Who should buy a done-for-you local newsletter, and who shouldn't?

I've sold done-for-you local newsletters to friends, clients and partners for a while now. The product works. Picking the wrong buyer is what breaks it.

"This is a long-term play that could pay off insane, but you have to have the money. You have to have the desire and you have to be patient, right? It's not going to work in the first six months. Most people miss on one of those."

Who's the ideal buyer?

A seven- or eight-figure local business owner with a high customer lifetime value. Two reasons. They make money just by marketing their own business through it, so they don't need advertisers; if a client is worth $4,000 or $8,000, you don't have to win many. And they have employees who can help write, edit or make social content.

Types I like:

• Insurance agents. Everybody buys that product, all the time.
• Larger med spas. Not one person with three employees. Someone with four locations.
• Custom home builders, home services, attorneys and franchise owners of high-value businesses.
• Multi-brand home services companies. They can rotate ads for their window, roofing and yard brands, so readers never see the same ad over and over.
• Community banks and big credit unions. $2,000 or $3,000 a month is nothing to them, and they'd treat it as brand awareness. This one's a hunch I haven't proven.
• Business brokers. Their job is to know every business owner in town. Most have no idea this exists.

Who's a bad fit?

Solopreneurs. They're the ones launching these right now, and they tend to quit when the payoff is slow.

Most realtors and mortgage brokers. Many are cash strapped and too short-term focused. Because they already have a main job, they never focus on the newsletter. A partner of mine has about 40,000 readers and is still just doing his mortgage business. The exception is a top 3% agent whose job is to be the best-known person in town (more on that in should a realtor start a local news brand).

Anyone who needs a predictable return. One insurance agent loved the idea but told me that in insurance, he knows exactly what $20 of lead spend returns in a month. My model can't promise that. If that's what you need to justify it, you shouldn't do it. My takeaway: sell to the bigger owners, not the smaller ones.

Does the owner have to do the work?

Someone has to. I do all the back-end work, but the owner has to own it in their head. That doesn't mean 40 hours a week. It means going to chamber meetings and talking about it, doing Instagram, putting real effort in somewhere. If you think I'll write you a newsletter and you'll drop a photo of yourself in it every week, it won't give you the value you want.

The best version I've seen: the owner of a large plumbing company hired one person to run his local newsletter full time. She writes it, does social, does sales, everything. That's the play. The other good profile is someone who truly wants to be the local foodie or the local celeb.

What did a buyer who wanted out teach me?

We set expectations very clearly up front, and one customer still treated it as passive and wanted to cancel. The lesson: people don't listen, and you have to accept that. Get the fit right before the sale. If you don't have somebody to do this, or the ability to get somebody, it's not for you.

Why isn't ad revenue the point?

For these buyers, it isn't the reason to do this. The three people I'd sold my consulting package to when I first said this weren't counting on ad money in year one. The point is being a leader in the community and owning an audience you can use however you want. For the pricing side, see how I price and structure done-for-you newsletter deals.