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How Catskill Crew Turned a Local Newsletter Into a Local Culture Brand
Mike Kauffman’s Local Newsletter Success Story
Kanishka & Brandon Storey
January 1st, 2025
How do you find out when there’s an event in your city?
The newspaper? Instagram? A friend?
Nowadays, it’s harder than ever to figure out exactly what’s going on.
Enter the local newsletter.
Recently, a local newsletter, Catskill Crew, reached 10,000 subscribers (which was their goal for 2024)!
Founder Mike Kauffman shared, “It was a no brainer to build on beehiiv when I started on the journey. It’s the easiest to use, especially if you’ve never created a newsletter before.”
Catskill Crew is the most popular newsletter in The Catskills, which is a region in southeastern New York known for its rich wildlife, endless hiking trails, and fly fishing.
Every Tuesday, Kauffman sends out a newsletter to Catskill locals with the latest happenings, business deals, invites to events, and even product drops.
Kauffman shared, “The goal was not fast growth early on, it was to establish the brand - now that I have done that - it is about cranking those numbers higher. I’ll close out 2024 around 12,000 subscribers at this incredible rate."
Now, let’s dive into how beehiiv helped him grow his newsletter to 10,000 engaged local readers in under one year by tapping into organic and paid growth… and how he’s already managed to establish nearly a dozen revenue streams.
Table of Contents
Catskill Crew Backstory
So how long has Mike Kauffman been in the newsletter game?
Not long, but he’s been starting businesses for over a decade.
Kauffman shared, “I’ve been starting companies for about 14 years now. I’ve never had more fun in my life than building a newsletter. I started Catskill Crew, which is a local newsletter for folks up here in The Catskills.”
So how did Kauffman get started in business?
“I started my first company in college — it was a beverage company. We had a potential investor reach out, and he's like, ‘Hey, send me over a business plan. I want to invest.’ And I Googled, ‘What is a business plan?’ And that opened my eyes to the reality that if you have an idea, you could pitch it, you could sell it, and you can make it a reality,” he shared.
But over the years, Kauffman found that the most brutal part of the process was raising capital. And a year ago, he wasn’t able to capitalize a venture, so he shut the project down and decided to hit the reset button.
He recalled, “I grabbed my fly rods on the wall. I drove out west and went fly fishing in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. And I was like, ‘Damn, what do I want to do next?’ I just want to build something to build something. It’s not about the return.”
So Kauffman decided to take his shot at newsletters.
“I just said, ‘Screw it.’ Up here in The Catskills, it's really hard to find out what's going on. I'm not huge on social media, but Instagram ended up being the only place where everyone can find the local happenings. So I just started aggregating events in The Catskills and put them into a newsletter,” explained Kauffman.
Next thing he knew, Kauffman had 1,000 subscribers, and he knew he was onto something.
We asked Kauffman why he chose to start a locally-focused newsletter and learned that he didn’t just want to start another business just for the sake of running a machine. He wanted to do something he loved.
He shared, “First and foremost, it was fun for me. I knew this would be exciting. I'm connected to my local community, and so I knew, first and foremost, there is a problem figuring out what to do.”
So Kauffman saw that this could be a fun opportunity but wondered if there would be a real need.
Kauffman remarked, “I think people are desperate for community. We've never been more connected, yet we've never been more lonely. I think that's everywhere in the world, and so I use this newsletter as a tool to bring people closer together that can be locals, weekenders, or people thinking about buying houses here. So we gather in public.”
“There was also a need for it in the market up here. Businesses need a new conduit to connect with the local community. They used to post on Instagram and Facebook and get a lot of exposure organically. Then, they had to pay to get that exposure, and now they can't even pay to get the exposure they once got for free,” he continued.
Making the Switch to beehiiv
Around the 1,000 subscriber mark, Kauffman caught wind of a newcomer to the newsletter game – beehiiv.
He recalled, “I started on another platform, and it was fine. But, then, beehiiv came across my radar. I was like, ‘I don't really want to move over. It seems like a big pain in the neck to do that. But eventually I started seeing how compelling the product and the services were, and the cycle of new features launching was very attractive to me. So I said, ‘Alright, I'll try it out.’”
