Building a Local Newsletter Business

Business brain, episode 524 for Wednesday, February 14th, National Ferris Wheel Day 2024. Greetings, folks and welcome to welcome back to Business Brain, the show where we take an idea or three, we analyze it, we dissect it, we dig into it, we pull it apart, we put it back together so that each of us get can tune our business brains every single time we get together. Sponsors for this episode include Miro.com podcast where you can go to create your first three Miro boards and they will be free forever. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. For now here on National Ferris Wheel Day, Valentine's Day, it's like National Gooey Chocolate Cream Filled Chocolate Day. And I think it's also National NFL Hangover Day, which seems weirdly late this year. In Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. And I can't stand Ferris wheels, man. Oh, not for me.

Ferris wheels.

It's not a, it's not a height. I have no problem being up high when I'm in control of it. But I've seen those guys put those Ferris wheels together and those places and I'm not convinced that it's a good, good place to be for me.

No. They smoke only the best weed before they put those Ferris wheels together when the. For the carnival. So it's totally.

That is true. But have you ever ridden one of the giant Ferris wheels? I London Eye.

Yeah.

When you're inside the big cart, that's cool. That's an experience. That's like being an elevator. I, I can handle that.

Yeah, I can do it.

But hey, best engineers did that.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

So, hey, we're joined today by Ryan Sneddon of. He's the local newsletter guy on the X platform. I've been following Ryan for a while as he's promoted this concept of this local newsletter. He has created one that's very successful called the Naptown Scoop for Annapolis, Maryland. And Ryan, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, this is cool. So I wanted to have you on because you look like you have something.

To say, Dave, I want to dig right in. What is this Naptown Scoop? Explain it to me because I don't live in Annapolis, so you might be surprised. I haven't subscribed yet.

Not a problem at all. I only want people in Annapolis to subscribe. So I was hesitant to actually put it on my Twitter X for a little while because I didn't want. I was Like I don't want people seeing this if they're not actually going to read. Turns out I don't have very many followers anyway, so it doesn't matter now. I let people do it anyway. But it's an email that you get every Monday through Friday, every weekday at 6am and just tells you what's going on in town, where's the live music, what did the city council do at their last meeting, what's the new restaurant that just opened on Main street, that all that sort of stuff. What's the new restaurant or the restaurant that just closed, what's replacing it? So basically, you know, like a community newspaper, lifestyle newspaper kind of thing. We don't do any crime unless it's like really big. You know, if the bear got kidnapped we would put that in there. But like the carjacking at the Safeway, we skipped that.

Yeah, you're not looking to be sensational, you're looking to be informative.

Exactly.

Kind of like the skim for very hyper local. Right?

It, it's, it like you know, I, people say what is it? And I gave you the little bit longer pitch because we're on a podcast.

No, I wanted you to that but.

Like the, the elevator pitch where it's like hey, what is that? It depends on who asks. You know, if, if it's an older person asking and they're a man, I might say it's, it's like the local newspaper just sent through email. If it's a, you know, middle aged woman asking, I might say it's the skim. But if it was only about Annapolis. If it's a young person, you know, like a young woman, I'd be like, it's like morning brew, but only for an apple.

Yeah, sure.

And then if a young guy is asking, I'm like, well it's like barstool sports. But if that was only about Annapolis.

Yep.

And that kind of runs the whole range of who might ask that question. And usually the answer is like oh cool. Every once in a while.

I like that. Yeah, I liked how you break down the demographic and how you tell your story to that different groups. I think that's a great way to fine tune it. So where'd the impetus for this business concept come from?

I like all good businesses. I copied somebody else.

Woo hoo. Smart.

It's cool.

It's the best way to do it, isn't it? Cause you get to iterate when you do that. You get to look at all the things you loved about that business and all the things you didn't love about that business and you get to create from that. It always bugs me when somebody says, oh, I stole this idea from somebody. Unless you literally stole their business from them, you stole nothing. You were inspired by it. Like, I. Not that you said you stole it, but I hear this from people often.

No, I hear that all the time. And you know, at the end of the day, like, you can't. You can patent certain things. Like, you can patent the cool way that my tripod that my camera sits on extends its legs. And if somebody went out and stole Enduro's design, then that's actually stealing. But if I saw somebody have this local newsletter in Columbia, South Carolina, where I did, and then I go and do the same thing in a different city. It's just like, you know, that's not copyright infringement or patent infringement or anything. And so people hear that, like, I need to have a new idea. And you're like, no, no, no.

