The More Niche, the Better: How Content Creators Can Add Sponsorships to Their Revenue with Justin Moore

Allea Grummert (00:12)

Hey there, welcome to Happy Subscribers, a podcast that explores how bloggers and content creators can create more purposeful relationships with your audience through email marketing. I’m Allea Grummert, email marketing strategist, copywriter, email platform expert, and founder of the Done For You Email Marketing Agency, Duett. I started as a personal finance blogger in 2016 and have since helped hundreds of bloggers and creators like you maximize your email marketing for more impact, more traffic, and a better connection with your subscribers.

Be prepared for some advanced email talk as well as tactical tips to help get your valuable content into the hands of your audience faster and easier. I’m excited you’re here, so let’s do it. We can create a deeper, more meaningful connection with the community you love and serve through email.

Justin Moore is a sponsorship coach, author, and the founder of Creator Wizard, a school and community that teaches you how to find and negotiate your dream brand partnerships so you can stop leaving thousands on the table. His latest book, Sponsor Magnet, offers a succinct distillation of all of his ideas and frameworks for securing successful brand collaborations. I met Justin at Craft and Commerce, which is Kit’s conference in Boise back in 2023.

This is a this is burdened into my memory, I have to share. Is that Justin got a front row seat to my presentation at a workshop at a mastermind and he was the ultimate hype man, just like listening to every word, like eyes on the screen, eyes on me. And I was like, this man is listening, and I will never forget that. So Justin, I’m so grateful that you’re on the Happy Subscribers podcast today. Thanks for being here.

Justin Moore (01:51)
Here.

I’m stoked to be here. I love that personal anecdote because being a speaker is actually terrifying. ⁓ I remember when I first started doing it and it’s like you’re always wondering it’s the imposter syndrome. I like, is anyone gonna come? Is anyone gonna listen? Are they gonna be on their phones their whole time? Like so the fact that that’s your memory of your first memory of me is very makes me very happy.

Allea Grummert (02:09)
I treasure it because everyone in the room was not paying attention, quote unquote not paying attention. And then afterwards I got a message from Matt Molin on Slack saying, Ali, everyone was furiously taking notes. And I was like, ⁓ thank goodness. I was like, that that could have been that could have been weird for me to leave ⁓ in that sir situation, not knowing that I’d actually engaged them at

Justin Moore (02:31)
Yeah, a hundred percent. But I I am so thrilled to be here. And you know what I’m more thrilled about, Allie, is that we’re gonna be making everyone lots and lots of money today, right? Let’s go. Let’s go.

Allea Grummert (02:43)
Let’s go. ⁓ well, some backstory that I do think is important to share with folks is like what how do you even know about sponsorships, how you got into this, because your you and your wife, your wife especially, she started a YouTube channel back in 2014 and you two grew that.

Justin Moore (03:03)
It was even it was earlier. It was 2009 is when she started her channel. Yeah. So she’s she is a an elder statesman of YouTube. she stateswoman, pardon me. ⁓ she yeah, started. I mean, you know, she ⁓ you know, back in 2009, the partner program was just starting. Like it wasn’t like it is today where you just get

certain number of watch hours and subscribers and all that. And then you get monetized. Like you had to apply to to get into the program. And she actually got rejected three times from the program before getting in. And so you know, it it it this this whole journey of creating content on the internet was very much an accident because she got into it for the love, for the love, the hobby of beauty products and skincare and cosmetics, because she didn’t have any friends in in real life that were into that kind of thing. And so she’s like, wow, there’s this whole community on the internet who is into this thing. So let me start making some videos. ⁓

And what happened was that pretty quickly Ali Brand started reaching out, but they didn’t offer to give her f to pay her.

Allea Grummert (04:05)
Like free products. Yeah.

Justin Moore (04:07)
And mind you, we’re like early twenties, no money. We’re living in a studio apartment where our bed is literally in the same room as the kitchen. And we’re like free stuff. Let’s go. Right. You know? And so, you know, because you know, I was had just graduated. I was in medical devices. I’m an engineer by background, but my wife is a preschool teacher. She was a server at the same time. She had two jobs. And so free stuff, let’s go. We were just accepting it.