And it didn’t take long for Kauffman to realize he made the right decision.
Diving Into the Content
We asked Kauffman to share a bit more about what his newsletter is all about.
He explained, “The main focus of my newsletter is around events. I also have a lot of fun with the history of The Catskills. This is an area deep in history – from Native Americans, the Dutch to the English, the birthplace of American fly fishing, logging, tanning.”
“I'm a history nerd. I studied history in college. So I always feature that history, and I talk about my fly fishing experiences up here, and the hiking, the skiing, and the interesting people that call this place home,” continued Kauffman.
Kauffman explained how it’s a balance of events, community, and the art, history, and culture local to The Catskills that makes his newsletter so unique.
He explained, “I think it keeps things interesting where people tend to open up the newsletter for whatever reason. It might not even be just the events; it might be the history section.”
So how exactly has Kauffman grown his local newsletter to over 10,000 subscribers? He uses a variety of tactics, starting with organic growth.
Kauffman shared, “Some of the best tactics we've seen work are places like Reddit. You can post events or answer questions on your local subreddit. It really does drive traffic. You might run into issues with mods shutting down self promotion, so you can start your own subreddit for your area. So a couple hundred, if not 1,000 subscribers, have come in from 3 posts on Reddit.”
Next up is Instagram.
Kauffman explained, “Build further connections with your community with Instagram. Spend time on the branding. Look premium. I think the aesthetic of most newsletters is pretty subpar. And with two tools like Canva or Midjourney, you can make something beautiful. Take the leap, spend the time, look at the DNA of your audience, and try to weave that into what your brand represents.”
Tagging businesses on social media is another key opportunity for organic newsletter growth.
Kauffman advises, “Start posting on social media, whether that's TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook. Then, tag a local business or anyone who's involved or promoted within your newsletter. And if it looks good and it looks good for them and they want to promote it, you're gonna get a ton of subscribers and a big following.”
“Every single week I post to Facebook groups. One of the guys in my newsletter club has been posting in the Ring Neighbors app, and he's seeing these responses. I don't want to say it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, but especially when you have a geographic local newsletter, it's very easy to figure out ways to find those folks,” he continued.
Paid Growth With Facebook Ads
Kauffman doesn’t just rely on organic growth. He’s also a big proponent of diving into paid acquisition.
Enjoying this case study? Here’s how Christian Collard of Sunday Money grew to 25,000 subscribers in one year.
Hitting Six Figures With 11+ Revenue Streams
While many local newsletters rely heavily on ad sponsorships, Kauffman has taken a different approach, which he calls “creative monetization.”
Events
Kauffman shared, “Events are one of the biggest pieces. You don't want to do too many of them because they kind of lose the ‘specialness,’ so I try to do one a month now. It's $2,000 a month. I usually sell products at those events – Catskill Crew merchandise.”
Ads
Another way Kauffman generates revenue is with ads.
He shared, “If you're a local business and you want to feature something you have going on, I charge for that placement. I've worked with small businesses and entire counties who have taken out larger blocks. I'm now spinning up higher priced ads with 3-12 month commitments – higher lifetime value (LTV) businesses, which are easier to sell.”
Selling Other People’s Art Prints
Kauffman has also teamed up with local artists to sell their prints.
“I've done local art with artists. Something nice about that is finding local artists in your area who have strong followings. I did a scratch off print called The Catskill Trout Trio — so Rainbow Trout, a Brown Trout, a Brook Trout. This is the type of art that resonates with the folks up here since this is the birthplace of fly fishing in America,” he explained.
Selling His Own Art Prints
Plus, Kauffman has also created his own art that he’s sold himself.
He shared, “I just go on Midjourney, keep the aesthetic on brand, bring it into Canva to fine-tune it, and sell them as limited edition prints.”
Crew Cards, Hats, Shirts, Pins
Another way Kauffman has gotten physical products into the hands of his subscribers is by launching a variety of other types of merchandise, including ‘Crew Cards’ which is a type of coupon book for locals.
“I’ve also sold everything from hats and pins to shirts,” he continued.
