Around a month ago, I got my first sponsorship by reaching out to companies that I was hoping would give my newsletter a shot. I was lucky enough to secure one sponsor from the reachoout of 10, but realized that the cold reachouts were taking too much of my time. I thought... there must be a better way.
Since my blog gets ~500 readers on any given day, I figured that maybe instead, I would just put a note at the bottom of each article letting people know it's "open for business". This was the text that I put at the bottom of an article: https://imgur.com/a/qoIqTqd. Super simple stuff.
I put it there since I didn't want it to be intrusive and also am guessing that if someone made it all the way through an article, they can see the value they provide. The link directs them to my promote page: https://stephsmith.io/promote. That page is connected directly to Stripe Checkout, so I don't have to manage as many logistics and just get the notification that someone has chosen to sponsor!
Anyway, I implemented this around two weeks ago and was happy to wake up to this message this morning! My first "passive" sale: https://imgur.com/a/aEfprtO ๐She even sent over a template for the newsletter copy, so this will only take me a matter of minutes, versus the hours I had spent last time.
Hopefully, I'll be seeing more of these roll in over time and means that I can focus on writing and increasing traffic.