👻 (Update) 100 Days Into Running A Local Newsletter

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If you’re new here, we turn $1 into thousands building these weird but simple side hustles. Welcome to Ghost Business 👻 Your (mostly) weekly email

TLDR;

• Goal is to get to 28,000 subs in 1 year

• Currently at 2,500 subscribers

• Started July 1st 2025

• Target $10k/mo

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 🚨 this is that ad to click… remember?? 👆🙏 🙌 

Okay, here’s the 100 day update to starting a neighborhood newsletter. I posted about starting it here in early July and outlined my plan.

I created kidfriendlyseattle.com and the Instagram handle @kidfriendlyseattle

Here’s how it’s going, the good, the bad and the ghostie 👇

The Good

The growth has been insane so far:

• ~2500 subscribers

• ~800 followers on Instagram

all that in just 100 days!

I’ve built the newsletter on Beehiiv (highly recommend if you want to do a newsletter)

Open rates and CTR (click through rates) are well above industry standard, which signals strong product market fit.

• Standard Open Rate: 50% (Mine: 60%)

• Standard CTR: 5% (Mine: 10%) 🔥 

Also I was able to land 2 sponsors outside of the Beehiiv network making $168.

Within the beehiiv network, I have 2 revenue streams:

• Boosts (aka Referrals): $143

• Ad network: $27

Total: $338 in revenue in 100 days

p.s if you click on the beehiiv link you get a 30-day trial + 20% OFF for 3 months 🤯 

The bad

Running ads is pricey. I’ve spent $2,621 on Meta ads bringing new subscribers and followers into the Kid Friendly universe.

Currently at a net negative: -$2,283 ouch. But not bad if you consider it being an investment. A little over my $1 promise at the beginning of the email 😢 

The ghostie?

What this all comes down to is a sponsorship game. 

Writing the weekly newsletter takes about an hour a week and is very enjoyable. But most of the time spent is emailing, messaging, and calling potential sponsors to get this thing cash flowing.

🚨 (if you know a Seattle kid friendly sponsor, reply here and hit me up PLEASE)

So I signed a deal with a firm to land sponsorships for me.

They get 30% of the cheese for every deal they land and I don’t have to do anything… Other than copy and paste it into the newsletter.

I can still land my own sponsorships but this seemed like a risk free way to get the ball rolling on the most important but my least favorite part about the business.

I’ve reached out to other neighborhood newsletters who are at ~15,000 subscribers and bringing in $10k a month so the path is there, it took them about a year.

Just have to stick to it 💪 

Viability:

1 [building spaceships] 🚀 to 5 [easy peasy] 😊 

It’s tough. This is easy to grow, takes a little cash but requires time and a solid sales muscle. If you get started keep that in mind, I’ll update you guys again when I’m making $1k/mo

(As usual each business will have it’s own setbacks, and it’s all about the execution and consistency rather than just having the idea)

It’s a great day to be great!

Love, Mike 👋