For years. It wasn’t like we wised up after like a month, right? It was like, hey, I feel like this is not fair. It was like, you know, years of just accepting free stuff or featuring them in the videos. And what happened was I decided to go back to school to get my MBA at night after work. And this is multiple years into the journey. And so I started taking these classes around marketing and advertising and negotiation and sales and things like that. And I don’t know, the gear has kind of started turning. And I was like, I came home to April one night and I was like,

I feel like you’re getting the short end of the stick here. Like you have hundreds of people in your comment section saying, April, thank you so much for telling me about this brand. I never heard about it. I just went to the store and got it, or I just went to their website and picked it up. that is the the value that you’re bringing to these brands is way more than just a $30 curling iron or something, right? And so this is what ultimately led us down the path of like, okay, let’s let’s start asking for compensation for you know, what’s what’s your budget? and the first brand that we actually asked this to.

They came back almost immediately and was like, yeah, if you can you know, if you can include us in two videos a month, we will pay you seven hundred dollars a month. Like this was back in two thousand probably eleven at this time. And so we were like, our minds were blown. And the very first thing we thought was, how can we find ten more brands just like this? Right. And so it was the very first time in our life where we realized, wow, there’s other ways to make money in this universe beyond a W two paycheck, beyond the nine to five income. And so, you know, fast forward ten, fifteen years made

Close to six million dollars in sponsorships, personally, across six hundred sponsorships. I ultimately ⁓ ran an influencer like an ad agency for seven years, paying out millions of dollars to other creators. And then yeah, over the last six years or so, I’ve I’ve started this business educating creators and coaching people around how to make more money on brand deals.

Allea Grummert (06:18)
That’s incredible. Incredible. And I know you interviewed me briefly at a conference last summer about getting sponsors for the podcast and whatnot. And I’m really curious because this is an email marketing podcast for folks who maybe aren’t necessarily quote unquote influencers, like whether on YouTube or on Instagram selling Awala water bottles or whatever. What does it look like for a blogger to monetize through sponsorship?

Justin Moore (06:48)
You know, I think that that is the l let’s do a bit of reeducation here because I the the caricature of the influencer that you just described is on the downtrend in terms of brands’ appetite to just drop large amounts of money on the lifestyle influencer, the travel creator, the mom, mommy blogger, you know, the the kind of the the idea from yesteryear the like that’s the that’s who brands wanna work with, the millennial mom or whatever, right? ⁓

And in reality, ⁓ what’s on the upswing is folks like you, people who have deep subject matter expertise. They have a very niche podcast, a very niche newsletter. And they they may not have hundreds of thousands of followers, but they have five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand followers who are all interested in this very niche topic. I love answering this question by sharing a few stories. So for example, one of my

A client of my mastermind, his her name is Dr. Alex, and she has a podcast called Digital Pathology Place. Okay. She is a doctor, she’s a veterinarian, right? And she’s she nerds out over this super niche topic around digital pathology, histology, things like this. And so she does not get tens of thousands of views or downloads on this podcast or on her newsletter or whatever. She gets hundreds, lit literally hundreds. And she is absolutely

Crushing it with sponsorships because who is in her audience? It’s the people in the C-suite at the hospital system. It’s the people at the medical device company. It’s the people who are in decision making seats of decision-making power at these organizations. She told this anecdote recently about she did she was doing a live stream on LinkedIn. Okay. And she had less than 100 people or 150 people on this live stream. And she ended up selling a $250,000 piece of medical equipment to one of the people that was.

on the live stream. So I just love sharing examples like these because ⁓ it dispels the myth that like you need to be this person dancing on TikTok to be able to work with brands. So I I actually prefer working with people like you and subject matter experts because it’s way easier to convince brands to to partner with you.

