Newsletter sponsorships are becoming one of the fastest-growing revenue streams for creators, but many creators worry about sacrificing audience trust for ad revenue. Kit’s newsletter sponsorships helps creators monetize newsletters with relevant sponsors while keeping full control over which brands appear in their emails. Three creators share what running newsletter sponsorship has actually looked like in their newsletters, and why being able to say “no” was the part that sold them on saying “yes.”
Your newsletter is the most valuable thing you’ve built. It’s a direct line to the people who chose to hear from you, and the trust they hand you when they hit subscribe is what makes every email worth opening.
Most ad networks ask you to spend that trust like it’s a renewable resource. They optimize for reach. They push whatever fills inventory. And they hand you a choice no creator should have to make: take the money, or protect the relationship.
We’ve spent the last few years trying to build a version of newsletter advertising that doesn’t force that trade. Every time we asked creators what would make sponsorships work for them, they told us the same two things. Bring me brands that actually fit my audience. And let me decide which ones run.
That’s what newsletter sponsorships is.
What is Kit’s newsletter sponsorships?
Here’s how it works. Relevant brand offers come straight to you, matched to your niche, your content, and how your subscribers actually engage. You review each one, approve the ones you want to run, and decide where the ad lands in your broadcast.
If a brand doesn’t fit, you pass and a different one comes along. The matching, the payouts, and the reporting happen in the background, with no outreach, no negotiation, and no contracts to chase.
The marketplace today already includes Lovable, Superhuman, and Morning Brew, with more being added as we grow. And for most creators, even a handful of sponsorships a month can offset a meaningful portion of their Kit subscription, without ever putting the relationship with their readers at risk.
Here’s what that’s looked like for three creators using it now.
How creators monetize newsletters without hurting audience trust
How Katie Cooksey uses newsletter sponsorships as a recurring revenue stream
Katie Cooksey has been running a Kroger couponing site since 2009. Her 77,000-person newsletter goes out every single day with deal alerts, and her Saturday Kroger ad preview—a sneak peek at the next week’s sales—pulls her highest open rates of the week. Around 30% on a normal send.
She’s been doing sponsored content for over a decade, ever since Crest reached out about a 99-cent toothpaste promo back in 2012. So newsletter sponsorships wasn’t a stretch for her. It was diversification.
“I’m always looking for new revenue sources,” she said. “I thought it would be a good way to offset just the cost of Kit. And my audience is used to seeing ads, so it didn’t really feel like it would be invasive or take away from the messaging.
She’d worried, briefly, that the ads might land wrong. They haven’t.
“I have not had one single complaint about it ever,” she says.
What surprised her most was which sponsors actually converted. She expected couponing-adjacent brands to win. Instead, her readers clicked on things she never would have predicted: AI courses, an investment platform called Masterworks. These brands seemingly don’t have anything to do with her niche but are great fits for her audience.
Newsletter sponsorships matches by behavior, not just topic, which means your audience’s curiosity gets to do some of the work.
How Tori Avey protects audience trust while monetizing her newsletter
Tori Avey has been writing about Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Jewish food since 2010. With a deeply loyal audience that includes a sizable kosher Jewish segment, anything that touches her newsletter touches the relationship she’s built with them.
So she was nervous about running ads in it.
“It was actually my biggest concern when we started,” she says. “I’ve really done very few sponsored posts throughout the life of the site. I only do it if I truly connect with a brand and feel comfortable promoting it. So this was new to me, to be promoting newer brands.”
What changed her mind was being able to preview every placement before it went out, and pass on the ones that didn’t feel right.
Her team also frames each placement carefully. Every ad goes out under a “thanks to this sponsor of our newsletter this week” intro, so readers know the trade: free content in exchange for one relevant brand showing up in their inbox.The pushback she’d braced for never materialized.
What did surprise her was which brand performed best. She’d assumed anything outside food would be a stretch for her audience. Instead, the top performer in her newsletter sponsorships so far has been Superhuman, an email productivity tool with no obvious connection to Mediterranean cooking. And it’s outperformed every other brand she’s run, consistently.
I was surprised by which ads resonated with my audience. Just because a brand isn’t in your niche doesn’t mean your subscribers won’t respond—people don’t live in one lane.
That’s exactly what newsletter sponsorships is built around: matching by behavior, not just topic. The brand that looks off-niche on paper might be the one that earns the most for you.
Tori sees newsletter sponsorships as part of a longer arc with Kit. “We see Kit as a longer-term partner,” she says. “We’ve really enjoyed working with you and have seen a lot of benefit to working with the whole Kit system, not just the ads.”
Her advice to other creators who are nervous: “Every audience is different and unique—you don’t know until you try it.”
How Huber Bongolan curates newsletter sponsors like personal recommendations
Huber Bongolan writes Credible CRE, a commercial real estate finance newsletter that’s grown to 70,000 subscribers, entirely as a passion project alongside a full-time day job. He sends every Monday and Thursday.
