Doug: When I started this podcast in 2019, over 540 episodes ago, the main focus was affiliate marketing, niche sites, SEO, some general marketing stuff, but the main focus was really around niche sites and authority sites. So, As time went on the industry has changed. And I mean, I’ve covered it pretty well in some of the shows where basically, you know, starting a niche site or starting a blog these days is maybe not worth the ROI, depending on exactly what you’re aiming for.
But if you’re looking to start a side hustle that’ll earn money in a short amount of time, the niche site area is problematic to say the least. If you’re sort of newer to the show and newer to the industry, The, the thing is Amazon has changed some of the commission rates over the years from when I started the show and even before that, and then Google algorithm updates have made it super difficult to rank in a relatively short amount of time.
So like when I started like 10 years ago, I mean, you could rank a site, uh, for a pretty profitable keyword within like a couple of months. If you were doing things sort of like the average way, if you were doing things more aggressively, you could. Maybe rank within a few weeks. Nowadays, it can take way, way longer.
And the Google algorithm is super volatile. So just a little background, people that have listened to the show for a while. You already know this now, as I’ve talked to other folks, uh, specifically like Shawna Newman and Brooks Conkle over the past few months, they’ve been talking a lot about. Local newsletters and Shawna is in, I actually, I think both of them are in a kind of, I don’t know if it’s a mastermind group, but it’s a community of some kind where they share tips and tricks.
And I am not associated with it. I don’t even know what the name of it is, so I can’t even put the link I could probably ask. So if you are curious, leave a comment or shoot me an email, but. The, the point is the local newsletter business model seems to be a very good one to go after. Part of it is everyone lives in some community, even if it’s a very small one, surely there’s some, you know, critical mass, a population that you need to have before it really makes a lot of sense.
But the thing is like whatever community you’re in, you have an unfair advantage over anyone else in the world because you live there. There’s other people in your community. Maybe there’s already a newsletter, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t start a newsletter. And Shawna has talked to me a couple of times.
She’s in the Las Vegas, Nevada area. And hers is not working out exactly how she thought it was going to. However, she has a friend named Jas out of Winnipeg and he has the Winnipeg digest, I believe it’s called. And. He’s doing awesome. The cool thing, he’s a pretty young entrepreneur, like younger than I thought when I read his bio, when he sent it over, I was like, Holy shit.
Is it, is that right? Did he accidentally hit the wrong number and he’s, he’s older, but anyway, smart dude, he actually asked me a lot of questions after we finished recording. And they were fantastic questions, very insightful. So Jas is a smart, smart dude. And he tells us all the information we need in this interview.
He lays out the numbers, the revenue, the number of subscribers, what has worked and what hasn’t worked and that sort of thing. So it’s a fantastic interview. I had an awesome time talking with him. I’m going to be getting updates. From him like over, over time, he was a great interviewee and I enjoyed talking to him overall.
We, I think we stayed on for like a half an hour after we finished the interview. So pretty exciting one. Be sure to, you know, check out his links. You could actually sign up for the Winnipeg digest. Like I said, I’m pretty sure that’s the name of it. Winnipeg digest and see what he’s sending out, sort of his style, follow him on social media.
He is on Twitter. He’s on X. So you can follow him there if you want to interact a little bit more. And I think he even put his LinkedIn as a link to include. So feel free to connect with them over there. And before I send it to the episode, we do have a sponsor today. So last week I talked to Zach Welchel and he’s over at my budget coach and I met him in person down in Atlanta and we, we worked out a little sponsorship deal.
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Intro Music
Doug: Hey, what’s going on. Welcome to the Doug show. My name’s Doug Cunnington. And today we’re talking more about newsletters, which is pretty exciting and local brands, really it’s a local brand. So Jas is a 23 year old entrepreneur with eight years experience in the digital marketing world, which. I’m doing the math in my head.
And I’m like, when did this guy get started? Anyway, Jas transition from running an offshore hiring company to now running a local newsletter in Winnipeg, up in Canada, our friends to the North. And Jas has grown multiple Instagram and Twitter pages to. Huge numbers. So 40 K to 100 K followers. And now you’re working on the local newsletter.
So Jas, welcome today. How are you doing?
Jas: No, thank you. Thank you so much for the great intro. I’m doing great. It’s honestly, as I was saying before the show, I’m like, it’s starting to snow here. So it’s getting cold. But other than that, yeah, things are great. Local news that is growing. What more can we ask for?
Doug: And we were introduced by our mutual friend, Shawna Newman, who’s a longtime friend of mine personally. And then she’s been a friend of the show and been on the podcast probably 10 times now through, you know, different business models that she’s been working on the ups and downs and all that kind of stuff.
So. Shout out to Shauna for hooking this up and we’re going to get into the newsletter, but I kind of want to go back. How did you get started working online again? You’re a pretty young entrepreneur, but very successful for, you know, your age. And I don’t want to emphasize it too much, but it’s pretty cool.
