Branden Harvey is a storyteller and the founder of Good Good Good, where he runs a weekly podcast, an email newsletter, and a print newspaper. He began working as a professional photographer at age 16, which took him across the world in projects for organizations including (RED), World Vision, UNICEF, and more.
In his travels, Branden witnessed his fair share of injustice and tragedy across global communities, as well as stories of hope. He founded Good Good Good to combat cynicism by highlighting those making an impact.
Tell me about your newsletter
At Good Good Good, we’re experts on good news. We spend each week sourcing all of the best positive stories from around the world — especially on weeks where it feels like nothing is going right. Then, on Tuesday, we round up the week’s best good news and send it out in an email called the Goodnewsletter.
Each week tens of thousands of people open these emails– our open rate usually hovers between 45% and 55%. Our goal is for readers to feel more hopeful throughout the week.
When we feel more hopeful about the good being done in the world, it makes it easier for each of us to join in and make a difference ourselves.
Who was your first advertiser?
I consistently sent a good news email every single week for more than a year before we ever made any money from the newsletter, which blows my mind.
The big moment that changed everything for us was when we decided to create our own real-life product, inspired by the Goodnewsletter. We’d been building a community of people who cared about good news, but we wondered what it would look like to take our positivity beyond email inboxes and into the real world.
We decided to launch a print Goodnewspaper (yes, a real print newspaper filled with good news) on Kickstarter — and we opted to tell our newsletter community first.
It was the first time we’d had such a big and overt promotion, but we knew it would be a great fit for our audience of 10,000 readers. That’s the key for any first advertisement — it has to be a perfect fit for your community’s interests and values.
Read: How To Get 10,000 Email Subscribers in 2023
It turns out that we were right. Our audience loved it! Our Kickstarter was fully funded within 56 hours, and we more than doubled our initial goal by the end of the 30-day campaign.
We’re still creating new issues of the Goodnewspaper every month, and we’ve continued to build our print and email communities over the years.
How long did it take you to begin accepting external advertisements after this?
It took another two years after the successful launch of the Goodnewspaper before we began accepting sponsors for the Goodnewsletter.
We’d gotten a lot of media attention around the newspaper, and it translated to a bigger audience on email as well. This also attracted attention from brands.
We simply didn’t need advertising, so we avoided it for a long time, saying no to everything. At one point though, we started noticing that the brands reaching out to us were aligned with our mission. They were social enterprises working to make the world a better place.
Our first sponsored post was for a weighted blanket company that supported refugees. We knew our audience loved self care and would be interested in weighted blankets. We knew our audience cared about supporting refugees and making a difference. We knew it would be a compelling ad and would almost feel like the good news stories we share every week anyway.
We said yes, and did a slight redesign to make the ad feel natural.
What did you charge?
If I remember correctly, we charged $200 per email. When we first began running ads, we asked advertisers to commit to a whole month of emails. This allowed us to still spend 90% of our time focusing on sharing good news across our channels because we only needed to chase 12 advertisers per year.
This new source of revenue also helped us bring on an employee who would be focused purely on our social media! Everybody else on the team at that point was just working on the Goodnewspaper and our podcast, Sounds Good.
As far as determining the price goes, we had a minimum number that would make it worthwhile for us — and we also asked around to see what other similarly sized newsletters were charging. Our price felt a little bit high to us, but brands said yes! I think it helped that we had an audience who was very focused on one particular topic: good news and making a difference.
Read: What Is a CPM for Email Ads?
How do you get advertisers now?
Once we started running ads, more brands started reaching out. It turns out that a lot of brand managers and marketing folks subscribe to our newsletter.
Some say it’s because they need more positivity in their inbox. Others say that it’s the best source for finding good news to share with their team or even on external marketing channels.
To be honest, we got a little bit overwhelmed with how many brands reached out. Specifically, I got a little bit overwhelmed with how many inquiry emails I was receiving from brands.
Read: 4 Steps to Find the Best Newsletter Advertisers Right Now
I decided to build an automated ad manager using no-code tools that would allow select advertisers to book ads without ever needing to email me. This worked for a while, but when we started doing more custom creative ad campaigns, I knew I needed more support.
I brought on a dedicated ad manager who has the time and expertise to focus on creating a great experience for our brand partners — and works hard to ensure that every ad is in line with our audience’s values.
Hiring someone to manage sponsorships across our channels has freed me up to focus on building other parts of the business, and doing what I love most: discovering and sharing good news stories.
Connect with advertisers the easy way
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