Allea Grummert (08:58)
Yes. It’s having me reconsider the conversation from last summer. I can’t believe it’s like even a year later and I’m like, yeah, remember that life-changing conversation I had with Justin? I actually just looked ⁓ yesterday and I have an average of fifteen hundred listeners a month. I don’t know what that means, but

Justin Moore (09:17)
Hold on a second here. Can we can we do some deep therapy for you for a second here? Please. Ali, why? Let’s go into the depth of your soul and your psyche. Tell me why it’s been a year and you haven’t taken action because you said it was life-changing. Yes, I’m gonna do this, Justin. This sounds great. What is it about sponsorships that feels like I’m just gonna put it on the back burner or I don’t I don’t wanna do it?

Allea Grummert (09:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think there’s a couple things. ⁓ I’m a big process person. So the thought of building out like a new process for like how do I do this? How do I actually inform my editor? I don’t that’s a big like gray space for me. But then also like currently my ads, my ad space on the podcast are ads for duet things. So like to book a call or to get a freebie or to attend an event. And so it would replace those things.

Justin Moore (10:07)
Yeah. Okay. So it’s a big So can I o can I overcome these objections? Please. Okay. So first and foremost, let’s address ⁓ the process question, because I’m a process person as well. this is very I hope the moment that word came those words came out of your mouth, you’re like, Okay, this is dumb. Like I could probably I could probably

create a SOP or create a process for where I want to insert the ad read or when I’m recording this podcast episode with Justin, I know that halfway through the episode I’m gonna do blah blah blah and there’s gonna be some sort of segue. And then I tell the editor to look for that, you know, and put some little jingle music to for them to know that the ad read’s about to come in. Or maybe you do the ad read live because you’re fun and you want to do it live with the guest or something and you talk about whatever, right? You can decide what the process is, but that that is a that is not that is figure out. Would you agree with that?

Allea Grummert (10:56)
It is figure outable. Yeah. It’s more that like I have other people that rely on me and I just can’t like create stuff on a whim like it used to.

Justin Moore (11:05)
Okay, but but this is okay, agreed. But at the same time, this is a pretty if if it’s a money producing thing that you’re adding on to the process, I would argue that it’s important. Right. And and you know, you can make the justification to the people that rely on you or the people that are, you know, working helping you bring these things to life. That’s true, that’s true. You could you could help them understand why you’re doing it. So that’s question number that’s that’s objection number one. Objection number two is

Why would I talk about another brand stuff when I could be talking about my own stuff, right? My mastermind, my coaching program, my community, my whatever, the thing I’m directly selling to my listeners, to my audience. And ⁓ the argument that I would make about this particular point is that it is quite myopic of you to believe as a business owner that the only way in which you can serve your customers or your audience is with the things that you directly sell.

So let’s go, let’s think a bit about the psychographics of your audience right now. They are email marketers or they are probably business owners. They’re people who want to learn how to, you know, send more compelling emails so that they can sell more products and they can reach their audience, they can do something, right? So email is I I’m a I’m guessing is not the only thing that they live and breathe on a daily maybe it is, but like, you know, there’s their they’re bloggers, they’re people who are are thinking about other things in their business, right? And so there’s a tendency, I think.

for you know people to believe that like you know the only partners that I could ever collaborate with or sponsors is like kit like an email marketing platform or something like something super obvious right in the niche of the things that I’m talking about. But the activity that I ⁓ encourage people to do is let’s actually learn a little bit more about our audience and what challenges they’re going through to identify gaps

In ⁓ their life or their business that I’m not currently filling with my own products. So for example, let’s say you do a survey, you hey, I’m planning out my next series of podcast episodes or newsletters or whatever. You might even do surveys like this already ⁓ and say, I want to make sure that my content serves you. ⁓ you know, can’t will you fill out this short survey with seven or eight questions and and and you know, one or two of the questions is ⁓ you know, you say,

What types of jobs do you have? Are you married? Do you have kids? What’s keeping you up at night? What problems do you have? What brands and products and services are you using in loving night right now? What if, for example, you did this survey, Allie, and the 40% of your audience comes back and says that I am having work-life balance issues. ⁓ I am feeling super anxious about my business right now, the economy. Like every time I wake up, I’m like terrified.

