Newsletter Revenue is Easier to Scale Than Ever

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Everyone has a newsletter these days. Even me. But only a small percentage scale to the point of mentionable growth or profitability.

For both brands and individuals, the road to growth can be a double-edged sword. If you put more time into creating content, you have less time to drive revenue. If you put more money into it, you have less money to, well, live off of.

The solution, obviously, related to advertising. The process is generally cumbersome. You have to spend a ton of time going back and forth with a pipeline of leads to finally land on a lower-than-you-planned-for dollar amount. Or as an advertiser, a higher-than-you-wanted-to-pay rate. But what’s great is that there are a number of solutions working to make this process pretty much effortless. There are a number of companies working on double-sided marketplaces for both advertisers and content creators to drive business.

What’s particularly interesting here is that this emerging category is leaning on some classic growth marketing models – CPA (cost per acquisition) and CPC (cost per click) deals.

One cool marketplace that I was recently introduced to is Swapstack, a platform for connecting brands and content creators for driving growth through newsletters.

They make it really, really simple to get up and running with affiliate CPA deals, CPC deals, and even 1:1 brand partnerships.

CPC deals are great because you get paid with every qualified click. What’s great about Swapstack is that the deals are laid out with all the relevant details, the terms, and they even provide an example ad for you to use. For CPC deals, advertisers will reach out to you directly and offer a deal. It’s up to you to accept it.

For the sake of today’s newsletter, I accepted an offer from a newsletter looking to grow their followers. Here’s how it looks in the platform:

It displays a clear scope of the deal, the CPC payout, and the example ad. On another view you also have more details about conversion triggers and other terms of the deal. So with this deal, between a certain date range, I will get $0.75 for every qualified click my newsletter drives, up to 100 clicks. Pretty cool.

Then, once I accept the deal, it’s as simple as copy and pasting the provided creative. Like this:

Get smarter every dayEvery day Refind picks 5 articles that make you smarter, tailored to your interests. Loved by 200,000+ curious minds.Subscribe to get 5 links / dayPowered by Swapstack

There are a lot more affiliate CPA ad placements on the Swapstack platform than CPC deals. Off the bat, I had over 40 to choose from. The advertisers range from newsletters, to home security systems, to food delivery companies. But the vast majority so far as newsletters looking to grow their subscriber base.

Similar to the CPC deals, affiliate CPA deals are as simple as reviewing the deal terms, accepting the offer, and copy/pasting the ad creatives.

For today’s newsletter, I decided to go with the Gist. So for this, I get a $4 CPA for every qualified email sign-up to their newsletter. And this is the pre-drafted ad they supply for creators:

Sports, sans mansplaining.The GIST is a forever-free newsletter that provides a refreshing female perspective on the most important headlines in sports. They’re inclusive, progressive, and not afraid to talk about anything—even the sexist bs 👀 Sign up todayPowered by Swapstack

Swapstack isn’t the only, or even the first, platform to connect creators with advertisers. If you’ve run a newsletter over the past year, you have definitely been cold-emailed by platforms offering a network of advertisers.

What’s particularly exciting is that the email newsletter platforms you send your content through are also jumping into this category. Last week Beehiiv launched a product called “Boost,” which provides a marketplace for newsletters to pay other newsletters to promote them.

Just like the other platform, you can select from dozens of CPA and affiliate opportunities to help monetize your newsletter. Or you can post an offer for other newsletters to promote your content.

They’ve put together a couple great 101 videos talking about how newsletters can grow and how creators can monetize using this feature. It’s worth noting that this feature on Beehiiv is only available to those who have the “Scale” subscription level, at $99 per month, which is a great deal for those making a business out of their content.

I’m a big fan of Beehiiv and have been using it for Market Mix for about a year now. I highly recommend it. I’ll end up doing a separate newsletter just about their platform and why you might want to consider using it.

Whether you’re building a newsletter for your personal brand or a corporate brand, that 0-1 growth stage (whether we’re talking about audience or revenue growth) is a major hurdle. Platforms like these can very easily be that passive and scalable solution for early audience growth.

To summarize, what’s great about advertising features on platforms like Swapstack or Beehiiv is that:

1. They help connect creators with advertisers

2. They help advertisers create a dependable, scalable marketing channel

3. They allow you to reallocate the hours you would normally spend putting together ad deals to focussing on making excellent content

Newsletter revenue is easier to scale than ever. It’s up to you to make your audience as engaged with your advertising partner’s content as possible.

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