Making $15K on a 3K newsletter in a year

TLDR; I make money through ads, sponsored posts, and B2D marketing consulting. The more niche your audience, the higher your CPC can be. If you're writing sponsored content, make sure you have an example and performance data. Use information you already have (like click stats from your newsletter) to determine what companies would do well as sponsors. ALWAYS FOLLOW UP IN SALES.

I run a small, daily, curated programming newsletter that currently has 3,009 subscribers. I started two years ago, but just in the past year I've been able to make a decent amount of cash on it (I've grown from around 1,500 subs to my current amount in that time). I'm writing this post to share a bit of my experience, some insights, and some resources I think could help others.

How I Make Money

The primary source of income is charging companies for putting ads in the newsletter. You can see an example of an issue with an ad here.

The secondary source of income, which actually is nearly on par with the ads in terms of total revenue, is writing technical content/sponsored posts. Here's an example of a sponsored post a company commissioned.

The third source of income, which I'm trying to currently grow, is B2D (business to developer) marketing consulting. I'm a developer myself, do a lot of marketing for the newsletter, and have seen what copy works/doesn't from ads in the newsletter, so I generally have a good idea of how to reach developers. Companies pay me to consult on their copy, product-led growth strategy, or general website audits.

Pricing

Newsletter

This is very dependent on your niche. Fortunately for me, my target audience is programmers, who are generally difficult to reach and have a lot of money, so I can charge a premium for ads in the newsletter. If I was even more niche, like let's say a programmers working with a specific language or using a specific technology, the premium would be even higher.

My general rule of thumb when I was smaller was $100 - $200 / 1000 subscribers (per ad), but I've now shifted more to thinking in terms of cost per click (CPC). I generally try to stick to $3 CPC, which is around $300 per ad, because that's what I've had multiple sponsors say was a good return on investment (ROI) for them. I was pretty much charging the same price when I had 1,500 subs, but decided to lower it to make it easier to find sponsors (since I send out issues 4 times a week) I could probably increase my pricing, but I'd have to put more effort into finding better leads, for whom it would result in a good ROI.

If you're a smaller newsletter though and don't know how to price yourself, I'd recommend the $100 / 1000 subs, then just increase your price by $50 for each new sponsor until you get one saying no or that's too expensive. Also don't be afraid to ask your sponsors for stats on how much they generally pay per click or how the campaign they did with you went on their end (how many conversions were there). If you know how many conversions they got from you, that's a pretty compelling stat to share with other potential sponsors that have similar products/services.

Sponsored Posts

For sponsored posts I charge between $3,000-$5,000, depending on a number of factors like the length of the post, how exciting the topic is, and whether or not I can finesse it into becoming something useful for me. I try to use the sponsored tech to build something useful for myself, then write a post on it to give the raw truth of how it is to work with something. Any new tool or technology is bound to have nuanced positives or negatives, which are difficult to identify if you don't actually use the new tool/tech. This is especially true for software, so I figured my approach would be most useful for other developers and the best marketing for companies. I believe this and it's what I told companies, which made it easier to sell, because it was clearly thought out.

I also sweetened the deal for companies by offering the sponsored post as part of a package where I'd share it in my newsletter a couple of times, have it on my blog, and post it in other communities where I thought the readers would find value in it.

I've since stopped offering this service for single articles though. I didn't really enjoy it and if I'm going to write, I'd rather do it for myself. I do still offer multiple article packages though (where I can hire + manage content writers), as part of a larger SEO strategy kind of deal (falls under the B2D marketing consulting stuff).

My advice here is to first write an article for yourself that is similar to something you'd want to write for a company, then use that as a demo piece to show as an example during your sales pitch. Also I'd recommend keeping track of any useful marketing data for that article, like where you post it, how it performed engagement wise, etc. The example article I used ended up on the first page of hacker news, so I used this piece of information during my sales pitch to make it more compelling (I didn't promise anything though, since going viral isn't predictable).

Also don't be afraid to work out incentive deals with companies, where they pay you some base value for the article (say $1,000), then you make $XXX for each conversion they get up to some amount. Companies are normally fairly open to this (lower risk for them). Just make sure you find out what their customer lifetime value is so you can price your incentive appropriately. If it's something like $2,000, I'd ask for $500-$1,000. Or ask them what split they'd be open to.