I've always said if you want your idea to be worth $100, write it on a hundred dollar bill. It's all about how you execute. That's where the value is.

I've never heard that, but I love that.

The values in the.

That's like a really nice way of putting it. I. I put it a less nice way when my friends are like, I can't tell you my idea.

And I'm like, yeah, exactly.

Your idea is worth nothing. And they're like, what?

Yes.

Yeah. I shouldn't be so mean, but I am.

You can use the hundred dollar bill thing. Give you.

I think I will.

Yeah. Give me credit. Like the first two or three times you do it and then you just own it and pretend it's just.

I'm just going to steal it from right away.

Correct. Yeah, yeah, that's fine.

You got it.

That's my idea.

Now, I love the iteration. So, okay, if you write it on.

$100 bill, it's worth something. Yes.

Okay. How does. Yeah. How does the newsletter, how does it work? How do you build? How'd you build your subscriber base, how long you've been around? And I'm. I don't know much about it. I think it generates revenue, Good revenue. So tell me about how you generate that revenue.

So, yeah, I've been around three and a half years now, I think started August 2020 and this is February 2024. I'm bad at math, so I don't do that.

Don't do public math. That's right. That's what We've learned podcasters.

Yeah, I'm an engineer, so I can do like complicated other math, but, you know, not just out in my head. So, yeah, three and a half years though I think about that. Got my first subscribers. I just, I posted on Facebook that I was doing it. I just, I grew up kind of close to here, so I had some friends who were nearby. I posted, I made an Instagram account for the business, for the newsletter, posted there a picture of myself and said I was going to start this thing. And then I also started running Facebook ads to get subscribers. The first before, we even sent the first issue for about a week before. So I sent the first one to about 70 people. Then a week later I sent the second one to 150 people. And then I don't remember how many we kept sending to, but now we just sent this morning's to 17,600 people.

That's sweet, man.

Yeah, that's like you said, do the podcast for 10 years. It just when you put the reps in for something over a very long period of time, that's when good things happen.

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Yes. So we do sponsored ads. Five ads produced. Letter. I've toyed around with the idea of doing more because top two have pictures, the bottom three don't, and the top two, everybody wants those two. So we only used to have one. One picture, and then they all sold out. And so then I created another with pictures. I feel like we're pretty full. With five ads, it's only about 15 to 1800 words. Even with five ads, which are worth, let's see, 210.

You're doing public math again.

I am doing public math, but I've done this public math before, so I'm more likely to do a public memory if it's about 1800 words. And about a third of that is ads. If we have all five ads in there.

Yeah.

So I don't know if I really want to jam too many more in there. Like, we might be able to do some banner ads. I've been kind of experimenting with promoting our own things with what are effectively banner ads, and I haven't heard a lot of negative feedback, so I definitely think I could do that. But all told, if all the revenue is sold out, all the ads that I've currently invented, that would be about half a million dollars. And in 2024 this year, we already have about 175,000 of that sold just with renewals and a little bit. Pretty much everything we've done is inbound. So right now I'm in the process of hiring someone who can go do a little bit of outbound, because I don't really want to do that.

And you might be able to. I mean, there's a ceiling in terms of the cost of an ad, but you might be able to raise it up. And what you could do is, I don't know what engine you're using for your email sending, but you don't have to put the same ad in every copy in every person's newsletter. Right. You can. You could put. You could have six ads sold for the top Two slots. Right. And. And send a third to each. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yep.

So yeah, that. That gets things a little more complicated than I deal with.

Well, but if you work with somebody that's doing that.

Yeah, that could be something we do. But for the current time, like I'm pretty happy with, you know, if with. With only selling like last year, we didn't even have. I think we have 160 in ads sold for the entire year of last year. So we already have more than that sold for this year. And we're not even, you know, we can sell throughout the rest of the year. So it'll be a much better year even with just that small amount sold. Last year I finally. It took me four over about three and a half years, but I replaced my income from the job. I quit doing this before. So if I sold out, all the ads would be very good opportunities to go to the next thing because I. We can talk about this. This is a much bigger conversation. But like, part of the thing about having this is if I want to do anything in my town, I can now have this unfair advantage to advertising it. Oh yeah. So there's two businesses that I'm thinking about. Well, one I'm thinking about starting with a friend, one that we're looking to buy with a friend. And I have the marketing for that just kind of built in. So it's got it. There's all sorts of advantages to how it's.

