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Derek Carlson runs Bend Buzz, a 3x weekly newsletter about Bend, Oregon (pop. 108,000).

He recently shared that it took him 13 months to start earning more than $10K/month from the newsletter 😎

Breakdown is 80% direct ads. 10% other (job board, premium memberships, etc), 10% social media deals. 

Expenses around 20% for ads, tech, and a freelance writer…

14k subs. I have two ad spots per newsletter and charge anywhere from $300 – $500 per ad, depending on the client. 

He says he barely does any outreach for advertisers; they all come to him 🔥

Regarding the job board…

Grabbed a free WordPress plugin that I added to my website… Folks can post jobs for $25 and I include them in the newsletter every Wednesday.

📈 Derek apparently ran ads to grow fast…

I just hit 10k subs in my local newsletter and about 1/3 of those have been organic… if you can’t invest in ads you’re gonna have a really hard time growing the newsletter to a point where it’s worth the time and effort.

For organic growth, posting in the r/Bend subreddit (example) worked well…

I was lucky that my subreddit and mods were very receptive to the posts.

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