RainCross Gazette tops the Newsletter Revenue Category
Newsletter ad sales are identified as the most underutilized revenue source in the 2025 Niche Publisher Revenue Survey.
The highest over-performer in newsletter ad sales as a percentage of total revenus was Justin Pardee, founder and publisher of 4-year old The Raincross Gazette, serving Riverside, California.
The online only publication, founded in 2021, uses a newsletter first revenue model, and had passed 10,000 in unpaid opt-in emails by early 2025. He said that newsletter sales are on track to reach $375,000 this year.
We caught up with Pardee as he drove to a Chamber of Commerce meeting at the crack of dawn (it was still dark in his car) to find out how he did it.
See a full transcript of the interview here.
Background
Pardee had a background in news, having started summarizing daily news at Toastmasters, literally in kindergarten. His father was a professor in business, and Pardee soon became an entrepreneur launching e-commerce businesses, and then digital and branding agency in Riverside, a sprawling community of 320,000 residents between LA and Palm Springs, Ca. The community held a lot of promise, being both underserved by media and 25 minutes away from a population of 4.7 million. The idea of launching a digital newsletter for the area was never far from his mind.
The impetus to pull the trigger happened during Covid, when people in Riverside turned to YouTube live streams to find out everything from local masking mandates to business closing school openings and Covid policies.
“All of the sudden, people realized the enormous impact local governance had on their lives,” Pardee said. “It was the only way we could find out if our kids were going back to school. ”
Pardee decided the time was right to pivot to a launch a local media company with a newsletter-first revenue model. He published the first newsletters in 2021. Initially, he sold paid subscriptions for $5 a month, but dropped that model in favor of exploding growth for the owned email list in 2022.
Evolution of the Strategy
Newsletter timing
Initially, Pardee published on Tuesdays, the day of the County Council meeting, and Thursdays. Both newsletters covered civic news, and had three ad positions. After selling out ad positions for six months, he added a Sunday newsletter, covering lifestyle news. “The only way I you think of to add more revenues was to add another day.”
While newsletter advertising is still the core product, he began bundling website ads into the package in late 2024.
Pricing and packaging
Initially, Pardee copied the Morning Brew model, with three ad positions on the newsletter: top midel and lower.
Ads sold for $150 to $250 per newsletter. Soon however, he realised that selling ads piecemeal created an insurmoutable workload for a solopreneur. Also a large organization asked him put together a proposal. After staying up all night to write the proposal, and walked away two days later with a $30,000 sale. The experience was life alternating.
Today, almost all advertising is sold in annual partnerships, in addition to some short run options.
The Community Pillar at $30,000 and the Local Authority at $10,000 includes industry exclusivity. The lowest tier, Good Neighbor, at $5,000 for the year, does not. On the day of the interview he was getting ready to pitch the Riverside Cookie Shop on an the lower tier Good Neighbor program (see the media kit here).
Additional exclusivity and value built in to the top two tiers; the top tier has just five advertisers who also get a sponsored story per month. The second tier has ten advertisers, and the Good Neighbor allows 20 advertisers, with a correspending number of sponsored news stories, promoted events and newsletter position. 
Selection of advertisers is key
Pardee said he is selective about the advertisers he calls on, not only because of the limited positions, but also to build audience trust. He is proud of the fact that when he polled paid subscribers on whether or not they wanted him to elminate ads as a perk, they did not.
Keeping the local feel and the sense of local discovery is key to how he competes both with local influencers who take money from anywhere as well as local competitors fueled by grant money from entities such as Press Forward or the MacArther Foundation.
“I took my wife to dinner at a restaurant recommended by an influencer and it was garbage.” Later the influencer told him, “Yeah I know it is terrible, but they paid me, so, what are you going to do?”
“There’s a concept of ‘signalling.’ When the audience sees an ad in my newsletter, they know hey are serious and that Justin has let them in.”
Audience growth
After dropping the paywall, the audience growth surged, surpassing 10,000 in March 2025. The goal for the end of the is 16,000 or 5% of the market, with a goal of 25,000 by the end of 2026.
To keep emails consistently growing, Pardee invests in an “ongoing persistent paid acquisition META campaign” that captures emails.
Revenue Growth
Revenue growth has also skyrocketed over the last four years, from $17,000 in 2022, its first full year, to $47,000 in 2023, and $225,000 in 2024 with a goal this year of $375,000.
While Pardee says “Its the lowest salary I’ve ever made,” he’s clearly on a promising trajectory.
The Team
In addition to Pardee who does most of the sales, The Raincross Gazette has a full-time reporter, and a content manager, who copy-edits, creates social posts, and puts the finally touches on the newsletter. “We all work on it,” Pardee said.
The CMS he uses is Ghost, an open source platform, purchasing the theme for $175. Although there are not a huge number of plug-ins, when he needs some changes, he simply hires the theme’s developer, who “lives somewhere in Denmark” by the hour. It typically costs “something like $450.”
Final thoughts
Pardee says the concept of sustainability is crucial, because for-profit entrepreneurial media compete with those funded by millions in grants from Press Forward, META and Google.
While grant recipients may have a few great investigative stories, they cater to the funders, Pardee said. He is accountable to the audience, he said, pointing out an open rate for the newsletter of 65%.
“We are relentlessly obcessed with the quality of the content,” he said.
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants are going to these little tiny newsrooms that have no long term viability. If if you don’t have an audience that is gonna want you in their driveway – metaphorically – if somebody doesn’t wanna walk out in their bathrobe the second that newspaper hits that, then you’re not sustainable.
“I’m on my high horse about this.”
