Adding sponsorships to your newsletter are an incredible way to diversify your income.
As creators, they usually aren't the main source of our income, but they can be upwards of 10-40% depending on our niche and overall business model.
For example, this is a good rule of thumb:
- Media Brand Newsletters usually make 90+% of their income with sponsorships.
- Hybrid Newsletters usually make 30-50% of their income with sponsorships.
- Creator Newsletters usually make 10-25% of their income with sponsorships.
Note: The Creator Newsletter income is below that original 40% mark I quoted above because we still consider "Hybrid Newsletters" to be in the Creator Newsletter category, just with a slightly different business model and monetization plan.
You can learn more about this by reading my deep dive on: The Ultimate Guide To Newsletter Business Models.
Let's take a look at some creator stats with sponsorships:
- In 2022 Justin Welsh made $122,000.
- In 2023 Katelyn Bourgoin made $250,000+.
- In 2024 she discussed how to make over a MILLION a year with Justin Moore. And this is with ONE email a week.
To put that into perspective, let's also take a look at some of their other income streams and subscriber counts...
Justin Welsh's 2022 Income Streams and Subscriber Count:
- Subscribers: 75,000+
- Courses: $1.3 Million
- Coaching: $144,000
- Sponsorships: $120,000
- Subscriptions: $103,000
- Affiliates: $25,000
As you can see, sponsorships make up for less than 10% of Justin's income in 2022.
Conversely, let's take a look at Katelyn Bourgoin and Why We Buy.
Katelyn Bourgoin's 2023 Income Streams and Subscriber Count:
- Subscribers: 60,000+
- Un-Ignorable Cohort: $170,000
- Sponsorships: $135,000
- Other Digital Products: $43,000
- Workshops/Strategy Calls: $28,000
Which means Katelyn Bourgoin's sponsorship income makes up for over 35% of the projected 2023 income she she shared.
One thing to note is that we'd consider Katelyn in more of a Hybrid Business Model, and Justin in more of a Creator Business model - which has to do with their niche specificity, how they handle their sponsorship sales/process, and overall business plan.
We're going to be taking a look at some more sponsorship calculations and how and when you should be adding paid sponsors to your newsletter, but we also have much more to cover.
Here's what we'll be breaking down:
- How and when to add sponsors to your newsletter.
- How and why to add a sponsorship section in a small list.
- How and where to place your sponsorship section in your emails.
- Visual examples of the sponsorship sections of the world's top newsletters.
- Tools and resources to help you when you're ready to start adding sponsors to your newsletter.
So sit back, get your notepad ready, and let's break into it.
How And When To Add Sponsors To Your Newsletter
In the image above you see some examples of newsletters and how much they charge (or have charged at certain subscriber counts) for their sponsorships.
The first two newsletters are Media-Brand newsletters, which means they send more emails and make more money with sponsors.
For example (Media Brand Newsletter Model): Superhuman sends 5 emails a week, which means Zain Kahn is making that $1500 x 5 emails, or 7500 a week, and 30,000 a month.
Comparatively, the bottom two creators are Creator Newsletter models, which means they [usually] send once per week and sponsors are just a way for them to diversify their income.
For example (Creator Newsletter Model): Justin Welsh sends out his email every Saturday, making $3,500 per ad slot, or $14,000 a month.
You can also see that their are a very varied range for the CPM, which stands for "Cost Per Mille", or a way of charging companies for every 1,000 impressions an ad receives.
There is also CPC, flat rate pricing, and other things to discuss when it comes to charging for your sponsorship slot, BUT, for this one we're keeping it simple.
Let's take a look at Justin Welsh's newsletter, The Saturday Solopreneur:
- 215,000+ Subscribers
- 105,000+ Avg. Views
- 50% Avg. Open Rate
- 1,000 Avg. Clicks
These are the stats Justin shares in his Media-Kit, which is how we can calculate the CPM.
The amount you choose for your flat fee or CPM is based on your niche, as you can see from Chenell Basilio's much higher CPM rate, for a much more niche audience.
When Should You Start Adding Sponsors To Your Newsletter?
This is obviously based on a variety of different circumstances, but for this one we're going to assume you're building a Creator Newsletter.
This would also mean that there is a high likelihood:
- You're only sending 1X newsletters per week.
- Your business plan will be to make more with digital products.