3 Other Ideas for Monetization
Kauffman has no shortage of ideas when it comes to generating revenue for his business.
“We have a Monopoly board coming out. I'm looking at doing a coffee table book, which is about the history of some of the famous people in The Catskills,” he shared.
Kauffman also brought up the idea of doing a premium newsletter one day.
He shared, “I'm not doing a premium membership at this point in time. I think it starts isolating your community, and I think it starts taking away from how you focus your efforts. But I'm open to anything and everything and looking for inspiration on every front.”
Finally, Kauffman mentioned, “Being an owner in some of these local businesses, I drive traffic in that direction. So I'm looking at what other kinds of businesses I could do, and I'm always kind of keeping my eye out there.”
Launching Monopoly for The Catskills
One of the projects that Kauffman’s most excited about right now is The Catskills Monopoly board.
He shared, “The Monopoly board is being shipped from China today. I was using a company based here in the U.S. to design and manufacture the Monopoly board, and the price came out to be somewhere around $20 a unit.”
“And then, I went on the craziest platform in the world, which is Alibaba, and I started looking at these overseas manufacturers where I could get the prices as low as $8-10. I decided to go that route because the middleman here in the U.S. was just using one of those Chinese manufacturers.”
Kauffman explained how he’s having fun throughout the entire building process, even though it can be a lot of work.
Kauffman’s mission isn’t just to sell products. It’s to build a community-centered brand that interweaves itself into the culture.
He shared, “This is a way to take The Catskills Crew brand and move it into someone's house. The Crew Cards are getting into someone's wallet. I did some artworks, and now we're on the walls of people’s homes. I think it's about continuing to extend that.”
Community-Led Product Creation: Building With Subscribers
A key word Kauffman referenced over and over again throughout our interview was “community.”
Not only is it a crucial part of what makes his newsletter so special for his audience, but it’s also what Kauffman leans into for the direction of the newsletter.
“These are discount cards I put together. This was something where I was thinking, ‘How do you support local businesses?’ This is a great way. How do you discover new businesses that you may have not been to before?” Kauffman remarked.
So he put out a beehiiv poll to his newsletter subscribers to see if they’d be interested in a discount card, and it turns out they wanted it and so did the business owners. So he set it in motion.
Kauffman shared, “I even let my community price it, and we landed on $25. My cost is $1 for each one of those, and so it's a fantastic return. I'm about to launch the second one and will be doing about 500 of them, so when you do the math, it's a pretty significant return there.”
Hint: I did the math, and that’ll be $12,000 in profit for the next Crew Card launch.
Kauffman continued, “It doesn’t matter if you have a local newsletter or not. I see a newsletter as a platform to launch products and services and to listen to your audience and see where you can go. Just not sure where we'll go as I always say, and I think that's the most exciting part of it.”
beehiiv
We asked Kauffman to share what led him to beehiiv.
One thing that’s stood out to Kauffman is how quickly and frequently beehiiv releases new features.
“I've seen people on Twitter post about a feature, and a couple weeks later it's designed for monetization, it's designed for ease of use, and it's designed for multi-publication. They've thought about it from top of the funnel to bring people into this newsletter, in a really effective way,” he shared.
Kauffman continued, “I was using another business for my landing page, but I switched over to beehiiv’s. It's just better. It's designed with everything you need in mind. It's always exciting. I don't know what you guys are going to come out with next, but I know it's going to be good.”
He explained how being a part of beehiiv comes with a strong community aspect. “I never thought I'd have to tell my mom I'm a cult member, but I'm sold. I drank the Kool-Aid, and I'm a fan for life at this point.”
Growth & Results With beehiiv
Curious how Kauffman’s local newsletter growth has been with beehiiv?
And Kauffman feels like he’s just getting started!
He shared, “The analytics dashboard makes it very easy. when I shifted over to beehiiv after my fourth newsletter, I had maybe 200-300 subscribers. Now I have 10,000 subscribers as we kickstart with 2025.”
“I'm seeing this parabolic growth start to come in, and I think there is a snowball effect. I believe local newsletters take a nuanced approach to growth; and then once you hit critical mass, you can actually happen to scale up even bigger,” Kauffman commented.