Cause I didn’t know what the hell was going on when I was 23. So yeah. How’d you get started online, man?
Jas: Yeah, for sure. So, like I would say growing up, I was always like, okay, how, what can I do to make money and that sort of thing. So I had a pretty young age, started listening to like Gary Vee and all this stuff.
And so, started flipping shoes a little bit. So kind of got doubt my dabbled a little bit in there with like side hustles and things of that nature in high school. And then when I was like 14, 15, I started growing Instagram pages to, yeah, as you were mentioning, like 100, sometimes 200, 000 followers.
And selling them to e commerce companies at the time just because it was a lot easier to grow kind of like theme pages. So grow them to a specific point and then sell them for a few thousand dollars. Which kind of looking back, I was probably getting a little finessed on, but that’s okay. All right.
Doug: And then where did it go from there? Yeah. Yeah,
Jas: so I mean, from there, then we, I continued to do some e commerce stuff and that sort of thing. And then once, once I was finished high school, then I have immigrant parents and they were like, Hey, we want you to get a degree. So I was like, okay, I’ll get an architecture degree finished architecture degree in four years.
And then kind of switched back into marketing and then did a few jobs, that sort of thing.
Doug: All right. And architecture is a tough one and you could have picked an easier one. So for people that don’t know, architecture is like a pretty tough degree. It’s very competitive. People like to get into it, love it.
From what I understand. So yeah. Why architecture and not like some management or general business or whatever.
Jas: Yeah, well, I mean, I wanted to go to business school. It’s just that my parents wanted me to be like an engineer is like a typical Brown. And so I was like, Oh, okay. I was like, Oh, engineering, that sounds too tough.
And I was like, well, let me pick architecture. It sounds a little artsy, a little fun. Long behold, it wasn’t that fun and artsy, but, um, but yeah, I mean, we had a, I had a blast and then graduated from there about two years ago at 21.
Doug: Got it. Okay. And where, where’d your parents move from? They, and you’re the first generation in Canada.
Jas: Yeah, exactly. So my parents moved, uh, to Winnipeg from India, Punjab.
Doug: Okay. All right. So they typical story, they want you to go to college and stuff. So that’s cool. You go to college, but you’re the whole time you’re thinking, I’m an entrepreneur. Were you dabbling on the side? Did you have time to like, keep that sort of itch scratched?
Jas: It was no, it was honestly really hard. Like I was still keeping up with like, started investing a little bit here and there with the little money I had, but like nothing crazy, I would say. The biggest thing was probably, I was just trying to get the degree over with as fast as possible. So usually the degree takes about six years to do.
I did it in four. And then after that I was like, okay, now I can, You know, show my parents that, Hey, there’s actually ways to make money other than just a nine to five job.
Doug: Okay. All right. Well, let’s just jump right in to the newsletter and how that started. So when did you start the local brand?
Jas: Yeah.
So, prior to this, I was running an offshore hiring company and I’d always seen there’s a guy, his name is Ryan Sneldon on Twitter. He runs a pretty successful local newsletter himself and he does it in Annapolis, Maryland. And I had always seen him do it pretty successfully. He grew it to about 20, 000 people in a 50, 000 people city.
And I was like, okay, so he’s captured like 50 percent almost of the town. Right. And, uh, yeah. So, I live, where I live in Winnipeg, it’s It’s kind of like not a tech savvy city. Like it’s a pretty like old school city things get here pretty late So I could have copied any business idea off of twitter and just done it here and it would have worked But then I had seen the success that ryan had had with the naptown scoop there And I was like, you know what like my eventual goal is to run multiple portfolio companies and build a portfolio of companies and so It would be best for me to build kind of like a launch pad, of an audience locally So then i’m able to launch other businesses off of it and that’s kind of what inspired me to go down this road.
Doug: What year did you start?
Jas: Oh, I started like eight seven eight months ago. So I started in april this year
Doug: Okay. So pretty young. I didn’t know it was so fresh. So yeah. Where are you at as far as numbers, how’s it going?
Jas: I mean, honestly, we’re blown past any metrics that I had ever thought possible. So we are now, uh, 16, 000 email subscribers and about a total audience on social media, 45, 000 people.
Doug: And what’s the population of Winnipeg again?
Jas: It’s a million people. It’s about a million people like 800, 000 people out there.
Doug: Okay, great. So tons of room for growth here.
Jas: Now,
Doug: is it? Yeah, good.
Jas: Yeah, no, I was just gonna say yeah, I mean, I think eventual goal is probably to grow this to about 100. To 150, 000 people.
And that would be like a really, really good spot to be in. And so that’s kind of the goal that we are striving for at least.
Doug: And so the a hundred K that’s great. That would be like roughly 10%. And I imagine it’s like many cities where there’s a bit of a hub of a downtown and then there’s like some suburbs around, is it kind of a typical sprawl?