With that in mind, we can do some calculations.
Let's assume you're fairly niche, can charge around $50 CPMs, have a 50% open rate and have 10,000 subscribers.
So to recap, here's what we're calculating:
- Business Model: Creator Newsletter
- Send Frequency: 1X Per Week
- Subscribers: 10,000
- Open Rate: 50%
- CPM: $50
This means you're going calculate CPMs based on 50% of your 10,000 subscribers; with the assumption that 5,000 members of your audience are seeing the ad.
The CPM for 10,000 subscribers at 50% open rate would be: $250.
Which means: $250 per week, or $1000 per month.
Even with 10,000 subscribers, a 50% open rate, and the ability to charge $50 CPMs.
Not that great....
Eventually, if you can increase your CPM or wait for more subscribers, you can hit 25,000 subscribers, charge $625+ per issue, and add $2500 a month to your income.
Until then, though...you're likely better off using your sponsorship slot for your own products!
Early Implementation: Selling Your Own Products (And Other Methodologies)
If you're making less than a certain price point for a sponsorship slot, it's likely going to make more sense for you to promote your own products instead.
For example: If you have 10,000 subscribers and can make $250 per newsletter ad slot, but have a $297 course, you only need to sell .01% of your list (1 person) to make more money with your own products each week.
This will almost always be better for you to start with for multiple different reasons:
- You can take people through your value ladder and eventually sell more of your products/services to them by overdelivering on your offer.
- Selling sponsorship slots can be a lot of work, and take time to implement within your newsletter each week when they come from outside businesses.
- Being in the Creator Newsletter model we're optimizing our niche and specificity to make it easier to sell our own digital products already.
As you can see in the image above, both me and Eve Arnold (from The Part-Time Creator Club) use our sponsorship slots to sell our own products.
I'm selling my 5-Step Newsletter Launch Template as an exclusive welcome offer, and she's selling her Medium Blueprint.
I also use this slot for my 6-Figure Creator Newsletter Blueprint.
We learned about using this methodology in our last deep dive on The Top 5 Spots To Sell In Your Newsletter.
I will also be breaking down a bit more on how you can still do this even when you have sponsors paying for slots in the section below.
But first, let's discuss using this tactic early on in your journey..
Should We Add A Sponsorship Slot Before Selling Sponsors?
Your sponsorship section can be used for a few things other than selling sponsors.
We covered selling your own products (which is my personal favorite; especially because you get to switch up the offers at different times), but let's also discuss other examples.
What You Can Use Your Sponsorship Slot For (Other Than Sponsors):
- Selling your own products.
- Selling affiliate products [you believe in].
- Asking questions and learning from your audience.
- Adding in other CTAs like giving away bonus free resources.
- Exchanging newsletter shout-outs with other creators/newsletters.
But a lot of these take leverage.
So what do you do if you don't have many subscribers just yet?
I personally like using it to continue learning from your audience with questions and surveys.
Why should you add your sponsorship section in early?
The biggest reasons I like to add in a sponsorship section before selling actual sponsorship slots are:
- People are used to seeing them. They're a non-pushy way to sell your own products (or affiliates) as long as they are things that can help your audience.
- They get your audience used to seeing this section in YOUR emails. Rather than throwing in a big sponsorship section out of no where after sending tons of emails, this trains your audience to see that section early on.
As long as you're providing value, no one will mind seeing it!
Hybrid: Selling Sponsorship Sections AND Your Own Products
Sponsorship sections aren't just powerful for selling your own products early on in your journey.
They're also extremely powerful when you grow a larger audience as well.
In last week's deep dive we took a look how both Jay Clouse and Codie Sanchez use their sponsorship section to sell their own products.
In the image above you can get a good look at how Jay Clouse leverages his; which is one of my favorite examples:
- To the left we see Jay promoting Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush's Premium Ghostwriting Academy in his sponsorship section, as a paid sponsor.
- On the right we can see that he uses his sponsorship section to promote his own paid community: The Lab!
This is a perfect example of providing tons of value, training your audience to be used to seeing your sponsorship section in your emails (and being okay with it because of the value you regularly provide), and then optimizing non-pushy sales tactics to sell your own products on a timely basis.
Have a launch coming up?
Consider using this tactic as a way to fill up your wait-list.
Examples of Other Sponsorship Sections
Not all sponsorship sections have to be (or should be) treated the same.
