When should I start looking for sponsors for my newsletter?
Hello IH's, I run a website enygmato.com that sends you weekly riddles through a newsletter and gives you a $25 USD prize if you are the first to answer correctly. Right now I have 603 users with a ~25% open rate and getting 40-60 answers weekly.
When should I approach sponsors? How many users should I have to do that?
And how much to charge? Any experienced sponsored newsletter owners that have any recommendations?
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You can already approach sponsors. Find the email addresses of companies you want to advertise and reach out to them.
I sold my first ad for $50 before I had 1k subs. my newsletter is quite targeted however. If you can align an advertiser perfectly with your readers actions and intentions. then great, do it.
You may already thought of this... Instead of a sponsor, If you're already giving away money, I'd look for partners to front that $25 prize for you. That way it the sponsorship money, doesn't hit your bank account and you have to start paying taxes on it, even if it's $50 or so... just raise your prize amount.
I sell ads in newsletters (as Hypeletter.com) and we typically can only work with newsletters with over 3k subs but happy to help you as much as I can. email me [email protected]
Thanks for the answer @AndrewKamphey!
What are your recommendations for selling the ads? Should I send 1 different ad per weekly newsletter, or would it be better to charge per month or various months in advance, like 2? Would it be better to find several businesses for the newsletter or stick to one? How is that usually working in your market place?
all of the above.
Honestly every newsletter is different and every advertiser is different.
I like selling different ads each week because my audience gets to see different products.
Some other newsletter writers sell only 6 month spots for a high price so they don't have to think about advertisers for a while.
in your particular case, it's probably best just to discover the process. Figure out if and to whom you can sell 1 ad, then go from there. You never know what you'll enjoy. I had never been a salesman, but then when I started selling ads, it's fun at time and soul crushing at others.
It seems a recurrent thing that newsletter sponsorship is an experimentation journey, gonna try it out and see how it goes. Thanks!
It really depends upon your niche, as I’ve experienced both moderate success and total failure at sponsorships.
I run two different web communities. Each is similar in size & scope (from 5-10k visitors/mo and <1000 newsletter subs) but are in slightly different niches. One community took about over a year before we were able to land the first sponsor, and it is still not very lucrative. The other community was the opposite - around a month after launch we had multiple PR agencies and retailers asking us if we offered sponsorship packages.
My recommendation is to start sponsoring as soon as possible. 603 users with a 25% open rate is a fantastic start! Even if it’s a nominal amount, getting a process ironed out may make it easier for larger sponsorships down the road when you grow.
I’d also recommend making sure your website is fleshed out so it stands alone. Our primary acquisition channel is organic SEO, which is slow but cost-efficient for us.
(If it’s any help for establishing a baseline, our first sponsorship started at 150 newsletter subscribers and was $200/mo)
Thanks for the insights @gilgildner!
What's your recommendation on finding sponsors? Is it better to get a monthly fee or per ad fee?
For your specific $200 month example, how many times a month did you send a sponsored email?
I imagine your sponsors are looking for conversions, how did you convince them to pay for the first sponsorship?
Thanks in advance!
We limit our monthly emails to one per month. We prefer a single quality email rather than constant daily or even weekly emails, which we've seen deter people and have a pretty high unsubscribe rate in comparison.
We actually didn't really have to convince any sponsors for our community - they just asked up front what we charge. This past week, our monthly email included a coupon code for 20% off the sponsor's ecommerce store, and we also posted that code on our social.
We have been able to grow our fee and increase number of sponsors over time, but we are always careful to make it very valuable for our sponsors and never have competing/conflicting sponsors.
Great recommendations @gilgildner. Definitely gonna look to give the most value to our future sponsors. Thing is, here in Mexico sponsored newsletters are not a common marketing channel, so I will need to look for them and persuade them to try it.