Ernie Smith is a writer and creator known for his newsletter Tedium. He publishes twice-weekly, launching deep dives into weird, mundane topics, from bubble hockey to packaging labeling. Aside from that, he’s also a contributor to Vice’s Motherboard and the creator of the news-focused Tumblr site ShortFormBlog.
Tell me about your newsletter
Tedium is a twice-weekly newsletter that focuses on the history of things that don’t usually have histories written about them. It’s an old-school, long-form newsletter that’s been around since 2015, and it has a custom template design that emphasizes deep dives about offbeat topics—generally, half-technology, half general obscurities.
Our audience of 12,000 subscribers includes those who like learning about how things work, such as tech-heads (including a Hacker News contingent) and those in fields such as museums and technical research. We also have a lot of people who are generally attracted to the strange way I think about the world.
Who was your first advertiser?
The product was a tool for online investigations called Hunchly. At the time, my newsletter had just 1,700 subscribers and was still running on MailChimp. I had been running it for about a year and a half at that point, and I didn’t have a system for advertising because I was more focused on content syndication.
Given my design-heavy focus, I built something custom for them that stood out within the template. And generally, that’s been the approach I’ve taken ever since.
How did they contact you?
Just a simple email. They reached out to me because they liked the newsletter. Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking in this direction yet, so I needed to make some changes to account for this addition, including building a custom design for the sponsored ad.
There was some back and forth on the design front, but from a negotiation standpoint, I kept it simple. We came to an agreement quickly, especially because the newsletter space was a bit quieter at the time.
What did you charge?
I kept it low-priced— just $50. My thought process on the pricing was in part because of the newsletter’s small size, but I also consider its generalist nature a factor in terms of who I reach with sponsorships.
Read: What’s a CPM, and How To Easily Price Email Ads the Right Way
How do you get advertisers now?
I still get reached out to from time to time by different companies via email, but I also use solutions such as Paved to scout out potential advertisers. I’m actually a big fan of Paved’s programmatic solution. It’s not only a great source of backfill, but it’s designed to match my template, which I love.
Since the days of MailChimp circa 2016, I’ve worked on building out my own custom solutions to newslettering, and my emails are actually built out using a CMS. Even when I was using MailChimp, I relied on a Ghost install to set up email templates long before it was actually a feature on the platform.
My system is built out using Craft CMS, and a major feature of it is that there’s a CMS category specifically for building out ad templates, at different sizes—I offer three at this time: text-only, a small image with text, and a large image with more text.
I charge a bit more now—my most popular ad type goes for about $150 these days. However, I tend to focus on package deals with sponsors with the goal of running their sponsorships multiple times each month. And while I mostly emphasize email, I have a web presence where my articles live long beyond the inbox. The ads generally show there, too.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
I think that there is value to newsletters for sponsors beyond the number of clicks a newsletter can generate. I think that approach can discourage experimentation in the newsletter space, especially for more long-form newsletters that are intended to be read within an inbox.
I’d love to partner with more brands that see the value in taking part in more in-depth experiments with editorial content, as well as storytelling approaches that emphasize brand affinity rather than maximum click count.
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