What is it?
Recommend other newsletters in your own newsletter and earn $1-5 for each subscriber you refer.
You can integrate your referral links either by replacing traditional ad slots or by weaving them into your content to make them feel more like a casual recommendation.
Your audience will appreciate the free recommendations, which feel less like "being sold to" compared to standard ads or products.
The Good and the Bad
- With a large audience, revenue can be significant.
- Free and easy to get started.
- Smaller newsletters will struggle to generate a lot of income here. Fewer subscribers = fewer potential referrals.
- You usually have to be approved by the referral partner before you can participate.
- Referrals are only paid out once a subscriber has been verified as active. They need to actually open the emails.
Examples to Steal
This Canadian local newsletter includes a paid recommendation for keeping up to date with U.S news.
It hints at the top U.S. stories of the day, stoking curiosity in a readership that has already proven that they care about current affairs. So this likely converts very well.
Canadians who want to "zoom out" from their city probably only want an overview of U.S. news, which is exactly what The Mix-up offers.
Ottawa Lookout also chooses to make clear this is a "sponsored" promotion, and being open about that helps them maintain trust with their readers.
This is a great example of where audiences almost perfectly overlap, and everybody wins.
The Pour Over offers a Christian take on the news, so a section of their audience is likely to resonate with more personal Christian battles, too.
Crucially, the subject matter here is not exactly the same. This Prayer is a more emotional newsletter sharing deeper dives.
So it doesn't threaten to replace The Pour Over, it's just something extra for readers to try without any risk.
Stacked does a great job of seamlessly blending their email recommendations into their newsletter.
They aim to arm digital marketers with resources to help them to be better at their jobs.
So when they promote a newsletter that promises to help this exact type of person, it doesn't feel weird or salesy. It just feels helpful.
The headline and "story" are written in the same tone as the rest of the news - snappy and curiosity-inducing. The "ad" doesn't take you out of the Stacked Marketer experience.
This makes it far more likely that people read what Geekout has to offer and give them a shot.
And that means more recommendation payouts!
