Advice on Advertising?

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theorosendorf
theorosendorf Posts: 14
in Type Business
I’m starting a daily email newsletter on type. It’s growing steadily and I’m humbled by the interest so far. We plan to launch Winter 2025.
I have some questions (and slight ambivalence) about running ads. Above all else we want to honor reader sensibilities, but this thing also needs to operate as a business. So we plan to run some non-obtrusive ads under/after the content.
Here are my questions but would love any input on the topic.
  • Have you seen good examples of newsletters (or print zines) that include tasteful, relevant, useful ads that don’t alienate readers?
  • As a reader, what kind of ad placement or formats are you okay with?
  • Of course I have lots of ideas, but what kind of advertisers would you like to see in a newsletter about typography?
  • Also, if you liked the content but not the ads, would you pay $3/mo to not have ads?
Appreciate any insight. Especially from anyone who’s done something similar in this space.
🙏

Comments

  • Carl Crossgrove
    Carl Crossgrove Posts: 10
    2 thoughts: DAILY??? And, subscriptions, via existing platforms like Substack or Mastodon might provide a lot of infrastructure you could use, since the format is a match. That removes all the pressure to use advertising, although people who publish on those platforms can weigh in about the business model. 
  • theorosendorf
    theorosendorf Posts: 14
    Thanks Carl! Yeah, daily. 😄 You are, surprisingly the first to give such a reaction. I have thought about giving subscribers a way to customize the frequency. But I’m curious, do you think daily is too much content or are you saying it sounds difficult to pull off?

    Here’s the site for anyone that’s interested. I should mention, the content format has evolved from what it shows. It will be more narrative and better tuned for the medium of email: https://quadrat.today
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,282
    Constant, frequent marketing, in the guise of “content creation,” is extremely exhausting. 
  • theorosendorf
    theorosendorf Posts: 14
    I couldn’t agree more, @Nick Shinn.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,016
    • As a reader, what kind of ad placement or formats are you okay with?
    Gosh, no idea.
    • Of course I have lots of ideas, but what kind of advertisers would you like to see in a newsletter about typography?
    For the most part, I would be happy to see anyone who will pay you money for the space.
    • Also, if you liked the content but not the ads, would you pay $3/mo to not have ads?
    I would say, take ads, and optionally (if it is not too much trouble) let people pay a premium for the ad-free version.
  • dascaluflorin
    dascaluflorin Posts: 3
    Hi, there.

    It might be worth looking into what daily sends could do to your email list/deliverability.
    From what I heard from colleagues in charge of strategy/coordination (in an email marketing agency), daily sends are not recommended as it can lead to higher unsubscribe rates and higher changes for the emails to land in the Spam folder. I think you might get away with using different subdomains for different types of newsletters you'd send - but don't take it as advice, as my experience is with the design, not the strategy/coordination side of things. 

    Giving the subscriber a customization option for the frequency might work, especially if they can do so when they sign up for the newsletters.

    "Also, if you liked the content but not the ads, would you pay $3/mo to not have ads?" - if I didn't like the ads, $3 sounds fair. But for me, it would really depend on a combination of:
    • the type of ads (do I find them useful? - i.e. discounts for X app or Y event),
    • are they unobtrusive and don't disrupt the flow (i.e. somewhere at the end of the newsletter, between the sections, or written in a way where I don't realize it's an ad until I'm halfway through it?),
    • frequency of emails (a few every week? Yes. One every month? Probably no),
    • benefits (once in a while, do I get a discount for something, or get to hear first about an event?),
    • etc.

    Cheers.
  • theorosendorf
    theorosendorf Posts: 14
    This is all very helpful. Exactly what I need.
    Along the same lines of what @Nick Shinn said, I think we’ve all reached a boiling point with “social” media. I want the old internet back. Daily Quadrat has to be anti-enshittification.
    Thank you everyone!
  • MarkJohnson
    MarkJohnson Posts: 1
    Daily sounds tough and more like something I might expect from Instagram, TikTok, or Mastodon or something, but if you're excited about it, I'd say go for it!

    I thought I was going to send a monthly newsletter with Type.lol, but it's such a pain to make one in the first place I've only sent ~14 total in 5+ years, so my time scale is glacial in comparison haha.

    My general thought would be make something that you yourself would want in your inbox and make your decision based on that. If you'd pay $3 to not see ads, cool. If you think ads will make you money, try it and find out. Inboxes are basically a river, so throw some stuff out there and see what sticks and with who.

