📬 Update on Local Newsletter Life

In partnership with

One quick announcement - later today I will pick the winner of last month’s ad earnings ($572.02) and once confirmed I’ll share who it is with everyone.

Today I want to give you an update on how things are going with my local newsletter and some changes going on with it.

More on that in a moment.

But first, I’ve got another sponsor today. So, give ‘em a click to check out their offer and get entered to win ALL the ads earnings for the month.

Turn your Shopify brand’s email marketing into a profitability engine

• Increase welcome flow revenue by 50%

• Generate 15% more repeat purchases

• Send shoppers to branded storefronts with a 20% conversion rate

Effortlessly optimize your lifecycle marketing

#sponsored

Honestly, I’m Baffled

Okay, so this is week 22 of sending out the local newsletter and starting next week we’re making some changes.

Why? Because we’re at 3,200+ subscribers, with over $3,000 invested and only a little over $300 in revenue (mostly from premium memberships).

The problem is that we’ve invested a lot of money and time with little return because people just aren’t receptive to buying ads for it. But they’re happy to ask us to promote stuff for free.

I spent several months researching this business model, so I know it’s sound. And I’m in a private newsletter group where I see plenty of successful people - some with few subs.

That leaves the question - what are we doing wrong here?

The answer to that is not easy because it could be one of many things. Here’s how we’re different from other people having success:

• chose a large area (100K+ population) of a city compared to an entire city

• not doing the same format as most local newsletters (we focus more on events/restaurants than delivery the news and weather with those things)

• we’ve been publishing 5 days a week from the start (most launch with one or two days a week before scaling up - I thought this would set us apart as a serious publication)

• run by a woman instead of man (likely only a factor when doing advertiser outreach)

Other things that could be a factor:

• Vegas - unlike the majority of tourist cities, most events here are targeting tourists, not locals. Some days we have zero events in the area to put in the newsletter.

• maybe people/businesses in Vegas are cheap and don’t wanna spend money on ads?

• not enough variety in audience demographics for the area we chose to focus on?

• Vegas is a transient city, so businesses know that people aren’t gonna be around for the long haul

I dunno, just some thoughts. I’d love to hear yours, if you have any.

So, starting next week we are scaling back the publishing of the newsletter to just two days a week. And we’re going to expand and target people that live in the surrounding areas (north, east and south cause this is the furtherest west side of the city we already target).

Will this work? No idea.

What I do know is that CityCast, who is a major player in local newsletters, has a Vegas newsletter that rarely has any local advertisers. Maybe it’s a Vegas thing?

Coming up…

Upcoming topics: more tips and ideas on Etsy and KDP, how it’s going with my chatGPT fiction ebook and the AI music thingie, and growing an ecomm site.

If you have a topic you want covered just reply and let me know.

Stay awesome,

Shawna

P.S. If you’re looking for high level discussions or tips on things like local SEO and Rank & Rent, I highly recommend Jacky Chou’s Advise community. I’ve been in it for several months and there’s tons of value in it, including a SOP for local SEO.

Some links may be affiliate links. I 💖 you if you use one!