For example: you can see three different sponsorship sections above, which are all different to the placement and style we've already seen throughout this deep dive.
Just like the other sections of your newsletter: you need to make your newsletter section YOURS.
This will also determine how much you are able to charge for sponsorship slots, and ultimately effect your overall strategy.
Let's take a look at some of the examples above (and include Jay Clouse's as well):
- Justin Welsh: Justin has his sponsorship section right at the top of his newsletter, and includes TWO sponsors in every single newsletter, with a short title, description and button. Keeping it short and sweet leads to him having lower CPMs, but doubling up on sponsorship income each newsletter.
- Katelyn Bourgoin: Katelyn also has her newsletter slot right at the top of her newsletter, but has a much larger section devoted to her sponsor. Just below the image shown above it leads to another small section all about her sponsor. And then, get this, the entire newsletter ties her sponsor into the method she's teaching! There is a total of 15+ links to her sponsors content. This is one of the reasons she can charge so much more for her slots.
- Kieran Drew: Kieran Drew recently started implementing newsletter sponsors into his newsletter and he's starting with a small section towards the top of his newsletter, just after his intro slot. He shares one sponsor, a short description and a button. It's not far off Justin's method, but Kieran gives it his own twist as he ramps it up.
- Jay Clouse: Jay Clouse shares his sponsor at the very start of his newsletter, similar to how we'd see from Morning Brew (shown in the last image of this deep dive), with a small snippet, but then does not include the sponsorship slot until mid-way or so down his newsletter. When he does, the sponsor gets a large section where they can include an image and fairly lengthy description.
All of this will also determine how much you're able to charge your sponsors, and it will be your job to make it yours.
Great Sponsorship Tools, Services and Media Kits
Whether you're just starting out or already have 10-20K+ subscribers and looking for more ways to make your life easier and add some systems; there are some awesome tools and services that can help with your newsletter sponsorships.
Here's a list of some I recommend checking out:
- PassionFroot: PassionFroot is "The all-in-one tool to help creators do more brand deals - easier, and faster." It lets you build your media-kit with a plug and play style, and even takes your future sponsors all the way through the buying process.
- ConvertKit Sponsor Network: ConvertKit's Sponsor Network can be a viable option for creators who have 10,000+ sponsors but don't have the capacity to sell their own newsletter slots at the moment. They'll pair (and sell) the best sponsors for your newsletter, and simply take a cut of the profit. This likely should not be a long term solution, but even Jay Clouse started with this before moving to running his own system.
- Who Sponsors Stuff: Who Sponsors Stuff does amazing things for newsletter operators, and one of their services, called Sales Pro is there to "give you and your team the tools to quickly find and reach out to relevant sponsors for your newsletter."
These are just some of the many tools out there to help you begin implementing sponsorships into your newsletter.
There are also independent ad networks and other ways to find sponsors (including inbound/outbound strategies), but you'll want to adopt a specific gameplan that fits YOUR newsletter business model and goals.
Final Thoughts On Creator Newsletter Sponsors
If you're a creator following a typical Creator Newsletter model (like I teach in my 6-Figure Creator Newsletter Blueprint) you're likely sending 1X email per week, and sponsorships should not be at the top of your monetization strategy.
However, if you're going more of a Hybrid Newsletter model (likely due to being in a more broad niche, and potentially having a harder time selling digital products), or even have plans to pivot into a Media-Brand model [where you'll send more weekly emails eventually], then you may want to make this a bigger part of your strategy.
Either way, sponsorships should be a part of your strategy, and are an amazing way to diversify your income.
Right now Justin Welsh is making $7000 a week with his two ad slots.
With some volume and a strategy, you can get there as well.
What Should You Be Doing Now?
- Your next steps should be evaluating your newsletter business model, niche, and overall monetization strategy; and how it aligns with your goals.
- From there you should be analyzing your current audience size and niche and begin thinking of when you may want to start implementing paid sponsors into your newsletter.
- If you already have 10,000+ subscribers I would begin thinking of whether you want to offload the sales process or implement some inbound/outbound strategies.
- But, if you have less than 10,000 subscribers (potentially even less than 15-20K+), I would be optimizing ways to sell your own products in your newsletter, learning from your audience, and getting them used to seeing your sponsorship section in your emails.