Wouldn’t it be interesting for you to go out there and pitch a company like Calm to sponsor your podcast to help your people in your audience be more present with their business? Are you ever going to make a meditation app? No, absolutely not. Is that the thing you’re going to do? No, you’re not going to do that, right? No. And so I call it your PSA. It’s this three-pillar framework where you’ve got your products that you sell, right? Your courses, your coaching, your community, whatever, your sponsors, the S, and then the last bucket.

is alliances. So let’s say that survey, they say, hey, I’m ⁓ you know, the work-life balance thing, my marriage is crumbling, right? I’m working all the time, my relationships in my life are suffering. Are you gonna ever do a counseling program for people who have that issue? No. So you should go out there and find a friend who has a they’re a life coach or they’re some sort of other and put their offer in front of your audience. And a lot of people are thinking, that’s terrifying because well if if everyone buys my friend’s thing, they’re not gonna have money for my thing. Right. And so

This is the scarcity mindset view is like I believe that there’s infinite money in the universe. And by serving your audience and your customers with these three pillars, you’re actually gonna make more money in the end because it’s born out of service.

Allea Grummert (15:04)
Yes. And I was just thinking today over my little lunch break. I was like, I have always been such a connector. Like if somebody needs something, I’m like passing it along. I have a friend who have recently got a diagnosis and I like, I know somebody who has a similar diagnosis. I’ll ask who she knows in that city where you both used to live. Like and so I’m like, it’s really not any different than than that.

Justin Moore (15:25)
It isn’t. And I I don’t know what you believe, but like I feel like karma always works its way back around. And so if you have this mindset of like I it’s it’s it’s not about me maximizing the amount of money I make in my business, it’s about serving my audience and my customers, good things happen. Yeah.

Allea Grummert (15:39)
And it might sound weird, but it is more fun to do things when you’re making money. Like a podcast. Right now it’s like it just feels pro bono, right? Because it’s not generating anything. But it does take time and intentionality and planning and time again on my calendar and then an editor and all these things. So it’s like if it could pay for itself and then some.

Justin Moore (16:00)
Well, ⁓ it’s also the quickest way to burn yourself out and r decide like, you know what, the podcast isn’t worth it. It’s it’s a net negative in terms of money and time and resources and yeah, maybe I get some new clients, but even that is a bit you know, murky of whether or not there’s a return there. And then you just kind of peter out and you stop doing it. And so like my what I like to say is like you owe it to yourself. You owe it to the people that you’re serving to figure out the financial underpinning.

of it so that you can continue to have the stamina to put out great free c free content. Right. And so it’s just a really important thing to understand the economics behind what we do.

Allea Grummert (16:36)
One I believe I’ve asked this before, but it’s all in the book, right?

Justin Moore (16:40)
It’s all in the book. I mean, in my so if you’re listening and not watching, Ali is holding up my book sponsor magnet. ⁓ and like going back to what we were we were talking about earlier, like, you know, this is 15 years of mistakes put into the book. Like it w it was the book that I wish I had when we started out. and you know, I remember one time early on, my wife, a brand reached out to ⁓ April ⁓ and said, Hey, we will give you two thousand dollars of free clothing credit.

If you make a video for us. And again, early 20s, new wardrobe, let’s go. Right. And so my wife was like, for sure. So they sent us this like agreement. Again, we didn’t know any lawyers. I’m not a lawyer. None of us are any familiar. But again, 2000 clothing credit. We want the clothing credit, right? And so I like kind of read through it. I was like, yeah, it seems fine. And so we signed it, right? Then like three months later, we were watching TV and a broadcast TV commercial comes up with her YouTube footage for the brand. We turn to each other and we’re like,

Did we let the brand grant the brand the rights to do that? Go look at the contract. Sure enough, signed away broadcast TV rights in exchange for clothing credit. It wasn’t even money. Right. And so that mistake multiplied by, you know, whatever, like, you know, hundreds of times doing stuff like that. and that’s why I wrote the book.