Jas: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, well, it’s considered one city, yeah, but it is, like, main downtown. Everything is covered in a 30 minute radius, though. Like, the city’s fairly small. Like, I can go from any suburb to the other side of the city in 30 minutes.
Doug: Okay. That’s great. So traffic isn’t super horrible. Yeah.
All right. Um, okay. So a hundred K subscribers, like what, what’s the estimated, you know, say monthly revenue. If you do hit a hundred K in, you have to extrapolate, there’s some waste. Sometimes numbers fall apart when you look at projections like that, but yeah, what would you estimate? Like the revenue could be, if you have a hundred K subscribers?
Jas: Um, Okay. I probably, well, so I haven’t really thought that far, but what I do know is So actually a recently another newsletter was sold for that have about 40, 000 subscribers and They were doing about five million dollars in revenue a year So I’m pretty confident that will be in like high seven figures to low eight figures range If we’re able to get to that about a hundred thousand people, Mark.
Doug: Got it. That’s way higher than I would have guessed. That’s so much because I’m not, I’m not on X looking around, but I know people that are like in the, in the know, like that makes sense. Right?
Jas: Yeah. I mean, Ryan. So, I mean, my, I can give my numbers and then Ryan’s been running for a lot longer. And of course I’m only speaking like not speaking on his behalf, but these are just numbers.
Here’s what I’ve heard. And from a 20, 000 people email list, Ryan will be probably doing about 350, 000 to 400, 000 this year. And so it’s, I would say it’s like possible to do, I would say mid seven figures with about a hundred thousand people here, definitely in Winnipeg.
Doug: Amazing. So you have about 16, 000 on your list in Winnipeg.
So can you share like some of the revenue numbers and maybe how it has grown over the few months here?
Jas: Yeah, for sure. So since our growth’s been so rapid we’ve only actually truly started monetizing in the last Two to two and a half months. And I recently went full time into this from my last gig.
And so, I’ve only been able to now give it some actual time that it deserves. And so in about the last two months, we’ve now booked for the next 12 months revenue of about 60, 000 in the last two months. The goal is probably to end the first two Or like at least next year, next full year, we want to do about 200, 000, 250, 000.
And then, yeah, I mean, hopefully we can beat that number.
Doug: So that’s amazing. Again, we, um, we know that emails and email lists are great because there’s so many different options of monetization. But the sheer numbers, especially, you know, I’m coming from in a lot of the audience is coming from like the affiliate marketing and niche site where at one point in time, you know, Eight years ago, it was like very profitable, these sort of shocking numbers.
Right. But it’s gotten harder, more competitive. A lot of the components, SEO have like sort of fallen apart. AI hit. So this is super cool. So you’re targeting 200, 250 K for next year. So what are the monetization methods?
Jas: Yeah, so I mean, I would say the few, there’s actually a few ways that you can monetize and being in a part of, well, I’m in a part of a group that same thing with Shawna where I met Shawna and it’s a bunch of local newsletter folks.
So, there’s a few ways that you are able to monetize. The primary way I’m doing it personally is annual sponsors. So, you can definitely do like one off advertising and that sort of thing with small businesses. I find that to be a hassle, like if I’m working with someone and they’re paying me a thousand dollars.
They kind of want track for all of that thousand dollars. Like, Hey, how am I like spending it? How many clicks did it get? So that sort of thing. What I’m doing now is I’m selling exclusivity. So I’m going to a business in each industry. So let’s say there’s 20 industries. I can have 20 different sponsors and in the car wash industry, I’m going and being like, Hey, you know, you advertise with us for a minimum spend of 12, 000 for the year.
And, uh, you’ll be our exclusive partner in this, uh, in this industry essentially, and you kind of get exclusive access over our audience and none of your competitors will.
Doug: So are there any other methods that you’re using or it’s just straight up advertising within the newsletter?
Jas: I’m doing mainly advertising.
I know a few other folks that are kind of playing around with the idea of like a discount card and that sort of thing. So I’m working on that. About 25 a card, 10 different restaurants, a one time discount at each, each restaurant. And you know, you’re able to sell even 150, 200 of them. And that’s like an additional 5, 000.
And the cost to print a card is like a dollar, right? So, the profit margins are huge. The restaurants are getting free visibility to your audience. And your audience is essentially someone that wants to try new restaurants in the city anyways. So, they’re also getting to go to new restaurants.
Doug: Okay, very cool.
So have you done that? Or that’s just one that you will be working on?
Jas: i’m working on it right now. I have about nine restaurants booked. I’m just looking for the final one And once that’s kind of done, hopefully we’ll be launching that Mid december ish just before the holidays as like a You know, last minute holiday type of thing that, like gift folks can buy for, for significant others and that sort of thing.
Doug: Yeah. Super smart around the holidays. That’s a perfect gift. Yeah. Okay. So one thing that jumps out at me, you know, you’ve had pretty fast growth with the newsletter and. I suspect because of your background, you’re probably going to be able to grow even faster. Like I feel like for you’re going to hit some plateau, but I feel like you’re in a sweet spot right now.
