Monetization 101: All the ways to make money from your audience
and which is best for you

DEEP DIVE
You don’t need millions of followers to make real money. You just need the right offer.
My first product generated $105,637 in sales in 30 days with no ad spend, no team, near zero costs, and 5k people on my email list.
In 18 months, I’ve made $1.8M+ selling offers like digital products, cohorts, coaching, and events. Even $224,356 in a single day.
And, I’ve helped GrowLetter clients sell much, much more.
To make money from your audience (even if it's small) you need to understand monetization 101 and that’s why you’ll learn today.
We’ll start with the basics.
There’s only one way to make money from your audience:
Sell them a product or service. Also known as an “offer.”
That could be your offer (direct marketing) or another businesses offer (sponsorships/ads/affiliate).
There are 3 ways to sell offers (and therefore monetize your audience):
Direct marketing: Sell your own offer — You create, sell, and deliver it
In-direct marketing: Sell sponsorships / ads — Get paid a flat fee to promote someone else’s offer
Performance marketing: Affiliate / referrals / lead gen — Get paid per click, lead, or customer when you promote someone else’s offer
All 3 work. People have built billion dollar businesses using just 1 of the 3 ways.
For example:
Direct marketing: Agora and MarketWise — $1B+ in sales each
In-direct marketing: BuzzFeed, Vice, Barstool, & more — $1B in lifetime sales or valuation each
Performance marketing: Red Ventures (The Points Guy, Healthline, Bankrate) — $1B in sales
And there are thousands of others who have built 7 & 8 figure media or creator businesses with 1 method.
That’s the foundation. Next you need to know…
When you should start
The pros & cons of each
Which is method is best for you
And exactly what offers to sell to your audience
First, I’ll start with most common question I get…
When can I start monetizing?
The answer, ASAP.
The market doesn't care about your audience size, only your value.
Your goal should be to build a business, not just an audience. Simply having followers or subscribers does not mean you will be financially successful.
Start from day 1 with simple ways to make money like paid consulting calls, newsletter recommendations, ad networks, and recommending products as an affiliate.
Those will cover your costs and give you insight into what your audience needs.
Side note: Beehiiv makes it easy to do this. They have a built-in ad network that gives you sponsorship opportunities and beehiiv boosts that pay you ~$2-$3 per subscriber when you promote other newsletters.
It’s the platform I personally use and recommend.
But what about the “big boy” monetization methods like your own offer and sponsorships?
For selling your offer - Minimum of 500-2000 people on your email list. I recommend making an offer before you have 3000 subscribers. There’s no reason to wait after that.
You don't need a big audience for direct monetization. If 10 people out of 500 buy a $1000 offer, that’s $10k with just a 2% conversion rate.
For selling newsletter sponsorships - Minimum of 10,000 newsletter subscribers if you have a high value niche or B2B audience. If you have a board, consumer audience, you may need to wait until 20,000 subscribers.
There's a lot of competition for advertising dollars. To sell ads successfully you need to have a truly valuable, engaged, and large audience that trusts you.
Sponsorships can be great, but they compound over time. It’s challenging to build an advertising business from scratch.
Next…
The pros and cons of each
Direct marketing: Your offer
High Work - You need to develop, build, and sell a product. Then keep customers happy and handle customer support.
High Reward - You keep all of the revenue. You also build alignment with your readers and a deeper relationship with readers who buy. People who buy one product from you are more likely to buy again and become promoters of your content.
Low Risk - The risk is on your execution. Not anyone else. No need to worry about the opinion of advertisers. Or changes to affiliate terms.
In-direct marketing: Sponsorships / ads
Medium Work - You need to sell advertisers and get advertisers' results. A mid or large audience is required to sell sponsorships (usually 10k-20k+ subs).
Medium Reward - Get paid based on your audience size and engagement. You make money regardless if the ad works for the advertiser or not. If it works well, they’re more likely to buy ads again.
Medium Risk - If advertising budgets are cut, your sales will go down. If you write something advertisers don’t like they may not work with you. There are things outside of your control that can cause you to lose sponsorships.
Performance marketing: Affiliate / referrals / lead gen
Low Work - Join an affiliate network or program. Then promote affiliate offers to your audience. Only a small audience is needed.
Low Reward - Only get paid when people buy or sign up. The company you're promoting gets most of the value.
High Risk - Affiliate terms and payouts can change. Even if you get recurring commissions, the affiliate program could shut down.
I share these pros and cons to illustrate the trade-offs of each method. Of course, they’re an oversimplification. Doing anything at a high level requires a lot of work.
One method is not necessarily better than others. What’s more important is…
Which is method is best for you?
