The local media business

Every answer 31 answers

• Can a local newsletter be a six-figure business?

  Yes, if you really go after sales. I've interviewed five or six local media operators making six figures, some part time. One partner reached about $11,000 a month after six months of full-time focus, and another operator I interviewed is past $20,000 a month. Without real sales effort, most stay small.

• Can a local newsletter make money from the newsletter alone?

  Rarely. Morning Brew and B2B newsletters can live off the newsletter because each reader is so valuable. A local reader is worth far less per impression, and your subscriber count is invisible to everyone not on the list. So I build a local media company around it: Instagram, a website, a podcast, events, a directory and a job board.

• Can you run a local newsletter as a passive side hustle?

  Not if you want it to go anywhere. If your plan is to launch Meta ads, have AI write the newsletter and chat with a business now and then, don't do it. The model works when someone actively sells. Many operators I work with make about $3,000 to $10,000 a month, and they're the ones who stayed focused.

• Do you have to be the face of your local newsletter?

  Someone does. People trust people, so a local media brand needs a real person in town on Instagram and in the room. It doesn't have to be the founder. I front only my business-facing brand. My local newsletters are fronted by local people, and for a local operator, personal brand mostly means showing up at chamber meetings.

• How can a local business use a local media brand to win customers?

  Launch a neutral local media brand with a human face (a newsletter, Instagram and a website named after the town) and mention your business only occasionally. I call it the Trojan horse model: the brand earns know-like-trust with readers and owners, so when you sell your roofing, insurance or real estate, people already trust you.

• How do I choose a niche for a local newsletter business?

  Run every idea through two gates: can you get the audience cheaply, and will advertisers pay well to reach it? Most cheap audiences fail the second gate. 55-plus seniors is the only niche I've found that clears both. Local business owners, a metro's biggest immigrant community and real estate pros are others I like.

• How do you run local newsletters in many cities?

  There are three main models: one owner doing it for cash, a company that owns every market and hires a writer, or partnering with a local entrepreneur who lives there and treats that market as their own business. I prefer the third. The person creating the content has to be local.

• How does a local media franchise or licensing model work?

  Prove the whole system in one market, then repeat it. My plan is to get the website, social and newsletter working in one county and clone it, either as my own brands or as a productized service around $1,000 a month. Operators run their own market; I handle onboarding, Meta ad acquisition and the software.

• How long does it take for a local newsletter to be taken seriously?

  Longer than most people expect, often years. A successful operator I've cited has been at it since 2020. Reaching 8,000 subscribers doesn't make advertisers beat down your door. My wife and I put about 60 combined hours a week in for five months before any revenue, and I wasn't recognized in public once at 15,000 subscribers.

• How much does a neighborhood print magazine franchise cost to run?

  In one franchisee's numbers I heard, printing and mailing ran about $7 per magazine, roughly $12,000 a month regardless of revenue, plus a franchise fee of 15% of ad sales. Another franchise network requires about $10,000 in monthly ad sales before anything prints. A digital local brand's costs are near zero by comparison.

• Is a 55+ senior newsletter a good niche for local media?

  I think it's the best one I've found. 55-plus is the only vertical I've seen with both cheap subscribers and high advertiser value. My senior brand signups have run about 20 to 25 cents in Williamson County and about 40 cents on day one in the Palm Springs area, versus a usual 30 cents to a dollar. The catch: the ads have to stay local.

• Is a B2B newsletter for local business owners worth starting?

  Yes, especially if you already have a coaching or services business to sell into that audience. A Meta ad targeting local business owners doing $1M+ landed three qualified leads quickly in a test market, and a podcast guest running a B2B newsletter plus cohorts told me he makes roughly $150,000 to $200,000 a year.

• Is a suburb of a big city a good market for a local newsletter?

  It's harder than a standalone city. Suburb residents often don't feel connected to their town, and businesses there get pitched by several outlets. I'd rather own a place like Green Bay, big enough to have real business and industry with almost no competition, than fight for attention in Austin.

• Is it better to sell tools to local media operators than run local media yourself?

  It can be. Picks and shovels means the people who make the most money in a hot space often supply the tools. Local content is getting bigger, so I build software (lightbreak, greetform), consult, and sell packages of software plus coaching plus Meta ads support. The best buyers are companies with budgets, not solo operators.

• Is it easier to grow a local newsletter than a national one?

  Yes. National niches like AI or tech are very hard to break into, while local has far less competition and a built-in reason to care: people care about where they live. I tried a national senior newsletter and it didn't work. Framed locally, that audience signs up for about 50 cents each.

• Is it too late to start a local newsletter?

