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As some of you know from my marketplace thread, I run a curation newsletter targeted at niche site publishers.
I'm now researching how other newsletters in the space are monetizing, and I thought I would share the findings here; you'll probably find them interesting.
Note: This was originally just for personal use, so it's not really that organized or full of additional data - I just wanted to quickly check how people were making money.
Numbers:
However, one caveat: if multiple people were promoting the same product, I only listed it once. During big launches (like for the Niche Site Summit recently), pretty much everyone was promoting the same thing, so it wasn't very interesting to add it 20 times.
Most popular monetization methods:
Interesting facts:
Takeaways
Considering how much Google is cracking down on the affiliate/display ads model, it seems that people who are looking to the future might want to focus on email + products - especially considering how lucrative some of these niches are.
I'm now researching how other newsletters in the space are monetizing, and I thought I would share the findings here; you'll probably find them interesting.
Note: This was originally just for personal use, so it's not really that organized or full of additional data - I just wanted to quickly check how people were making money.
Numbers:
- The number of newsletters I'm subscribed to: ~30 or so
- The number of emails I went through - ~500 or so (since July 2023)
- The number of unique monetization methods: 85 (explained below)
However, one caveat: if multiple people were promoting the same product, I only listed it once. During big launches (like for the Niche Site Summit recently), pretty much everyone was promoting the same thing, so it wasn't very interesting to add it 20 times.
Most popular monetization methods:
- Info products (courses, eBooks, reports, etc.)
- Affiliate (for courses, SaaS, etc.)
- Sponsorships (DFY niche sites, software, etc.)
- Services (link building, etc.)
- Communities (a few, but nice recurring income)
- Consulting (very few people do this)
- Databases (e.g. database of profitable niches, expired domains, etc.)
- Not everyone has their own products, but plenty of people do.
- There are two main categories of courses being sold:
- Site building courses for beginners. This is usually a few hundred bucks.
- Specific courses: These are laser-focused on one specific aspect of niche site building, like content updating, HARO link building, etc.
- Around 38% of newsletters have at least one product of their own that they are promoting.
- Two main categories here are courses (whatever is launching at the time) and software.
- Courses:
- Content updating (Tony Hill's course was promoted everywhere)
- Site building for beginners (e.g. Authority Hacker, Fat Stacks, etc.)
- Summits (e.g. Niche Site Summit)
- Software:
- Keyword research tools
- AI writing tools
- Very few people were offering services, but the most common ones seemed to be audits and link building.
- Done-for-you niche site services
- Link building services
- AI writing tools
Interesting facts:
- Several newsletters used fake sponsors. They labeled the affiliate link as a sponsor - I don't know if this is legal or not.
- RPMs are insane in this niche: One newsletter shared their RPMs for their travel site and their SEO courses.
- Travel site RPM: $86
- SEO stuff RPM: $780
- Launch model is alive and well: if you ever read Product Launch Formula by Jeff Walker, you might have wondered if that still applies in 2023. I'm here to tell you it does. Most of the people selling the courses only open them a few times per year and reap the benefits of scarcity and urgency.
Takeaways
Considering how much Google is cracking down on the affiliate/display ads model, it seems that people who are looking to the future might want to focus on email + products - especially considering how lucrative some of these niches are.