Ryan Sneddon is a self-described CEO and emperor of local news. Ryan is building a hyperlocal newsletter empire one city at a time, starting with Annapolis, MD.
Ryan’s newsletter, Naptown Scoop, is an email to the residents of Annapolis containing all pertinent news and events. It’s an awesome community of residents and business owners coming together to be good neighbors.
Ryan has worked as an editor at The Daily Thread, as a business solutions consultant at Softdocs, and as an engineer for Grand Banks Yachts. Ryan has also worked as a project engineer at The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company.
Ryan studied mechanical engineering at the University of South Carolina, and also worked as a cinematographer and photographer. Ryan has done volunteer work building relationships with high school students while leading a team of other volunteers at Young Life.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How Ryan stays motivated when work gets overwhelming
- Ryan’s philosophy and tips for interacting with your audience
- A great way to assess your growth and progress as a writer
- Ryan’s proven strategies for maximizing your social media engagement
Links & Resources
Ryan Sneddon’s Links
- Ryan’s Twitter: @sneddymobbin
- Naptown Scoop
Episode Transcript
Ryan: [00:00:00]
First advice would just be to “get started.” Second advice would be, “don’t quit,” every day. Third advice (this is not specific to a local newsletter. I would say this to any newsletter, any brand, anyone ever) just be responsive.
The great thing about an email newsletter is that people can answer it: I can reply to an email cause it’s just a regular email. Answer every single one of those, because that’s how you build up a loyalty.
Nathan: [00:00:30]
In this episode I talk to Ryan Sneddon who runs Naptown Scoop, which is a local newsletter for the Annapolis region. I like it because I started a local newsletter called Boise, to just about a thousand subscribers. And, you know, Ryan and I were chatting back and forth on Twitter, just saying like, what ideas are we learning from each other?
He was giving me some advice and I was like, you know, I why don’t you just come on the podcast and share the story, share what you’re doing.
It’s pretty fun how it’s coming together. He’s working super, super hard on it, and we dive into all the details. So with that, I’ll get out of the way.
Ryan, thanks for joining me.
Ryan: [00:01:09]
My pleasure.
Nathan: [00:01:10]
So give us the 30-second pitch. What’s the newsletter, and then from there, we’ll dive into, “Why start a local newsletter?”
Ryan: [00:01:18]
My newsletter is called an Naptown scoop and the 30-second pitch; I could really do it in 10 seconds. It’s just everything you need to know about the town delivered straight to your inbox three times a week. And I would do it more if it were a bigger city, do it less if it were a smaller city, but that’s just kind of the perfect number of times that gets you all the information, but it’s not too much.
Nathan: [00:01:40]
Yeah, that sounds good. So what was the inspiration to start it?
Ryan: [00:01:43]
There’s another company. I mean, there’s a couple of companies now that are out there doing this, but I lived in Columbia, South Carolina after college. I went to college there and stayed a little bit extra. And there was a company there that did it and I really liked it. And then I moved away back here to home, and I didn’t have that.
And I was like, well, that was cool. I can’t be the only one that liked that. So I was like, I’ll just build it here. And, I wasn’t the only one that liked it. We were talking before we started recording. There’s not really a good original ideas in my head. So the fact that I wanted it was a good sign, because if I wanted it other people probably do, too.
Nathan: [00:02:17]
Yeah, that makes sense. I am fascinated by local newsletters. I started one on my own called From Boise.
Ryan: [00:02:27]
I get it; you got to see what everyone else is doing and your same space.
Nathan: [00:02:31]
Got to get some ideas. I saw Andrew Wilkinson do it in Victoria, British Columbia, which is one of my favorite cities to visit. And so I saw him do that and I was like, oh, well I love Boise as much as he loves Victoria, and wanted to do some local projects. So, so, it’s been fun, but maybe before we dive into the growth and all of that, what are some of the favorite moments from running it where you’re like, “Oh, this is actually pretty sweet?”
Ryan: [00:02:59]
There’s a lot. One just happened last week. I think it was, it’s been like a really long, last two weeks; has been a really super full and, I don’t use the “B” word. I don’t say “busy.” I’m not allowed to, but it’s been like a really full on hundred miles an hour, 20 hours a day, kind of lasts two weeks now.
Like sometimes—no joke—sometimes more than that. But last Thursday night I was delivering cookies to people who bought shirts, because I made some shirts to sell for the brand. And I said I was going to deliver cookies to the first or 10 out of the first hundred orders, which was like super ambitious of me.
I didn’t even think about the fact that like, I would have to sell a hundred shirts for that to happen. and I only sold 10 shirts. So I delivered the 10 cookies to the first 10 people instead of 10 out of the first hundred. But I’m delivering cookies to this one, and I just emailed everybody and said, if you’re not home, can I leave it in the mailbox?
And they were like, yeah, our mailbox is a giant stone pillar at the front of the driveway. And I was like, giant stone pillar? Like, this is probably a pretty nice house. And so I put in the GPS and I’m like, oh yeah, this is a waterfront looking pretty good. I roll up to the house and it’s gorgeous.
It’s probably like this three to $4 million house. I can look at it and kind of think I know who the architect is, because she’s pretty famous around the area. And as I’m putting these cookies in the giant mailbox, they roll up and they like the car honks, and they roll down the window. It was an Uber, they rolled out of the back windows and they’re like, “You must be Ryan!”
And I was like, “Yeah!” And they were like, “Do you have time to come in for a drink?” And I’m like, “Yeah, why not?” it’s 9:45 at night. No, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a Thursday. I think it was a Wednesday because if it was Thursday, I would have had to go home and write the email for Friday. But since it was Wednesday, I didn’t have to get one out to the next day.
So I was like, “Yeah, I have time for a drink!” And I ended up sitting on their back porch for two hours, drinking wine, just talking about their life, my life, the business, the guy, it was just the guy’s first day of retirement. He had just retired from being CEO of a giant PR firm in New York city. And this is their retirement house.
It turns out it was designed by my favorite architect and it was just an incredible experience. I saw them the next day, too, because they live on this Creek called Mill Creek. And have you ever seen hydrofoils?
Nathan: [00:05:24]
Yes.
Ryan: [00:05:25]
So we were doing that the couple of days before. but we were doing electric ones, so they have a little propeller on them.
They’re super fun. And a bunch of like, it’s really trendy right now. And there’s like three businesses that all started in Annapolis doing it. And, two out of, three of them have invited me out multiple times to go out with them. And so I’ll do it and put it on Instagram. And part of it is like, I do want to help these people cause they’re just super starting out.
They’re like way earlier than even me. And also it makes me look super cool when I go out and do this thing. Every time I post this, it gets incredible engagement and people love it. And then, you know, this is a funny story about that. This guy, his name’s Rob and his wife, Tammy. They were like, we saw your friend James yesterday.
And James is one of the people that owns these new businesses. We saw them out doing the foil and we asked them, we called them over to our boat and we said, are you Ryan? And he was like, apparently a super disappointed that he was like, no, I taught Ryan how to do this. Like, I’m the only reason you know him to do this.