Allea Grummert (17:46)
Yeah.

my goodness. Well, okay. Love that with the email. Okay. You’re I’m convicted, Justin. I’m gonna go I’m gonna go work on this. ⁓ I think I always have a fear if we’re gonna talking about like a third thing, it’s because I’m a service provider, is that ⁓ it’s drawing away from what I should be working on, which is like my core offer. But I like what you said about I mean, in order to continue to provide free content like a podcast.

Justin Moore (18:25)
I so I am a service provider as well. I have a coaching program. That’s the core of my business. And yet, a non-trivial secondary revenue stream for me is sponsorships. Right. And so I think it’s as much it it’s it would be one thing if you were launching, you know, 30 different offers and you were confusing everyone. And it’s it’s it’s more about fracturing

And diluting attention away from your the things that you’re directly selling. That would be a problem. Yes, I agree. I’ve also consolidated my offerings to try to make it clearer and everything, but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about a secondary or tertiary revenue stream for you that could help not only diversify your revenue streams, ⁓ but again, going back to the service thing. Yeah, the other thing too, I think is important is that having a more diversified revenue picture.

As a business owner, even if you’re a service provider, makes it easier for you to turn down crappy clients. Because if you’re really hurting up for, I’m I don’t know, I’m gonna make this shortfall for my employees or whatever, this quarter or whatever, sponsorships can be a really compelling way, I think, ⁓ to allow give you some of that power to walk away from from toxic customers. So again, it’s this is not just for service providers, this is for anyone running a business that if you have distribution, if you have an audience on top of the way in which you’re, you know, serving customers, it be really compelling.

Allea Grummert (19:45)
Hey there, if you have been listening in and you are looking for help and support when it comes to your own email marketing, I would absolutely love to be able to talk with you about how me and my team we can support you, whether it looks like done for you email marketing, where we research your audience, create an email strategy for you, write those emails, and set up all of the tech for you. So those emails are automated and you’re welcoming new subscribers. Or if you want one-on-one coaching, that is an option as well, and something I absolutely love.

To able to do with my clients on a regular basis. I get to meet with them, discuss strategy, copy tech, as well as operations and working with a team. So if any of this sounds interesting to you, or you’re like, Allie, is there something in between? There is, there are. So I would love to be able chat with you. Please go ahead and book a discovery call with me. It is a free call. It’s the time for me to get to know you.

and see if it would be a good fit to work together and so I can share more what we do and I get to learn more about your email marketing goals. So you can book a call at duet.co slash contact and we’ll be in touch soon.

Can we pivot that to the use case of bloggers with their email lists? Because we’re talking about a toxic client. One might call it Google or AI or these things that are really tanking page views, which tanks revenue. And that’s really why I wanted to have you on. Because same with me. It’s like, what is the first step? You know, like where does one even go with this? Because we’ve got a lot of bloggers we using.

Justin Moore (21:01)
Hmm.

Allea Grummert (21:21)
Kit, Flowdesk, whatever. And especially with kit, the more subscribers you have, the more it costs to be running it. Flowdesk now has that as well, if you’re not in the old plan. So email marketing is expensive, but you have so much more control over it. And this would be a way to reduce the the visible expense of it, right? Because email does make bloggers money through site traffic. It just doesn’t always say, like, you sent this email and you earned this much in revenue. You know, like as if you were selling a product. But

Newsletter sponsorship, you could have another level of revenue. So tell me, what are your thoughts?

Justin Moore (21:59)
My thoughts are this is a very real thing. I’ve talked with a lot of bloggers whose traffic has gotten absolutely pulverized in the last, you know, month or month or sorry, year or two, ⁓ with, you know, AI search results. Just people are just not clicking on blog posts as much as they as much as they used to. So it’s a very real thing. ⁓ here’s what I would say to you, which is that

Again, going back to the myths myths that we were dispelling earlier, which is like I have to be dancing on TikTok to get brand deals or like that, you know, if I’m sc scrolling my own feed, I’m seeing people get brand deals on social media, but I don’t have those assets or I have no interest in creating content like that. ⁓ what I’ll say to you is that the disproportionate number of ⁓ opportunities for sure exist for creators that are creating video content. I’m just gonna say that straight up.

