How do I know if a paid newsletter promotion is worth it?

Work out what you keep from one sale after what the product costs to make and the promoter’s cut. Divide the flat fee by that number. That is how many sales the promotion has to produce before it has cost you nothing. Kickstarter’s own fees can be left out, because you pay those whether or not you take the deal.

Is 15% commission on a Kickstarter promotion normal?

Ten to twenty per cent of pledge value is a common range for newsletter and promotion partners. The figure sounds small because people compare it to the full pledge. Compare it to your contribution margin instead. On a product with a 40% margin, a 15% commission on revenue is taking well over a third of everything you had left.

What should I ask a newsletter before paying them?

Four things. Whether they will send people through a Kickstarter referral link you provide, so you can see in your own dashboard exactly what it brought in. How many sales they produced for a project like yours rather than their best ever result. Whether the flat fee is refundable if the send underperforms. And whether you can read the email before it goes out.

How do I check what a newsletter promotion actually brought in?

Give them a Kickstarter referral link — your project URL with a custom referral tag on the end. Kickstarter reports pledges by referrer in your dashboard, so you can see exactly how many backers and how much money came from that send. Agree the link before the email goes out, so you are paying commission on a number you can verify rather than one they report to you.

Newsletter deal calculator · free, no sign-up

Someone wants to email their list about your project.

They want money up front, plus a cut of everything they sell. Is that a good deal? Put four numbers in below and you will know in about a minute.

Currency

What they are asking for

Copy these two numbers straight out of their email.

Money you pay up front

$

You pay this even if they sell nothing. Their cut of each sale

%

Usually a slice of the full price, not of your profit. Ask them which they mean.

What you keep when someone buys

Two numbers: what a customer pays you, and what the thing costs you to make.

What one person pays you

$

The price a normal backer pays. Sometimes called your AOV. What it costs you to make one

$

The product and its packaging. Add delivery too, but only if your price includes delivery.

Also take off Kickstarter’s fees

You can skip this. Those fees come off whether you do this deal or not, so the comparison works either way.

How many sales before you break even

—

They have to sell

—

just to cover what this deal costs you.

You normally keep

—

With this deal you keep

—

Their cut swallows

—

Four things to ask them first

Will you send people through a referral link I give you, so I can see exactly what it brought in?
How many sales did you get for a project like mine? Not your best one ever.
If the email does badly, do I get my money back?
Can I read the email before you send it?

None of these are rude. Anyone good will happily answer. If they dodge the first or the last one, walk away.

How this works

Step one: what do you keep? Someone pays you $50. The thing cost you $15 to make. So you keep $35. That $35 is the only money that can pay for anything — not the $50.

Step two: take off their cut. Their cut is 15%, but it is 15% of the whole $50, so $7.50. Take that off your $35 and you have $27.50 left. Look at what just happened: they said 15%, and they took more than a fifth of what you actually had. That is the bit everybody misses.

Step three: pay back the money up front. You gave them $800 before anything happened. At $27.50 a sale, you need 30 sales just to get back to where you started. Sale number 31 is the first one that earns you anything.

One more thing, and it is not in the sum. Give them a Kickstarter referral link — your project URL with a tracking tag on the end. Kickstarter then shows you in your own dashboard exactly how many pledges and how much money that link brought in. So you never have to take their word for how the email did, and you can check the number yourself before you pay anyone a cut.

Kickstarter’s own fees are left out unless you tick the box, because you pay those whether you take this deal or not.

Questions people ask

Is 15% commission normal?

Ten to twenty per cent of pledge value is a common range. The number sounds small because people compare it to the full pledge. Compare it to your margin instead — that is the money it is actually coming out of.

Are these deals a scam?

Usually not. Some of these lists are genuinely valuable and some promoters are very good. But the deal was written by someone who does this every week and it is being read by someone doing it for the first time. That asymmetry is the problem, not dishonesty.

How do I check what it actually brought in?

Give them a Kickstarter referral link before the email goes out. Kickstarter reports pledges by referrer in your dashboard, so you can see what that send actually did rather than taking their word for it.

They want an answer today.

Nobody with a genuine offer minds waiting a day. Pressure to decide immediately is itself a piece of information. "Send me the numbers and I will come back to you tomorrow" is a complete answer.