And they were like, yeah, we, he could tell that we were kind of disappointed that he wasn’t you, but now we met you. so it was just crazy. And we were out doing it the next day and they were on their docks at high. so just stuff like that, that like I never, in a million years would have written that as a story, but it happens and it’s just, it’s a great.
Nathan: [00:06:42]
Yeah. You, you had a tweet the other day about going out for a walk with the mayor, which on one hand that’s, that’s a pretty cool thing. You know, you’re like, oh, I get to meet. You know, meet the mayor and all of that, but then more people recognized you then the mayor just as you’re walking around town.
Ryan: [00:06:58]
Yeah, well, the mayor, so it is cool to go out with the bear, a campaigning event for one of our city council people or city council hopefuls. And, I went out just to meet her. I, no one else showed up except for me, her and him. And her, I think her campaign manager or somebody who works for her. And so instead of doing their normal walk where she walks around the Naval academy, football stadium and talks to her constituents or hopeful constituents, we went and saw the new bike path that the it’s one of the mayor’s projects and he just kind of hijack the campaign walk.
And he still thinks that the Naptown Scoop is an ice cream. it’s kind of hilarious. I’ve I’ve met the guy a bunch of times, someday. Well, we’ll get them to know that it’s not actually an ice cream shop, but yeah, we’re, we’re out walking and he’s introducing himself and he’s got this British, not British, Australian accent and he’s campaigning for reelection.
They all, there are like city council persons. She’s not on there yet, but she’s hoping to be on there. So she’s campaigning and he’s out. He introduces himself as, Hey folks like, Aw man, Buckley. This is I’m running for reelection. We’re resurfaced in this bike path, and this is karma. She’s going to be a great asset to this world when she gets elected.
And then he gets down the line, I’d introduce me. And like, doesn’t know who I am. Doesn’t know how to introduce me. And these two people are like, oh, we know you. And it was just the funniest thing is like, yeah, you have to introduce you yourself. They’d actually didn’t know you were the mayor. They have no idea who this person is, but yeah, they know this 24 year old kid you’re hanging out with.
Nathan: [00:08:24]
Nice. Yeah. That’s what you get when you build an audience, you know, it works out. Yeah.
Ryan: [00:08:30]
And that’s the power of the internet that you can get to that level of recognition in 10 months, or? Well, he’s been the mayor for like four years already. but like he, I mean, he’s doing important mayor stuff. He’s not on social media building up at all.
Nathan: [00:08:45]
So let’s talk about the last 10 months. So, when, when exactly did you start it and what, like, I’m curious what the path was to the first a hundred subscribers or 260.
Ryan: [00:08:55]
First send was August 17th, 2020 that sent the, I started running Facebook ads like a week before I sent it. I, I made, I shortened the story a lot on the way in, I didn’t just like decide I was going to do it here. I was trying to hire people out elsewhere to do other cities, but I didn’t. I didn’t know how to hire anybody and I didn’t really have enough money to pay him. So I got a cup of kind of close with a couple of people. And then finally, like the last one we were about to start, we’re going to probably start writing like the next week. And he’s just like pulled out at the last second.
He was like, Hey, this is, I’m not going to do this. And so that was just fed up and I was like, I’m going to start that here. So from the time. Told me on the phone that to the time the website was actually up was probably like eight hours. And then the Facebook ads were running a couple hours later. So they would run it for a whole week before I sent the first email, I think I sent the first email to 64 people and I sent the second one to like 120.
So the path to a hundred subscribers was not like, you know, super long or grueling or really even tough. It was just like, oh, I’ll put up some Facebook ads.
Nathan: [00:09:58]
Yep.
Ryan: [00:09:59]
Everyone talks about how the first 100 is super hard and I’m like, No, I just had to pay for him.
And I think set of that for 64, I’ve gone back and looked at this. Almost all of them are still on board. And this is a stupid, crazy fact, seven, at least when I last check this, which was like a month ago, seven out of those first 64 had opened every single email since which just blew my mind.
Nathan: [00:10:27]
Yeah. so first I’m here is like, when you’re paying for the Facebook ads, what was the cost per subscriber? Like how much did it, did it cost to get this off the ground?
Ryan: [00:10:35]
In the early days. I think those people were coming for like 50 cents, 80 cents each. I was like, this is great. Yeah. So that was great. it’s it’s more like,
Nathan: [00:10:47]
$3 a subscriber, I would have been like, okay, that, that makes.
Ryan: [00:10:51]
No, it’s more like, I try and keep it as close to a dollar as possible now. but usually ends up creeping up to around $2. And once it start getting up to like 2 20, 2 50, I know it’s kind of time to make a new ad and that one’s kind of spent, or just like put it on the back burner for a little while because people, they just get sick of it.
And this is a small town, so the same people are seeing it all the time. So really I’m just kind of trying to convince the same people over and over again with different creators. So I still, I keep it under two 50. I, I kinda need to, but I, I would love I, when I’m down in the ones, I love it.
Nathan: [00:11:24]
Yeah, that makes sense. What’s the population.
Ryan: [00:11:27]
36,000 in the actual city.
And then I cover a 10 mile radius outside of that, which opens it up to, I think 200 to 250,000 total, maybe probably close to 200. It depends on which population might be look at. It’s not a super well-defined area, but yeah, 36,000 in the city, probably around 200,000 in the next 10 miles.
Nathan: [00:11:48]
Okay. Yeah. So the city itself, yeah, that’s relatively small, but
Ryan: [00:11:53]
Yes. Very small.
Nathan: [00:11:54]
Yeah.
Nice. so growing from there, what, like what worked, has it been almost entirely Facebook ads or what, what are the things you.
Ryan: [00:12:02]
A lot of Facebook ads, I think probably half the audience has come from that. people are starting to discover it organically, like put some effort into ranking for certain things on Google. So people are discovering it. I think that so a decent amount of people are Googling it directly and I’m imagining the only way they’re doing that is if they’re free.
Telling them about it or if they saw it somewhere. so I still count that as organic cause obviously that’s free. If you Google Naptown Scoop, it’s like, all you get is there’s nothing else that comes up, which is great. and I have a referral program as well. That’s accounted for. Almost 20% of the subscribers.
So that’s a pretty decent chunk as well. And the way that’s set up, that’s mostly free. I got a lifetime license of viral loops from AppSumo super lucky on that. the first reward is free. It’s a birthday shout out at the top of the email and it works well because it’s a local place. Like you couldn’t do that on a national newsletter, but your friends might see that and you might want your friends to see that.
So that’s a fun reward. And then at the second level, I have to pay for a mug and the next little I had to pay for a bag. But not many people get to those levels. So like a referral programs or as long if when the first rewards free referral programs can be absolutely awesome.
Nathan: [00:13:12]
Right? Yeah. That makes sense.
Ryan: [00:13:14]
And then also I do a lot of work on Instagram, so I’m a pretty big Instagram following.
