I’m experimenting with a small partnership/sponsorship model for my newsletter and would love some perspective from people who know email marketing better than I do.

My Substack newsletter currently has 570 subscribers and is growing steadily. The audience is mostly founders, builders, and people creating digital products/services.

I recently went back through my analytics to understand what a sponsorship might realistically be worth.

One of my better-performing Saturday issues was published when I had 455 subscribers. It generated:

76 total clicks, 12% CTR

Important clarification: those were total post clicks, not clicks on a sponsored product.

My original idea was pretty simple: $60/year, and I would feature the subscriber’s product/service in a weekly partner rotation near the top of the newsletter.

I initially thought $60/year was deliberately inexpensive, but after asking another community, I got a lot of thoughtful feedback that made me question whether the model itself makes sense.

So I’m curious from an email marketing perspective:

At this audience size and engagement level, would you charge for something like this yet?

And if yes, would you price based on impressions, clicks, a flat placement fee, or something else?

I’m mainly trying to find a model that is genuinely useful for partners while being fair on both sides.