Welcome to Revenews number ‘written when I should’ve been at the pub’.

🧐 What CPMs should you charge? Good question. Coincidentally, we’re answering it today.

Pricing mysteries aside, let’s dive in! 🚀

1. Newsletter News

2. What can I charge?

3. Recommended product

4. Inbox Banter

^{What CPMs can I charge?}

The best approach to pricing newsletter sponsorships is a flat fee. What that flat fee is, will be based on CPM calculation. It’s that CPM calculation that we’re talking about today, although it’s not technically true CPM pricing.

Figuring out what CPM to charge can be a bit of educated guesswork at the best of times, and ultimately will vary from channel to channel. The ensuing guide is my best attempt at defining the CPMs for various common newsletter audiences.

🧱 What are the factors at play?

Your topic/niche - the most influential factor.

Your audience - Who your subscribers are demographically.

Engagement - mainly the commonly critiqued open-rate, and sometimes misrepresented CTR.

Advertiser economics - who are you selling to? What is their AOV? Are they awareness or performance-focused? Is their industry well-funded right now? For example, even a successful CPG clothing brand, will have much tighter budgets than a niche SaaS brand which charges $10k+ per year.

Sales skills - Because you’ve read every Revenews, you’ll be fine.

Availability -plus how desperate you are to fill the calendar.

Supply and demand - Including macroeconomic trends, as well as micro, such as, the number of similar publications in existence. For example, AI is a great niche, but pricing is hampered by the glutton AI newsletter ad space.

Performance - Directly impactful for renewal bookings, but also indirectly impactful for new business. Let’s say you perform really well, you’ll get more renewals, have less inventory/supply, and therefore a stronger bargaining position.

🙌 The CPM guide

A guide of the most common audiences and the associated CPMs from my experience. To clarify, I am talking about CPMs based on open rate, not the whole list.

Morning Brew-esque - By this I mean broad professionals/retail investors, a quality audience but not necessarily niche. There are a lot of these now, to stand out you need scale. CPMs are in the $25-50 range, they used to be higher, but hey, markets and that.

Founders - a great audience to have, I know multiple charging over $100 CPMs for a main ad slot. It does depend on the industry though, tech seems to dominate.

B2B (Industry) - e.g. Payload & The Industry. Massively dependant, but quality publications in high-value and underserved verticals can command $150+ CPMs. I think most industry newsletters will be around $75 though, still solid.

B2B (role) - where you’re B2B by focusing on a specific discipline/function e.g. Stacked Marketer and The Quota. Pricing is influenced heavily by the density of your chosen ICP, seniority and depth of content. Some examples…

• Marketing - In danger of having too much supply, but still a very valuable audience, educated guesses would be $40-60 CPMs depending on quality and seniority.

• Sales - I think an underserved niche (bias alert). I’ve seen newsletters charging $100-$200 CPMs, again depending on quality, seniority and performance.

• Engineers/Developers - There are some great publications now, that seem to charge an average of $40-60 CPMs.

AI - A fantastic, well-funded niche, which is why a LOT of people have started one. For this reason, CPMs generally come in at $20-50. Depending on the specificity and quality of the content.

Crypto - Another good but potentially overserved niche. A big problem you’ll see is that crypto marketing budgets are directly tied to the price of Bitcoin. CPMs therefore range massively from $20-70.

Retail Investing - One of the most overserved niches now. I’d recommend niching down into a sub-segment, like Alts has done well. CPMs will probably be $30-60.

Local - to state the obvious, CPMs wildly depend on your locale. Pick a populous and affluent city if you can, CPMs are pretty solid at $50-100.

Political/Governmental - Super high CPMs. This one is much more of a guess, but I’d say $100-200+ depending very much on the advertiser, KPIs and audience quality.

Financial professionals - I think B2B finance is underserved still, with so many high-value options like accounting, payments, advisors, and so on. Depending on your dominant industries/roles, CPMs tend to be $60-150

Newsletter newsletters - saved the best til last, sorry couldn’t resist. CPMs tend to be ~$150. Niche = power. But you ultimately have a small subscriber ceiling.

Did I miss your category? Let me know!