Syften
Real-time Social News Sifting
The first newsletter I sponsored was The Slice, for just $10. That got me 8 mailing list signups.
So next I tried Indie Letters, for $50. That got me one product signup and another 8 mailing list signups.
While that was a good educational experience I'm done with newsletter sponsorship. Content marketing and participating in online discussions proved a far more effective marketing channel for me.
Other than the costs, sponsoring a newsletter is abour a half hour work. Additionally, unfortunately it seems to be industry standard that newsletters won't send you an invoice.
Recently I was chatting with Reilly Chase about finding customers by monitoring online communities. He suggested that it’s a good idea to monitor Upwork, a job board for freelancers.
A few hours later I had a prototype ready, and Syften was already processing job posts.
You can read about how Reilly uses Upwork to find customers for his SaaS here: https://syften.com/blog/post/upwork/
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This takes the definition of the "job to be done" by your software to a new and very practical level. I wonder if mid-size firms will post "help wanted" to attract software bids instead of RFP's. To be fair, there is a labor component to Riley's offers, it's just that he offers software-enabled services where the labor element is fraction of someone employing manual or artisanal methods. Very thought provoking example of a possible "future of work." More of an existence proof actually.
Last week I sponsored my first newsletter.
I picked The Slice, as the price was only $10 - a no-brainer with great educational value. Perfect for a first try.
Here is the ad that I placed:
Syften - Get new users for your startup without spending a dime. Learn from the best, sign up for our free two-week social marketing email course: https://syften.com/course
This resulted in 8 signups, or $1.25 per signup, which I think is reasonable.
I pointed to my email course instead of the product itself because I figured newsletter subscribers liked to receive email, and I could convert better this way.
Will I be able to make a sale? We'll see in around a month.
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You can advertise on The Slice here: https://theslice.co/#advertise
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Don't forget to list your newsletter on lettersponsor.com for sponsorship
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I registered. Clicked on a newsletter.
There's no call-to-action whatsoever.
What do I do next?
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Thanks for sposnoring! I really appracit it! Holding thumbs for future sales :P
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That sounds like a great ROI.
How do you look for newsletters to sponsor?
Who usually decides the price?
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I can't really tell. I asked a friend and he recommended The Slice. It's also the first one I've sponsored so far.
I purchased a second sponsorship but the issue is not out yet, I'll write about that when it comes out.
The price is decided by the owner of the newsletter. Don't expect to be able to haggle too much, they're usually booked for two months in advance, the price is the optimal market price.
When considering sponsorship take into account that you'll get a backlink. Those usually cost $200 on their own, so it's good value even if you have no clicks.
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That's a smart move! 👏
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
I posted a deal for Syften on startup.deals. It cost me $29, but I figured it's worth it. The domain authority of that site is pretty good, and given that the price of a backlink is around $200, I thought that even if I get no leads it's still a good deal.
If you have a startup.deals account could you please click "recommends" here: https://startup.deals/deal/syften ? I'd really appreciate the help!
I was testing out a newly released feature that allows Syften to monitor Slack communities for keywords. I was trying out a few keywords to see if it works reliably. That's when I randomly saw this message:
Morning all. If you're an engineer who's recently used a new API at work I'd love to have a chat! 30min zoom call, £25 Amazon voucher for your thoughts. If you're interested, sign up here
To implement Slack monitoring I had to use the Slack API, so I was perfectly qualified for that. A quick, pleasant and unexpected £25.
This makes Syften the only social monitoring tool that can do that.
Granted, Slack has a built in option to alert you when certain keywords are mentioned. But what a pain it is to edit those across the 20 different communities you're in. Also, it doesn't allow you to track other users or get alerts when someone replies to your thread.
The feature request came from existing users. Entrepreneural wisdom says to focus on features that get you more users, not those that existing paying customers want, but it was just two days of work so I went for it.
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Currently we're monitoring:
backlinks.slack.com
bigseoreddit.slack.com
codestorycommunity.slack.com
crohacks.slack.com
demand-curve-open.slack.com
growmance.slack.com
growthband.slack.com
growthhackersslack.slack.com
growthhackersunited.slack.com
itpoolparty.slack.com
launch-chat.slack.com
makers-kitchen.slack.com
marketer.slack.com
measure.slack.com
microconfconnect.slack.com
mindtheproduct.slack.com
mspgeek.slack.com
onlinegeniuses.slack.com
pigeonhack.slack.com
productledgrowth.slack.com
techlondon.slack.com
video-dev.slack.comDid I miss something?
