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$1M/Year Sharing Local News in the Middle East

Richard Fitzgerald
  • Richard Fitzgerald

  • Founder of Lovin.co
  • $1 Million annual revenue

I recently came across Lovin Dubai 🇦🇪 via this amazing report by Glen Allsopp…

Turns out, Lovin Dubai is just one of several local news websites run by Irishman Richard Fitzgerald 🇮🇪

According to the Irish Examiner

In 2012, Richard Fitzgerald left his job as a senior advertising executive to head to the Middle East. Three years later he founded Augustus Media.

Augustus Media owns Lovin.co

a local news & entertainment channel sharing the best of its city, informing using bitesize news, viral content, and community stories… available across the Arab world.

All their sites are subfolders on the same domain, such as…

🇦🇪 Lovin Abu Dhabi
🇧🇭 Lovin Bahrain
🇪🇬 Lovin Cairo

Richard shares in a June 2022 interview…

I grew up in Ireland in a small little town… went to university in Dublin… worked in Dublin, spent a year in Germany… lived in London for a couple of years and then I moved to Dubai 10 years ago…

When I came to Dubai, I didn’t have any money. I luckily had a good promotion and a good job, but I didn’t have any money.

But he did have experience related to SEO, affiliate marketing and social media. Probably from his time working in London 🇬🇧

Back to Glen’s report…

In September, Richard tweeted a company-wide email he sent, which started, “Hi all. Today we turned down an offer of $12M for the business from a rival media company.”

Later, he added, “After 8 years of building it might have been tempted [sic] to cash out. But, I’m not in this to get rich.”

According to Glen, Richard’s sites are now earning a combined $1 million a year 🤑

As I’ve said many times before, most cities or regions should have a local news site like Lovin Dubai or Lovin Cairo.

Or a quality tourist information site for such places.

Examples featured in past newsletters 👇

Could you do something like this in your area? 🤔

As Richard proves, you can do this successfully even if you’re fairly new in town.

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Updated: March 7, 2025

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