There’s a disproportionate number of opportunities for video creators. Why, why is that? ⁓ well, short form in particular can be repurposed and distributed across a lot of different platforms, right? TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, you know, Pinterest used to have idea pins or like, yeah, there’s all these like a Reddit, like, you know, X, like they’re all they all have some sort of like video feed now. and so brands are pro are are preferring a format like that because of the repurposability of it and

To be able to use it for paid advertising too. So not only will the creator distribute this content natively on their own platforms, but then they say, hey, let me get the rights to run that as an ad. And so now the return on the investment starts to make sense for the brand because they can use it in a bunch of different ways. So I wanted to say that because it’s important rather than sticking our heads in the sand, like my my wife and I is my my wife and my income have swung so wildly in the last 17 years of being a creator on the internet. And if we were

Sticking our head in the sand and saying, I’m just stuck in my old ways, and I’m just a blogger, or I’m just a YouTuber, or I’m just a this. I don’t want to do short form or I don’t know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then we would not continue. We would not, we’ve been full-time creators since 2014, my wife since 2012. You can’t do that if you stick your head in the sand. Like you, you have to be nimble and agile and willing to try new formats and try new things. So I just wanted to get on my kind of pulpit for a second here and just like anyone who’s just a little like,

Cagey about trying new things, stop it. If you want to be a creator, if you wanna be a blogger, if you wanna keep doing this, you need to be willing to adapt to what’s changing. So that’s that’s point number one. Right. Point number two, on how do you even start getting a newsletter sponsorship or or get a brand to like sponsor your blog post or whatever, you have to understand that like most brands aren’t sitting there thinking in their marketing meeting, let’s go find people with large newsletters to sponsor. Like that it’s it’s very difficult to know who even has a newsletter. Like if you

Are going out there and doing research, maybe AI searching can help you a little bit. But like let’s say it’s a ⁓ let’s just, for example, let’s say it’s a food blogger and they you know, cater to people who have ⁓ celiac disease. I don’t know. That that’s that’s your niche. Like you do gluten, gluten-free recipes. a brand almost always will think, well, let’s go find video creators out there to create video content for us for these new recipes or whatever. ⁓ and so the onus is is on you.

To come to them and say, hey, I saw that you hired this Instagrammer to do, you know, some recipe development or or whatever. ⁓ it’s awesome that you are, you know, trying to cater to people who are gluten free. I actually have a newsletter with, you know, 30,000 people who are really into, you know, a similar thing. I would love to help you amplify this campaign. So again, the onus is on you to actually reach out to them and not sit on your hands and wait for you for them to come to you. And so this is the first thing I’ll say is that.

The step number one in my book sponsor magnet is pitch. How do I learn how to put together some compelling ⁓ outreach that will get brands excited and have a conversation with me?

Allea Grummert (25:51)
Hundred percent. So okay. So if you are on Instagram or you are doing TikTok, that might be the best place to just go ahead and start pitching that. But you could add in newsletter spots, like ads, because there’s sponsored content, right? There’s like we bought this flower, we’re using this flower. Here’s a blog post about it. But there’s also just like running ads in a newsletter, just like would a newspaper.

Justin Moore (26:16)
So

it is my so yes. So so let’s split hairs a bit here. So what you’re talking about ⁓ with Instagram TikTok creators is what’s called branded content, where you are actually talking about the brand in your content. You’re saying, I used Red’s Bob’s Red Mill or whatever to like, you know, you make this gluten free cake or whatever. Yes, that is branded content. What you’re describing is ⁓ sometimes referred to as programmatic advertising.

PPC pay-per-click advertising where it’s just like a interstitial, right? So you send out your newsletter and then like there’s like a break in the middle. And it’s like, here’s an and it may not even be a related like add to what you talked about in that digest. It’s like it’s maybe it’s contextually relevant, hopefully. ⁓ but it’s not like specifically like you’re incorporating that brand’s messaging into the content of the article of what you’re saying. So this is an important distinction because I actually think that.