This all depends on who your audience is, where you publish, and the type of content you create.
I find founder and creators who publish informational and educational content fall into five categories…
The Analyst — Analysts gather data, study it, and produce conclusions based on what they find. They deliver insights and help readers understand complex topics.
The Curator — Provides summaries, takeaways, and trusted and relevant creations of links, articles, tools, resources, advice, and more.
The Expert — Experts are teachers, mentors, and coaches. They have deep knowledge of a specific topic and deliver “how to” content and advice.
The Reporter — Usually journalists. They share news, stories, and updates on a topic, niche, or industry.
The Writer — Creative writers that don’t fit into a box. They may share wisdom, humor, or entertainment.
For example, I fall into “The Expert” category. My content teaches people how to build an audience and grow their business.
Stratechery is the classic “Analyst” newsletter. Ben Thompson (the founder) has been publishing analysis of big tech companies since 2013.
Morning Brew was originally a “Curator”, they started by summarizing The Wall Street Journal for business students. Now they publish original journalism and curate the news. They’re primarily “The Reporter” and secondarily “The Curator”.
It’s normal to be a combination of two with one primary role.
If you’ve been publishing content for a few months or more, you should know what category you’re in.
This leads us to…
Which monetization method is best for each category
The Analyst
Best method: Direct marketing: Your offer
If your content is insightful and helps readers make smarter decisions, you can charge for it. Analysts sell paid content subscriptions, memberships, one-off reports, and consulting packages.
Secondary method: In-direct marketing: Sell sponsorships / ads
Analysts who have built large, valuable audiences can also build sponsorship businesses that monetize the audience that does not pay for a direct offer.
The Curator
Best method: Performance marketing: Affiliate / referrals / lead gen
Pure curation publishers struggle to monetize because they don't create anything original. Often (but not always) this doesn't build real trust with an audience.
Because of that performance marketing is a great match. If the audience values your recommendations, they will sign up for the offers you get paid to promote.
Secondary method: In-direct marketing: Sell sponsorships / ads
With a large enough audience curators can also build sponsorship businesses.
The Expert
Best method: Direct marketing: Your offer
Experts can sell courses, coaching, events, masterminds, and more. If you're an expert monetization is straightforward. People will pay for more access to you and premium content that solves their problems.
Secondary method: Performance marketing: Affiliate / referrals / lead gen
Experts can sell sponsorships but I find it’s usually a distraction. It’s better to sell more of your offer. Then recommend complementary products you get paid for (affiliate).
The Reporter
Best method: In-direct marketing: Sell sponsorships / ads
Building a large, valuable audience that needs content on a daily and weekly basis is a great match for the advertising model. Reporters often publish 2-5 newsletters per week so they have lots of ad inventory to sell.
Secondary method: Direct marketing: Your offer
Usually, reporters stick to advertising. But if the content is good enough, it could be sold as a paid subscription. Or you could offer an event or paid community.
The Writer
Best method: Direct marketing: Your offer
The best writers sell books, memberships, communities, mentorship, and unique offers.
Secondary method: In-direct marketing: Sell sponsorships / ads
Often times “writer” audiences are broad, making ad rates are low. But when your audience is big enough this revenue channel can become meaningful.
That’s the broad overview of which methods work best for each category.
Now you need to know…
Exactly what offers to sell
There's endless types of offers you can create and promote.
I recommend starting with only ONE of the five offers best for beginners:
Live learning - Cohort based courses. Educational experiences delivered via live sessions with the instructor and other students.
Digital product - ebooks, reports, guides, playbooks, templates, SOPs, spreadsheets and calculators, swipe files, databases, etc.
Group coaching — Regimented group (and some 1on1) access to a coach or mentor.
Sponsorships — Promote an offer in your newsletter, podcast, YouTube video, etc for a flat fee.
Affiliate marketing — Promote an offer anywhere and get paid per click, lead, or sale.
These are by far the easiest and most lucrative to start with.
So if direct marketing is best for your category, you could offer:
Live learning
Digital product
Group coaching
If in-direct marketing is best for you, offer:
Newsletter sponsorships, podcast ads, YouTube pre-roll, dedicated social post
Or if performance marketing is for you:
Promote the affiliate offer: To your email list, your thank you page, in your welcome email sequence, on your blog, on a dedicated product recommendation page, and contextually (anytime you're talking about a topic related to the product).
The bottom line
These are the foundations of monetization.
I hope this gives the clarity on WHAT to sell. Next week, we’ll cover HOW to sell it and exactly how to structure your offer and sponsorships to make them irresistible.
If you have questions or ideas on what I should cover next week, reply to this email or comment on the blog post. I read every response.
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