💀 Are Niche Newsletters Dead Now?

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Just 10 days ago, I gave you my top 3 recommendations for online assets you can flip for a decent multiple.

The third item on that list was niche newsletters.

But I’m not so sure that I would still include them.

More on that in a moment.

But first, I’ve got one sponsor today. So, do your thing for the drawing!

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CPC vs CPM

Ever since I’ve been using Beehiiv for newsletters, the ads payout has always been CPC, which is cost per click.

That means the payout is based on the number of clicks on the ads. That’s why the ad money for this newsletter that I give away is always around $500/mo despite me keeping my subscribers around under 2,000.

Three days ago, Beehiiv announced CPM ads. CPM is cost per mille, or per 1,000 views/impressions.

Nowhere in the announcement did it say that CPC ads were disappearing, but that seems to be exactly what has happened.

For large newsletters that get thousands of opens, this may be a good change.

But for smaller newsletters, this is a terrible change.

To show you the difference, using this newsletter as an example, here is how much earnings came in from a recent Black Crow AI ad that was CPC based-

So, $19.20 in earnings when it is CPC based and only 812 of you opened it.

Now here’s the new CPC offer that landed in my inbox for this newsletter -

I cleaned my list on Friday, so right now this newsletter is at 1,562 subs. If ALL of those people opened the email with this ad, it would result in $8.90. But no one has a 100% open rate. So, let’s assume its 812 opens again, which would result in $4.63 ad revenue.

lol

What’s more insulting is that most of the advertisers I’ve seen are now only offering $3.00 per 1K opens.

Side note: I do have CPC ads already booked for this newsletter through Nov. 2nd, so it won’t yet affect the ads earnings that I give out each month.

I think this will have a ripple effect across the newsletter industry as a whole.

Prior to this, it was common to see anywhere between $50 and $100 CPM for newsletters.

And Beehiiv has just lowered that to $3 to $10 CPM.

Why would someone pay you whatever your newsletter sponsorship asking price is when they can go to Beehiiv and pay newsletter operators chump change?

So, if you planned on growing niche newsletters to flip with ads as the main revenue, your newsletter just got seriously devalued.

I, personally, have several niche newsletters that I’ve been growing that are now not really worth my time unless I can sell my own products through them.

So, what to do?

For me, I’m now planning on moving those niche newsletters to Kit’s free newsletter plan because there’s no sense in paying the monthly Beehiiv fee for them when they won’t earn enough from ads to cover that cost.

While the ads for those niche newsletters were never intended to be the primary monetization method, they were a good way to start bringing in early revenue while growing the lists.

Coming up…

Upcoming topics: more tips and ideas on Etsy and KDP, how it’s going with my chatGPT fiction ebook and the AI music thingie, and growing an ecomm site.

If you have a topic you want covered just reply and let me know.

Stay awesome,

Shawna

P.S. If you’re looking for high level discussions or tips on things like local SEO and Rank & Rent, I highly recommend Jacky Chou’s Advise community. I’ve been in it for several months and there’s tons of value in it, including a SOP for local SEO.

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