Maybe this is spite a hot take. ⁓ but I think that most programmatic ads suck. They’re not relevant. They’re not very relevant to the reader. They look at it as spam a lot of times. and there there are some people who are doing ⁓ some platforms and stuff that are that do a good job with this, but like the majority of the time, not only do they suck and people don’t click on them, but you’re not gonna make very much money on them. Okay. ⁓ and so I actually think it’s way better if all of your your entire sponsorship strategy is branded content.

So you’re saying I’m not gonna do these like crappy ads where I’m making thirty bucks, you know, to send this out to thirty thousand people. No, I’m gonna do a little bit more legwork. It’s it seems intoxicating, actually. It’s like, ⁓ the platform, all I have to do is put this little snippet of code or they tell me, you know, exactly what to say, you know, and it’s fine. I’ll just like put it in here. I don’t have to think. ⁓ but like not again, you’re not making that much money and it’s a terrible experience for your readers. So my my my thing that I’ll posit is that

Yes, it’s more legwork to go out there and pitch these brands and form relationships, but n you’ll make so much more money and it’ll be a better experience for your readers. So I I just think that like this is a no brainer. Okay.

Allea Grummert (28:21)
Okay, great. I don’t know why I was under the impression. I th was actually thinking maybe it came from Chanel and her web her blog post or sorry, the email she sends out, which is like once a week, but they she has a new a sponsor for that week’s newsletter. But also like that’s also B to B, which might be a lot different versus like a recipe blogger getting Bob’s red mill to sponsor a weekly email for twelve weeks. Like, is that a big enough sum of

Justin Moore (28:52)
So to clarify, yeah, like so to clarify, I am also on Chanel’s newsletter, shout out to Chanel Growth in Reverse. ⁓ I’m also on her newsletter and the types of ⁓ of sponsorships that she does, I also do those. But again, I’m putting my personal flair on it. I’m not just like copying and pasting it, you know, ⁓ and I’m not even reading it really. It just feels so detached from the rest of the context. So that that’s really what I meant.

Allea Grummert (29:14)
Yes. ‘Cause the programmatic ads, I know that’s like what Kit has. I mean, I haven’t seen a ton of revenue coming for folks who have a list of two hundred thousand subscribers, earning maybe two hundred dollars a month or something.

Justin Moore (29:25)
Yeah,

so so I I think that Kit, ⁓ d full disclosure, I’m an investor in Kit and you know, nothing but love for them. they’re working on those tools. Like I think these are like, you know, works in progress. They’re onboarding new brands, new clients, and I think their product is actually getting better. ⁓ but again, I think the gold standard is just like making these deals custom.

Allea Grummert (29:45)
And I’m sure in the book you cover like how to find the sponsor.

Justin Moore (29:50)
Yeah, well, I mean, one example, one very low-hanging fruit that we just discussed is like see who’s what brands are sponsoring other people in your niche, right? Like follow 20 other gluten-free bloggers and and creators out there, see what brands are partnering with them. Look, ⁓ there’s this like I’ve been there, so I I understand this, but there’s this temptation when you see another creator get sponsored or whatever, you like cross your arms like a curmudgeon, like how dare that creator get that deal.

I’m the one who’s been using Bob’s red mill for five years. I’ve never even heard them talk about it. Right. And then they turn into like a low-key hater of the brand, even though the brand didn’t even know who you how would they know unless you’re shouting it from the rooftops that you’ve been an authentic fan. And so, ⁓ the very first thing that a marketer thinks when they do a successful partnership with one creator is, how can I find 20 more people just like this to amplify this message? We’re not gonna just work with one person, right? And so again, like this is a low-hanging fruit. It’s like

Just go and reach out. Let’s let’s craft some outreach. Let’s say that you can help them in these other ways. So so yes, that’s idea number one is, you know, ⁓ follow ever your niche neighbors, right, right? and then idea number two is AI can be your friend, like here, you know, where you say, Hey, you know, this is the types of brands I want to target. This is the ⁓ you know, the types of ⁓ you know, more information about my audience, ⁓ you know, what types of brands could solve the problems that, you that my

Research in my psychographic survey revealed. ⁓ you know, so again, like AI can for sure be your friend, help give you some short list of ideas.

