🍎 Newsletter Monetization Thoughts

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It’s been almost a month now since I last talked about newsletter monetization and Beehiiv.

So, I wanna share what I’m seeing and some thoughts on it in case you’re considering jumping into newsletters.

More on that in a moment.

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The Current Status

Before getting into this, I want to take a moment to note that October was the highest ads earnings for this newsletter.

Total brought in by your ad clicks was $767.53.

The random number generator picked Quinn S. as the winner of that.

And sadly, I’ll be surprised if we see it get that high again.

Such a shame too cause I really thought November was gonna result in a cool $1K going to someone right before Christmas.

How cool would that have been?

But one of the changes to Beehiiv ads since they introduced CPM only and then reverted to letting creators decide between CPM or CPC is insultingly low CPC offers.

Like the one below is a shitty $1.00 per click.

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When I get these lowball ad opportunities, I try to place them as the secondary ad since it tends to get fewer clicks.

But it’s still a hella insulting amount.

You can literally see how these companies are punking us with testing out lower paying ads, like this, which appeared on my dashboard a few days ago.

Overall, I still believe that Beehiiv has damaged newsletter monetization with these lowball offers.

But from what I hear, they still pay better than the ads that Kit offers (I think they’re STILL in beta though).

Obviously, finding your own advertisers is a great way to combat this.

One of these reasons this works is because if you’re sourcing your newsletter ads from Beehiiv, they’re basically commoditizing newsletter monetization and most newsletters end up losers here.

But certain niches easily command higher ad rates.

So, if you’re thinking about starting a newsletter in 2025, then put a lot of thought into your niche. And discard any data about the going rate for newsletter ads that was published before last month (when Beehiiv changed things up).

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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