The Ultimate Guide to Newsletter Advertising Rates

Whether you’re starting to dip your toes into advertising or you own 10 profitable newsletters, it’s essential that you nail your ad revenue.

Too much advertising can make your newsletter feel spammy and turn readers away. Too little and/or the wrong types, and you’re missing out on valuable revenue.

Today, we’ll dive deep into average newsletter rates, what affects those rates, and a few ideas for how you can increase your ad revenue with little effort.

Why Newsletter Advertising is Important

For many newsletters, including most of the world’s largest, advertising is their bread-and-butter monetization strategy. 

Here are a few reasons why it’s so popular:

• Works for any niche. If you’re a general interest newsletter without obvious affiliate opportunities or products to sell, there are still advertisers that will pay if you’ve got a large, engaged audience.
• Keeps the newsletters free for readers. Without ads, many newsletters might turn to paid subscriptions instead.
• Readers don’t (necessarily) have to click away from the newsletter for the creator to earn money. Some advertisers depend on clicks, but others simply want the brand awareness a large newsletter gives.

Is Newsletter Advertising Right for Your Brand?

There are plenty of factors that can help decide if advertising is the right monetization model for you. 

When Allowing Advertising Makes Sense

If you're in any of these situations, allowing advertisers in your newsletters is likely the way to go:

1. You’re willing to work with advertisers. You’ll have to find advertisers, pitch them, and manage ongoing relationships. You’ll have to figure out where to place the ads and figure out how they fit into your newsletter's design. If you have experience with this or think you can take it on, then advertising can be a stable source of revenue.
2. You want to keep your newsletter free. Some newsletter creators just don’t like the idea of charging for their writing. They’d rather keep it open to all.
3. You’re in a general interest niche. It’s harder to monetize a newsletter that’s generic or doesn’t target a specific audience. For example, many daily news newsletters rely on advertising because there isn't much to do in the way of leveraging affiliates, creating their own products, or having a paywall (there are so many free places to get news).

When Allowing Advertising Doesn’t Make Sense

1. You want your newsletter to be 100% you. If you frown on the idea of having a content block that belongs to another brand, this might not be for you. Some brands also like to send out long-form essays, which don’t lend themselves as well to inserting advertising in the middle of it.
2. You sell your own products. In this case, the advertising in your email will be for your own coaching, info products, or services.
3. There’s an easy delineation between a free and paid version. Let’s say that you send out an email about the stock market for free. A paid version could include your top stock picks. The obvious delineation could also be just sending out one more email per week.

Types of Advertising

If you’re considering allowing advertisements in your newsletters, it’s important to consider what type you’ll allow. 

For example, you’ll have to balance visibility with income. If you want the most money, you’ll have to give advertisers the best spots in your newsletter. If you only want small, text-based ads or have them at the very bottom, you’ll earn less.

1. Newsletter Sponsor/Partnership

This is usually the highest-paying type of advertising because it gives them the premier spot: right at the top. Also, there are often no other advertisers present in the email, ensuring the sponsor gets all the attention.

Forbes Daily has a presenting sponsor in their emails:

Then, later in the email, their presenting sponsor gets a mid-content ad:

2. Content Block

Many newsletters break up their emails into distinct blocks of content. For example, many that round up the news will highlight a few big stories and give a title, image, and a longer breakdown of what’s going on. 

Then, when they want to insert an advertiser, they can create a content block that looks like the others in their newsletter. Advertisers are willing to pay well for these because they are commonly read by subscribers. 

Here’s an example of how Marketing Brew inserts an advertisement into a content block:

By law, they do have to signal that it’s an ad (thus the “PRESENTED BY CUTS" at the top), but for a subscriber scrolling through, this looks like a piece of newsletter content.

3. Display Ads or Banners

These can be called different things, but we’re referring to image-based ads that are inserted into emails.

Here, you can see Morning Brew with a display ad inside the History Facts newsletters:

Advertisers typically don’t pay as much for these as they would for a full content block or to be a presenting sponsor, but they can still get prime real estate inside each email.

Another option is to present a flurry of image-based ads, with each one paying a small amount. Here’s how Sports Collectors Daily does this:

Then, they even use one of the blocks to advertise their own advertising options.

4. Classified

What does a classified ad look like in an email newsletter? They’re short, usually text-based ads that don’t take up much space. They’re often designed to appear as a native piece of content that looks like it belongs in the newsletter.