Would you agree with that?
Jas: Yes. I know. Like I’ve already started to see a little bit of the plateau, but we’re figuring out ways to kind of get around that. Whether it’s changing ad creatives for Facebook or trying different strategies on Instagram and that sort of thing.
Doug: So that brings me to the annual deal.
So huge pro is like, you have someone signed up for a year. So it kind of, you get that revenue in, but at this point you got 16, 000 subscribers in six months, you may have 50, 000, right? So like you’ve underpriced yourself. You’ve kind of locked it in for those people that you started working with. How do you feel about that?
Like, you know, you’re going to be growing and. Like later on, you’re going to have to be raising your rates because you’re, you know, the RPM will be much, much different. I mean, you’ll just have.
Jas: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I feel like that’s completely fine though, because I’m also not locking in. So I feel, I’m pretty sure I have the capacity to bring on about 15 different sponsors, like if they’re all on annual deals.
And so I only have about four booked in at the moment. Right. So at the end of the day, The rest of the sponsors is kind of like one at a time and not all at once, right? So I’m not booking them all tomorrow for the next year essentially the deals are coming like maybe two deals a month or something along those lines, right?
So I’m able to still keep adjusting my prices month over month And these sponsors actually get first rights to renew it once their contracts are done. So What I’ll be telling them at the end of the day, like, once the contract is done, is that, hey if you don’t want to move forward, that’s completely fine.
It’s just that we do have interest from your other folk, like, other competitors as well. So if you’re gonna move forward, that’s fine. We’ll just sell your spot to someone else.
Doug: The market figures it out. Okay. Perfect answer. And the thing is like, of course, like you get a big advantage if you’re getting you know, sort of more guaranteed, like monthly payments, you can, you know, you’re going to be able to afford ads if that’s how you’re growing and all that kind of stuff.
There’s always trade offs and the trade off is like, you might be a little underpriced, but at least like you’re proving the success and you have like the business model is working. So that’s, that’s great. Okay. Anything else with like the monetization, like what, what does it actually look like within the newsletter?
Jas: Yeah, so I mean, in the newsletter, it’s generally just a section, so they get a section to themselves. Um, it’s an image and then 50 to 150 different words that they can kind of use to either explain their services and that sort of thing. We usually make, write the ad copy just so it’s cohesive with the rest of the newsletter and send it to them.
For like, to check the draft and then they’re able to link to any website or any landing page that they want. And I would say that’s kind of the big differentiator that we’re selling is that, Hey, When you’re running an ad with this local magazine, you don’t really know how many people went to page seven, right?
For us, we’re able to tell you exactly how many people opened the email, clicked on the ad, that sort of thing. And if we’re even putting in multiple links, we’re able to track each link and tell you how many people clicked to each one of them. So.
Doug: Do you find you have to educate the Advertisers on that kind of stuff, just like digital marketing and like what they should be putting in the, like in the copy or what a good offer is or landing page or whatever.
Jas: I’m usually not tweaking their landing page and that sort of thing, unless like they specifically want some help in that if they have an offer already, which is more like, hey, you know, we want to highlight, let’s say for a dentist, I don’t know, we would highlight braces or something like that. Then we will simply just build the ad copy around that.
Something that we do do is we’re pretty careful with the people we’re sponsoring. So we don’t just like, we could have easily promoted nightclubs and events and that sort of thing, but that’s just not what our audience is. And we know that if we go down that road, uh, we’ll start losing trust with our audience pretty fast.
Doug: Right. Do you have any other notes on monetization before we move on to another area?
Jas: I would just say like probably as a final note is you’re not really selling the advertisers on Open rates and click rates and that sort of thing unless the advertiser brings it up If the advertiser brings it up, then you’re able to talk more about it because I mean we have a great open rating click rate So we can talk about it, but it’s just that to the average business owner They don’t really care about the open rate or click rate.
What they care about is How many people are going to see the ad? Why should I advertise with you? And what’s unique about your way of advertising, right? Because most of these business owners have been approached by social media agencies and that sort of thing. So they’ve kind of lost their trust. So you kind of need to help gain that trust back in a way rather than sell them on like open rates and click rates.
Doug: So what, what is special about your email list?
Jas: Yeah, I mean, we know that we have a demographic of 20. So the age range that we have, 93 percent of the folks are between 27 and 65. So a little old on the older end of the spectrum, 75 percent of them own homes, right? And we’ll run these surveys to ask them these questions.
And then we usually extrapolate the data. So it’s, let’s say, like, if 600 people answered a survey, then we generally know that that’s probably the general consensus of the rest of our list as well. So we know that we have a high We have more like white collar audience people that are actually gonna buy things from you people with families and that sort of thing.
