Can I sell done-for-you newsletters to businesses and organizations?

Think about how many organizations have a newsletter because they have to. They don't do a good job, it takes forever, and the person who does it doesn't care. That's like 90% of newsletters.

Who needs a done-for-you newsletter?

• Chambers of commerce
• HOAs
• Trade associations, like a state roofing association
• City governments and downtown groups
• Small businesses with hundreds of customers they rarely stay in front of

There's a person inside each of those who is responsible for the newsletter and just wants it gone. Right now it probably takes them hours, and it looks horrendous too.

How does the service work?

The version I described on one call:

1. A one-time consulting call to get their brand, their voice and what they want the newsletter to be.
2. A Zoom every week, or even once a month, where you ask a ton of questions about what's happening in their business.
3. Run the transcripts through ChatGPT to write the newsletter.
4. Email them the finished newsletter to paste into Mailchimp or Beehiiv, or manage the sending for them.

For a city it can be even simpler: you just send me a Word document and I'll do it for you.

What should it cost?

I've floated several price points. None are proven, so treat them as starting ideas:

Offer	Rough price
Shared template, sent every other week (mortgage brokers)	About $300 a month
Shared weekly template under each client's brand (one industry, like pest control)	About $500 a month
Exclusivity plus custom content, photos and an owner editorial	$1,500 to $2,000 a month

The cheap version only works if every client gets the same newsletter. Customization raises the work. For organizations already paying $500 to $1,000 a month for software, the pitch is: for the same money, or less, I'll do it for you.

At a low enough price, buyers don't even care about direct ROI. You just know it matters to stay in front of your clients. You're not doing it because it's hard. What if it was easy?

What's the pitch?

For businesses, it's retention. Most company newsletters are terrible, just them pitching themselves over and over.

"We tell these businesses, you have 500 customers, you need to be in front of them more frequently. They're ripe to leave the second they don't like something or the second somebody offers them a deal."

For a team that already sends one, show the time math in their own terms. If it takes three hours an issue and we can do it in 15 minutes, that's about two and a half hours saved. Twice a week, that's five hours. At $30 an hour, you're looking at six, seven, $800 a month of an employee's time she gets back for more valuable work.

For a city, it's not an incremental tool. Taking 10 hours a week off the marketing person's plate is a different category. Governments are slow and need a million approvals, but once they're on something that works, they don't leave.

How do you reach the buyers?

This is the real problem. There's an opportunity, but without a unique marketing angle it's hard to get in front of people who want this.

• Go to their meetings and conferences. Set up a booth at a city association conference and ask: are you guys doing newsletters or media? We'll do it for you.
• Call someone at the city, then check the city's newsletter. It probably sucks.
• Pick one industry so one newsletter serves many clients.

It's also a Trojan horse. Once you're in front of these businesses, you can become their AI team.

Who doesn't need it?

If a team already makes a newsletter that looks good, sounds good and takes under 30 to 45 minutes, maybe they don't need us. I'd rather say that than oversell.

For the real estate version, see what a done-for-you realtor newsletter costs, and for what goes inside one, what a business newsletter should include.