Why Newsletter Sponsorships Should Charge A Premium

I've been experimenting with selling sponsorships for my newsletter on Substack through having conversations with certain audience members who want to reach out to the rest of the audience. My newsletter channel is super specific, it's all about polymer chemistry and industrial chemical news. I publish twice a week with the goal of making about 10-20% of the audience super engaged and happy with each issue. Open rates are about 30-40% and I've got about 671 free subscribers.

People that have experience in buying online promotional ads might feel that newsletter sponsorship space is costly, but here is my argument for why I think the price is worth it to a current sponsor. Right now I'm charging $300/8 issues for The Polymerist. Here was my justification:

1. The audience is unique. There are lot of highly skilled professional scientists, engineers, and executives that read this newsletter. By buying a month of sponsorship you get access to this unique channel that Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn ads will not get you. I have former P&L managers from large chemical companies who email me topic suggestions or write some super interesting (and confidential) stories to me about their 30-40 year career in the chemical industry.

2. There is no other competition in the newsletter for the space. When you open the email your company will be the only one present for the whole month, which is not necessarily true of other newsletter advertising such as through Morning Brew, The Hustle, Inside, or other ad centric newsletters.

3. It's a sponsorship. It's definitely part advertising for you and monetary upside for me as opposed to me trying to sell at the market rate of other social media platforms. I'm also 100% willing to go without having any sponsors for the newsletter too. If I accept a shitty sponsorship for the money it could also hurt my own brand/subscriber sign-ups/open rates/etc. There is some risk in me taking on a sponsor and I just want to be compensated for it.

4. You get cross-promotion. I will promote your company on Twitter and LinkedIn and there are opportunities for going viral through three distinct channels as opposed to just one.

5. I will write your copy for your sponsorship. It's an easier transition to go from my article to your sponsorship section and then back into the story I'm writing.

I'm still running the sponsorship so I'm not 100% sure that it's worth it to for purchaser just yet, but I'm hoping it's not only providing value, but might actually be worth more than I am charging now. I'm working on landing a few more sponsors at this price that are relevant to my audience channel. Another newsletter that I read frequently who has big name sponsorships is Big Technology. I've asked the writer to share pricing on sponsorships, but haven't gotten a response just yet.