One of Kauffman’s favorite things is checking his stats first thing in the morning to see his progress.
“It’s the first thing I do in the morning. I'm like, ‘All right, what's the growth?’ If I'm not hitting at least 1% growth per day, I’m like, ‘Something's wrong here,’ so it's been phenomenal,” he shared.
Kauffman continued, “I look forward to tapping into the power of a lot of these other features around monetization and around growth and Boosts and ads.”
Favorite beehiiv Feature
We asked Kauffman to share his favorite beehiiv feature with us.
Kauffman continued, “It removes a lot of the paralysis analysis a lot of people experience of ‘What do I do here?’ So being able to go in there and know, ‘Hey, this is my header, my subheader, my hero copy, my call to action, what testimonials do I want in there’ — I just love that. beehiiv’s signup page – it's just straight up optimized to do what needs to be done.”
Goal #1 for 2025: Community
We asked Kauffman to share his goals for the direction of the newsletter moving forward.
Michael recently started another newsletter, about which he shares: “1800flyfish is my next goal. I have launched this fly fishing newsletter. 2 issues in and I am at 600 subscribers. I plan to continue to grow this, building a new media brand that will go on to launch products in time.”
He also plans on growing The Newsletter Club which already has over 60 members from across the globe. Some are established, some are acquired, and some have 20k+ subscribers. He wants to turn this into a far larger and more significant community.
Launching micro apps. He has currently identified over 12 micro tools, that he really needs. So he will continue to explore launching new tools to support other newsletter creators.
“It’s about community first and maintaining some of my core principles. If something is non-negotiable for me, it’s losing any authenticity and trust. I will say ‘no’ to any opportunity that I think will chip away at that,” he remarked.
Kauffman continued, “Once you lose that trust, you're kind of lost at sea, so it’s about building this community even stronger. A lot of what I do is work with local businesses and put on these Catskill Crew events at their establishments. They started paying me about $800 for the first one. Now I'm charging $2,000 a pop.”
Kauffman explained how he’s leaning into these events as a way to build community, but the events are also a lucrative opportunity for both him and the local businesses where he hosts the events.
Kauffman continued, “What's most exciting for me is meeting my subscribers, adding a face to that email address, and talking to them.”
Goal #2 for 2025: Launch More Newsletters & Expand
What is Kauffman’s other plan for his newsletter? Keep tapping into growth and scale the brand.
Kauffman’s also going to keep leaning into the community aspect of his ventures, by buying real estate, launching new businesses, and continuing to host events.
He shared, “I'm actually putting in an offer on a commercial real estate property down the road. I would go into partnership with some other folks, and I would be promoting the events happening there, driving traffic, and continuing to create additional revenue streams that are on brand that are exciting.”
Kauffman continued, “Right now, it's about getting this Monopoly board out there, continuing to grow, having more products that support local businesses, and finding new creative revenue streams as well.”
Advice for Launching a Newsletter: Find Your Niche & Solve a Problem
We asked Kauffman to share his advice for anyone looking to start their own newsletter.
Kauffman shared how most people doubt they can do it because they’re “not a writer,” along with a myriad of other excuses, but you shouldn’t let that hold you back.
“I never thought of myself as a writer. I still don't think of myself as a writer, but yet there's kind of this voice inside me that's really excited to come out every Tuesday and ship this newsletter. It's zero risk, so just get started,” he explained.
Closing Advice: Make It Fun & Be Consistent
Kauffman had a word of warning for anyone looking to launch a newsletter: you have to make sure you enjoy it.
“I think the most important thing about building is for it to remain fun. Yes, there are some things that are a pain, but make sure you come back to your North Star of keeping this exciting and keeping it valuable for people,” he shared.
Kauffman explained how it’s not always easy to figure it out; but if you stick with it and you’re consistent, you can find success with your own newsletter like he did.
Kauffman closed by stating, “You might create a newsletter empire. You might start a business out of this. You just have no idea, and I think that's one of the most exciting parts of starting these types of things. And the beauty is, why not? It doesn't cost you any money to get started. Just do it. You'll probably have a good time.”
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