Consulting

This on a per project basis, but I usually ask about their current customer acquisition cost and a customer's lifetime value to work out some incentive deal, on top of the base pay.

Sales

Since I curate a bunch of articles on different software engineering topics and have click data for all of those links, I just look which ones have done the best, then try to find companies that sell products/services relating to that. It's an easier sell when I know their business will get a good ROI and I can show the numbers to back it up. I also look at what previous sponsors did well, then reach out to their competitors. I'll also subscribe to a bunch of other software newsletters and see what companies sponsored them, then reach out to those companies. I'm also going to experiment tomorrow with asking my audience if they have any paid products/services they'd recommend, then email those companies.

My initial email will look something like this:

"Howdy XXXXX,

My name is Alex and I run a programming newsletter with over 2950 subscribers, most of whom are tech decision makers (https://abyteofcoding.com). I'm reaching out to see if you'd be interested in sponsoring a couple of newsletter issues or other marketing services to promote your product(s) or service(s)?

Kindly,"

My emails do decently, with cold emails averaging about a 25% response rate. Around 20% of those will convert, so something like a 4% cold convert rate overall. After that initial email, if they respond they'll be asking for more information, in which case I'll send them a media kit. Here's a template I made you can use if you want. Just export it to PDF after you change it.

The next email they'll either say they're not interested or that they are. If they are interested, we'll sort out invoice, schedule, and copy/urls. I prefer doing the copy myself, because usually theirs will perform worse (I just know my audience better), but they have the final say. If they're not interested, I'll ask them why and if they might be in the future.

If they decided to go with running ads in the newsletter, I'll follow up with them again a week after the last ad has run with a report on total emails sent, total/unique opens, total/unique clicks, and asking them about any stats they might have on their end. Then I'll ask if they want to run more ads or if I should follow up with them again in the future.

ALWAYS FOLLOW UP. Even if they don't reply, I'll ALWAYS FOLLOW UP. It doesn't have to be time consuming, I normally send:

"Hey XXX,

Just wanted to follow up on the last email. Any updates?

Kindly,"

I'll keep following up until they tell me to stop. Most of my biggest deals have come from 7+ follow-ups over several months. Just do it. I've never had anyone complain. If anything, they say thanks for following up. I'll normally follow up the day after, then 3 days after, then a week after, then keep it at every week going forward.

I haven't seen any success really with LinkedIn. I used the sales premium version for a couple of months and it did nothing for me. I wouldn't recommend it, but maybe it works for other people.

I'll also follow up with previous sponsors every 6 months (or whenever they tell me to) to see if they're interested in running more ads. This is a good way to get repeat customers.

Since I reach out to a lot of different software companies, I've made a database of potentially hawt leads that I'll keep updating on a weekly basis. It might be worth checking out if you run a software related newsletter and are looking to save hours on lead generation (time = money).

I package all of my services together in the media kit, so any sponsored post/consulting services information is only shared with companies that are initially intrigued by advertising in the newsletter. Is this the best approach? Naah, but I'm working on it.

Other Advice

• Don't be afraid to ask for more. Worst case they'll say no. If you really can't walk away from a no, you can always adjust your price. If you REALLY want to save face, just say it's a startup or holiday or birthday discount. Whatever. Nothing wrong with just saying "Well I can do XXX instead if that works for you?".

• ALWAYS FOLLOW UP.

• Make package deals that set you apart from other newsletters. Maybe offer ads in your newsletter, with a special intro, a post on Twitter, and a recommendation to your network on LinkedIn. If your offering is different from anything else on the market, you can set your own price because there won't be anything to use as a reference point.

• If you're going to get into sponsored posts/consulting, have a clear idea of what you offer. Be able to summarize exactly what it is in a 1 minute pitch. There's nothing more awkward than getting on a call with a potential client and neither you nor them know what you can actually do for them.

• Just know your stats. Everything becomes a lot easier when you can tell marketers who your audience is and how their ad might perform. Spend a day going through like 300 subscribers and seeing who they are on LinkedIn, then break them into buckets you think would be useful. Have no ad data? Just do a test ad. Pick some random company and see how it performs. Then send them the results. I didn't do that, but I think that would be hilarious (and informative).

I think I covered most things, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask them below.

PS. unrelated to making money with newsletters, I made a website to help newsletters grow through cross promotions a while ago. You can post your newsletter for free and I'll match you with other creators in your niche and with a similar audience size (if there are any), twice a week via email.