Influencer Marketing Trends
To curate and dive deep into the world of Influencer marketing. Un-covering the people and campaigns that make this industry amazing.
Sold Influence weekly late 2020, for 5 figures.
Here's a podcast interview with the buyer and myself (the seller)
It was time to either build a team and grow faster, or get Influence Weekly into the hands of someone who is motivated to grow it and has the resources.
Sometimes as a bootstrapper, we need to make a living more than put money back into the business to grow faster.
2020 was a tough year for everyone. But in the end we move on. And the year also moves on, to 2021.
Sold a big package with some help. I offer 3 sponsor spots in each edition and have sold 60% of all spots available for the rest of the year.
Been able to do this in 2 ways
I just tweeted about it: https://twitter.com/Kamphey/status/1298541195111460864
Disclaimer: Yes I am a co-founder of HypeLetter and I use it.
Moving all newsletter work to Thursdays. Been recently distracted dealing with an inbox. Realized if I put all my time from the whole week together, I don't even add up to a day.
So starting today, or rather Last week, I'm working exclusively on Influence Weekly on Thursdays.
Let's see how this goes.
Due to my other projects taking off, and my inability to focus on building. I'm putting the work on a new site on hiatus.
Nothing changes week to week. Meaning I'm still delivering a ton of value to my readers. Still selling ads.
Simplifying the ad process with HypeLetter
My hope is that I can work on the new site a little slower and get it in a position to launch end of June. Instead of working on it fast and making it shitty. I might be able to find 20 to 40 hours in the next month.
It's 7 days from launching a new website and I haven't worked on it at all. Okay that's a lie. It's all planned out.
I've put it hours of sketching and planning and mocking up.
But it doesn't feel like work.
It doesn't feel like anything has been accomplished because there's no site, no nothing, yet.
Looking at taking a couple days off of other things to really put something together for the new launch.
I sat down with Indie Hackers to talk about Influence Weekly. It’s been a long road! Check out the interview to learn more about how Influence Weekly got started and what challenges I've faced while getting the newsletter off the ground and profitable.
I learned that I like big numbers. It helps to bring in big checks. 4 figures.
Getting $10 a month subs sucks.
It's been 2.5 Years of running Influence Weekly
And I'll be doing it for another 2.5 years.
I'd like to give away as much value as possible and make as much as possible.
How do I accomplish both?
Cutting the donation button. Sorry BuyMeACoffee
Cutting Substack. bye bye.
Cutting outreach efforts for advertisers. No love lost.
Been enjoying my time using memberspace and so will use it for this.
Creating a searchable archive of 2,000 articles I've curated in the past 2.5 years.
Creating a searchable database of companies working in the industry.
Creating deep reports.
I'm calling my shot a bit here. Hope this goes well.
Already feels good to not have to chase sponsors or advertisers unless they come to me.
I think the free newsletter gains a ton of value because it'll have less ads overall.
Those who want more, get more.
And I will accept sponsors if they come to me.
In fact as part of HypeLetter I'm building a tool to make it easier to accept sponsors.
Ads aren't evil. I just want to add more value.
An interesting update since CreatorScape a year ago was hosted by Influence Weekly but on a site I had at the time called Influence Directory.
CreatorScape 2020 includes 284 companies that help creators make, manage and monetize their content.
influence.co/go/infographics/CreatorScape
Back Story: I never intended Influence Weekly to be my main thing. It was originally a way to gather an audience to launch Influence directory. But that wasn't useful as much as the news and the sharing what's going on in our industry.
People and companies liked the passive news in the inbox... more than the active search for companies in a database.
They wanted help drinking from a firehose.
Influence Weekly was that curatorial aide.
Influence Directory was just adding to the stress.
I stalled on working on Influence Directory, stalled on salvaging anything from there. Kept up weekly information nuggets... and Earlier this year I got an offer to do CreatorScape for Influence.co
It made total sense.
This turned out, I think, 2x better than it would have had I done it alone. It also exists. While I had plans to do an update to CreatorScape. Working with the team at Influence.co made it happen.
So often solo founders and solo makers can do anything. We learn how to do everything. But working with a team, sometimes we can focus on exactly the thing we are really really good at.
This experience was a taste of what working with a team is like, again. It was enjoyable and I hope to do more.
6k current subscribers to Influence Weekly. A newsletter about the Influencer Marketing industry.
Started Influence Weekly 125 weeks ago. Just after Thanksgiving 2017.
While FB ads in late 2019 helped, I am now getting 50% of new subscribers from referrals. How do I know? I use Sparkloop.app
Through the years found great communities of newsletters who support and critique.
If you just launched a newsletter, happy to offer any help or advice I have. Or just share my experience so far.
Felt in light of current event that it's best to not add to the noise. I had been previously going pretty hard on promoting my newsletter. Gotten up to 5,933 subscribers.
I'll be doing less, and doing it better. (I hope)
The newsletter curates information for those in Influencer Marketing and the whole marketing industry has seen large layoffs along with a decrease in ad budget spendings.
While tracking the industry week to week I noticed that my unsubscribes and bounces also went up the last two weeks along with the layoffs.
In reaction, I could have double downed on the educational aspect of the newsletter, and also promoted heavily the jobs I feature each week.
However, being inundated myself with webinars and emails mentioning the news, the current ecosystem, and everything.. I decided to pull the plug for a couple of weeks. I'll be doing less.
And I hope that the few things I do. I do them better.
Also I had an excellent experience during Nyepi, a Bali tradition to turn off electric and internet for 24 hours. During that time I reflected on the noise, the silence, and the world.
It was during this silence that I felt this is what I find useful. I hope the my newsletter is useful and it won't stop but my promotions will. And therefore I may lose many subscribers this week and next.
The silence is better than the hustle.
Less, Better.
To curate and dive deep into the world of Influencer marketing. Un-covering the people and campaigns that make this industry amazing.