Can a network of local newsletters sell to regional and national advertisers?

"With one newsletter you're not going to get in front of a national advertiser, where if you have 20 with 400,000 subscribers, you can. Scale just works out really well."

This is the thesis behind running many local newsletters instead of one. It's my assumption about how the math works at scale, not a measured result.

Why does a network get bigger deals?

Coverage. Regional advertisers want regional reach. Twice the subscribers and more land area is a stronger pitch than one small town.

The same works across operators:

"What if there were 20 different local newsletter operators that each had ten thousand?"

That's 200,000 local readers. A regional advertiser would value that audience far more than any single operator's list.

What does a network deal look like?

My version is an all-or-none partnership across brands:

"We're only going to have one bank who's going to be in all of our newsletters. A B2B one, a seniors one, a general one: all or none. Do you want to pay us 25 grand to be our partner for the year?"

• One partner per category across every brand.
• About $20,000 to $25,000 a year.
• Options for advertorial takeovers: an entire issue about the bank, with stories about a client, an owner or an employee. That's normal in local media, and you can charge a lot for it.

Have national sponsors actually bought local newsletters?

Some. I've cited a national seniors newsletter operator who landed a $25,000 medical device sponsor. A statewide creator brand that guested on my podcast turned a $500 local advertiser into an introduction to that company's corporate marketing team for a bigger deal. That guest also said no to national advertisers with no tie to his state. Relevance still matters.

How does a network pay for local staff?

Once a brand makes $5,000 to $10,000 a month, you can hire a local person in that market for about $1,500 a month. That's the idea: national and regional deals at the network level, local people on the ground for local relationships. Those are working assumptions.

What's the catch?

Selling it. Big organizations need $1,000 to $2,000 a month or more before it's worth their time. You still need someone pitching their marketing teams. See selling to banks and hospitals.