Should a new local media brand start with a website or a newsletter?

Starting over right now, I would not do a newsletter first. I'd do the website and social, then add a newsletter later. That's a reversal for me, and I want to be upfront about it.

"I would actually tell you the newsletter should be the last thing that you do, okay? You should start with the website and social media at the same time, and then newsletter comes later."

What did I used to say?

In April 2025 I agreed with the "new model": start with the newsletter. It's the acquisition channel and how you get the brand going. The old model, from the early 2010s, was website first. A long-running operator I talked to did it website first and was slowly adding a newsletter, and I was honestly torn. I knew someone running a lighter model like his who was crushing it while working way less than us.

Through most of 2025 my advice to new operators was:

• Send weekly and focus on the newsletter itself.
• Skip the full website at first. It's too much work. Build one once you have traction, around 6,000 to 10,000 subscribers, or roughly three to six months in.
• Treat the website like going to two sends a week. You do it when you're already having success. Of the people I was coaching then, only one had a website, because it's a level-two step.
• Don't do everything at once. Come in gung-ho on every channel and you'll burn out before you figure it out.

Why did I switch to website first?

After two years of newsletters only, I still had newsletters all over the country that weren't really making money. Part of that is nobody was selling. The other part: business owners don't understand newsletters. They understand directories, and they understand websites.

"A newsletter is limited on space; a website is not."

• Unlimited inventory. A newsletter has two or three ad slots at most, so a $49 ad is pointless. A site can feature anyone, so a $47 or $49 listing works at any size.
• A public number. You might have 5,000 or 10,000 subscribers who love you, but in a town of 100,000 or 200,000, nobody else knows you exist. A site is visible to everyone.
• It looks official. A newsletter is intangible. When someone Googles you and lands on a bare signup page, it doesn't feel real. A full site, with the podcast featured on it, shows you're serious and clearly not an AI-only operation.
• Search. A newsletter will never show up in Google News, because you're not writing actual articles. Full articles on a site can.
• More ways to get paid. An operator in the Waco area got a $1,500-a-month sponsor just for a logo and job listings on his job board.
• Wider coverage. One operator's newsletter covers four small cities while his site is set to cover 40 cities and about 4 million people. That's the area he'll be selling when he networks.

If you already run a newsletter where you live, keep doing it. Being seen as a super connector in your community has a lot of value. This is about what I'd launch first.

What goes on the website?

My current model combines three things on one local site:

1. An automated event calendar, which replaces tools businesses pay about $100 to $200 a month for.
2. A job board.
3. A business directory where every business gets a page, linked from articles about them.

Free submissions through a form lower the friction for businesses to get on it. Media companies usually start random directories as separate things. Put them together and make them good.

How do the newsletter and website work together?

The newsletter gives two or three sentences on a story or restaurant, then a "read more" button. That goes to a longer article on the site, which links out to the business's website, address and Instagram. To keep people subscribing, my plan is a preview that shows the first couple of paragraphs and asks for an email to read the rest. No payment, just the email.

It's a lot more work. Each item means a full article, a post, formatting and a thumbnail, at least about 15 minutes. It won't pay off short term. I do it for brand building, and if I had a full-time job I wouldn't.

Which platform should run the site?

My sites started on Beehiiv's website builder. Sections are just tags, so a post tagged as a restaurant shows up in the restaurant section automatically. It's a template, not plug and play, and it took a while to set up. The downside was monetization: no programmatic ads, and no open API to sync with a separate WordPress site. Ghost already publishes every post to a site. Eventually I want an open-source setup, but only once traffic justifies it and it's as automated as what I have. I'm not an SEO expert, and I don't expect display ads to pay until traffic is much bigger.

The kind of number that changes the advertiser conversation is something like 40,000 views a month, with individual articles getting 3,000 views.

What if I already have a newsletter?

Import the archive first. When we launch a site for a city that already has a newsletter, we pull everything they've published into the website before launch. We did that with WilCo Guide, and a Las Vegas brand had about a year of content ready to bring over. That gives a new site real depth on day one. Cities with no archive start thin.

What's the newsletter for now?

It's one arm of the brand. For a senior brand I'm building, the plan is website first, print second, newsletter third. The newsletter's short-term job there is collecting survey data through greetform and proving the audience to partners. The gold is the data and the directory.

The order I'd build in now:

1. Website and social in one county.
2. Prove the outreach, the funnel and the operating process there.
3. Add the newsletter.
4. Repeat the operating system in the next market, not copied content.

The newsletter still matters. It's just better as one arm of the brand than as the whole thing. See why a newsletter should become a media brand.