    It's really hard to read minds and know what people like and inevitably the answer will always be some people like it, some people don't. So you might as well make something you're happy with and you'll inevitably learn, find, and cater to those who appreciate a shared sensibility with you.
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 2,018
    If you send your emails out daily you’re going to run out of stuff to write about pretty quickly. You could feature a new typeface every day but there are already social media accounts that do it.
  • theorosendorf
    theorosendorf Posts: 14
    Thanks Mark, and thanks for type.lol! Very cool site.

    Somebody wise once said that there will always be more people not using your product than there are who do.
  • theorosendorf
    theorosendorf Posts: 14
    edited June 20
    @James Puckett Yeah no, I wouldn’t do it that way, featuring typefaces. I’m thinking more like intellectual porn on the subject of type. I’m also not talking long form, more like ~200 words. Here’s some messing around on LinkedIn. It’s rough but people seem to like it.

    I recently did an exercise and listed around 100 ideas off the top in 30 minutes. Of course half of those might prove actually usable. My point is there’s no shortage of things. But my goal is quality, not quantity.

    I've written on the topic before, just not in this way.
  • theorosendorf
    theorosendorf Posts: 14
    Thanks @Kent Lew!
  • Johannes Neumeier
    Johannes Neumeier Posts: 393
    theorosendorf said:
    • As a reader, what kind of ad placement or formats are you okay with?

    In the type space, I like "sponsored by", possibly with using some of the foundry’s type as part of the design. Anything else, in my eyes, will feel like "sponsored content" and take away from the credibility of your overall offering.

    Also, daily is insane — not just for you as creator, but also it’s too much to consume and appreciate properly. Unless it's AI slop, in which case...  :# Maybe make the "daily" part single bulletins on social, then once a week the summary per email.
  • dascaluflorin
    dascaluflorin Posts: 3
    possibly with using some of the foundry’s type as part of the design

    A side note, if it's relevant to anyone: add a fallback font as well if you're going to use a web font for the text, unless you're fine with whatever default font each platform uses.
    Apple Mail, AFAIK, renders web fonts correctly (at least on iPhone and iPad - don't know about MacOS), but Gmail on Android doesn't render them, while Gmail on desktop will render them only if you have them already installed on your machine.

    As a workaround, you can have the text as a PNG image, but make sure to:
    1) Ensure it will stay visible on dark mode; and
    2) There's still some text coded as text (not sure about the exact ratio, but email clients don't like it when you send way too many emails that include almost no text).

  • theorosendorf
    theorosendorf Posts: 14
    Thanks guys. Much appreciated.

    Email related: this cool little site: https://www.caniemail.com/
  • theorosendorf
    theorosendorf Posts: 14
    What’s with the line breaks here on Typedrawers? It seems to pick up on different types of new line / paragraph / return characters. Copy/paste from Obsidian adds lots of space.

    Type straight into the comment field and there’s less space.
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,754
    Typing return or enter in the text field here results in a <br> tag. Pasting from another app seems to result in a <div> tag and a <br> tag for each paragraph. It seems to be related to pasting formatted text vs. plain text. If you paste without formatting, you don't get the <div> tags. (At least in my limited experimenting just now.)

    Formatted text (pasted from another app)

    Unformatted text (pasted from another app)

  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,754
    Actually, after viewing the source for this page in my example above, the "Formatted text..." line has added <p> tags rather than <div> tags. So I guess it depends on the source text. In any case, pasting without formatting does the trick.
  • theorosendorf
    theorosendorf Posts: 14
    Ah, cool. Thanks Mark
  • Stephen Coles
    Stephen Coles Posts: 1,022
    edited June 24
    The issue is that Typedrawers’ CSS has built-in spacing below paragraphs, but that doesn’t show in the input field (or the Preview), so people add an extra linebreak to get space between paragraphs. If you do a single return, you get space between the two paragraphs.
    So it’s a bit of a bug that needs to get fixed in either the input or the display styles. I have now reported it the dedicated area for bug reports.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,475
    I think this is a great idea! I think you should try it. If you don't reach the subscription base you are aiming for, well, chalking it up as a failed experiment is a respectable outcome :) 
  • theorosendorf
    theorosendorf Posts: 14
    Thanks for the encouraging words @Dave Crossland 😀

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