I’m sure some of that has come from the newsletter, but also it feeds the newsletter or people are discovering it through there. I made this kind of cool and like basically made my own link tree or Lincoln bio kind of thing where it’s just posted on my website. Apparently Instagram doesn’t like those, third party apps.
So I’m like, well, they’re not going to punish me for linking to my own website and I can just make my own one of those easily. So I’ll do that. And I don’t have to pay for that.
Nathan: [00:13:42]
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. so like, let’s go through some of the numbers. W how many subscribers do you have now? What’s the Instagram following?
Ryan: [00:13:52]
Subscribers are 5,500. 70 I think is the last I looked today. it’s still, still not big enough where I can, like, I can spout off the exact number. someday we will, hopefully we’ll just say like, oh, like 15,000, I don’t know, you know, give or take a thousand who cares. but now right now everyone’s still matters and I would like everyone to matter forever. but Instagram, I think Instagram is like 4,700 something around there. So, yeah, people always look at the Instagram and they’re like, wow, it’s so big. And I’m like, but the email’s bigger and more powerful.
Nathan: [00:14:26]
Yeah. Yeah.
What are some of the differences that you’ve seen when you promote something on Instagram versus promoting it in the email? Because I always say that, you know, the email is so much more powerful, but it’s fun to have specific examples.
Ryan: [00:14:38]
Well, it depends what it is. So like just. It depends on what platform you’re promoting. So with the newsletter, we had this really cool fundraiser a couple of weeks ago called rock the dock. You’ll hear a lot of waterfront stuff. Cause everything Annapolis is a waterfront town and it’s like very much focused on that.
So rocket dock was a fundraiser by the broad racked, which is like the young person’s rotary and they put their tickets out on sale. And I think that sold a decent chunk of them, but I put it in the newsletter and it sold out in like hours. So that was powerful, probably sold like 50 or 60 tickets through that.
And it sold out in like four hours and then they reloaded it cause COVID restrictions loosened. And I was like, okay, I’m going to sell it out again. And I don’t know that I sold it out again. Like the results were not as directly. they just weren’t, they didn’t seem that correlated. Like last time it was pretty clear.
It was like, No 6:00 AM on Friday morning, it wasn’t sold out. And then noon. It was, and it was like, well, you didn’t do anything else today to really push it hard. it did eventually sell out the second time as well, but I don’t know if it was directly attributable, but that event is another one of my favorite times that we can talk about later.
And, a lot of it wasn’t true. But so that’s when I say like the email can be really powerful if I’d put them on Instagram and just hard to convert, like I can convert you straight from the newsletter to the ticket link for the, for that event. That’s a really powerful thing. On Instagram. I can’t do that as well.
I don’t have 10,000 followers, so I can’t like do the swipe up stories and store links. Don’t work in posts anyway. Like pretty sure Instagram will penalize you on the algorithm if you do use that. Cause all the posts I see with links are always at the bottom of my feed. but like. There’s a business that I’m visiting or like, and support, or like a new business opens.
Then I see the power of the Instagram where it’s like, well, this new business opened up. Here’s like an I’ll post something about them and say, go follow this business. And you know, like one day they have a hundred followers and the next day they have 300 and it’s just a nice head start for them. So I see them be powerful in different ways.
I think it’s much more practical the way the newsletters.
Nathan: [00:16:48]
Yeah. Yeah. I like that. when you do on the revenue side, like obviously growing an email list is, is a great thing that being involved in the community, all of that’s really fun, but, ultimately this is a business and you’re spending quite a bit to grow it. And so I’m curious, what’s worked for monetization.
Ryan: [00:17:05]
Yeah, spending quite a bit to grow it. advertising in the newsletter is the primary source. It’s kind of the way that I look at it now. And I don’t want to say easy, but it’s just like, if you’re building an audience, why not? Why not do that? I don’t see this as a product people would pay for, it’s not original reporting.
It’s not, you know, investigative journalism. I’m just seeing what’s happening everywhere else and then summarizing it. So I feel like people would have a hard time paying for that. I don’t want to do donations. cause that doesn’t strike me as like a smart business and look for the brand. And that’s.
So really it will be primarily advertising supported. I have thoughts of how to do a premium subscription, where maybe you get some more content. Maybe you have some deals with local businesses, but that’s kind of down the line. We’ll see if that happens. That would be great. Cause that could make my subscribers much more valuable than they were an advertising.
And then also there’s secondary small stuff like selling these shirts and I would like to do some events. So those things aren’t going to make a ton of money. They’re not nothing.
Nathan: [00:18:13]
Yeah.
Ryan: [00:18:14]
So that’s.
Nathan: [00:18:15]
How has it been selling advertising? Like, is it easy to get sponsors lined up and businesses or is that, you know, quite a bit.
Ryan: [00:18:23]
That’s a lot of work and that’s actually the first thing I brought someone on to do. cause I don’t like doing it and I’m not good at it. And there are things that I am good at. Maybe even great at that only I can do. But that’s not one of them. So I brought someone on to do it. just recently she is about to close her first deal, hopefully today or in the next couple of days.
So that’s exciting. I would definitely, I had to like definitely kind of discount and let her have some freedom on it, but I was like, I feel like it’s just more, like, it’s better for her to just get that first deal and have some confidence then like say, no, you actually can’t give them a discount, but like make sure they know it’s a one-time thing.
Yeah. No, I want you to be confident going out and doing this again. So that is hard. I’ve had like pretty full out advertising for the last few weeks. It’s this kind of, it was like nothing, nothing, nothing. And then kind of all at once. so it’s been pretty full, but it is still just a small audience.
I mean, I I’m charging on opens and only 2,500 people are opening each one. So it’s tough to charge. You just can’t charge a lot on that.
Nathan: [00:19:30]
Yeah.
Ryan: [00:19:31]
That’s just the stage we’re in right now.
Nathan: [00:19:33]
Yeah. Those early days are interesting. what are you charging, you know, for each sponsorship or, or each open?
Ryan: [00:19:41]
I like to keep it around. I like to think this is a high CPM also, as I’m working on something now for another local client, like as it just kind of a side hustle thing, I’m seeing what other people are charging and I’m like, wow. I could be charging a lot more. so I, I used to feel bad saying this, but now I don’t at all.
I charge $70 CPM for a, a primary ad, which has a picture and a lot of texts and it gets your logo at the top of the email. And then I charge $35 CPM for our, I call them the secondary ads. They’re just little text ads that have 50 to 60 words, and they’re a little bit further down to the bottom of the year.
But like I’m, I’m seeing other people who are charging $200 CPM for an email blast. And I’m like, this is not good. Like, cause I’m, so I’m working on, promoting a music festival right now and we need to sell a lot of tickets. So I’m like, well, we gotta pull all the levers. So I sponsored this newsletter blast.
It was basically $200 CPM to reach just over 4,000 people. And I look at my, you know, right now, I believe that we have gotten two ticket orders out of it so that, that’s not good.
