Can Sponsors Help You Create More Consistently?

Hey creator,

You might notice some changes around here:

• I've changed the name of this newsletter: Filtered Fridays is now Frootful Creator.

• I didn't send you an email last week. From now on, instead of sending you weekly emails, I'll be sending them biweekly.

• I've also changed the format of this newsletter.

When I started Filtered Fridays, I didn't want to bombard creators with noise. I wanted to filter it and provide value. That vision hasn't changed and that's why I want to use these emails to help your creative endeavours become more frootful. From now, you can expect more content on monetising and scaling as a creator.

In this week's issue:

• Creator Spotlight - How Anthony Castrio uses sponsors to stay accountable

• Why you need to send proposals to brands

• Newsletter landing page mistakes

• Growing a blog that makes $20,000 a month

A Secret weapon for Consistency: Sponsors

Consistency is important for growth, but it’s not always easy. It’s especially difficult to keep your motivation high when you’re not seeing any results or monetary rewards.

Anthony Castrio killed two birds with one stone. He lined up sponsors for his newsletters, selling 2 months' worth of sponsorships in less than 24 hours. As a result, he was also able to publish more consistently and experience more growth.

We sat down with Anthony to talk about how he’s grown Indie Worldwide and BotEatBrain, and how sponsors helped him along the way.

Building a community

With a background as a software engineer and hackathon organiser, Anthony always wanted to be an indie maker, but he didn’t know where to start. Instead he did what he knew best: he organised local indie maker meet ups.

Being a nomad, Anthony set up communities in each city he visited. Despite gaining a wealth of experience in community building, Anthony craved a community that would always stay with him.

With this in mind a community of over 100 indie founders building bootstrapped startups around the world was born: Indie Worldwide,

A second newsletter

Artificial intelligence has become a trending topic across social media platforms. "Almost every task we thought only humans could do is being taken over, enhanced, or replaced by AI," explains Castrio.

Anthony decided to tap into the hype by starting a second newsletter business: Bot Eat Brain.

Growth strategies

With 12,000 followers on his personal account, and 3000 more on the Indie Worldwide account, Twitter has been the biggest driver of growth for both of Anthony's newsletters.

Posting on Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, Hacker News, and Reddit has provided occasional growth spurts, and although more difficult to track, word of mouth has also been crucial.

Overcoming challenges (and selling out of sponsor slots)

Like most creators, Anthony struggled with consistency.

"It’s hard to write a newsletter every day or even once a week. I knew I needed some external motivation, something to keep me accountable, so that I could publish more frequently", he explains.

Anthony knew the fear of letting other people down would be his powerful driving force. He realised that if every newsletter issue was sponsored, he would publish more consistently to avoid disappointing partners.

As a result, Anthony did something few creators would consider: he made his prices as cheap as possible.

Charging $5 for one sponsored newsletter or $10 for a bundle of 3 slots, Anthony sold out of all February slots just a few hours after tweeting about it.

He then increased his prices to $10 for one slot or $20 for 3 slots, and sold out for March too.

Anthony knew he was undercharging for his niche and audience size. But this strategy worked for him:

1. He published more consistently and as a result, grew his newsletter faster than ever before.

2. With a limited number of slots, he created scarcity. As a result, he sold out very quickly and could raise prices.

3. By taking such a different approach to sponsorships, Anthony created hype and momentum. He was able to stand out in a market that was gaining popularity. "People love a good story, they love to be a part of something", he says.

Finding Sponsors

Anthony’s revenue streams as a creator are his Indie Worldwide membership fees and sponsorships for both of the newsletters.

This works well because most of his sponsorships come from existing members of his community or from Twitter.

As a result, Anthony has had to do little outreach.

Anthony’s advice to other creators who want to build a business around their newsletter is to focus on audience. "Focus on building a valuable niche audience and the sponsors will start coming to you. Then, make it easy for them to buy from you".

Making sponsorships less stressful

Anthony was using Google Sheets to manage sponsorships. He emailed sponsors back and forth and found the entire process too manual. He wanted to streamline his workflow so that he could manage the number of sponsors he was working with.

That’s why he decided to use Passionfroot. "I can manage more sponsors at once and clearly see what’s coming up on my calendar", he explains.

You can see how Anthony is approaching sponsorships for his newsletter businesses using his Passionfroot pages for Indie Worldwide and Bot Eat Brain.

Each week we'll give you one tip to earn more as a creator

This week's tip: send proposals to brands

Brands want to work with creators who help them reach their marketing goals and who are easy to work with. If you can go the extra mile and make the sponsorship experience as seamless as possible for them, they'll want to work with you again and again. And you know what that means: recurring income!

There's no better way to do this than sending proposals. Once a brand has shown some interest in working with you, put together a brief outlining what content you will create, the date, price, and what you need from the brand, such as approved copy. You can create a PDF and email it to your partners, or look even more professional by sending proposals with Passionfroot.

If you want to increase the conversion for newsletter subscribers, avoid making these mistakes on your sign up page.

This might be the most in-depth thread on how to grow and monetise your blog that you'll ever read.

Become a Top 20 LinkedIn Voice - AMA Session with Céline Willers

Céline is one of the biggest business creators in Europe. By sharing content on LinkedIn, she was able to grow to 150,000 followers within a year. She's even been recognised as a "LinkedIn Top Voice" in 2018, 2019, and 2022.

In this free 1-hour session, you'll be able to ask Céline all of your burning questions on how to grow and monetize as a LinkedIn creator.

Build an Audience & Monetise - Season 2 Recap

I can't believe we've already reached the end of season 2 of the podcast. I decided to look back on some of the best lessons from our creators, including Andrew Kirby, Lana Blakely, and Thomas Frank, in this season 2 recap.

I'm now gearing up for season 3 and I'm so excited. Are there any creators you'd love to hear from? Hit reply and let me know!

I'd love to know what you think of the new name, structure, and content of this newsletter! Just click reply ☺️

Stay passionate,

Akta