Remember the olden times of flipping through paper trade magazines? In the late 1900s (sorry!), periodicals like Ad Age, Restaurant Magazine, and Digiday dominated industry newsstands.
Fast forward to the early 2010s, and some of these paper publications were still hesitant to embrace the digital era. Enter Brandon Pindulic, who saw this as an opportunity. He took over a trade publication, supercharged list growth by 800%, and sold it for a profit.
After this win, Brandon launched Jolt Media, carving out new niches in digital trade newsletters across industries like retail, marketing, and HR.
We chatted with Brandon about turning pages into pixels with newsletters and earning revenue along the way.
So, tell us about your newsletter.
We own a few newsletters under Jolt Media – HR Jolt, Hotel Jolt, Marketer Jolt, and Retail Jolt. We are also actively building a newsletter in the Small Business and Restaurant space.
How'd you get started in the newsletter business?
In 2015, I started a demand & lead generation agency that worked exclusively with B2B clients, and we dealt with many trade publications. I noticed a lot of these formerly print-first businesses didn’t do a great job building their email lists, so I saw it as an opportunity.
When I sold that agency, I acquired a compliance media business called Planet Compliance. We grew that newsletter from ~8k subscribers to 72k+ in 2 years and sold it to a British publishing company. We went ahead and started executing on our build-first newsletter strategy at Jolt Media.
What's it like to work with Paved?
It’s been really good! Everyone is proactive to ensure both publishers and advertisers have a good experience. I also advertise on Paved, so we get the full 360 view on how your team operates, which is nice.
HR Jolt, in particular, stands out as an in-demand newsletter on Paved. What do you think is driving that success?
We’re a niche HR newsletter– companies that market to our audiences tend to do well, but we know our advertiser pool is much more limited than a general consumer publication. Paved makes it easy to showcase this and connect with other advertisers that value this.
Resources:
Do you have any newsletter sponsorship tips for other publishers?
With sponsorships, I think it’s important to try different ad formats and keep your pricing as low as you can at first. Once you find what’s working and to what level, then you can increase pricing. Even better if you can toss some of that extra revenue into audience growth.
Our most successful advertisers, by and large, do not treat each ad as a ‘test’. It is human nature to buy the smallest ad package and hope for the best…but, when we build tailored engagements based on our shared goals together, our renewal rate is almost 100%.
What's your favorite newsletter, beyond your own, of course?
I subscribe to a ton….CEO Report, Alts, Front Office Sports, and Bay Area Times.
How to find more advertisers with Paved
Want to monetize your newsletter as effectively as Jolt Media?
Sign up for Paved today.
Get discovered by sponsors through the Paved Marketplace, or run email ads on autopilot with the Ad Network.
Enjoyed this interview? Check out the other installments of our Paved Publisher Spotlight Series:
Want to be featured in an upcoming Publisher Spotlight? Send a message to hey@paved.com.