Nathan: [00:20:57]
We’ll have to wait and see how that return on ad spend comes in,
Ryan: [00:21:01]
Yeah. If, if this, if this is directly attributable to it and the one earlier this morning, was it because one of them was a VIP order for the music festival. So if those are both from it, it looks like we make the money back, but like nobody wants to like a one X return on ad spend,
Nathan: [00:21:16]
Right. Yeah. That makes sense. It’s interesting. If people can charge kind of. Almost whatever on ad spend, you’ll see people just make up something and it’s like, look, if the market’s there and people are buying it then great. And if not, then obviously you need to change your pricing, change your offering, something like that.
Ryan: [00:21:35]
Yeah, it’s this like black magic that nobody really knows how to do. Like there’s no real formula. You’ll like Google it and you’ll see numbers and stuff, but like everybody’s charging different things. And it’s, I feel like the advertisers that I’m working with are a lot less sophisticated than I thought they would be.
Like when I advertise something I’m like, all right. Like I look at that blast and I’m like, I’m paying. $200 per thousand people. I’m going to reach, I’m going to reach 4,500 people or 4,000 people. Like I need to make X dollars back on that to consider it a success. And I’m like expecting all my advertisers to come in and be the same way.
But I’ve actually only had very few ever who looked at it and they were like, yeah, we think the math works for us here. Most of them were just like, oh yeah, well you have 5,000 your list. And I’m like, yes, but like not all of them are going to read it. And they’re like, no, we do have 5,000 people on the list.
That’s not the numbers. You need to care about 2,500 of them. We’re going to see it, not all 5,000. And they’re like, yeah, I don’t care how much it costs. And I’m like, okay, you guys. So we actually just took a provision out of the contract where I used to put it in like, Hey, this is based on this amount of impressions.
And if you don’t get it, you’ll get a refund.
And, I was like, nobody cares about this. So I just took it out and I was like I’m not gonna, if I. Yeah, punish myself for something that my advertisers don’t care about. If there’s happy with their ad spend and the return they get on it, even if it’s just from a brand building perspective, then who am I that say they can’t spend their money with me? Or should.
Nathan: [00:23:04]
Well, I think about the, some of the groups that have advertised in from Boise, you know, you get like the local chamber of commerce or like the, There’s a first Thursday, like series downtown. So it’s like a concert and, you know, vendors coming out and that kind of thing. And it’s beautiful promoting that.
And they’re like, look, we’re just trying to drive awareness for it. We’re not actually like, there’s no click back to a ticket sale or something like that. So they’re just like, just promote it. And, you know, in this case, like we only have a thousand people on our, on our local newsletter, but, you just not into dollar amounts.
Really register. And so they’re just like, yeah, a hundred bucks, 200 bucks, 500 bucks. I don’t know. It kind of rounds to the same number,
Ryan: [00:23:50]
And that’s the thing that I can understand, because I can’t afford to do that with, with my business. Now it’s like, if I’m spending. $450 on Facebook ads over these next two weeks. I need to know that I’m going to get 225 people out of that to read the emails, at least. And I don’t like I don’t have money to go in and put a banner up at our local golf tournament.
Like I need to, I’m like very, very, very much performance driven on advertising right now. And so I just expect that everybody who wants to advertise me is going to be feeling the same way. Cause I think they should be okay. They’re not. And so I have to get used to selling that. And really now I don’t so much because I’ve got somebody doing it for me, but that was definitely something I did not expect.
I was like, everyone else is going to be super concerned about what they’re getting out of this. And they aren’t, some of them are, but, but a
Nathan: [00:24:40]
Yeah. Yeah. I’m curious. Is there anything offline that you’ve done or like you mentioned the golf tournament, right. As something that you’re not doing right. Like for our newsletter, I thought about, should I be putting a business cards? Should I be, you know, like, are there things in person to try and get subscribers or is like, you know, Facebook and other social ads, the best way to go.
Ryan: [00:25:00]
I mean, I think those are the best way to go from a. Getting a lot of people on perspective, but from the quality of subscriber perspective and from building a community perspective, the in-person stuff is absolutely the best way. And I have, I’ve got business cards right here. I just like pretty basic on the front, put on the back.
They’ve got the QR code to sign up. So I hand out those basically I need somebody to go somewhere and meet people. I’m not just like handing them out, for the heck of it. Like, I’m not, I’m not like the guy on the streets. He was just like here. but if I meet somebody and they like ask what I’m doing, I’ll be like, yeah, here’s a, here’s a business card.
You can sign up on the back. And those people, they. They always tend to be, or not always, but they normally tend to be very good subscribers and those are the people that tend to respond to the newsletter. And then the source time they get it and they’re like, Hey, like, I’m so glad you did. Like, I really liked this great meeting you.
So that’s like the best way. I think that’s, you know, the classic story adage, like do things that don’t scale. I can’t get out there and get every person on the list. But when I do get the person on the list, cause they meet me and they liked me and they like, they get my business card. Then I think those people turn into really good subscribers.
Nathan: [00:26:23]
Yeah, that makes sense. What are some of the things that have been like really hard, a lot more challenging than you expected in getting this started? When you go from last August to now, you know, what was a lot harder than you expected?
Ryan: [00:26:35]
That’s a really good question. nothing pops out originally, like immediately, and that’s not just because nothing has been hard obviously, but. I guess I didn’t really go into this with that many expectations. Like I didn’t go into this expecting it to be super hard or super easy. I just kind of went into it, expecting to build the product that I wanted.
So yeah, nothing was really like that much harder than I thought. it’s just kind of all been hard, I guess. sometimes it is pretty hard to keep going. Right. We’re not the only one doing all the things and I have to be out at all the events and then come home that night and write the email every once in a while the thoughts creep in when it’s like, Hey, you know, you could just not send this email tomorrow.
Nobody would care. And you’re like, no people would care. Not maybe not that many, but like, I can’t do that. I’ve done 122 in a row now, and I’m not going to stop now. I’ve never missed one.
So I think that’s probably. I have never. And this maybe it’s just because I haven’t really done a lot of super hard things in my life, but I’ve never really done anything where I was like, besides maybe even playing sports in high school and you’re at like a hard practice or something where you’re like, I want to quit this regularly.
Like in college, I never thought about dropping out. Cause it was hard. I never dropped a class. I never like just stopped going to a class at my last job. I never. Just kind of quit on a project. I did quit the job to go do this, but like, that’s, that’s a little bit different, but this is something that I look at.
And then like a couple of times a month, I’m like, man, this is really hard. Like just as a general thing overall, like you could quit right now and your life would get a lot easier. and then I. Very important phrase to me. I write at the top of my list every day is don’t quit every day. cause I don’t need the reminder every day, some days I’m like I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.
And other days I’m like, I just want to go to bed right now. And it’s not like a, an unreasonable time to want to go to bed. It’s like 2:00 AM and I’m not done working yet. And it’s not like I’m just doing busy work. It’s like, no, I’m not done writing the, email yet. And that has to be out at 6:00 AM the next morning.
Those are the times when I’m like, I really want to go to bed. I could quit this. But I don’t let myself,
Nathan: [00:28:55]
Yeah.