  No. You think you're late, but you're early. If you read about local newsletters, you're in a bubble: email, digital marketing and local newsletters are foreign ideas to the vast majority of people, including most local business owners. Measure crowding against your town and its advertisers, not against the operators you follow online.

• Should a local newsletter add a digital marketing agency?

  It's a natural back end. Every local business I talk to wants marketing help: a website, Meta ads, SEO. Advertisers already ask you to solve that problem, so an agency tier turns ad relationships into bigger retainers. The risk is fulfillment quality and distraction, so get the newsletter working first and hire out the delivery.

• Should a local newsletter cover one town or a whole county?

  Cover the bigger area. Combine adjacent towns into one brand of 100,000+ people instead of splitting them. It lowers Meta ad costs, makes 10,000 subscribers reachable, and halves the workload. You can spin off a single town later. Spreading small brands across unrelated cities was one of my biggest mistakes.

• Should a local newsletter launch a print magazine?

  Not first. Print only works advertiser-funded, and it's expensive and hard. The reason to consider it is that business owners love it: a free magazine mailed to the most affluent zip codes lets you sell ads against a specific audience. I'd rank it after newsletter and short-form social, and I'm thinking about it, not doing it yet.

• Should a new local media brand start with a website or a newsletter?

  I've changed my mind on this. In 2025 I said start with the newsletter as the acquisition channel. Starting over today, I'd do the website and social first and add the newsletter later, because a website has unlimited space: events, jobs and a business directory, with a public presence a newsletter never has.

• Should a realtor start a local news brand?

  It can work, and realtors are already out-reaching legacy local media on social. The rule: keep self-promotion to about 10%. Do a housing report now and then, but 90% of what you publish should be about the town. Expect a long horizon; even a realtor newsletter sold with a 6-to-12-month horizon lost a client around month three.

• Should an insurance agent start a local newsletter?

  Insurance agents might be the best people to run one. Every local household buys insurance, and one client is worth a lot over time. The point isn't selling ads. It's building influence in your community with your agency as the back end. Expect it to take time: locals want proof before they buy in.

• Should you buy struggling local newsletters?

  It's an opportunity I've thought about seriously. Side hustlers launch local newsletters, get them to 5,000 or 10,000 subscribers, and quit. If you know how to monetize, buying those lists cheap and adding the missing sales, social and operator could turn them into $50,000 to $100,000-a-year assets. Check open rates first for fake lists.

• What is the future of local news?

  Smaller, cheaper and more human. I think local news moves to creator-led, fully digital brands run by someone who lives in the town, with in-person events at the center. As AI makes online content harder to trust, people will trust what they know locally. Realtors and creators are already out-reaching legacy outlets on social.

• What population size is best for a local newsletter?

  Aim for a market of roughly 100,000 to 500,000 people, with 200,000 to 400,000 as the prime range. That's where I see operators succeeding. Smaller towns of 30,000 to 50,000 can work, especially if you combine several, but growth is harder. A metro over a million is where a million-dollar newsletter becomes realistic.

• What's the biggest mistake when launching multiple local newsletters?

  Spreading them across unrelated cities. I launched newsletters in areas of 100,000 to 300,000 people all over the map, when 60,000 subscribers in one metro would have been worth far more than 10,000 each across six. Advertisers buy reach in a market, so stack your brands in one region.

• Why are legacy local news organizations slow to adopt newsletters and Meta ads?

  Partly unfamiliarity and partly a moral objection: many journalists feel good information shouldn't require paying to get readers. That's changing. I'm helping legacy local media organizations run my Meta ad strategy, and the fastest win for them is software that turns content they already publish into a good newsletter in minutes a day.

• Why did local newspapers fail, and what replaces them?

  Cost killed local newspapers more than lack of demand. Google and Facebook hurt, but print and salaried journalists made the model too expensive for the revenue it could earn. People still want local news. What replaces it is one local creator, maybe with a helper, running a fully digital brand for about 95% less.

• Why do local newsletters fail?

  Mostly three things: the operator burns out, the audience grows but revenue doesn't, or attention gets split across too many projects. I've had my own versions: a directory I designed and never shipped.

• Why should a local newsletter become a local media brand?

  Because a local newsletter alone is a weak business and a weak moat. I think of a local media brand as an octopus with eight arms: newsletter, Instagram, website, podcast, events, directory, job board and more, all under one name. Each arm adds value and reach, and the brand is the part AI can't copy.

• Will AI replace local news?

  AI may soon be able to do what a plain newsletter does, and it makes running a local brand far cheaper. It won't replace the trusted local person. As AI floods the internet, people will trust what they know locally, so the brand, the human face and in-person events become the moat AI can't copy.