Monetizing a newsletter is hard.
That’s not a secret.
I sent my newsletter for nearly two years and 100+ editions before making a single dollar from it.
I was quickly sold out of ad inventory for months at a time. This sounds great, right?
Wrong (kind of).
I was capped at $1,000 - $2,000 per month from primary ad revenue simply based on the size of my audience and reasonable CPM that I could charge.
After re-acquiring Workspaces and trying to get the sponsorship flywheel humming again, I realized two things.
1) The newsletter was now ~12,000 subscribers and I had never experimented with “classified ads”
2) The website itself was receiving anywhere from 50,000 - 75,000 pageviews per month — a potential revenue stream that I had overlooked
So on October 24, 2024 I decided to try a quick experiment.
I want to try something new for Workspaces!
Introducing: Supporters
For a full month your brand will be displayed on every single pageview (~75,000)
It will also be mentioned in 4 newsletter sends (~14,000 subscribers)
It will also be mentioned on @workspacesxyz
Starting:… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— #Ryan Gilbert (#@rjgilbert)
6:49 PM • Oct 24, 2024
I would introduce a new “Supporter Tier” that would tackle both of the points above. I would introduce a classified ad tier while also attempting to monetize the website in a way that felt natural to what I had built over the last 4 years (no Google Adsense 🙅♂️).
If it flopped I could simply delete the tweet and move on.
Instead, these slots sold out in 11 minutes and had $1,000 added to the super official Workspaces, LLC bank account.
Replies and DMs were still rolling in with interested people and brands so I quickly stated a waitlist that immediately grew to 16 more people.
An additional revenue stream was officially rolling thanks to these four sponsors.
Throughout the month they would receive >2,000 clicks.
Last month I kicked off a new supporter tier for @workspacesxyz that allowed 4 companies to get in front of the audience for the entire month
The results?
A total of 2,029 clicks to them
— #Ryan Gilbert (#@rjgilbert)
2:52 PM • Dec 2, 2024
The Supporter Tier was working!
Since this kicked off, Supporters have now seen nearly 7,000 clicks come their way.
And yes… I did raise the prices for the next batch of supporters.
And now to state the obvious… while this single tweet did technically lead to $1,000 in ad sales in just 11 minutes, the ability to do this actually took 4+ years and thousands of tweets to build the following that made this possible.
There were no shortcuts.
Interested in seeing your logo as a Supporter? Just hit reply and let me know!
Whenever I’m asked how long it takes to run a newsletter like Workspaces I always respond with “I don’t know probably an hour or two each week?”
This week I’m going to time every single thing Workspaces-related so that I have a real answer.
I’ll share the breakdown next Sunday.
Stick around.