Should I pay someone to set up my first local newsletter, or just get advice and do it myself?

Pay for the setup. Learn the rest later.

Why not do it all myself?

"It's better if I just do all that base layer stuff, and you can learn it later. I can do the survey in an hour or two and set it up. It would take you eight hours and you do it wrong."

There are a lot of small details in a newsletter that works from day one. My advice: have me, or someone like me, do it for the first couple of months, then take it over. The other key part is Meta ads, meaning acquisition.

What does a done-for-you setup include?

My package gets someone set up with a local newsletter that's ready to go out of the box. I set up the newsletter and the Facebook ads, so on day one you're off and running. When I started offering it, I signed one person one day and another the next morning.

I've done this zero-to-one setup for three or four people. I set them up quickly with everything they need to do it properly from day one. Then they take it from there and do the content every single week.

What would I have paid for it starting out?

When I had nothing, I probably would have paid about $500 just to have Beehiiv, Canva, the images and all of that set up for me.

What should a setup service actually sell?

If you're a freelancer or agency pitching newsletter operators, start with the question every operator asks: are you directly helping me make money?

• Sells: sales help and lead generation, like cold email and cold calling. The hardest part for all of us is selling to local businesses.
• Sells to a multi-brand operator: one brand identity that someone with 10, 20 or 50 newsletters can reuse across all of them.
• Doesn't sell: branding and LinkedIn optimization for a single operator. Most local businesses aren't on LinkedIn and aren't checking yours.

Once money is coming in, then the operator decides where to spend it to build the brand.

How do I keep a done-for-you client from endless changes?

Say it up front. To scale the service, it won't be as perfectly custom as we were doing it. The client gets access to Beehiiv. We send the issue in advance, and if they want to change things, they go change them. We're not doing the back and forth.

What's the catch?

Effort. Every client I've signed for this treats it as a side hustle. All of them. They're successful, they have the money to pay me, and they don't put in the effort it takes to grow. It hasn't given me the proof of concept I want. If I had one full-effort success, I could sell this 50 times to 50 people in 50 cities.

If you want to understand the time it really takes, see how many hours a local newsletter business takes. For pricing a done-for-you newsletter for an agent, see what a realtor newsletter should cost. If you are the one selling setup, see what to charge for a newsletter setup service.