Dylan Redekop is the founder and author of Growth Currency, a weekly newsletter filled with tools, articles, and resources for creators. Using his own insights and new findings, he aims to help publishers start, grow, and monetize their newsletters. He shares about how he booked his first ad, and how he’s succeeded in raising his rates over time.
Tell me about your newsletter
The Growth Currency newsletter is written for the creator economy. I write it from the perspective of myself a year ago, starting a newsletter, trying to grow an audience and not sure what to do. The resources I share help new creators navigate their way through content marketing, audience growth, and monetization—with a recently increased focus on newsletters. I’ve found most of my readers to be a cross-section of marketing professionals, solopreneurs, and content creators.
I share a short personal essay on my experience and observations in the creator economy, plus growing and monetizing my newsletter. Then I include a carefully curated list of links to various resources and tools aimed at helping creators start, grow, improve, and monetize their newsletters.
Who was your first advertiser?
My first ad was in my 34th weekly edition. It was for another newsletter named Sideline Sprint who were looking to grow their subscriber base. At the time, I had about 650 subscribers.
How did they contact you?
I listed my newsletter on directories and platforms where I thought I could attract advertisers. An advertiser reached out to me via email, we determined which edition they’d like to advertise in, and they sent the creative and link shortly after. I mocked up their ad and sent a screenshot for their approval. It all took about 30 minutes from start to finish.
Though that first experience went smoothly, more recent advertisers have failed to provide all required info, so more back and forth is needed. They’ll often forget components like headline copy, UTM tags, and images on the first exchange. This can result in an extra hour of work that could have been avoided.
What did you charge?
I did a little bit of research to see what similar newsletters my size were charging for ads, but there wasn’t a lot of data. So I went with a gut feeling of what I felt someone might be willing to pay to get in front of 650 people. $25 felt like a “safe” price for both parties. Not a lot of risk.
Because of the low price, we didn’t have to negotiate at all. The ad didn’t perform very well. Substack click stats are awful, so I couldn’t verify if the ad received any clicks at all, but it got less than 2% of all clicks. I never ran another ad with that advertiser, understandably. But I did book one more bundle of ads for four editions at the $25/edition rate before raising my prices.
Read: How to Set Your Newsletter Advertising Rates (Without Selling Yourself Short)
How do you get advertisers now?
I received more inquiries once people started seeing ads in my newsletter. People reach out via Twitter DMs, or they’ll hit reply to one of my newsletters inquiring about advertising. My “explicit” outbound marketing efforts have been minimal.
What’s helped sell more sponsorships is building connections and relationships with other creators, solopreneurs, and founders. With these established connections, I’ve been able to reach out and ask if they might be interested in advertising in the newsletter. The answer is almost always “yes” and has resulted in over $2000 in ad revenue over the past 7 months.
Read: The Guide To Increasing Your Newsletter Revenue: What Advertisers Want
The only paid marketing I’ve run is Josh Spector’s For The Interested newsletter back in October 2021. A single $100 ad earned about 50 new subscribers. I’ve also arranged several free/unpaid cross-promotions with a number of other newsletters, and that’s been helpful for growing the newsletter.
My prices have steadily increased, and I’ve added multiple ad spots throughout the newsletter that advertisers can purchase. These price points now range from $39 for a footer ad to as high as $200 for a premium placement due to the high visibility. I’ll also be adding advertorial-style, fully sponsored campaign options.
The platforms I use to sell ads process payments for me through Stripe, so I don’t have to deal with any payment processing on my end.
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