For him, newsletter sponsorships is partly subscription offset and partly a vote of confidence his audience can feel.
“Cool, free money—that’s great,” he says. But the part he talks about more is the legitimacy. A reader once messaged him after seeing a Morning Brew ad in his broadcast: “Morning Brew is sponsoring you? Like, dude—how do you know Morning Brew?”
But that legitimacy only works if every brand fits. So he treats every offer like a personal recommendation.
I try to follow every single person that I’m putting an ad on for, or at least look them up. That way, if someone were to ask me what they do, I’d have an answer.
He places his sponsorships about a third of the way down each broadcast, not at the top where it would feel pushy, not at the bottom where no one would see it. He balances them against the direct sponsorships he already has lined up from friends and colleagues.
When the question of auto-approving recurring brands came up, he laughed. “I don’t even automate my bill pays. I would not automate approving brands.”
That’s the control piece. You decide which brands run, where they appear, and when. If something feels off, you pass.
Today, it’s supplementary, extra money on top of a passion project. But he sees the path forward. “I would like it to become a more meaningful revenue source for me in the future,” he says.
Why creators need more control over newsletter advertising: Earn from your newsletter, without comprise
There’s a version of newsletter advertising where brands buy as much reach as they can get. Creators take whatever shows up. Subscribers get ads for products they have no interest in. The campaign hits its impression target, and nobody actually wins.
That’s not what we built.
More ads to more people doesn’t equal more revenue. The right ads to the right people does.
newsletter sponsorships is built with that in mind. Brand offers reach you because the matching evaluated your niche, your content, and how your subscribers actually engage and decided your list is the right place for that campaign to land.
You’re always in the driver seat. You determine if a brand is a right fit for your voice, business, and ultimately, your audience. Because when the fit is right, your audience clicks. When your audience clicks, brands come back, and more brands like them show up too. Your earnings compound on the back of relevance, not volume.
With newsletter sponsorships, every offer that reaches you is one we believe actually fits, and even then, the call is still yours.
That’s the trade we wanted to make possible: earn from your newsletter, without compromising what makes it worth reading.
Turn it on
Newsletter sponsorships are available now inside Kit on the Creator and Pro plans. Start exploring brands you want to work with, express interest in campaigns, and we will send offers that are the right fit for your audience. Set up newsletter sponsorships in Kit.
Frequently asked questions
What are newsletter sponsorships?
Newsletter sponsorships are paid placements where a brand pays a creator to feature their product or service in a newsletter. The creator earns revenue; the brand gets in front of an audience that already chose to be there. They typically appear as a short ad block with copy and an image and they’re priced per click, so creators get paid every time the ad is clicked.
How do newsletter sponsorships work?
The basic shape is the same across platforms: a brand wants to reach your subscribers, you agree to run an ad for them, and you get paid based on performance or placement.
With newsletter sponsorships in Kit, the workflow is handled for you. You explore campaigns, Kit’s matching sends you offers from brands that fit your niche and audience, you approve the ones you want to run, and you choose where the ad lands in your broadcast. Kit tracks performance and pays you monthly. There’s no outreach, no negotiation, and no contracts on your end.
How do creators monetize newsletters?
Most creators stack a few revenue streams rather than relying on one. The common ones: paid subscriptions, digital products and courses, affiliate links, services like coaching, and sponsorships. newsletter sponsorships pair well with the others because they earn from emails you’ve already built—every send becomes a small revenue moment without requiring a new product launch.
Are newsletter ads worth it?
For creators with an engaged list, yes, as long as you have control over which ads run and how they appear. Tori Avey was nervous about running ads in her food newsletter and ended up with almost no pushback because every placement was previewed and framed transparently. Katie Cooksey expected complaints from her couponing audience and has had zero. When the brands fit and the creator stays in control, the trust hit creators feared doesn’t show up.
How do you add sponsors to a newsletter?
Two paths. You can pitch brands directly: researching companies, sending outreach, negotiating rates, drafting contracts, which can earn well at scale but takes real time and requires you to have an established audience and business. Or you can use a sponsorship platform that handles matching and payouts for you. Inside Kit, you turn on newsletter sponsorships, express your interest in brands you want to work with, and approve the offers that come your way. Each approved ad gets placed in a broadcast you choose.
How do creators avoid losing audience trust with ads?
Three things matter most: relevance (brands that actually fit your audience, not whatever ad network fills the inventory), transparency (name the sponsor, signal the trade—Tori does this with a “thanks to this sponsor of our newsletter this week” intro), and selectivity (the freedom to pass on any brand that doesn’t feel right). newsletter sponsorships was built around all three. If a brand doesn’t fit, you pass.
What’s the best newsletter sponsorship platform?
Look for a platform that gives you full approval over every brand that runs, matches you to advertisers based on how your audience actually engages, handles payouts and reporting in the background, and is honest about how scaled its marketplace is. Newsletter sponsorships in Kit was built around all four. You explore campaigns, get brand offers, decide which ones run, and your relationship with your subscribers stays yours.
