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When did you first make money off of your newsletter?

Last month, I started a newsletter that curates the latest no-code news and products (Check it out here). Having around 150 subscribers, I was thinking about monetizing it (Selling Ad Space, etc) to cover the running costs.

How did you first start making money from your newsletter and how many subscribers did you have?

  1. 3

    I made my first dollars from my newsletter recently at ~300 subscribers through selling an affiliate product (Ebook on Gumroad).

    There was a good discount for my subscribers, so some of them jumped on it.

    I don't have any plans to ever make my newsletter paid. I will go down the "ads & affiliate" path in the future. But right now, growth is more important and what I'm focusing on!

  2. 1

    I got my first paying subscriber @ $25/year on August 18, 2020. At the time, I just had 65 free subscribers and decided to go against everyone telling me to wait until 1000 subscribers before going paid.

    I haven't added any new paid subscribers since but added 6 new free subscribers.

  3. 1

    I sold a sponsorship at 200 subs for one of my newsletters. Couldn’t charge much per issue but sold a package of 8 issues. So made it worthwhile. Was good for the sponsor as audience was well targeted for their service and for me it looked good to have a sponsor in the eyes of other potential sponsors.

    If you’re well targeted to a particular audience then reach out to potential sponsors and offer a package. You’re in a growing and competitive market with no-code so you might get takers.

    Some one already mentioned affiliate offers. That could also work well. Especially if you have experience of the tool and can recommend it personally. With low subscribers that’s probably more lucrative than sponsorship.

    1. 1

      how do you find people to sponsor your newsletter and where do you find companies to do affiliate links?

      1. 1

        Sponsors:

        • Ask in your newsletter
        • Reach out to ideal sponsors on twitter or cold email (but no mass cold email - make everything personalized)
        • If you’ve got enough subscribers list somewhere like https://letterstack.co/category/sponsors

        Affiliates:

        • Depends on your niche but there lots of affiliate marketplaces. Also a lot of junk so be careful. Legit ones like CJ Affiliate or Shareasale have lots of offers. Partnerstack has SaaS affiliate programs for B2B.
        • Another trick is to look on the websites of businesses in your niche. If they have a program they usually will have a link to their program in the footer
        • Ask in communities of businesses that would fit well.

        Not covering everything there but a few ideas to get going.

  4. 1

    In PulsionDigital we have +8K subscribers. Most of them from Latam and Spain.

    We charge $350/mo for mentions in: 4 webinars + 4 podcast episodes + 4 newsletter campaigns.

    Right now we have 2 sponsors. We just featured the sponsorship plans in our website.

    1. 1

      That's amazing! I feel you could charge a higher premium as you are advertising on different platforms. Have you tried exploring this?

  5. 1

    Haven't launched yet. But I've three subscribers paying a monthly fee.

    1. 1

      That's great. How many total subscribers do you have?

      1. 1

        (Laughing!) 3! (I've only a paid option!)

        1. 1

          I'm in the same situation of only having a paid NL. Do you offer a free trial period?

          1. 1

            I wanted to. But it seems there are few integrations with Stripe's API for trials. If validation goes well, I'll circle back and see what I can stitch together. You?

            1. 1

              I'm in the middle of running a (free) beta test for a month, so everything's kind of in pieces on the floor right now - but yeah, I will offer a month free I think. It's data-driven market analytics, so if it doesn't prove its value to someone after a month, it probably ain't going to (& in fact talking to the people who have it for a month and then decide not to subscribe might be valuable...)

              You're right about the Stripe thing; the only way I've found to do it is through complicated membership tools. Currently I'm tossing up between a horrible patched-together WordPress thing, and Ghost for the archive+membership stuff. It's not easy because I have a bunch of different 'sub-newsletters' people might want to choose - so I need an account self-service type page.

  6. 1

    There are a fair number of no-code tools with affiliate programs. You could consider offering your readers that if they decide to use the tool, they can use your link to support the newsletter.

    Just be sure to check their terms and conditions when it comes to placing links in email and be sure to disclose them properly (especially devs will appreciate the transparency).

    That's how I first made a small amount of money from my newsletter. If you can add some screencasts/demos or even feature tools you personally use and pay for, even better.

    1. 1

      You are right. There are many no-code tools that offer affiliate programs (around 50+) and I just started to add some to the newsletter. But the main obstacle would be keeping track of all these programs and managing the payouts.

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