I think that’s something that a lot of content creators can relate to of like you set this expectation and you’re meeting and consistently, and like, you know, whether it’s a weekly or three times a week email or anything like that. But then the, those moments come where you’re like, ah, I actually don’t like, maybe I want to have done it, but in this moment I don’t want to do it anymore.
Ryan: [00:29:16]
Yes. They’ve probably been less than that. I mean, honestly, probably less than five of those times. Like I’ve written 122 emails, probably only five. I’ve not wanted to send. And I have a secret for when that happens. I just put on, it was like a couple of songs that I really like, and I’ll just put them on repeat over and over again.
But these headphones on and turn them up real loud and just right into it.
Nathan: [00:29:38]
Yeah, that’s a, that’s an important skill to be able to, you know, force yourself to power through and finish the task.
Ryan: [00:29:45]
Yeah. I mean, if you don’t quit every day, you’re going to get where you want to go. I guarantee it.
Nathan: [00:29:50]
I have create every day as like, it’s been like a slogan or a mantra for a long time, but I also like just don’t quit every day. That’s awesome.
Ryan: [00:29:59]
It’s kinda just like show up, but I don’t. Like saying show up every day. Doesn’t really imply. It doesn’t really like inspire me in the same way. Cause when I think about showing up, I’m like, well, you can just show up and kind of like go through the motions and like just be there.
But like don’t quit every day makes it sound like you’re really pushing every single day and don’t
Nathan: [00:30:22]
Right.
Ryan: [00:30:23]
That.
And I promise if you don’t do that, you don’t quit every day. You’ll get what you want might take a long time, but you will get it just by the definition of the word quit. If you don’t do that.
Nathan: [00:30:33]
Yeah, that, I don’t know. I never thought of that before, but how show up is like, you know, put in some effort, I guess, but really that when you say don’t quit, it
Ryan: [00:30:44]
Show up, doesn’t inspire the same confidence.
Nathan: [00:30:46]
Yeah. Cause it’s like, you’re really putting in effort if you’re actually thinking about quitting.
Ryan: [00:30:52]
I’ve never actually until really this year.
Getting a tattoo of anything. But if I ever were to get a tattoo, I’d want to get don’t quit. Every day I write on my forum there, like it’s, you know, Casey Neistat and how he’s got the do more tattoos right there. I always saw that. And I was like, that’s a really cool tattoo, but I can’t just copy his, what would I put if no, I’d get don’t quit every day. I think there’s enough room.
Nathan: [00:31:16]
Yeah,
Ryan: [00:31:18]
I that’s like the only thing I’d ever thought about, maybe getting tattooed on myself. I don’t know if I’ll ever do it also because tattoos are just expensive, but also like, I feel like that’s pretty sensitive area and tattoos hurt a lot, so there’s no reason to do it. I can write at the top of my, to list every day and it’s just fine.
Nathan: [00:31:31]
That’ll that’ll work.
Yeah. So as we’re talking about like this, this journey of a local newsletter and everything, one, we’re not overly glorifying it, which is good. Cause I’d hate for us to come in and say like, everything’s amazing. And then someone starts and they’re like Ryan and Nathan, you didn’t tell me how hard this is.
So at least we’re saying how hard it is, but I’m curious. So someone’s starting from scratch, or if we want to use like my newsletters, this specific example at like one fifth, the size of yours, what’s some of the advice that you would give, maybe we’ll go first, starting from scratch. And then second, like baby traction.
Ryan: [00:32:05]
Starting from scratch. I’d say like, just do it. I did not know if anybody was going to care about my newsletter. I was like, I’m just going to write this. I’m going to get it out in front of people and I’m going to start writing it. Everyone, I think likes to build up the. the. process where it’s like, I have to have it all figured out before I start doing it.
Now, just do it. I look back at the first newsletters that I sent and I laugh and how bad the writing is and how bad email template looked.
Nathan: [00:32:32]
Yeah.
Ryan: [00:32:33]
Everything looked. And I think if you don’t look back at your work a couple months later and laugh at it, then you’re not improving fast enough. Like you should look at it and be embarrassed because then you’d look at your current work and you’re like, this is much better than that.
And then hopefully the same thing happens again in six months. So just get started. You’re not going to be perfect right away, no matter how much you prepare. and you’re just going to get behind by not starting. So first advice would just be to get started. second advice would be don’t quit every day. But then also third advice. And this is really for any, this is not specific to a local newsletter. I would say this to any newsletter, any brand anyone ever, is just be responding. That’s a great thing about an email newsletter is that people can answer it. I can reply to an email because it’s just a regular email answer.
Every single one of those, even if it’s like somebody saying that they hate you and they hope that you get dropped your ice cream cone the next time reading it, respond to that and just say, Hey, thanks for taking the time to respond. Like, sorry you feel that way about the newsletter. I always respond.
That is the biggest, most common. Not a compliment, but comment I get on the newsletter is like someone will respond with a clarifying question about a story I wrote and I’ll answer within a reasonable time, like a couple of hours sometimes within an hour, always within 24 hours. And they’re like, almost always the responses unless they’ve responded before.
Wow. I didn’t expect you to answer. And it’s like, wow, that’s the baseline. That’s the hard to beat at all. Because most brands they don’t answer. And so if you do. It’s really not hard to set yourself apart because the expectation is that you won’t, so you don’t even really have to answer the question fully.
I get. And I’m like, I’m a huge, I don’t know if I’d say perfectionist, but like, I have a very strong idea of like how I want to do things. Yeah. How I want to deliver results. So some have responded to actually a meme. I posted the other day making fun of how, like, none of the restaurants have employees right now, and they’re all hiring and this person responded to it and was like, Hey, like, do you know any restaurants that are hiring?
I actually like, I’m really looking for a job. And so in my mind, I’m like, yeah, I’m going to get your list of every single restaurant in town that’s hiring. And then that’s hard, right? Like that’s a lot of work. So I.
Reaching out to a couple of friends of mine who own restaurants or work for restaurants like higher level positions, like Izzy restaurant hiring, et cetera.
I think I said our list of like eight restaurants that are hiring. And, there are our tourism board has a list of restaurant jobs, which is pretty cool thing they do. And I sent her this and I’m like, This is not good enough. Like if I’m grading my performance here, I’m giving this a C minus, like this is a passing grade, but just barely.
And then she responded and she was like, oh my gosh. So thankful that you did this, like, I didn’t even expect you to answer. This means the world to me. And I’m like, okay. So for her, like, this was an, a plus, but for me it was a C minus. So it’s like, you don’t need the bars, the high, just answer it.
Like I said, you don’t even have to fully answer it the way that you think it should be.
Just answer your fans or your readers or whatever they are. And, like I said, the bar is not answering. So just by answering you’re way above it,
Nathan: [00:35:49]
Right.
Ryan: [00:35:49]
That’s probably like, most are probably my top three tips I’d give to anybody. It’s funny because none of them are really actually related to writing news.
Nathan: [00:35:57]
I think that’s how life as a creator goes. Like, it’s all about the other things than the actual, like the exact work that we do every day.
Ryan: [00:36:05]
Yeah.
