Thanks Michael, it's great to see different experiments.
As you might know, I have been testing out Native Sponsors. The only thing that moves the needle is a format that sends at least 100+ signups or 100+ clicks somewhere at scale.
Anything less than this is not worth the "Ad space", even if it's to a peer partner imho.
For this reason it needs to be near the top of the Newsletter to get maximum impact and in a format that's a more "direct recommendation" to a trusted partner. A bunch of links at the end of an article, isn't efficient enough for what I am after here.
The click rate is already problematic on Substack given that they don't give a decimal point or an overall CTR of the Newsletter as a whole. Cross-promotions on Notes are still viable and doing well but they don't usually lead to a bunch of new signups at the scale I'm looking for.
Hey Michael, This is so freaking timely, it's awesome.
I noticed this same problem last fall and built an automation tool for my purposes, after some feedback I built a self-serve portion around it to open it to people - I am launching it as part of this month IndyHackathon and next week in Doha (Qatar) as part of the Websummit.
I wonder if we can work together on this - if you go to https://neuraldreams.ai you can see a screenshot of my demo from 1 week ago at the IndyHackathon.
The "ads" are right now your own newsletter or you can add text and a link to any other ones you want - or any other digital products you may have.
Even if you want to go your own way, I love how much this validates the issue I saw last fall immediately with Substack...
I'll take a closer look at this to make sure there's overlap.
If I understand, the conversion to high quality readers is the desired end result, right?
I'm thinking this assumes that you start with somebody who is already reading your newsletter, so then you promoting another high quality publication should lead to the reader joining the paid category of that newsletter?
It looks like the placement of cross promotion in the context of your newsletter content is of higher value than a cold "Here are 3 recomendations" one time promo? (Which, I think you are correct)
The theory is good but if your other point about Substack becoming saturated with many newsletters suffering from low quality subscribers I can only see this as making the problem worse. Ie you will be targeting your native recommendations at a saturated substack user base.
To work, you need to be targeting newsletters outside the Substack ecosystem or who have grown their list outside of Substack. Otherwise you are just going to dilute the Substack list even more.
I've been trying something similar at the end of my essays. I'm not sure the click through though. Mostly I try to do coauthor collab and cross posts.
I'm ways game to test something new.
Thanks Michael, it's great to see different experiments.
As you might know, I have been testing out Native Sponsors. The only thing that moves the needle is a format that sends at least 100+ signups or 100+ clicks somewhere at scale.
Anything less than this is not worth the "Ad space", even if it's to a peer partner imho.
For this reason it needs to be near the top of the Newsletter to get maximum impact and in a format that's a more "direct recommendation" to a trusted partner. A bunch of links at the end of an article, isn't efficient enough for what I am after here.
The click rate is already problematic on Substack given that they don't give a decimal point or an overall CTR of the Newsletter as a whole. Cross-promotions on Notes are still viable and doing well but they don't usually lead to a bunch of new signups at the scale I'm looking for.
Hey Michael, This is so freaking timely, it's awesome.
I noticed this same problem last fall and built an automation tool for my purposes, after some feedback I built a self-serve portion around it to open it to people - I am launching it as part of this month IndyHackathon and next week in Doha (Qatar) as part of the Websummit.
I wonder if we can work together on this - if you go to https://neuraldreams.ai you can see a screenshot of my demo from 1 week ago at the IndyHackathon.
The "ads" are right now your own newsletter or you can add text and a link to any other ones you want - or any other digital products you may have.
Even if you want to go your own way, I love how much this validates the issue I saw last fall immediately with Substack...
Cheers
So the pain point to be solved here Matt is actually customer acquisition that's targeted that leads to high quality readers that convert.
Anything outside of that pain point for me is more or less useless. So I'm not sure you understand totally what I'm getting at here.
I'll take a closer look at this to make sure there's overlap.
If I understand, the conversion to high quality readers is the desired end result, right?
I'm thinking this assumes that you start with somebody who is already reading your newsletter, so then you promoting another high quality publication should lead to the reader joining the paid category of that newsletter?
It looks like the placement of cross promotion in the context of your newsletter content is of higher value than a cold "Here are 3 recomendations" one time promo? (Which, I think you are correct)
That last part, this tool does not do.
The theory is good but if your other point about Substack becoming saturated with many newsletters suffering from low quality subscribers I can only see this as making the problem worse. Ie you will be targeting your native recommendations at a saturated substack user base.
To work, you need to be targeting newsletters outside the Substack ecosystem or who have grown their list outside of Substack. Otherwise you are just going to dilute the Substack list even more.