Hey everyone - A little late because we had another sponsorship call this morning. It went well, we changed our model a bit and were able to land it. Lots of moving parts!
This week:
A current status update for the week
Changing our sponsorship offer
Meta Ads Update
New media conference thoughts
What we are working on
Weekly Update
This week we added 220 subscribers to the newsletter. This is a little less than last week and a little signal that we should update our Meta ads.
Just this morning we landed another sponsor that brings us way closer to covering our advertising costs for the month. We are trying a new model for this (more on that later).
A second sponsor is a huge win for us, with just 1 more we should be able to cover our advertising costs for the month. With 2 we can ramp up our ad spend.
Changing our Sponsorship Model
Unfortunately, our first sponsor didn’t get the type of traffic we would have liked. I think it could be a slight market fit problem with our audience and the tool. No fault in either area, but a big lesson for us. We will likely offer a refund if they are not happy with the results.
Rather than a flat fee and random results, for the foreseeable future we are switching to a cost per click model. This will be run like a retainer. For example, we offer to get them 10 clicks at $10 per click ($100), and will run ads on their product or service until they hit that mark.
Where we are at right now we think this is the best option. It gives us cash up front to grow and sets clearer expectations with the sponsors we have. It also gives us a bit more flexibility on where we can run ads.
Excited to try this out with our new sponsor. Will report back with how this goes! Huge credit to Warren for coming up with this tweak.
Meta Ads Update (time for new creative)
It’s subtle, but over the last week our cost per subscriber has slowly crept up. This signals to us that it is time for a new ad set. I will be creating some ads this weekend and launching the new set on Monday.
These are some of the tweaks I’m going to try:
New POV walking shots (Brewery, Golf Course, Bridge)
Music - Our video has just been subtle ambient noise, but I want to try some with calming music or even upbeat music. I’ve noticed on my ads for my book (unrelated), that the music ads outperformed non-music ads.
New Copy - This will be a small tweak, but I’m going to experiment with more targeting for entrepreneurs, our ad from the last set targeting this group is our best performing right now.
New Headlines - We now have 1600+ subscribers to the newsletter. I think using this social proof language could be a good selling point for new users.
I may not test all of this in the new set, but they are good angles to pull on. We have good creative that works, now it is just about refining. If we can get our CPA down to consistently less than $0.50 this is a MASSIVE win for us.
New Media Summit Prep
Both Warren and I will be attending the New Media Summit in Austin Feb 26-27. We are really excited about this opportunity to speak with more newsletter people who are further along than us. If you’re interested in attending and want to meet us there, I have a code for 20% off (KEN20).
There will be a ton of great speakers and other newsletter creators who are doing 6-8 figures in revenue, and I’m looking forward to soaking up all their knowledge.
Based on where we are at, we are pretty comfortable with subscriber acquisition and content, our main interest is understanding how to create value for our audience and monetize in a way that is mutually beneficial.
We are looking to learn more about the following:
Lead magnet / welcome offer ideas - We think it would increase our survey responses and our trust with our community if we gave something away for free when they opened our welcome email.
Product ideas - Can we create a low ticket product that would drive value for the majority of our audience. What could it be?
Ramping up to 2 newsletters per week - If we were to add a day where we posted, what should we include in that. What is the roadmap for doing that?
Creating a paid community - What offer can we create for our audience that is compelling for them to pay $5-20 per month to join?
If you have any feedback on these, please reply to this email with ideas!
Next Week’s Initiatives
We are continuing to hammer sponsorships with our new model. I think this could get us to break even this month which would be amazing.
Initiatives for this week:
New ad set (described above)
Try to lock down 1 more sponsor (outbound and calls)
Create sponsorship calendar so we can be organized about all this
Thanks for reading. Feel free to respond to this email with any advice or questions!
Until next week,
Ken