Sponsorship tooling

[jmduke]

TL;DR

Work to be done

• [x] Allow opt-in for sponsorship view
• [x] Allow authors to create SKUs
• [x] Allow authors to mark specific slots as pending/sold
• [x] Add 'success' page for purchased slots
• [x] Email authors when a slot has been sold
• [x] Surface invoices in detail page for sold slots
• [ ] Allow configuring which statistics are shown
• [ ] Allow RSS subscriber count as a statistic

Out of scope for now, but interesting ideas

• [ ] Handling demand-side (surfacing empty slots to advertisers and holding inventory)
• [ ] "Notify me when a sponsorship is available for this newsletter"

[stefanjudis]

I occasionally include sponsors (if people reach out) and it's a very manual process. I keep a sheet with ongoing sponsorship discussions and include a sponsor block in the email itself.

My landing page setup is somewhat special because I'm running my own domain. The plan looks great though because I'd be primarily interested in the automation ( payment / invoice / confirmation ).

I'd have to have a look how I'd marry webweekly.email and the provided functionality. 🫣

[jmduke]

@stefanjudis This is a great angle that I don't think I've thought about enough! I'd definitely want to make sure it's well-supported.

Right now, the flow for you would be something like: you link from webweekly.email to https://buttondown.email/stefanjudis/sponsorships, which would then have a slot open for each week. Buttondown then manages the links for those invoices, confirmation, etc.

Is it a hard no for you to have folks go to https://buttondown.email/stefanjudis/sponsorships to handle that part, since you'd want styling and all that? I don't have any problem with that from a branding standpoint, but it makes me wonder what the easiest way for you to integrate would be — maybe just pulling the open dates + URLs from api.buttondown.email/v1/advertising-slots?

[stefanjudis]

@jmduke Thanks for considering.

Is it a hard no for you to have folks go to https://buttondown.email/stefanjudis/sponsorships to handle that part, since you'd want styling and all that?

It isn't. Your thinking is spot on.

My preferred solution would be:

• have webweekly.email/sponsorships that displays open slots, price, conditions and stats via API (all read only)
• link to https://buttondown.email/stefanjudis/sponsorships to receive and handle a booking

If https://buttondown.email/stefanjudis/sponsorships gives the possibility for a logo / hero on top, that'd work for me.

[jmduke]

@stefanjudis You got it. All should be doable.

[jmduke]

Some good examples via @matthiasott of sponsorship pages:

• https://css-weekly.com/advertise/
• https://www.densediscovery.com/advertise/