowners, 50-year-old moms. Jacob Espinoza raised the same worry on my podcast, that those followers may only be there for the money.

On Instagram, though, raw follower count matters in a way it doesn't for email, where it really matters who's on the list. Still, I wouldn't build a brand only on cash drops. I'd run one every couple of weeks next to podcast clips, green-screen news, carousels, events and restaurant gift card giveaways. It grabs a different audience, and the brand becomes an umbrella that does many things. More on that mix in growing a local Instagram account for free and the local MrBeast idea.