Allea Grummert (31:23)
Yes. I also love it when H AI just asks me questions. I’ll be like, ask me anything. Like, what do you need to fill in the gaps? Cause then it’ll prompt new things that maybe I hadn’t thought of yet. Right. Totally. Before we wrap up, Justin, I saw that you have a mission to enable creators big and small to land one million paid brand partnerships by twenty thirty two. Can you tell me about that?

Justin Moore (31:46)
Yeah, of course. So it’s weird. I’ve been existentially reflecting on my life. I’m turning forty in like two weeks, Ali. Happy birthday and thank you. And I’ve been very much reflecting on like it sounds cheesy, but like legacy. Like what do I want my legacy to be, you know, when I’m older and I’m I’m I’m no longer working. ⁓ and it very much is

Well, the book was a big reason, a a big kind of act of service to the next generation of creators. but I really do look at this as like my duty to help people avoid a lot of the mistakes that that we made and just realize the power that they have, you know, when collaborating with with brands and partners and and this incredible asset that they’ve developed probably over many years. ⁓ and so this this idea of helping creators again, not just big but also small.

you know, who have you know, deep subject matter expertise and and knowledge in a particular area. Yeah. I they just don’t quite realize how lucrative it can be. And to your point, it can help ease the pressure off of a lot of other areas in the business by you know, injecting some much needed financial resources into the business. So ⁓ yeah, it’s it’s a tall order, it’s a tall goal for sure, but I’m I’m trying my darndest.

Allea Grummert (33:08)
Yeah. How far are you along towards that one million?

Justin Moore (33:12)
this is the other trick, which is that it’s really hard to track. You know, I have yeah. I have so I have man, I had this huge project maybe like a year or two ago to like brainstorm what are the ways in which I could ⁓ introduce some sort of traceability into this model. ⁓ because the the the lazy ⁓ way to do it would just be like my following. I add all my followings together across all the platforms, and I’m like, I’m helping this many people. That’s super lazy.

to do though. And so I’ve ⁓ I’m working on actually with s with AI some different ways to track this stuff, including ⁓ direct testimonials like screenshots of Amazon reviews, people have said in the Amazon reviews that I got a deal, these types of things. So I’m I’m trying my best approximation to to ⁓ to account for that. ⁓ right now it’s somewhere on the order of a hundred thousand is like kind of my guesstimate. So but I’ve still got a long ways to go in in not so long.

Allea Grummert (34:06)
Well, I love that you’ve cast such a big vision too, because I mean that just puts more fire behind the work that you’re doing, even if it’s not entirely traceable.

Justin Moore (34:16)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (34:17)
Well Justin, before we wrap up, where can people connect with you and find your book?

Justin Moore (34:22)
Well, like a good creator, I’m only gonna give you one call to action. Cause if I give you more than one, no one no one’s gonna do anything, right? ⁓ so sponsor magnet dot com is the book. And you know, you can tumble down the rabbit hole if you get if you want to nerd out over this topic. Actually, I lied. I’m gonna do one more call to action. And it’s I’ve got a podcast, the sponsor magnet podcast. So would love would love for you to subscribe and ⁓ and come nerd out over this ⁓ niche topic with me.

Allea Grummert (34:49)
Well, guys, go follow Justin. I’ve known him for three years now. Like still one of the happiest people I know. My goodness. Every time I see Justin at a conference, I’m like, there he is. Still going. Just the happiest. And so, ⁓ thank you for being in the creator space, ⁓ for welcoming me in three years ago into your orbit. And I appreciate your time with us today.

Justin Moore (35:11)
Thanks so much for having me, Ali. This was great.

Allea Grummert (35:17)
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