🖱️ Earning Per Click
Swapstack launches earn-per-click offers and what it means for newsletter operators, plus other industry news including the biggest newsletter sponsors of 2022
Hi there 👋
Welcome to the 2nd Clickthrough - a free weekly newsletter for newsletter publishers. I hope you had a good week of subscriber and revenue growth.
Over the last week, I’ve been getting onboarded into Passionfroot (mentioned in last week’s email) to help manage the sponsorship opportunities I’ll be opening up across my soon-to-be 6+ newsletters at ACQUIRE.GG.
But enough about me, let’s get to the news…
Swapstack launches Earn-Per-Click Offers
Swapstack, the newsletter sponsorship platform, has been on a path to performance-based marketing by launching affiliate deals last year. And this week it launched per-click offers:
Here is a screenshot from the dashboard the next time you sign in:
Mo from Swapstack told me some more details:
We are moving to performance based models based off of brand feedback in recent months (& weird-ish economy!)
This will enable brands to work with publishers at scale, sponsoring 100s at the same time with 0 back and forth.
Ads are still native in fashion, just easier opportunities for publishers to monetise sooner and brands to work on a PPC basis like most marketers are probably used to.
On Swapstack, I’ve successfully run 1:1 relationships with brands with flat rates, as well as several affiliate ads that payout on a predefined conversion, such as a subscription or purchase.
But adding CPC becomes even more compelling for newsletter operators.
As long as the clicks are valid, you get paid regardless of whether the traffic you are sending converts or not.
It’s basically an inverse affiliate deal, more aligned with CPM impressions, but pricing on clicks, something I’ve been focussed on for a while:
Also, the co-founder of Swapstack, Jake Schonberger, put out a brilliant tweet where Mo had used ChatGPT to generate a song about CPC - if we RT it enough then Jake will have to film a music video about it:
You can sign up as a newsletter to Swapstack here.
🚀 Other Industry News
#1 Understanding Ad Pricing
Ethan Brooks at Trends.co put out How 7-Figure Newsletters Make Money: Part 1, breaking down really well the advertising model and different types of ad pricing. It’s basically a blog post version of a great presentation I had previously seen (perhaps to Trends paying customers). I’m looking forward to Part 2.
#2 Picking the Right Platform
A lot of new newsletter builders are unsure which platform to go with. Inbox Collective, by Dan Oshinsky, put a great article comparing the pros and cons of AWeber, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, Ghost, Mailchimp, or Substack.
#3 Paid Social Arbitrage
Louis from Sparkloop tweeted about how you can run paid social ads to your newsletter and make a profit by using their Partner Network, in particular Upscribe, to get paid to recommend other people’s newsletters post sign up.
This is a classic affiliate playbook, similar to a friend of mine who ran Google Ads to Jasper AI that’s still generating five figures a month commissions to this day, mentioned in one of my other new newsletters Supercharge:
#4 Biggest Newsletter Sponsors
Tobi Hikari from Sponsorgap just tweeted out who were the top sponsors are of mid-sized newsletters last year:
🚀 Other Industry Newsletters
#1 Who Sponsors Stuff
Keep on top of the latest in newsletter publishing & marketing in just 5 minutes a week, and make more money with your newsletter.
#2 Creator Wizard
Join 9K+ creators and get weekly updates on paid sponsorships, plus tips on how to pitch & price your partnerships.
Ok that’s it for this week, ntil then, come follow me on Twitter.
Cheers!
Richard Patey
This newsletter contains affiliate links and soon to be sponsors :)