A couple weeks ago, I signed up to a weekly newsletter that aggregates interesting links and online resources. At the top of the welcome email and in every email since, this newsletter says:
“Want to sponsor the newsletter and reach 9,000+ startup founders, designers, developers and tech enthusiasts? Just reply to this email to get in touch.”
So far, some of my best list growth results have come via classified ads I’ve run in other newsletters. And I like this new newsletter, and the recommendations they send out.
So I wrote to inquire about reaching 9,000+ startup founders, designers, developers and tech enthusiasts. How much?
It turns out the newsletter offers various packages, ranging from $300 per issue (main sponsor at the top) down to $60 (quick shout out at the bottom).
I calculated how much this newsletter is making per issue if each of the ads slots is filled. It comes out to $880 per weekly issue.
In other words, in the ideal scenario, the guy behind this newsletter makes about $3.5k per month, and it’s probably significantly less in reality because not all the ad slots are filled all the time.
Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of excitement, hype, and buzz about newsletter businesses. Thousands of newsletters have started up. Maybe tens of thousands. Inevitably, it’s led to a bubble.
Just as inevitably, most of those newsletters will not persevere long enough to succeed and become self-sustaining businesses.
All of which means today is the best time ever to start a newsletter — if you have a back-end business that a newsletter can promote and support, so you can be in it for the long term.
Not only will a newsletter help you recruit leads for your main business, and convert them, and retain them.
But pretty soon, you will be able to buy other newsletters that are folding. For cheap, you will be able to become the owner of vetted lists of self-selected, engaged readers or even buyers, who have expressed interest in what you offer.
In fact, the great newsletter poppening might already be under way.
I recently started listening to the Newsletter Operator podcast by Matt McGarry and Ryan Carr. Over the last few episodes, I’ve heard stories of such newsletter acquisitions, ranging from newsletters of a few hundred to a few thousand subscribers or more.
Of course, in order for the acquisition of a competitor newsletter to make any sense for you, you must have your own newsletter already set up and humming.
You must have somewhere to send those new subscribers, and you must be able to confidently tell them, “Of course, you can unsubscribe if you like. But if you liked [insert name of stupid and dull competitor newsletter], you will love [insert the name of your amazing and fun newsletter].”
All of which leads me, with the force of irrefutable logic, to my ongoing offer, the done-for-you newsletter service.
I’ve been talking about this done-for-you offer for the past few days. I will talk about it tomorrow still, and then I will shut up, at least on this particular topic.
If this offer is something that interests you, you can find more info below:
https://bejakovic.com/announcing-done-for-you-newsletter-service/