This growth hack is entirely reliant on whether or not your city has a newspaper stand.
Newspaper stands, or ‘kiosks,’ can be found in New York, Rome, London, and Hong Kong, four cities I am familiar with.
Newsstand owners make money by collecting commissions on newspaper and magazine purchases, as well as selling confectionery, cigarettes, and ads on the sides of their stores.
Approach the newsstand owner and inquire if they’d be willing to give out flyers to anyone who buys something from their shop, in other words, plant the flyer on top of the newspapers or purchased snacks.
The hook is this: tell the newsstand employee that each flyer has a promo code that can be traced back to them, and they’ll get paid per conversion.
We’ve all got side-gigs these days and that’s why you can only but ask.
When I worked at Plum (Hong Kong Food Delivery App)
The good thing about this hack is that it will work particularly well if your service or product is local.
When I was working for a food delivery startup in Hong Kong, I used this hack and saw a 24 percent rise in orders in a week.
The lady who ran the newsstand where I worked had contracts to distribute newspapers to hundreds of banks in the Hong Kong Business District, so she used to slap a bunch of flyers on each bundle of newspapers. She got a $5 cash payment for each converted flyer, which was not bad considering she converted 152 in one week!
This is one of those growth hacks that works when you see an opportunity in your city.
Look and you’ll see opportunity.
Most people stay focused in one channel: mostly doing (for example) SEO in Hong Kong but there are other methods!