Well, that's part of your revenue stack.

Right.

As you're building up these companies. Dave and I have done the same thing over time, building these digital properties, if you will, and doing different things and talking about them here and doing stuff on the web. Yeah, I think that's terrific.

No, it's really smart. Think about that unfair competitive advantage that your existing business that you've built could give you for the next business. That's. Yep.

Yeah. I mean, my favorite advantage to think about is if I started, let's say, for example, a, you know, some kind of one, the one that we want to buy. I'm not going to say what it is because I have partners that want to do it with me. So they might get mad, but let's just pick any business. If I started a car repair shop or I bought a car repair shop, I could give my car repair shop the top advertising in the Naptown scoop every single week for free. And then I can also not let any other car repair shops.

Yes.

By advertising.

Yes.

So not only is my cost of advertising in the scoop zero, but Nobody else can because it's mine and I.

Put in the time. You built it, it's yours.

You get to choose.

Yeah, that's going to be my favorite. Advantage is just free marketing and also competition. I love it.

It gets a control.

Okay.

Yeah.

One of the other things that attracted me to your account follow you and I signed up for your growth newsletter is this comment here. It's this. You have another Life of Scoop newsletter to help others grow. Local newsletters throughout the country. And I love this part, too. I only want to teach people who really want to learn. I'm going to limit the number of subscribers to 7777. And if you don't open at least two each month, you're going to be unsubscribed automatically. So I like that. I thought that's cool.

So how do you deal with that with people who use the Apple Mail client and you can't track whether they've opened or not?

That is a great question. I'm going to.

It doesn't matter. You said to me.

It's just. I don't know.

All right, I'm a nerd. I asked these matter.

As soon as I said that, someone asked that and I was like, I haven't thought about that.

It doesn't matter. No, the statement is the more important part.

You're right, Shannon.

You're totally right.

Scarcity and like, look, your time and your knowledge is valuable. So I'm not just going to stick it out there for everybody.

Yeah.

It's free and I'll help you and you see where it goes. Is that still your plan that you're going to. You want to help other people grow and build local newsletters for their town, their city?

Yeah. When I first started, I wanted to do. I always said I wanted to build a hundred newsletters in 100 cities and I wanted to own them all and be, you know, the. Whatever number that would make me largest digital local news publisher in the country. I gotta imagine that would put you decently high up on the list.

Oh, yeah. Especially with how this model seems like it's a workable model for local news in today's world when newspaper. Local newspapers are like either dying or at best being consolidated and being published out of Dallas. Right. Like, that's literally what's happening in many cities. So, yeah, I like this.

Yeah. So I thought that in the beginning and then I always take like two weeks off at the end of the year around Christmas to really think about how the last year went and the next year is going to go. And I realized this year I was like, I don't want to do that anymore. That seems damn near impossible. I don't know how to run a hundred business at the same time. At the time. I'm 26. Today's my 27th birthday.

Hey, happy birthday.

Thank you. So, like, I'm like, I don't know how to do that. So I'm gonna go do something. Like, I'll keep doing this, but then I'll go figure out something else. And then over the next month, I kind of learned, you know what, I will. I thought about selling the Naptown scoop and I decided not to. And I was like, I'm gonna keep it. I'm going to teach other people how to do it while I figure out what the next thing is. And I kind of an idea of what the next business is, but it's probably like three years away. It's a big swing. It's. It's either. It's the kind of business that either goes to 100 million or it fails. And I think that sounds fun, but I want to have something that's a little bit more secure before I try that. And so now I'm like, I'm going to help people do it. You can make money helping people do it. Yes. But then also as I help people, I'll find some people that I really like and they live in the right city to do it and I'll partner with them. And then I still will get to have a couple of these around the country. Maybe not 100. But I've already got two people that I'm really excited about partnering with. One I actually met last weekend. I know I did meet them for the first time. I met them because I want to partner with them.

Yeah.