I mean, I definitely have like tactical tips of how you read a newsletter too. Like proofread it out loud, like reading the words out loud. That’s a great way to catch typos. but I think that’s less important than just first of all, starting second of all, not quitting and third talking to your people because that’s how you build up. Like I fully believe that if a competitor came in with more money and more people and they try to do exactly what I’m doing, and that was the difference, they didn’t do that. Sure. They might get any new readers, like anybody who has never heard of me, that they somehow reached with advertising or just reached first.
They’re probably going to go to that new guy. That’s great for them. But I mentioned that very few of my people would actually jump ship and go. Because they know that when it’s eight o’clock on a Friday night, and I don’t know how you scale this up. Cause I don’t know if I can expect employees to do this same thing, but like when it’s eight o’clock on a Friday night and you messaged the Instagram account and say, why is my favorite pizza place closed?
And I answer, cause I happened to see the Instagram posts from the pizza place about how they’re up and broke and then there’ll be open the next day. Like you get an answer then, but, and so you’re not going to leave that brand for someone doing the same thing. It’s not going to answer you. It’s just, I mean, it’s the best. To build up loyalty. And it’s not just fake, like by doing that, like forcing yourself to pretend to care about the people and I actually care. But if you did pretend to care and you still did that, I think you’d find it really hard. Not to actually care after a few weeks of trying that out.
Nathan: [00:37:33]
Yeah. I think you’re right. I’m curious more about the journey, say from a thousand subscribers to 5,000 and I can ask totally selfishly as, as a, you know, I’m casually working on the same thing. what are some of the things that worked in, in that? Was there anything different or was it just more of keep doing more of the same and just give it time?
Ryan: [00:37:55]
A little bit more of the same. it was, you know, refined techniques on Facebook ads and the creative use there. So like in the beginning I was just doing stock photos. Then they started to perform really poorly, even when I would make new ones. And I was like, oh, what’s going on here? And so I started get some feedback from some people in the town that were like, everybody knows that person doesn’t live here.
Everybody knows that picture. Wasn’t taken. Like try something that’s a little bit more authentic. And I was like, okay. So I did now I do. And this works really well. I just walk around the downtown area and talking to my phone, selfie style and film, these little punchy, quick little ads telling people to sign up for this thing.
And they knock it out of the park. Those things crush. I can get my cost of acquisition down below a dollar again. So refined techniques like that, just kind of getting better at Facebook ads. I’m getting better at Instagram. Like. What people like and what they don’t like. Like I used to post some stuff that just, it was useful information.
It was like I’m posting the live music schedule from the newsletter on the Instagram. And it’s useful. That’s, that’s a lot of people’s favorite part of the newsletter, but on Instagram it just performs horribly. And so it was learning like, okay, don’t do that. Even though that’s useful, don’t put that there.
And then trying other things. I didn’t do memes for awhile. And then I started doing meetings and I like started getting a ton of engagement on my Instagram. And I was like, okay, names are good. You know, I think Elon Musk said, maybe this is something just randomly attributed to him, but like he who controls the beams controls the universe and it’s just like such a good way to communicate right now.
So I started doing that in the engagement shot through the roof, and then I was like, there’s this. Just other newsletter that does exactly what we’re doing called hate Kingston for Kingston, New York. And, at the beginning, they actually copied me so bad that if you would respond to their welcome email, it would email me.
And we’re friends now it’s, we’re we’re friends and it’s all good. I told them like, Hey, I copied everything I’ve ever done. So like, I’m not mad about this. You just need to fix this because your people are trying to email you and they’re talking to me and, and, and they intended to talk to you, but they do these, they started doing these great local focus meetings.
So it was like, Yeah, all the regular meetings that you see, but with a local twist and I started seeing them, I’m like, this is incredible. The guy’s name is Chris, who does it? I was like, I love this Chris. And he was like, well, just feel free to steal any of them. So I started like using some of their templates and then kind of making my own things.
And once I started doing local means versus like just general memes, my, and I only do it on stories because I’ve learned the hard way that they do not do well on the feed for me. Cause that’s not what people are used to. but once I started putting those on my stories, So the engagement had already been up a ton because of regular means, but month over month, it went up 500% the the local ones were just so much more sticky and it’s so much better.
So things like that, it is
Nathan: [00:40:42]
There an example of a local meme that, that comes to mind that did really well?
Ryan: [00:40:46]
The best one ever. you know, so I didn’t even really know this until I started looking at the insights. Cause I really don’t know much about what I’m doing. I just figured out, I was like, oh,
Nathan: [00:40:55]
St. John.
Ryan: [00:40:55]
I didn’t even know you could share Instagrams. It’s a little bit harder than a post. Like, you know, how the procedures click the, a paper airplane, send it with a story.
It’s not as intuitive. It’s like the three dots I think. And then you click share. So I didn’t even know you could share Instagram story, but I started seeing some of these memes get shared. And then there’s this one in particular that got shared. I think it was 130 times, which is my next, most popular one has been shared like 20 times.
So this one just was incredible and it was, I, I, I don’t know anything about wrestling, but I think it was like a WWE match. This one guy is slamming this other guy to the ground. And I just overlayed the words on the guy getting slammed to the ground. It’s us trying to have a good time downtown and the slammer, I put the word tourists, because in the summer, Annapolis just gets overrun by tourists.
It’s, it’s incredible. We need it because it’s good for the economy, but it also is just one of those things that, you know, you can always make fun of and people who live right. Will love it because there’s find it so annoying. So like, I, I now know what I can make fun of with the memes just because I know what people like, what grinds people’s gears, like make fun of parking downtown, make fun of the tourists, make fun of like the rich people that drive their boats down.
This thing, we call it ego alley. it’s just like certain things always perform well.
And that’s kind
Nathan: [00:42:15]
Right.
Ryan: [00:42:16]
Learn doing it over and over.
Nathan: [00:42:18]
Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. Cause there is that, that sort of thing. And what was interesting to me about it is that means, yeah, not something that I’ve used at all to grow an audience. So I feel like I’m, you know, as I see, on Twitter or what you’re talking about or everything else using that so effectively to grow an audience and spread ideas, I’m like taking notes.
Cause I’m like, it’s not really my style, but at the same time, like I would, you know, the Boise equivalent of those names, I would die laughing, you know?
Ryan: [00:42:45]
But it wasn’t my style either. And that’s the thing is people are always like, are you just like super passionate about journalism and all this stuff? And I’m like, no, I just think this can be a great business. I just like figure out what I need to figure out. So I saw all these other people doing funny memes and I’ve never been good at internet funniness.
Like I’ve been on Reddit for years, but like, Always posted stuff that I thought was hilarious and nobody else did like did awfully on Reddit. and so I was like, I would see, I saw this, Hey, Kingston guy posting stuff. And I’m like, well, I’m not funny like that though. And yeah, I’m not, or I wasn’t. And I say, now I am, because I just started doing it.
