Sponsorship extended, plus a new revenue stream
by Yaro BagriyHello fellow IndieHackers,
This is the 3rd week of sending my newsletter Investing Cafe. After my first issue was sent, I reached out to my current sponsor and asked them if they'd like to go for a month at the same price.
Since I'm currently starting out I didn't want to charge something outrageous, just enough to cover the costs of my tech stack.
They luckily agreed! Another $80 in the bag. At the end, I'll ask if they'd like to renew again, no price increase. Currently I'm only at 42 subscribers, which is great but not enough to really charge anything more than $20 per issue.
How am I growing?
- Tweeting as much as possible with my Twitter account
- Cold outreach to potential subscribers
What will I try this week?
- More cold out reach
- Perhaps try posting on other forums or Reddit without seeming too spammy
I also added another revenue stream. @kintulabs has been creating standalone directories, which I thought would be a solid idea to add to Investing Cafe, especially given how many new investing platforms and tools are out there. I'm currently either adding products that have affiliate links or if they pay the $299/year fee to be listed.
I met with one potential client for the repository but they said they wanted to see some data before they commit. They said they'll give me a special link I can use. Then in 3-6 months we'll meet again to discuss if it's worth it.
Overall it's a very slow process to get started. But worth it!
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Hey, thanks for sharing this! Could you share your experience finding your sponsor? Was it cold email outreach?
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Fortunately over the years of building in public and just sharing my insights I was able to build a Twitter following to about 4k subscribers. What I did was send a tweet asking if anyone would be interesting in simply supporting me. The sponsorship price was set low intentionally to incentive people to sponsor.
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Ahh I see. Thanks for sharing your experience! Do you have a general "guideline" for how to set sponsorship pricing? Like
x_views / 1000 * .01? Just not sure how to determine a decent range to ask for-
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Yeah that's a good question. Usually it's a CPM model ($ per 1000 subs). Certain niches have better pricing. For example investing usually sees around $50/1000. So If your newsletter has 2000 subs, you can charge $100/issue. Some debate if it's subs or opens, but if you can get someone to pay then there is no issue how you price it.
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That makes a lot of sense! Do you have any tools or sites that can help determine CPM for different niches? I run an anime and manga recommendation engine, ideal sponsors would be those in the entertainment or gaming spaces, but not sure how to determine what pricing range to shoot within.
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What's the link to the recommendation engine? I believe it also varies based on medium. Newsletters generally have higher CPM compared to say YouTube.
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The site is anibrain.ai
Thanks for taking a look!
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Hi @yaroslawbagriy
Thanks for sharing these insights. I am currently negotiating a few sponsorship deals. I am luckily in a position where I can have no-negotiation conditions. For example:
1- Sponsorship duration not less than 3 months.
2- Money is paid in advance.
3- The sponsor must actively participates in the community's content.Tomorrow, will meet a couple of companies marketing reps that agreed to these conditions. Will see how it goes.
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Congrats! That's a great place to be. I hope the deal goes through :)
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Thanks @yaroslawbagriy
All 3 deals were signed and money was transferred! Not big sums of money (total $3k/month) but good enough to validate the process and hopefully scale it up later.
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Love this. Hope one day it could be the source of truth in investing.
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Thank you! Starting from 0 is a very slow game but it's worth it. I also hope so, perhaps in a few years!
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