Ep. 81: Building a $500k+ local newsletter business ft. Geoff Sharpe

**Geoff Sharpe** (0:00)
The ability to get something and launch something is quite easy, and so the barriers are extremely low. You know, setting up, you know, a newsletter is quite easy, right?

**Francis Zierer** (0:07)
You, I believe, make around $500,000, like half a million approximately this year. How do you make that work?

**Geoff Sharpe** (0:13)
The quality of the journalism is what drives people to become members. Journalism is not necessarily that complicated. It's like produce really good journalism.

**Francis Zierer** (0:21)
I wrote down something you said. You actually don't want to listen to your audience as much as some of these people say that you do.

**Geoff Sharpe** (0:27)
What people are willing to pay for is very different from what they're willing to sort of say that they want. The job of journalists is to spark curiosity and interest in people, bring them towards things that they might not necessarily even know that they're interested in.

**Francis Zierer** (0:41)
What have you found really does not work? Like what have the failure has been in trying to convert people to paid subscriptions?

**Geoff Sharpe** (0:47)
It is tough.

**Francis Zierer** (0:51)
Welcome back to The Creator Spotlight Podcast. My name is Francis Zierer, and today we are speaking with Geoff Sharpe, the founder of Lookout Media, a local news company up in Canada. He has four newsletters across Ottawa, Vancouver, and the Yukon. What's special about this one compared to some of the other local media entrepreneur types I've had on here, is he monetizes primarily through paid subscriptions, about 75 percent mixed paid subscriptions and advertising. He also focuses on our news, on journalism, as reporters, on staff, whereas a bunch of the other people I've spoken to in this new local media entrepreneur space are primarily monetizing through advertising and running newsletters that are largely based on local event aggregation, which Geoff does too, but also with a lot more original reporting. This is a really good conversation. I hope you enjoy.
You currently have four total newsletters under your business. The Ottawa Lookout, Capital Eats, Van City Lookout, and Yukon Lookout. And I understand that you're on a rate of maybe $500,000 approximately, half a million approximately this year.

**Geoff Sharpe** (1:56)
Getting close, I would say, yeah. That would be like the stretch goal. But yeah.

**Francis Zierer** (2:01)
Yeah. And so you're four years in, I think, November was when you first launched. Tell me, you've got four now. Has it been like just one every year? What's the order it's been of launching these?

**Geoff Sharpe** (2:13)
We started in the city called Ottawa in Canada, and then moved over to Vancouver, and then did one up and doing one up in Yukon. The way it worked has been like every two years, I guess you could say. But I think we're trying to move into more of a one-year thing based on how things are going. But we'll see. But it has changed a little bit too, in terms of what we're looking for and how we're doing it, which I'm sure we'll get into. But yeah, that's been the timeline.

**Francis Zierer** (2:42)
Yeah. Okay. Long time listeners will have listened to my episodes with Ryan Sneddon, Michael Kaufman, Landon Hueslig in that order.
These guys are really talented local media, local newsletter entrepreneurs. But part of why I've been looking forward to speaking with you is, from everything you've told me about how your business operates, it's a little different. These guys are doing largely event segregation and advertisers supported. These are free products. There's no subscription. You, I believe, make around 75 percent of the revenue comes from paid subscriptions, 25 percent is from ads. So it's a very different business. You're also more trafficking in actual news, in hard news. You do do the event aggregation, but it's a lot more than that, correct?

**Geoff Sharpe** (3:25)
Yeah, you summed it up really nicely.

**Francis Zierer** (3:27)
That's my job. Okay, how do you make that work? Like if I've talked to all these people who have this really solid model and I haven't really, I mean, I've spoken to some people who do more like actual reporting and producing original information. I'm thinking of this one person in particular. I'm Breanna Lee, who I spoke to last summer and she runs this grant funded journalism project in New Jersey. There are paid subscriptions, but they monetize through grants. And so my basic understanding is that it is relatively easy to not, I mean, let's not say it's the simplest thing, but it's relatively easy to spin up a events aggregation, advertiser supported local media company than it is to do what you're doing, which is more reporting based and more subscription based. What makes it work? Which is a big question, but we'll go out from there.