I just released this tool last week. I noticed that there were services that sent Twitter notifications once a day via email, but nothing delivered live notifications to Slack. It's quite simple to set up: just sign in, enter a few filters, and you're all set.
I'd appreciate a bump: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/twitter-monitoring-straight-to-slack
Product Hunt is a weird place. The best results from a launch that I've seen were just two sales, yet the whole maker scene is obsessed with it. I don't think Product Hunt is without value - you just need to figure out how to use it. That's why I'm running an experiment: I'll try to launch my app multiple times by releasing side projects. After I get some results I'll write about it.
So, this month I've released a Hacker News Topic Tracker: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/hacker-news-topic-tracker
I'll see how that goes, analyze my mistakes and try to improve next time.
I've published Syften on Product Hunt today: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/syften-com
It would be interesting to analyze the timelines of Indie Hackers products and see the average time from first commit to a Product Hunt post. I just might do that soon.
I founded MentionMe to help me keep track of what people were saying about my and my competitors’ products while remaining distraction free.
One of those products is Code Dog, a Pull Request reminder for Slack. Since GitHub acquired Pull Panda and started providing it for free I’ve been serving an even smaller niche: GitLab and BitBucket.
See how I found out about a new emerging competitor in this entry:
https://medium.com/mentionme/how-to-monitor-your-competitors-before-they-even-exist-799a0d44a3e9
11 Comments
I've actually had some decent success from sponsoring newsletters in the past. They might not have a huge number of hits, but they allow you to target people based on their interested very well, meaning you can get pretty good conversion. Here's my stats from the last month comparing social links to a newsletter ad.
Twitter | 289 visitors | 36 sign ups | 11% conversion
Newsletter sponsorship | 49 visitors | 25 sign ups | 47% conversion
How so? What sort of legwork is required?
You have to prepare a graphic that fits the newsletter's format, write copy that fits in the character limit, fill out the form and pay. Around half an hour.
This fascinates me as someone who runs a newsletter, I'm quick to invoice just so it is less a of a headache on my end. I am surprised to hear that that's not common!
Jumping into the discussion here - i founded Sponsorgap couple months ago and going through newsletters every day looking for companies buying sponsorships. What is a bit surprising is that there are almost cero ads that are a bit creative, telling a story or outstanding in a positive way. I think a good partnership with a newsletter, website or podcast owner can be very good fit for both sides but it needs a bit more then just a link to the product. Not sure if I am wrong here so happy about your feedback.
Turning this around a little, what kind of subscriber base would you need to charge others for sponsored listings in your newsletter?
@akfaew when I went onto Syften website, the pricing was shown in Indian Rupees which was great. May I know how you manage to show the pricing in local currency?
Do you also mind sharing how your product was written and marketed on the newsletters ? The writing can sometimes make a huge difference.
That's easy, I just use Paddle for that. They do it automatically.
Here is the one in The Slice: https://alecto.eomail7.com/web-version?lc=853069d6-e77f-11ea-a3d0-06b4694bee2a&p=cd666bf6-1f56-11eb-a3d0-06b4694bee2a&pt=campaign&t=1604586655&s=e07a84c80d3cc3f870973bb7aba966e0a8826ebc1c88e357899c52e28f3fc7d1
Here is the one in Indie Letters: https://preview.mailerlite.com/n3j0u2
I'm curious what you think about my copy
I completely agree with you.
I also runed sponsorships on my newsletter, but, my sponsorships is paid through Paddle.
So you actually get an invoice.
You can see it here.
After filling up the form, it takes you to.
Then you can pay for what you reserved.
To get signups you must sponsor s huge one...like densediscovery.com or sidebar.io...
You should be able to get an invoice if you ask - that's bad practise on newsletter creators' part.
I would say sponsoring is best when you have a reasonably priced product.
I agree with @petecodes . Irrespective of the service/product, giving an invoice is a must. It could just even be a piece of word document converted to PDF with the invoice details.