William Knight is the founder and managing director of Industry Slice, where he develops a collection of free newsletters, including Human Times, Risk Channel, Education Slice, and more. He agreed to chat with us to share his experience monetizing his newsletters while keeping the content free for subscribers.
Tell me about your newsletter
Industry Slice publishes a stable of newsletters to professionals in the HR, Accountancy, Education, Legal, and Risk Management worlds. These include the award-winning Human Times, Principal News/Education Slice series, the Morning Account, Letter of Law, Legal Matters, and Risk Channel.
We blend our innovative AI and human intelligence from our industry experts and hundreds of thousands of global news outlets to create and curate bespoke daily updates from the biggest hitting stories that impact your professional world so you can lead, innovate, and grow.
Who was your first advertiser?
Our first advertiser was one of the largest global education publishers. They came on board in 2016. We published a newsletter called Principal News Texas (since rebranded Education Slice Texas), which was being read by over 10,000 senior school leaders. The publication started out as a paid subscription newsletter in 2015, but once we converted it to be free, we saw an unsurprisingly large spike in subscribers.
How did they contact you?
We contacted them. We had drawn-up lists of potential partners for newsletters in the Industry Slice portfolio with the intention to approach them when each summary reached 10,000 readers.
We choose not to place advertising while growing the audience as we did not wish to devalue the brand or advertising space.
It took multiple attempts to identify the right contact within the organization, but once we did, we added them to the distribution list so they could see the quality of the content they would be aligned with and presented them with detailed data analytics, audience insights, and open engagement rates.
Read: 4 Steps to Find the Best Newsletter Advertisers Right Now
What did you charge?
The sponsorship was $20,000 for a 9-month banner ad with exclusivity. The price may seem cheap by today’s standard, but this was in 2016.
The price was discounted due to the length of the contract. Having an exclusive premium sponsor meant guaranteed revenue, no risk of unsold slots, and a saving in the manhours which would have filled the sales team time chasing advertisers.
The sponsor’s brand also added gravitas to the newsletter, in turn helping us to continually grow its audience.
Read: What’s a CPM and How To Easily Price Email Ads the Right Way
How do you get advertisers now?
The majority of sponsors are recurring. By only selecting sponsors that we feel align with our audiences' pain points, we deliver high quality returns for them, which in turn leads to return business for us.
For new and developing newsletters, we have developed a lead generation system which assists the business development team in making new relationships.
Any advice for newsletter writers seeking to get their first advertisers?
Become a student of your own environment. Put in the hours. In any given niche, there are hundreds, or even thousands, of companies looking to promote their services and products.
Find every watering hole your audience drinks from. Visit every related news website, sign-up to every newsletter, sign-up to target companies mailing lists, follow people and organizations, and self-serve.
Let advertisers’ events and products come to you. If someone is spending budget elsewhere to reach your audience, they will spend it with you.
List everything, create a forward diary, research contact details, roles of targets, make sure you have a crisp and professional media pack, place a value on your space, draw out how your content aligns with their messages, look through your leads to decide which ones offer value to your audience, and be persistent and patient.
Read: Quick Start Guide to Your First Sponsorship
Find more advertisers with Paved
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