So That’s the sell to our advertisers is that hey if you’re going to book a billboard or something or a magazine You don’t even know how many people looked at that ad, right? We’re kind of giving you the best of both worlds Facebook best of Facebook ads, but also the local feeling of like a billboard or a bench ad and that sort of thing
Doug: You mentioned, um, Facebook just now. So, you know, we’ve been talking newsletter, but like, what is the full platform, all the different pieces of, of the business?
Jas: Yeah. So, I mean, the different pieces are, there’s two big sides to the business. One is our content creation side. So we post some sort of, we make a post on our social media every day.
So that’s one thing. And then the others, we send out a newsletter three times a week. So that’s what the consumers see. And then we’re able to, the unique thing about us in comparison to other local newsletters is we have built an audience on multiple platforms, right? So because we have an audience on Instagram and Twitter, tiktok and that sort of thing we’re able to go to advertisers and the ones that it makes sense for we can sell We can sell them instagram slots, but also newsletter spots So sometimes the advertiser might not be interested in just a newsletter spot So then we kind of sprinkle in a few different instagram reels and that sort of thing and price it accordingly And so that’s kind of the one side and the other side, obviously being working B2B with businesses and selling the ad slots to, to these places, which also allows us to have more advertisers as a whole for the year as well.
Doug: And across all social media, it’s a, it’s a little over 40 K. Follow,
Jas: like total, I would probably say about 45. To 48, 000 followers is probably where we’re at
Doug: in, in which platforms again.
Jas: Yeah. So it’s about 40, 000 on Instagram, another three or four on Tik TOK, another three or four on Facebook. And then yeah, 16 K on our email list.
Doug: And I suspect your previous experience with Instagram helped a lot and you were able to grow faster because you know what works and what doesn’t work.
Jas: 100 percent that’s a big factor of things. I’m just a big believer in like, see what other people have done in similar industries and just you can copy that to start and then start putting your own twist on it.
So that’s kind of what we did is in the beginning, when we started Instagram, we just saw what was to do Toronto doing? What was 604 Vancouver doing? What was? There’s like 70 pages for New York and Boston. You can just go to there and like see what type of reels they’re posting and how they’ve grown and what works best for them.
And you can just do that for your own city. And that’s kind of what we’ve done here in Winnipeg.
Doug: Okay. So nothing crazy. You just go look and see what’s working and then put it, put your own flavor on it.
Jas: Essentially. And then you start by copying them and then as you keep posting content, you start experimenting with a little bit of your own stuff and see what works from there.
All right.
Doug: How many people are on your team?
Jas: It’s just me and like two other VAs. That’s it.
Doug: Okay. What did the VAs do for you?
Jas: They just curate the information. So before I’m going to write the newsletter, they’ll usually just pull all the events and that sort of thing that are happening. So that’s one.
And then the other one manages some of the Facebook creatives and that sort of stuff for me. Both are part time.
Doug: All right. So how I suspect you’re growing the email list from the social media plus some ads, but can you elaborate on that? Like, where are you getting all the subscribers?
Jas: Yeah, I mean, I would say it’s probably 95 percent Facebook ads.
And then we’re probably like almost at 1000 from social media, give or take, and then maybe another few 100 from referrals. But because, like, we’re now starting to hit the critical mass point now, referrals are starting to mean something. Previously, referrals weren’t that big of a factor. But our main thing has been Facebook ads, so we’re acquiring, so we’ve been running Facebook ads since kind of like day one, actually probably like day ten of the newsletter.
And we’re probably acquiring a subscriber for about a dollar, maybe less than a dollar Canadian. So, that’s kind of where we’re at right now.
Doug: And do you have any suggestions on getting people to actually like sign up so people can set up some ads and stuff? Is it anything, anything special or it’s just like, Hey, it’s just so targeted to like that person in that area and that kind of thing.
Jas: Yeah. I mean, we just keep everything local. So the ad copy is very simple.
It’s simply like struggling to find things to do in Winnipeg. Yeah. The Winnipeg Digest sends you an email with all the events happening in the city every week. That’s probably the, that’s a simple, that’s the creative and then the background is usually some sort of monument or something of the city. Or like some sort of video that shows people that it’s actually Winnipeg.
And that’s about it. Honestly. On Facebook ads, up to 90 percent of your results are going to come from how good your creative is. And that’s really all we’re doing. Okay.
Doug: When, and really, I mean, there’s no clickbait stuff. It’s not. Yeah. Something weird. It’s like they know what they’re going to get. They know what you’re doing and there’s no, yeah, there’s no trickery involved or anything, which obviously wouldn’t work, but it’s like if people are looking for a trick, there’s no trick.
Right.
Jas: A hundred percent. And I mean, what I’ve found is if we were to do more, so I’ve run previous newsletters as well. And if you do more Like if you offer a lead magnet, which is more like hey, here’s a free gift guide or something or here’s a food guide to Winnipeg Then they usually only subscribe for the food guide and will the engagement will heavily drop off in the as you keep sending them newsletters Which is why we don’t do something like that and which is why we’re focusing more on The organic nature of things so more.
