a single source, nothing corroborates it

Work out what the ads actually bought you

Estimate where organic growth alone would have landed, so the spend can be judged against a counterfactual: one local newsletter reached ten thousand subscribers and its owner puts the no-ads figure at three and a half to four thousand. Then publish the true cost. That list cost about sixty two thousand dollars all in, of which roughly thirty four thousand was paying other people to do work he could have done himself, which is the number nobody includes when they describe a newsletter as grown rather than bought.

The method

1. 01

   Know what your paid spend actually bought you by estimating where organic growth alone would have landed.

2. 02

   Publish the real cost of growth: a 10,000-subscriber local newsletter was bought, not grown for free.

What it returned

• 3,500

  He estimates 3,500 to 4,000 subscribers without ads, versus 10,000 with them

• $62,000

  About $62,000 total: $20,000 ad spend, $6,000 agency, $28,000 editor salary, $4,000 freelance writers, $2,000 photography, $2,000 misc; roughly $34,000 of that was paying others to do work he could have done

Sources

• How we grew a local newsletter to 10,000 subscribersNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · The finances · 2022-03-22