Why Phat Chiem walks into rooms to sell The 518

Phat Chiem publishes The 518, a local newsletter in Albany, New York. It reached 2,300+ subscribers in its first year without much ad spend, and he has been building the brand hard. This is the second half of our conversation, and it's mostly about the part nobody warns you about: selling.

If you haven't heard the first half, start with Part 1. Here we get into the long-term plan, then the honest report on what happens when a new newsletter goes looking for advertisers.

Why he thinks a local newsletter is a safe bet

Phat starts with the reason he's doing this at all. He's a journalist who loves telling stories, but he also sees a local newsletter as a vehicle for other things. In his words, it has immediate product market fit, because local journalism has worked for decades. The new part is how little it takes to start.

Once you've built an engaged audience, he says, you can layer things on top. He's a big foodie, so he thinks about a cafe, a restaurant or a concert venue. It might not be a venue he owns. It could be one he partners with, where he brings the audience and they bring the room, and they split the profit.

I added a warning here. It's easy to say you'll buy a plumbing company because you have an audience, but that's a huge lift. Smaller businesses that match what the newsletter already does are an easier first step.

The business he already has

Phat's answer to "what do you build on top" was that they already did it. StoryCraft is their boutique marketing firm. Readers of The 518 have approached them about content creation and social media, including a nonprofit.

That led to an idea he floated in a newsletter group. A lot of real estate agents follow The 518, and every agent could use a newsletter. The event roundup is something they already produce, so he could package it, add the agent's own home listings and send it to their clients.

I like the idea, and I said so, with one catch: most agents don't have money or don't want to spend it. You'd have to find the top 5% and ignore the rest, and probably offer one agent per area.

The numbers game nobody mentions

Phat's own results were humbling. They have a landing page for agents, but it still takes a ton of outbound. They reached out to 50 or 60 agents and about two got back to them. He's not sure if it's the money, the time or how they explain the value. His point is that it's a numbers game.

I told him I've seen the same thing. Some inbound comes from companies with no money, and the ones with money forget to write back. I have several legit companies who reached out, and when I replied they went quiet.

One call that opened up 15 big advertisers

This happened to me the morning we recorded, and it makes the point. I stopped at one of the big family fun centers. They told me they use a marketing company in town, so I called it and talked to the owner for about 15 minutes. I told her what we're doing and how many subscribers we have.

She said she'd put me in front of the companies she manages. That firm handles about 15 big, legit companies, like franchise restaurants. One call put me in front of 10 or more of them, but only because I went in person to a place 40 minutes away. Otherwise I'd never have known the company existed.

Phat's routine is the same idea: Chamber of Commerce events, happy hours, a tech event the night we recorded. He and his wife made their own business cards to hand out.

Bartering with a MacBook repair shop

Phat loves trading. An Apple repair shop owner had asked The 518 to write about him, but Phat didn't see a story there. So he asked for a trade: they'd advertise his shop and he'd repair their MacBook. The owner said sure.

Some people in their group say trades devalue the work. Phat disagrees, and I do too. If you're new, build the brand and put off the big money. Could you make 100K to 300K doing this? Maybe, but the more you do now to build the brand, the more you'll make later. If a company has no budget, ask what else they can give you.

First Friday Albany: a trade where everyone wins

His best example is First Friday Albany, held on the first Friday of every month. Downtown businesses throw events to draw people from around the region into the city.

The 518 asked to be the media sponsor. They promote it in the newsletter and write about it every month. Neither side had sponsorship money, so it was a straight exchange. The listings are hosted on the 518.com, so people come to his site to get them, and some of those visitors will become subscribers.

That kind of exposure is the point: the more people see your logo at legitimate events around town, the more legitimacy the brand has, even at events you don't run.

Sections a sponsor would pay for

Later we traded ideas for regular features that bring readers back and that an advertiser would want to sponsor. In our Austin newsletter we run a house of the week on Mondays, and it's one of the most clicked things all week. A real estate agent, brokerage or mortgage company could sponsor it.

I also described a pet of the week. Four of about 30 booths at an event I attended were pet boarding companies, and all were interested in marketing. I have a call with someone from an animal adoption group, so a boarder could sponsor an adoptable pet.

Phat has done twice a week for about a year. They started at three and dropped to two because it was too much. We both think three is the sweet spot, because more sends means more ad slots. I mentioned Shane, a guest from a town of 50,000 who sends three a week and is almost sold out.

A podcast, events and the long view

Phat wants to throw his own events too. Albany has no Asian food festival, and he could partner with the 10 best Asian restaurants in the city and sell tickets. He's also thinking about a podcast, since he's a journalist who loves interviewing. I suggested a 10 to 15 minute weekly show about what's happening in town, built from the newsletter.

His goal is a little funny. He told his wife he wants to be the unofficial mayor of Albany, getting invited to all the best events. He sees the slow growth as an advantage.

He admits he was very late to talking to advertisers because he was building the brand. In the last two weeks he's had extremely positive feedback, though nothing has closed. He's betting that more effort will pay off, and I think all that brand building will pay dividends.