Yeah, like without any clickbait or anything like that All right.
Doug: So far, like everything sounds like it’s just, has worked really well. There’s been no issues. Is there, have there been any like hiccups along the way where you even thought something was going to work, but it just didn’t work?
Jas: I wouldn’t say so.
I would only say that it gets pretty like mundane. Like it gets pretty like, you know, what you’re, what’s happening in the following week at the end of the day. Right. I know that I’m going to hit up the same annual advertisers. I’m going to confirm the same ads. It will, uh, Send out, you know, maybe a few different drafts and that sort of thing.
But that’s probably the only like downside So you start to question your own growth. You’re like, so why am I growing? Like I’m even providing something that’s valuable because it’s almost kind of come too easy So I would say it’s a very simple business. It works Anyone can make it work in their city.
It just kind of comes down to Like, can you do it for long enough? Can you be consistent? Cause you can’t really skip newsletter additions and that sort of thing. Cause then you start to lose your audience’s trust. Right. And I run a poll in every single one of my email newsletters and additions and the replies I get kind of helped me keep going.
I would say cause the replies will be like, honestly, like, I don’t know if this is something weird to say, but I look forward to. Seeing your newsletter every day in my inbox, that sort of thing. So it’s great. It’s like a very positive thing that people are replying.
Doug: Interesting. And like how many people reply back to the surveys?
Jas: The poll will probably get about 150 like poll responses. And then like literal replies is probably like 20, 25.
Doug: And then what’s your open rate?
Jas: It’s 50, well, it was about 51, 52 percent and then now we recently did, uh, we recently cut like a thousand subscribers cause we had never done that before. That were kind of unengaged and now it’s up to like 57%.
Doug: Man, that’s crazy. And then what about click through?
Jas: That’s about seven to 10%. Awesome.
Doug: Yeah. Really good numbers for people that aren’t, aren’t familiar. Yeah. Um, yeah, and that makes sense, you know, like you said, just, it becomes a little bit routine and you’re like, oh, another event, another, whatever, trivia or whatever kind of thing.
When you write the newsletter, do you write it like a personal email or do you write it like a like an actual newsletter or do people know your personality? Yeah, like how do you view that?
Jas: Yeah, it’s a mixture of both. So actually in the beginning of each newsletter, I have like a little us section where I’m usually saying like something.
So for example, in today’s news newsletter, I said happy Monday, Winnipeggers. And, you know, hopefully we can help you plan out your week for the coming week. And you know, snow starting to hit, we are going to talk a little bit more about that in the newsletter. There’s some accidents and that sort of thing that happened.
So just like, you know, a reminder to be safe on the roads, that sort of thing. And then in our Monday edition, so we actually do something that’s like specialty sections. So in the Monday edition, we have like a community feedback. So I pick like the three best responses from the previous week and then I share them.
So that gets people to more respond to the polls. And then also like for example, a response might be, Oh, a colleague of mine shared this with me a week ago and this is the best thing I’m subscribed to in Winnipeg that was for last week and I saw that a lot of people actually sent that newsletter to other people simply because the fact that that response was in there, right?
So it’s kind of a mixture. So we do that and then we have like other sections. It’s like the new section and the event section where we’re curating essentially all the news and events happening in the city. Okay. But we do have our like local friendly tone, which is, I mean, it’s probably how any marketer would say it is keep it simple that, you know, a fifth grader can understand it.
And that’s usually the tone that we’re a little playful that we’re doing in the newsletter.
Doug: And I’m jumping around a bunch, but so you don’t have a big team. You have a fairly significant social media following. Are you like on camera on Instagram and stuff? Like they know, they know Jas and stuff. So.
Jas: Yeah, you kind of become like a local celebrity, I would say. Like once, if I step out of the house I’ll probably, and if I’m out and about, like at a coffee shop or at the gym, I’ll probably get recognized like two to three times, almost every single time I go out. Just kind of like, oh, you’re the Winnipeg Digest guy, love what you’re doing and that sort of thing.
It’s also another great way to like talk to people that you wouldn’t usually have access to. And that’s what I’ve seen a lot is the second I bring up like, and the thing is the newsletter as we know as marketers, the newsletter is such a bigger asset, but because people can’t see that number, they don’t actually think that the newsletter is that big.
So they actually care more about the Instagram following and that sort of thing more than they care about the newsletter or anything else.
Doug: Yeah. Very interesting. Probably good for dating life too. I don’t know. Do you want to share? No, I’m just kidding.
Jas: Yeah, it is. And I mean, like, I mean, I have a girl, I have a girlfriend, but usually like you’ll see, I like a lot more girls have been approaching me at like the gym and that sort of thing.
And so, yeah.
Doug: All right. So that, that may be the best reason to start a local newsletter. Just kidding.
Jas: If you’re, if you’re single, you should definitely do it.