However, they’re less expensive because they’re less intrusive. 

Here’s an example from Money with Katie:

5. Advertorial

There are other ways to use advertorials, but in a newsletter, it generally comes in the form of the writer talking about the product within the context of the newsletter.

For example, let’s say you run a newsletter about becoming a better golfer. You want to promote a product that helps correct your stance while golfing.

You could write a content section about how you fixed your swing, but then include the link to the product naturally. This is valuable content that your readers might enjoy, but then also has an advertisement naturally woven in.

This type of content does well because it’s likely to be read and gets an endorsement from the newsletter owner—someone who the subscribers already trust.

The Newsette does this in virtually every newsletter they send. They often have people on their team share products they use in real life, and then have links to buy those products. Some are sponsors, while others are affiliate links.

Here’s an example:

Below that image, their Associate Lifestyle Editor gives a list of all the things she’s bringing, with nearly two dozen links to purchase those products.

What Are Average Newsletter Rates?

There are many factors that can affect newsletter rates. However, we can provide a few examples to give you a sense.

First, Paved has some across-the-board data that newsletters generally earn between $10 to $30 per 1,000 subscribers per email send.

Let’s extrapolate that to a 10k subscriber list at various numbers of sends per week:

Of course, those rates vary wildly by niche, subscriber engagement, your ability to find & manage subscribers and more. However, with a daily email send you can earn more than $8k per month from a list of just 10k.

Newsletter Rate Examples

While many newsletters don’t publish their rates online, we can point to a few examples. Here’s Dense Discovery’s advertising page:

They do a weekly email, meaning that they can earn about $1k per email send. They have a list of around 37,000 subscribers, putting them at $27 per thousand (which is at the high end of Paved's data from above).

Their list is especially active (62% open rate and 13% click rate), but their list isn’t particularly targeted. Their subscribers are described as “savvy creatives, entrepreneurs, thinkers and artists.” This wide audience likely lowers their earning potential.

Next, let’s look at Today in Design. With about 5,000 subscribers and a newsletter sent every weekday, here are their rates:

This earns them around $20 per thousand (again, right in line with the data), but they also send every day—meaning they earn much more per subscriber per month than Dense Discovery. 

What Affects Newsletter Advertising Rates & Earnings?

Let's talk about the factors that can raise or lower your advertising rates.

1. Number of Sends

As pointed out with the two newsletter examples from above, total earning power per subscriber changes tremendously based on the number of sends per week. 

The easy answer may seem to be to send more newsletters! However, this doesn’t always work.

For example, the more niche your industry, the less news you can share. You can have opinions on things that are happening, but it may be difficult to fill a daily newsletter with this. Think about something like news from a small city. There might just not be enough interesting things happening daily.

2. Subscribers’ Ability & Willingness to Spend

The likelihood of your target audience clicking and buying a sponsor’s product is the main determinant of how much you can charge.

If your newsletter is aimed at high school students, advertisers are unlikely to pay much.

However, if you have a list of CEOs, affluent investors, or people who participate in expensive hobbies, your advertisers will be champing at the bit to get in front of those people.

This is why sometimes people with a small list can launch products and clear $100k—everyone on their list is responsive, has means, and is willing to pay big for what the newsletter owner is offering.

3. Ad Position

We’ve already discussed this extensively above with the different types of advertising. Just know that if you’re unwilling to have a presenting sponsor or offer large content blocks, your advertising revenue will be severely limited.

4. Seasonality

Some niches see more engagement from subscribers and can charge more from advertisers during certain times of the year.

Here are a few examples:

• Pro sports leagues
• Real estate (summer always sees an uptick in house movement)
• News (e.g., election cycles)
• Outdoor hobbies (fishing and hiking are likely less popular in January, while skiing would see an uptick)
• Vacation/trips

How to Automate Newsletter Advertising

Offering advertising in your newsletter is often challenging. If you’re just starting out, you wonder why people should pay you money for a spot.

If you’re running a multi-brand company with several newsletters, managing your ongoing relationships and maximizing ad revenue becomes a full-time job.

That's one way that Letterhead can make your life easier and increase profits. With our automated ad-insertion feature, you choose where you want an ad in your newsletter, and Letterhead enables insertion across your entire portfolio of publications. If you don't have direct-sold inventory, you can use the same feature to allow programmatic options or house ads to advertise your services or other products.

Chat with us today, and we’ll show you what else Letterhead can do to increase your revenue with less work.