How do I renew newsletter sponsors and raise my prices?

Renewals are where newsletter sponsorships get easy, if you set them up right on the first sale.

How do I set up a sponsor to renew?

• Sell a term, not a one-off. One ad has very low odds of working for a brand-awareness buyer. A longer commitment is better for them too.
• Make it exclusive. One partner per category per year.
• Add first right of refusal. They get the first chance to renew before anyone else gets an offer.

What's the renewal pitch?

Year two is about locking out the competition. My pitch to a roofer:

"Right now you don't care if your roofing competitor gets it, but when I have 15,000 and the whole town is talking about it next year, your competitor cannot get it because you're just gonna pay me again, maybe up to a 20% increase, and you're locking your competitor out."

The audience grew, so the price grows. The alternative for them is watching their rival take the spot.

Growth is also the reason to sign annual in the first place. The pitch: we're growing and our prices are going up too, so sign now based on what we have now. In eight months we might be double the size, and you're in front of twice as many people for the same money.

A guest on my podcast, John Apolinar, takes that further. He pitches big annual packages around $25,000 and commits part of the money to growing the list. I hadn't thought of growth as part of the package. I can afford to put a lot of the money from a big package into growth, and I add about 1,000 to 2,000 subscribers a month, so I can tell a sponsor there will be new eyeballs on their ad every month.

Can I keep raising prices?

Yes. My comparison is always Disneyland. People complain the price is so high, but attendance isn't really going down. If what you deliver keeps getting better, the price can keep going up.

I've read enough about pricing to know a higher price can make someone want the offer more. It's still scary. If you're struggling to sell ads, raising the price feels backwards. A partner on one of my newsletters pushed me to go bigger anyway.

The practical way is raising it with each new buyer instead of all at once:

• Start the first partners at a set price. Say $10,000 a year for the first three, like a bank, a med spa and a real estate agent.
• Bump the next ones. The fourth partner and up pays $15,000. Nothing I say on day one locks the price in. If it works, raise it.
• Sell ads on top. Ten partners doesn't stop you from also selling slots at $250 or $500, or a pack of six ads for $2,000.

Partnership revenue is the foundation, not the ceiling. At around $10,000 a month from partners, I can hire a writer and someone to make social content, and everything else is extra.

How do I raise a price I already quoted too low?

Be honest. When I underpriced my first ads, my advice for a prospect who'd seen the old price was to say the website pricing was an error, and that the list is growing by about a thousand subscribers a month.

• For anyone you haven't talked to yet, the old offer got taken. Telling people they missed the boat makes them want to buy more, even at a higher price.
• Saying the lower tiers sold out was a teammate's idea, and I thought it was a great one.
• Put the growth on the ad form. I added a bold line: we're growing at 1,000-plus subscribers per month, lock in your deal today.

How do I know I'm underpriced?

Watch for these signals:

• Buyers ask for annual contracts. An Instagram-first guest on my podcast charges $650 for an event post and $1,500 for a bigger package, and thinks he's underpriced because buyers keep asking for annual deals.
• Nobody pushes back. A client of my newsletter-building tool didn't push back on paying more than expected, and an industry consultant told me to charge at least a $10,000 setup fee for a local-media ad platform. I read both as proof I was underpriced.
• Big prospects hesitate. For large organizations, a price that's too low kills deals. Check that before you assume it's too high.
• Competitors charge far more. A B2B newsletter agency charges $3,000 to $11,000 a month with no growth services, and some of its clients have under 500 subscribers.

Why should I sound booked up?

You want advertisers to feel they need you, not that you need them. Going around saying you've got a bunch of open slots sounds desperate. "If you want to get involved, we're booked up for three months" is a much better position.

Keep the outreach going anyway. Landon, who runs Wichita Life, told me on my podcast that sales cycles can take months. One credit union deal came about six months after he reached back out.

What should I avoid when renewing?

Taking a sponsor who hurts the reader experience just to fill a slot. Short term, it would make more money. Long term, it hurts the business and your ability to make legit money. A guest on my podcast said he'd turn down a $10,000 deal that disrupts his subscribers. Long-term thinking pays off better.