Doug: But I hear you though, cause people don’t know, like. Like you said, the, the newsletter, they don’t see the stats or like what that actually means from a revenue standpoint, but they can see, you know, social media followers or like, I’m thinking of like YouTube versus podcasts and stuff like that.
It’s like people, depending on the niche, it’s like, yeah, people really care about the number of subscribers on YouTube, but really it’s like the number of views, which may or may not be helpful. And it’s all just a, I don’t know. Vanity. Yeah.
Jas: I mean, I would, I would also add If you’re gonna get into this space, you should definitely focus heavy on the social media.
At least for me, it’s worked great. Because, when I reach out to an advertiser, I’m able to, rather than saying I have 16, 000 email subscribers, I’m able to say that we’re a local newsletter with a total audience size of 60, 000 people, right? So, because I know that hey, potentially they might want Instagram ads and that sort of stuff.
The second reason is that people will usually search you up on social medias. And when they see that you have a large following, honestly, the way they talk to you changes a lot. So, that’s been a huge reason for us is, Because we have a large social media following, we are able to reach out to almost any company on social media and they’ll reply back to us for sure.
Simply because they know that we are probably like a top 10 Instagram page in our city at this point. Close to being like a top 5. And so it’s like, they know the power that we hold at the end of the day and it changes the way that they will talk to you or handle like a question that you’re asking them about
Doug: How many hours a week are you working on this?
Jas: If I’m doing like, if I’m including probably like ad talking to advertisers and going out for coffees and, you know, going out for events and that sort of thing, probably give or take like 30 ish. Um, if I’m not including that, It takes me about three hours to write a local news, each edition.
So that’s nine hours a week. And then it takes me another hour and a half to create an Instagram post every day. Which six days a week ish is whatever that comes out to. So less than 20 hours.
Doug: Okay. Do you batch it much or do you just do a little bit each day?
Jas: No. Um, it’s, everything’s done every day. So, the Instagram posts are done every day.
The Newsletter editions are written the day before and yeah. Okay.
Doug: Not too bad. Not too bad. It’s like less than, you know, a full time job and they’ll try to get you to work longer. So, okay, great. Let’s see. Well, everything sounds like,
Jas: oh, go ahead. Yeah. No, I was just about to say, like, I would say when I worked a full time job and probably got paid, like, let’s say 75, 000 a year.
I felt at least that. I didn’t work for half of the hours anyways, you know, like the out of the out of the 40 hours you’re working Give or take like five, six hours or like luncheon and stuff, right? Then you’re trying, you’re like extending your work hours as much as you can, right? Taking as much time on a single task and that sort of thing.
Because you know that there’s no direct incentive to like how much, as long as you keep maintaining a certain quality of work, that’s all that really matters. Whereas here, it’s like my goal is to finish my work as fast as I can so I can do other things.
Doug: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. If. At a job, if you finish early, you just get more work.
So yeah, don’t do that. So if you finish early, don’t tell anyone and then you’ll just have free time. That’s a trick. You see why I got laid off, right? So I was a bad employee. Okay.
Jas:I mean, I was hiding in bathrooms too, so that’s okay
Doug: So we got to start wrapping up here, but this is amazing. I’ve learned so much.
Now you had a leg up. This is a cat, uh, sort of a classic like talent stacking thing where over the years you’ve learned like different pieces you know, growing social media, different marketing techniques, managing teams, like working in advertising and selling and all that kind of stuff. And it’s sort of, all came together.
So this. is working for you pretty quickly. And I don’t think other people necessarily can do it that fast, unless they had some other unfair advantages too. So for people that haven’t spent much time on social media successfully, you gave a great tip before about looking what other people are doing.
You know, high level influencers are doing and taking some of those ideas kind of mimicking it and then layering on your own flavor later. But do you have anything else you want to add for people that, you know, maybe need a little kickstart to get going on social media?
Jas: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a very clear and direct path to, and I mean, I know that obviously we’re huge on side hustles and that sort of thing.
And I think This is probably the perfect side hustle for anybody simply because It’s so easy to transition over to a full time job eventually if you wanted to become one. If you don’t, that’s completely fine. It’s just that you know, you’re maybe spending If you’re just writing a newsletter, no social media, nothing, you’re spending maybe like 5 to 10 hours a week depending on how many editions you’re writing, right?
Like, if you’re writing two editions a week, You’re right. You’re maybe spending six hours a week on just writing, which is not that crazy to spend on a side hustle anyways. And Facebook ads, once you’ve set them up, they’re just set up. There’s nothing more to it or less to it. And at this point, I would say if you just search a beehive on YouTube, like they probably have a thousand videos on how to run a successful like newsletter.
So you should be able to just build your newsletter off the free things that they have on their website anyways.
Doug: I agree with that a hundred percent. Yeah. The, the thing is any of the email service providers want you to learn how to use it and have a profitable business because then you won’t leave them.