I wasn’t funny in the beginning. And then I started to get a little bit better and it’s like realizing what people like and, you know, seeing the music Chris is making and kind of adapting them to be like, maybe I think of it and I’m inspired by it. It’s not the exact same meme, but like, it reminds me of a thing here that I can make fun of in a similar way.
And so I just did it and got better. And I wasn’t good when I first started. And that’s, I mean, this is the thing that everybody needs to know about just about life is that most things you’re not going to be good at when you first started. I, I had this, my friends in college used to always say, like, I was good at everything I did.
And it used to drive me nuts. Cause I knew it wasn’t true. I was like, no, I’m not. And then I started looking at it and I was like, yes I am. But that’s only because I only do the things I’m good at. So like, yeah, I’ll go. But you want to play ultimate Frisbee. I’ll go. You invite me out to play soccer. I’m not.
And so I only do things I’m good at, so yeah, you do think I’m good at everything. And the first thing that got me out of that comfort zone was rock climbing because I love Heights. I’m like the exact opposite of the fear of Heights. I love standing on top of a thousand foot cliff and looking down it’s, it’s, a weird thing.
It’s maybe a problem. I don’t know, but I always wanted to like rock climbing. I’ve never had done it. I just thought I would love it. And we had a wall in our school. And so I just started doing it and nobody’s good at rock climbing when they first start, because it’s really hard, never use the muscles like that.
It’s just really tough and different. And I was like, no, I want to be good at this because I know I’m going to love it. And so that was really the first thing I ever did where I pushed through being super bad at it.
And then actually got quite good at it. And haven’t done it in a year now because living where I’m living and I probably lost all those skills, but like, that was really what taught me.
You’re going to suck when you first. And then just over time, you suck less and less.
And so I’m super thankful for rock climbing one, because it’s really fun. But two, because I do think it’s part of why I am who I am today
Nathan: [00:45:23]
Yeah,
Ryan: [00:45:24]
Because I don’t mind being terrible at something now. I think it’s funny.
Nathan: [00:45:27]
Well, and then you’d be terrible at it for long enough and you get good at it. Just don’t quit.
Ryan: [00:45:32]
Yeah. Just don’t quit every day. You’re going to get good at it.
You’re going to get what you.
Nathan: [00:45:36]
So you started, like you got into the local newsletter idea that you’re going to start at in other places and that didn’t work. And now, so you started it in your hometown. What, like where do you go from here? Are you now, like, now that you’ve got traction, they use that going back out and saying like, let’s start it in other cities or are you just looking to scale this one?
What’s the path.
Ryan: [00:45:57]
No. I want a, what I always tell people is I want a hundred days. And, you know, in the next 10 years, I want to own a hundred of these cities, which is kind of crazy. It’s huge. It’s a big number, whatever people would say, it’s impossible. I don’t believe them. the, the only problem that I have is the resources like w obviously I can’t go write a hundred newsletters a day, and I don’t have the money to pay people and I don’t have the money to grow them.
So I’m looking to get that somehow, whether that’s through creative, New ways to monetize this one to get bigger than it should be with just advertising or bringing on partners or investors. I never liked the idea of going out and raising money, but I realized now that like, yeah, that’s pretty much the only way to get where I want to go in 10 years.
Otherwise it’s probably going to take 40 or 50 and, I just don’t. I love this and I absolutely love it. I’m willing to work super hard at it, but like, I don’t really want to work on this super hard for the next 40, 50 years. I don’t, I don’t see that being sustainable. Like I am exhausted the last 10 months.
I can’t like you couldn’t do this for 40 years, 50 years. You, you would, you would die. You’d have no friends. Like it just, it’s not sustainable. I’ve heard a great quote. I think it was Jason. Calacanis saying like a startup is compressing your work life or your working career. As few years as possible by working as hard as possible.
And that’s, I’m definitely not afraid to tell people. It’s like, that’s what I’m trying to do here. I want to be able to be done with this in like 10 years, if I want to be, if I don’t want to be, I can keep going, but I want the option to be like, no, in 10 years, I’m good on money and I don’t have to do this.
So I don’t want to cause I’m just going to be so tired.
Nathan: [00:47:43]
I
Ryan: [00:47:44]
You get that. You’re building a company in the same way.
Nathan: [00:47:47]
I feel it deeply more so than I believe I feel it deeply. So as we look to, or as you look to expanding into another city, how would you go about that as the first step to, to hire a writer there, find some local what’s the process.
Ryan: [00:48:02]
The first step would probably be to hire somebody to write in Annapolis and to do what I’m doing so that I could then spend more time. Focusing on somebody and ideally, you know, if the money’s there, it’d be great to hire somebody for an Apolis at the same time as the second city, because then you could train them at the same time.
I’m like, just train them how to do what we need to do. And then we can set the person in Indianapolis loose and then go to the next city. And I can spend a little bit more time getting that one. Rolling. so ideally, yeah, the first people that hire a writers, I think, that’s kinda like, I don’t mind I can handle doing the growth stuff and I can, I can do that.
That’s fine, but the writers are really, I mean, that was a key piece of it. That’s like it doesn’t happen without the writers. They are the most important part of it. And that’s like the priority as far as getting the money. We’ll see what happens. There’s I have a actually pretty large meeting about that on Thursday.
So we’ll see how that goes.
Nathan: [00:49:02]
Fingers crossed.
Ryan: [00:49:03]
Yes, fingers very much crossed because I’ve had several people reach out, approach me and say, you know, we’d like to get on board with what you’re doing here. And, none of them I’ve been excited about until this one. So we’d love nothing more than to announce in the next couple of months that I have a really cool new partner and, and, and everybody will know who they are because they are a big.
So I would love to do that, but we’ll see if that works out fingers crossed prayers. If you believe in that, I don’t know what you believe, but I’m definitely praying for that.
And, yeah, I’ve really, I used to be like, no, I’m just going to bootstrap it. I’m going to go all the way. I’m going to bootstrap it.
But now I’m like, no, to get it where you want to go, you need money. And actually getting outside money is not evil. You can still do what
Nathan: [00:49:47]
Right.
Ryan: [00:49:48]
As long as you get the right money, then you can, you can do what you want.
Nathan: [00:49:52]
Yeah. That makes sense. Thinking about number of subscribers and like the thing with a local newsletter that you always run into is that it does have a fixed, fixed reach to it. Write of, you’re trying to reach a specific population. Where do you think, like maybe first what’s your goal for the end of this year for number of subscribers and then where do you think it starts to cap out where you’re like, okay, maybe I’ve got actually everyone who wants.
To follow this. And if I could get to this number, then I feel like I had market saturation.
Ryan: [00:50:26]
Goal for this year is 12,000, which is just about done. Now, it was 25,000 and I was like, that’s stupid. You’re not going to get that. and I very much am an optimist and don’t believe in telling yourself what you can’t do, but I was like, no, you need to be realistic. And if you make 25,000 your goal, just with the money that you have to spend on acquiring customers, like, you’re just going to feel like you failed this year.
So make a more realistic goal and even getting 12,000. Yeah. So it’s kind of on track for that. It should, if it was going to do that though, it should have been at 6,000, like the 1st of June. but we’re not, not quite there yet, so, but, but it has been like starting to hit that exponential curve.
