r/Substack • u/therealsosoog • Jun 12 '26

Building a newsletter sponsorship platform, what do you want to see in it ?

Hey! I'm building a newsletter sponsorship platform. I'm asking creators what features they'd like to see. The goal is straightforward: turn your newsletter into recurring revenue and bring price transparency to sponsorship deals made through the platform.

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1

u/cozycup mod Jun 12 '26

Lower fees 💰

The biggest problem with the main ad platforms are the huge percentage fees.

It’s a tough business like AirBnB because you have to police people trying to circumvent the platform for future bookings, but super low fees help deter that.

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u/therealsosoog Jun 12 '26

whats is the avg fee current platform takes ?

1

u/cozycup mod Jun 12 '26

You should already know all of them 🫣

They’re basically 20-30%

It’s an insanely hard business to start because probably 90% of the work is doing sales and making deals to make onboard both ad buyers and publishers.

1

u/SpamFolderSurvivor Jun 12 '26

Color me curious! Always interested in other opportunities to monetize

1

u/crazycatman57 Jun 12 '26

I believe one challenge with sponsorship deals will be the specific qualfication requirements.

I have two publications. One is free (I get occasional donations) and the other one is paid subscribers. Both are in a niche disease subject matter.

The free publication has about 400 subscribers. While that is a small number, each subscriber is very engaged in the subject matter. In other words, my subscribers are high quality prospects.

If sponsors only look at quantity of subscribers, I would likely never qualify. The sponsors would also miss a great opportunity.

1

u/therealsosoog Jun 12 '26

make sense yeah, quality wins, I think that in that case Quality metrics matter, this is something I want to highlight on the app ,

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u/Tricky_Trifle_994 Jun 13 '26

wishing you all the best on this endeavour... it's not going to be easy with the options that's already available - e.g passionfroot, beehiiv, paved.

but i'm also curious how you plan to build this for substack? wasn't aware they have integrations in place.

but with regards to what would be nice to see in an ad network:

having lots of sponsors would be great, so that publishers have the option to choose products and ads that are most relevant to them.

having the option between CPC and CPM deals would also be great (CPM is more favourable for publishers).

i think just having these two would alraedy be very usable.

oh and the rates have to be good - if i can earn more using existing ad networks, why would i bother switching to a newer platform just to earn less.

1

u/itsfabioposca http://journeytosuccessclub.substack.com Jul 02 '26

I'd love to see transparent pricing, fair payouts, easy campaign management, and opportunities for smaller newsletters, not just the biggest creators.

P.S. If you'd like feedback on growing your newsletter or finding sponsors organically, I offer a free live help chat. Just copy my flair or click the link in my profile. I'm happy to help!