So I'm going to do that. And I have another phone call with somebody I want to partner with early next week. If that goes well, then I'll fly out and meet him and still have a couple of these things that I'm a partner in or own a majority of. But the real plan is now Instead of owning 100 around the country, it's helping a thousand people do it. Yep, I love it.

And we'll have links in the show notes@businessbrain.show. so if you're listening to this, come up there, click, and you can get connected with Ryan up on Twitter X. Okay, before the show, we were talking about you're planning on relocating maybe later this year, that kind of stuff. What's the plan for your Local Scoop newsletter there in Annapolis. Are you going to run it remotely or. Which sounds kind of difficult to me. Or you have somebody that you're going to put in that's closer. You're going to get an operator like everybody likes to talk about online. How's it going to work?

So, to be honest, don't know yet. It can definitely be done remotely to a point. You know, when you're starting out in the beginning, it's awesome and helpful to be actually at basically every event in town. There's one of those, like, do the things that don't scale kind of thing. That's definitely a cheat code with local newsletters. I didn't figure that out until almost a year in. So if I had figured that out earlier, I bet you we would have grown faster. So it's part of why I'm helping other people do this, because they don't have to make the mistakes that took me nine months to learn. You're already nine months ahead. That's the kind of reason I'm excited to teach people. But so, yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do. It can be done remotely, it can't be done as well. But at this point, the snowball is kind of rolling and it's popular and big and it's. It's not too big to fail. I'm not sure that by any means, but I don't need to be out there every time anymore, at every event, every day of the week. I think if I do go away, I would want to come back. So I'm not going to go away until I have the actual budget to do this personally. But I'd want to probably come back about once a month because there's something going on that I'd want to personally just be at because they're fun at least once a month and it would be good to be back in the town. You see a lot of the clients of the newsletter at these kinds of things, but you talk about an operator. I have somebody in mind that I want to hire. I also. They're doing something on their own right now. And I want to either, you know, kind of like an acqui hire. I want to buy what they're doing, roll it up into my Naptown Scoop brand, and then have that person be the editor in chief of both publications that's still working that relationship. I've been working it for a little while. This person is, you know, we got close one time and then we got unclose. And that's how business goes.

It's how it works. Yeah.

Favorite thing that I've stolen from somebody as we keep talking about that topic is the founder of Twitch, Emmett Shear always says, birds fly, fish swim, and deals fall through. I used to get really late. I used to get really low when things like that didn't work out. And now I'm like, well, it's, you know, if it works the first time, you get super lucky. But doesn't often work the first time.

So I'm talking to a couple people.

That have, I mean, I have a. I have a sticky note that have.

Made up that phrase.

I have a sticky note on my monitor down in my office that says time kills all deals. It's been there for 15 years. I don't know why it still sticks to my monitor. This must be just the universe kind of smiling at me to remind me.

That time kills all deals. But it doesn't kill the sticky notes.

It doesn't. That's right. Yeah. A lot of deals have fallen through while that thing has. Has not yet fallen. That's right.

That's terrific.

Ryan's I love the birds fly, fish, swimming, deals fall through.

Because that's great.

So true. Yeah, it is.

And, and the fact that you're doing this now and iterating and figuring this stuff out, that, that's terrific. I love that path. And I, and I also love the what are you going to do here? And you're like, I'm not sure yet. And that's awesome. I am still making those kinds of calls after being doing, you know, doing this stuff for 25 years. And that's the way you adjust and iterate, make mistakes, learn from them and, you know, just keep, keep grinding out. So I love hearing this story again. BusinessBrain Show. Or if you have questions for Ryan directly, FeedbackUsBrain show, we'll forward them over to him. And Ryan, thanks again for coming on. We really appreciate hearing your story.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah, absolutely. Is there any place online you'd want people to. I know we've mentioned a couple of your Twitter accounts, which will be linked here. Is that the right place for people to find you?

Yeah, it's probably the best place. And then lifeofscoop.beehive.com is probably how to get on the Life of Scoop newsletter where I'm telling all the things about how to do this.

Yeah. Great. All right, we will put that there too. Ryan, thanks for joining us. Everybody else, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Doing what you do. Make sure to check out our sponsor, of course, miro.com podcast. Keep on living that charmed life and we'll see you next time.