So like, I think that the rate of growth will increase because of organic growth and the search stuff is starting to pay off And the social keeps getting bigger.
So I think though that probably 40,000 is like the top, top, top. You’re not going to get anyone more. 40,000 of those 200,000 that could read it. That would be pretty insane. Market penetration.
Nathan: [00:51:29]
One thing that, add Sam part from the hustle on, we spent a little bit of time in his episode talking about local newsletters and that kind of thing. And one thing that, he said that was interest. Cause I was framing it as a total market size of being like everyone who lives in Boise or the Boise area.
And he’s like, no, no, no. It’s everyone who has lived in Boise is thinking about living in voice. Boise has family in Boise, or is like, you know, has ever lived in Boise, right. It’s people who have ties that he brought up that, you know, the city that he grew up and he’s like, I haven’t been back in years, like for any meaningful amount of.
But I still like, oh, I know that neighborhood. And I see it in the news. Right. Like I still pay attention to that. And I thought that was interesting that actually the, like the market size could be quite a bit bigger than we think we’ll see how it actually plays out.
Ryan: [00:52:18]
Yeah, I think that’s a definite thing to be aware of. I, I know Sam and I know that Sam. Likes to talk. And so he will say things like that and just be super confident in it. And he will make you believe that as you can run through a brick wall, cause he’s really good at talking.
I think that is less of a factor. He would probably have led you to believe there. That’s definitely true. I have people that have, they tell me, they reach out and they’re like, Hey, my, I read this. Cause my son’s at the Naval academy or I read this cause I used to live here and I moved away or I read this cause I have a second house here and I spent half the year here or 25% of the year here that does happen.
But I don’t think that’s going to swell the, the list size from like, oh yeah, it could be 40,000. If you really get your penetration to be like, no, it could be 80,000. I think that’s more going to be. You know, you could get 40,000 Macs in the area and maybe on top of that, you could get another 10%. And that would be like pretty intense because the thing is, you’re not searching those people out.
You’re not going out and advertising for that. You’re all you’re relying on. There is people to move away and keep reading or to send it to friends who used to live there, send it to family. That’s really what you’re relying on. And I just don’t think that’s going to grow as fast. Cause you’re not trying to do that.
And you can encourage that, but when you encourage something, how much are your subscribers really going to do it? I always write a different encouragement at the very bottom of email every day to share it with somebody new, I have written 122 emails. I’ve written 122 different things. So it’s been like, share it with your plumber, share with your electrician, share it with someone today who was a state championship athlete. Last week. I had one who was like, share with the person you’re going to call it a zombie apocalypse. So you could definitely do something like that where it’s like, Hey, share this with someone who used to live here. And actually I probably will do
Nathan: [00:54:10]
Right.
Ryan: [00:54:10]
Cause I’m running out of ideas. I don’t think it’s going to be as big of a factor as we think,
Nathan: [00:54:15]
Yeah. No, that makes sense. It would be a 10, 20% lift on the total that you could reach. I think I thought of it because, right. Yeah. I thought of it because. Of the number of people like you do a filter and you know, I’m using ConvertKit for my newsletter. Of course, it’d be weird if I use anything else, but, you know, you do a filter down by location and see like, oh, 80% or 60% of whatever of our subscribers are in the Boise area.
But then I’m like, what are the rest of these subscribers doing? You know? And, and some of them are friends and other people, but as I talked to more of them, I realized like, oh, you’re thinking about moving here or you used to live here or something else.
Ryan: [00:54:54]
Yeah.
Nathan: [00:54:55]
You know, we always wonder, cause Boise has this huge influx of population.
If like advertising, like the realtor or Facebook groups or something like that would like somehow targeting the people who are moving here. It would be interesting.
Ryan: [00:55:06]
When you do it long enough, and you have like a big enough audience, you start to see patterns and, and how things happen. One of my very common emails I get is either a response to the welcome email, or usually a response to, I send an email a week after you joined and just say, “what do you think? How’s it going?”
A very common, probably the most common response I get to that is, “We just moved here. This is the best resource.” And, so I definitely think that, and that is why I have put a lot of effort into becoming friends with the realtors in the area so that when they do sell houses to people who are moving here, they’re either talking about it on their stories on Instagram or their posts, or they just tell them maybe like, Hey, you know, you should sign up for this thing.
I could probably start working some connections that I have with people who are giving their clients gifts and is like, Hey, you’re giving your people a Yeti mug, get clothes, like my business card. And, you know, I’m going to be interacting with you on Instagram and we’re friends and we’re pals. So like, you know, I scratch your back when you need it. You scratch mine here.
Getting in with the realtors was one thing that I focused my efforts on very heavily, very early, and it has paid off and has the potential to pay off further. So that is a great idea.
Nathan: [00:56:22]
I like it. Well, I’ll have to spend more time with realtors if I’m going to keep growing, or as I keep growing From Boise, because we need to do the same.
Ryan: [00:56:30]
It’s not hard. I mean, just get them on Instagram, follow them, comment on all their posts or respond to their stories. Like that’s, it’s it’s not hard. It’s just a lot of consistency. It’s just showing up. It’s just not quitting everything.
Nathan: [00:56:46]
That’s right.
Ryan: [00:56:47]
Is a little bit about showing up on Instagram, though. I just get in front of everybody. Like, I like every post that I can find and comment, if I can think of something witty, just because I don’t want you to be able to go on Instagram and see like a business in Annapolis and not see, oh, like Naptown Scoop commented, and then you’ll see it 30 more times.
And you’re like, who is this?
Nathan: [00:57:06]
Yeah. I mean, it definitely works. And then the businesses are paying attention. And then maybe they’ll do a sponsorship thing with you? or co-marketing in some way or whatever.
Ryan: [00:57:14]
Yes. It’s nothing that I do is, unintentional. Whenever I do something where I like doesn’t work out the way that I thought it could, or I can’t see the benefit, I’m like, ah, it was a waste of time.
Nathan: [00:57:24]
Yeah.
Ryan: [00:57:24]
And I don’t have time to waste.
Nathan: [00:57:25]
Well, thanks for sharing the details behind it. I’m curious to hear how it develops over the next couple of years, and where should people go to sign up for the newsletter or follow you? Any of that stuff?
Ryan: [00:57:36]
Yeah. If you want to sign up for the newsletter it’s a great way to learn about what’s happening in Annapolis. Even if you’re not there you go to NaptownScoop.com. I’m on Twitter is the only place I’m really on. I have a Facebook, but that’s only just to manage my ad account. I never post anything on it.
So Twitter is where I’m at, handle: @sneddymobbin. But, this last two weeks has been, like I said, full on. I have not been put much on Twitter, but I try to, and I follow my own advice. If you answer or DM me on Twitter, I promise you I will answer unless you’re a spammer. I answer everything.
Nathan: [00:58:12]
Sounds good. Well, thanks so much for joining me and I’ll catch you later.
Ryan: [00:58:14]
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Nathan.
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