I Convinced a 700K Newsletter to Stop Ignoring Ads

All right, man, you're not making enough money on sponsorships. I understand. I am not. Okay. Tell me a little bit about your business. First of all, give us some context. Our business is footballguys.com. Um, we help people win more at fantasy football. We've grown it over the years. We've been doing a long time. This is year number 26. We're well-established. We we've got a large audience. We have over 700,000 people on our newsletter distribution, and we're just not making that. We, well, we've not focused on. We've always focused on bringing value to the reader. In fact, actively, I mean, almost intentionally not had a bunch of ads. I mean, we have some competitors that newsletters in general that just seem like they're chock full of ads. We made the conscious decision years ago. We're going to have just one ad at the top of the newsletter and give that its attention. And we've naturally fallen into some easy ones that we know. I mean, people that, you know, really close to us adjacent in the industry. But outside of that, reaching out, we've just not done that. So tell me about the ones that fell in your lap and why you decided to take those. FanDuel. Nigel Eccles, the co-founder of FanDuel, became a personal friend. It was natural and easy. Here's a game that back when DFS was just getting started, they needed exposure. And both FanDuel and DraftKings both went. aggressively on advertising, it was easy. I mean, it just, we just didn't have to worry. It was not something we sought out. They were actually seeking us out. Um, so that's, it was just, it was easy. Okay. So when you look at other revenue levers in the business, it's, it seems like you're much more in control of other aspects of the business, right? Like, is it that advertising felt like kind of hard or a little enigmatic? Like how do I actually. The other, I mean, the only other real way we make money at the business is with subscription sales. So we have a freemium model, a ton of stuff, or, you know, we offer for free and then the premium content behind the paywall and that we control. We control ourselves and it's easy. Right. We know exactly how to do it. Okay. One comment that you made to me off camera was that you don't want to just like hawk any product. Right. And so you have editorial standards, you have personal ethical standards. Right. Right. And so tell me more about that. Like what, where, where's the line? Yeah. I mean, I think partially Justin is we built the business where it wasn't dependent on ad sales at all. We see ad sales as, as icing on the cake for us. And so with that said, we just weren't willing to make any compromises on promoting something that we didn't fully believe in. And that, that will naturally limit you some and, and, you know, and, but, uh, but then also there, we're not, it's not like we're crazy is, you know, I mean, there's, there's plenty of things that we could easily endorse and get behind. So when you think of, okay, if I were to decide intentionally that we want to generate more sponsorship revenue, that would require what? Investment in personnel to own it within the company? Probably. We've got some, and we've got some really great people that have done partial ad deals on the side, you know, in addition to their regular job stuff. So I guess it depends on how much time it would take and what kind of effort would happen into it. But we've certainly got people on staff capable of handling it. that extra stuff. What's the heck yeah number for you? If I said to you, you could generate another, I don't even know what the scale is for you. It's like what another, you tell me, like what's the number for you? I'd get super excited to say $500,000 in ad sales. I don't, I mean, for a 700,000, tell me more about the other assets you have beyond the website, the newsletter, like what else, what are the other surfaces that you think you could sell sponsorships? Yeah, the newsletter is our biggest one with the distribution there. And that goes, like I say, it goes out every day. Well, about 220 days a year, almost every day from the draft through the Super Bowl. And then, so that's a big one. And then the website itself has, we've designed that as well, though, where it's just not, some ads on it, but it's not overly intrusive on ads. Right. And, and that generates a ton of traffic also. So we've got, you know, those would be our two primary areas. And then we have several different podcast channels that would do well. And so it would be a natural tie in there. Wait, so you're not doing any sponsors on the podcast either? Very little. Wow. That's yeah. Very little. Now the Lipson automatic ones are coming in on the podcast, but as YouTube or actual, you know, and, and, and some of the, you know, the YouTube ads, but as far as, you know, sponsored reads or that kind of stuff, very little. Okay, so the first, I think, place I want to go here is that, first of all, I want to be empathetic to you because I think that there is, I'm just like chomping at the bit because there's so many things. Yeah, well, I thought I told you. He's like, you're going to cry when you see our situation. It's not tears of sadness. It's more like tears of joy because I'm so excited that I'm going to change your life. Here's the thing. I think you mentioned also to me that you had a few bad experiences with sponsors and that colored your perspective of like, well, if it's gonna be this much of a pain in the butt, do I really even want to invest in this when the membership model and other things are like, they feel like easier levers to pull. That reaction often comes from, it's all inbound interest that you as a business owner are basically reacting to. You're saying, okay, this advertiser wants to work with me. Yes or no. Is this a brand I want to represent or not? And the big, I think, switch that you need to flip is that of course, that's going to be your reaction when you have random people coming out of the woodwork, wanting to collaborate with you, who really aren't probably in alignment with 100% in alignment with your brand. And so the biggest, I think, cold start problem here, is the very first thing you need to do is figure out, okay, who is our dream brand list? Who is the top 10? Who is the top 20? And it's actually a bit deeper than that, which is that it's not just about who you or the owners of the company would love to collaborate with. It's about who are the advertisers that would serve your audience the best. And so part of this comes the very first step that I would counsel a company like yours through