So they will, all the training is like free and excellent and it’ll do everything to help you.
Jas: Yeah, exactly. And I think and then just the last part is if you’re anything like me and you want to launch other businesses in the future off of this I don’t think there’s a greater opportunity like and honestly, there’s no competition because everything is so local, right?
Because i’m not competing with someone from Idaho or something like that. I am I can talk to that person and be like, okay What have you done? What can I do? And uh, you know, we kind of merge the best of both worlds here so if you’re gonna if you’re thinking of starting I would just do I would just go and subscribe to like seven different local newsletters You There’s probably one in Austin, New York, and that sort of thing.
So subscribe to seven different of them and see what they’re doing. Pull out the best parts of each one and just create your own to start and, uh, keep, you know, touching it up as time goes on. And I did the same thing with Instagram as well. Perfect.
Doug: So you want to be at about 200 to 250 K revenue next year or profit.
I, I didn’t ask, but I assume just top line revenue. Um, You’re probably going to have like more like sales obligations and account management type stuff. Are you going to try to do it all on your own? Or are you going to bring some people on to help you out more VAs?
Jas: So I think what I’ll do is maybe bring on like appointment setter type of situation where they’re able to set up a bunch of appointments for me on Mondays or Monday, Wednesdays or Fridays because those are the three days that I don’t write the newsletter.
So if they’re able to do that, then I can go and talk to these local businesses for coffee and that sort of thing. And that’s probably what I’ll do to start. Eventually, I do want to bring on someone maybe like full time commission, but like, because I know that there’s a, like, even if we’re offering 10 15 percent commission, That’s decent commission for anyone that’s kind of coming on even as a part time job.
So, maybe do that eventually. But I do want the last thing I’ll be handing off will be the content because that’s kind of the bread and butter of the whole business.
Doug: Yeah. It’s also the most time consuming, but yeah, I hear you. It’s like, ah, like you, you can control so much by obviously the newsletter is probably like the most, most important piece.
But yeah, like if you, If you had to, like, what, how would you outsource part or all of like the newsletter writing? Do you have any ideas?
Jas: Um, yeah, I mean, I would probably hire folks for, to write different parts of the newsletter. So, I wouldn’t write, hire just an overall writer. I would hire a VA for events part, then I would hire another VA for like our news stories and then another one for like our community initiatives and that sort of thing.
And maybe all part time just because like, personally, like I think all three of them require like a different tonality that you’re kind of speaking in. News is a little bit more serious. Community initiatives is a little bit more playful, happy. And then events is like more curation. So that’s probably the way I’ll go about it.
And then I’m kind of like just the final checkup. That’s probably what I’ll do. But but when I do have to outsource it.
Doug: Yeah. Interesting.
I had, I had an idea, like I have a friend and she’s a, like an on air meteorologist and, you know. St. Louis, but the thing is you could potentially get someone that like works at a news station who’s like, basically they’re a journalist, right?
Like they act like they went to school and they’re like good and they’re pros, but they also have a big network and they’re already like many celebrities in the town. So it’s like, you could get the meteorologist to like write a little section or something like that. And they would, I mean, depending on the city and all that, like they may or may not get paid very much.
Like it turns out. local news folks don’t get paid nearly as much as you think. So they’d be like, sure, I’ll do this for like whatever, a few hundred bucks per section. And then they’re expanding their network. You got a good partnership. Anyway, just an idea planting in your head there.
Jas: Something that I have seen though, is, um, what a lot of folks appreciate about our newsletter is the simplicity and the simple tonality of it and the local friendliness, which from news, it’s more like.
So uptight and you know, the news almost acts like authority, like, Hey, we have, we’re authority over you. Whereas when we’re talking to our reader, we’re talking to them like they’re a friend of ours, right? So that’s kind of the big difference there. So when we’re talking to them and they’re like, Oh yeah, kind of like a friendly tone and that sort of thing.
Any decision that we make in the newsletter. So if we’re introducing a new section or taking out a section, we always run a poll. So it’s kind of like a community led initiative. And it’s kind of like, you know, for the people, by the people idea. And that’s kind of what we’re doing here. Got it.
Doug: Okay.
That makes total sense. All right. Well, I think we’re wrapping it up here. So Jas, is there anything else that you want to share before we let people know where they could find you?
Jas: I wouldn’t say so. I would just say that if you’re in almost any town, especially in North America with a population of over like 75, 000 people, you should definitely start this in your city.
So many perks to it. You’ll be a local celebrity. You’ll make good money off of it. And it’s a great launchpad to run other businesses. So Pretty cool.
Doug: All right. Well, we’ll link up to your main website, the Winnipeg digest and we’ll, we got your Instagram, we got X LinkedIn, all this stuff. So people could follow those links and, and, uh, you know, follow you, see what you’re doing.
It’s been amazing. Thanks a lot.
Jas: No, thank you. Thank you for bringing me on. And I had a blast as well.