is what is the psychographic research that we can do to learn more about the challenges that our audiences are experiencing. And so the very, the most obvious thing is like, okay, guys who like football, FanDuel, you know, like DraftKings, like the obvious, like fantasy football. But like what I want to know if I'm an advertiser is what, where are these people at in their life? If you could tell, come to me and say that 40% of these are new dads. Okay. Right. then I could easily go out and pitch a company like Pampers. Right. Or a company who is trying to get in front of dads who are in that life milestone. Because by the way, I bet you could think of a pretty creative ad read on the podcast or a creative thing in the newsletter to seg from fantasy football to new dads. Right. The other next level tactic to this is that because your largest distribution channel is the newsletter, I'm assuming, a level of sophisticated audience segmentation could be had here too. So imagine, let's jump three steps here just so I can get you excited. Imagine that you could serve different messages to different segments of your audience. So you could say to this 40%, you're sending them a targeted ad from Pampers because you know that they answered that psychographic survey about being a new dad. And so there's like follow on repercussions of this strategy. So like there's different technical infrastructure needed to be able to send out versions of the newsletter that have different messaging. But how powerful of an ad strategy is that? When, again, I told you this offline, like it's really difficult to reach men for advertisers at scale, right? Like pretty much every brand defaults to meta ads. We're gonna run meta ads, you know, and we're gonna do the targeting. But you have a very unique channel to reach them. And you told me, they come to you for advice. Right, they're already in that mode of listening to what we say. And so I think the big shift, if I were you, in trying to think, is how do I shift from being reactive to proactive? How do I come to my team when I go home next week and I say, okay, what would it look like for us to have a sponsorship strategy where we are going to intentionally survey our audience and we are gonna develop statistics that we can come to potential advertisers with a bit of like inside baseball. So I had, I have an in-person event called sponsor games. And I also was pitching sponsors for my event. And so one of the ways in which I got several of the advertisers across the finish line was we did a survey of our, of both prospective attendees as well as attendees. And we asked them about their challenges. And some of these questions were, I was leading the witness a bit because for example, like I knew, I knew that I wanted some camera audio kind of equipment, like, you know, creators, right? Like, you know, I would questions in the survey about like, what are your biggest challenges showing up and being professional on camera? What are some of your, you know, so these types of things. So that would be one of the exercises. Like, can we put together a survey where we have an idea of some of the advertisers that we would love to collaborate with and so we can reverse engineer what type of... types of questions we'd want to ask them. How's that landing? Perfect. I mean, we've got a really tight demographic, Justin. You're right. It's mostly guys. But I mean, there's just a whole, I mean, it's simple stuff. I mean, it's Kingsford Charco, Beef Jerky, Beard brand products. I mean, all these, barbecue sauce. I mean, all these things that just fit right in, it would be easy. And we do a lot of surveys. We've done almost the exact same thing you're asking, a couple years old, but we could do that again. And surveys are so simple now. Years, a couple of years old? Yeah, a couple of years old. Okay, bro. Yeah. I mean, this is a huge opportunity because the other thing you can ask in some of these surveys is like what brands and products and tools companies are you interested in using and loving or wanting to learn more about? Imagine how much more powerful of a pitch that is where you to go to that advertiser and say, hey, 30% of our audience is interested in utilizing ChatGPT to make better decisions about their fantasy team selections or something like that. Absolutely. You know, things like that's a terrible example, but you know what I mean? Like you come to open AI or Anthropic with that data. I mean, that's a no brainer pitch rather than, Hey, do you want to get in front of guys? Right. You know? Right. Right. Right. Easy. Yeah. And that's, and that's, say surveys are so easy now. So it's easy to do. One of the things I I'm curious your take on is that when I speak with brands or companies of your scale, oftentimes one of the challenges to actually even try to implement something like this is, um, it sometimes feels hard to, to turn a big ship. Right. So you have people, your team, you know, people who are in different departments and they're kind of resistive to this idea because for the longest time we haven't done sponsorships. Right. Right. And so talk me through, do you have any concerns there about coming in and convincing people about this? I mean, our team is aligned on this and they know, I mean, we've done it in the past, so it's not a, it's not a brand new thing for us. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't, we won't have a problem there. I don't think, I mean, there's, there's enough, they, they can see the value in it. Um. And now I say that we had a negative experience some in the past. It's got it. It needs to be a real system that is workable. I mean, what we had in past troubles were, you know, copy that wanted to change instantly and on a dime and, you know, five minutes notice and this kind of stuff being super reactive or they want to take over the entire website and watch it in all their company colors and stuff. We're not open. I mean, I think we really just boils down to expectations. Can we here's what we offer? We can deliver this. We need the copy by this time to run on this date, that kind of stuff. But that's just a real system and just, you know, put it in place. You know, I mean, one of the coolest parts about what you just said is There's actually a system for this. If only there was a book or a system. There's actually a system. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. Who is this? Justin Moore. Who's this guy? He's got a picture on the back, too. It's super handsome. And you have this book now. I do. So, no, but I'm joking. But like, you know, part of it comes down to like not having a system behind this and feeling confident that like you said, all of those things are avoidable, right? When they're trying to do last minute changes, when the copy doesn't resonate and you, part of the system is deciding what you will and will not do. Right. So if you can come to them at the outset of the conversation and say, here's our editorial standards. Right. Here's the process in which we work with sponsors. Here's what we will and won't do. And if you can't adhere to that, we're probably not the best partner for you. Right. And so I think, again, taking back some of this control, you'll feel good about the partners that you turn down because you'll know that some of those details will – you'll catch those before it gets to the 11th hour. Right. That makes total sense. Yeah. Um, so let's fast forward 12 months into the future. You've just made a million dollars on sponsorships. How's that feel? It was great. It feels really nice. Well, and the other thing is it's, it would be different if we're sitting around going, well, we need to, you know, if only we had an email list or if only we, we've got all the pieces in place. That's that, that's, I mean, we just have not, we're, we are the picture of leaving money on the table there. Do you feel as though, okay, so let's say fast forward, you go back home after this and yeah, that conversation with Justin was great. I'd love to do that. What are the things that are going to stop you from, or what are the things that are going to put this on the back burner for you in reality day to day life? Focus. I mean, like I said, we don't have a dedicated person to jump on it. So it's going to take, I would need to pull people off of some other things maybe. Okay. Let's talk about this. Focus that. What are the things that you'd pull them off of? Um, probably the person I'm thinking about this most would be this doing our growth strategy and working on an advertising campaigns and for growth on adding subscribers for other parts of our business. Um, so it'd be, you know, but we can do that. I mean, this is, it would just be allocating the right time for people. I think, I think, um, AI can definitely be your friend with a lot of the strategy stuff, um, in terms of, you know, helping you redesign some of those surveys, dumping that old survey back in there, helping me brainstorm. Here's my intention behind this new survey. Help me brainstorm some new questions where I can get leading indicators for advertisers that I want to pitch. So I think at this juncture in the discussion, like for sure technology can aid you in this aspect. But, you know, I look at your business and I look at kind of where you are in the industry and the tremendous reach that you have. And there's no reason at all why those revenue figures that you just cited for me, you shouldn't even be low. And so, you know, I know I like to paint a rosy picture of things, but like, you know, it's rare that I get to talk with someone who I honestly feel like this is just such a huge opportunity. And the other thing, too, is that I want to I want to go here for a second, which is that I think a lot of people think of ad advertising in general as something that's very closely tied to the macroeconomic landscape. So like if advertising, if there's a. economic recession or something that ad dollars get pulled. It just seems like a less predictable revenue stream than something like memberships and so on. And so there are certain industries where that for sure that's the case. But again, when you have a system behind what you do and you can illustrate to an advertiser that you are one of their most predictable. Okay. advertising sources, you become a line item that they don't touch, that they actually don't remove. And so I think this is why not pricing on CPM, which is where some of your experience has been in the past. For sure. If you're looked at as a commodity, you're like, oh, well, if we don't reach 700,000 readers on this newsletter, that's fine. We'll just go buy meta ads or something like that. This is where developing your reputation as an amazing partner, it's more than just the eyeballs. It's about who you represent And as part of their overall media mix. And so my suggestion to you is that advertising actually can become one of your most predictable revenue streams if you treat it in the right way. Okay. Do you believe me? I believe you. It just makes a lot of, well, it's not, we're not, you know, inventing a new model here. Yeah. I mean, this is, I've heard this works well for lots of people. Well, and some other people in the industry that are kind of your niche neighbors. That's their primary revenue stream. Exactly. Right? Yeah, exactly. And they actually probably look at you jealously like, oh, man, I wish I had a subscription business. Well, yeah, but I'm like, why can't we have both? I mean, we can do – there's no reason at all that we can't do both. Yeah. And the other thing too, another unlock hopefully is that, you know, you are serving your audience and your readers with one particular product, which is like premium content. Right. But it's myopic to believe that the only way in which you can serve them is with the things that you directly sell. Right. There are other challenges that they have in their lives that they're that you could serve with sponsors and products and things like that, that you're never going to create a right right content around or a product for. And so you're, dare I say, it's malpractice to not serve them with sponsorships. Yeah, I can see that. I mean, again, that goes back to, you know, working with the right sponsors and doing that. But there's there there's plenty out there that I think would fit that mold. I think that like, you probably know this well, you've been in business a long time, that like every business, every revenue stream has its challenges. Yes. Memberships has its challenges. Running meta ads to acquire new customers has its challenges. You need new creative all the time. They change the algorithm. It doesn't work as well, right? And so sponsorships is the same way. It's just a different version of hard. Right. And if you have intentionality behind designing a system around it, you'll work through the same challenges that you've worked through over the years acquiring new customers. I can see that. That makes sense. So I've solved all your problems. Easy. So we're going to do another episode in six months, 12 months. And you're going to read the book. You're going to buy the book for all your team. There you go. And yeah, life is good. Okay. Thank you. Cheers. Thanks, dude.