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Swapstack — A marketplace connecting newsletters & brands
As a newsletter creator, finding paying sponsors is hard!
Swapstack is a marketplace connecting brands & writers to run paid sponsorships.
✍️ As a writer: Work with brands your readers love.
💼 As a brand: Work with writers who speak to your audience.
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Replies
@tomaslau thanks Tomas! To the extent that you could call it a strategy, we actually basically didn't worry about this at first. Our approach was to first build a community of writers (around the shared interest in monetizing), and then once we had enough people there it was attractive to the brand side.
We're so excited to have you in Swapstack!
@tomaslau Doubling up on everything that Jake said. We did alot of community building (which we need to up our focus on!) before building any product. That led to alot of manual work... but really critical manual work that then led us to better understand what we really needed to build. We're still figuring alot of this out, but by focusing on community and doing things that don't scale, we were able to build the "more right" thing than by just jumping in to product mode.
As the editor of Tedium (https://tedium.co) I’ve been using Swapstack for a little while and I have found the Jakes to be incredibly easy to work with, and their work is such a great alternative to the subscription model, which doesn’t necessarily fit with everyone’s needs. This is the right model for the creator economy and I look forward to seeing where they take it next.
@shortformernie Woot! Thank you Ernie. Big fan of Tedium and have really enjoyed your honest feedback and additions to the Swapstack community.
This is one of those ideas where you see it and it just makes _so much sense_. Incredibly powerful. Congrats Jakes!
@julianweisser thanks Julian! TBH when the Flywheel started growing, I just expected to see stuff like this out there. When I didn't, I knew there might be an opportunity. Appreciate the support!
@julianweisser thanks sir. Think recognizing that there was a good feeling of "founder-market fit" for both of us also make a ton of sense. Appreciate the note :)
I was skeptical about newsletter sponsorship platforms. Others I’d seen have low quality on both sides. But I like Jake, so I tried it, and it’s been excellent.
When I had an open slot, Swapstack matched me with a big name sponsor that’s highly relevant to my audience, at my full rate. Last week, when a sponsor dropped out last minute, they found me a high-quality replacement within an hour.
Can’t recommend Swapstack highly enough.
DUDE! Thanks so much for your support @packym. Can't wait to keep getting you that cheddar 🧀
Jake and Jake have been stellar partners and incredibly helpful as I got going with Swaptstack. The platform they're building is just taking off and I can't wait to see what they've got in store for us!
@orishnal Thanks for note Stephen - really excited for whenever you package up some of your nocode skills and launch on PH! Will be looking out for it!
This is a great idea @jake_schonberger1
Wish I found you earlier. I run an agency for content marketing clients. Would I be able to sponsor newsletters that might have my audience? Is it a private deal or do you broker the relationship?
@kensavage Hey Ken! Will reach out directly to discuss but yes we're looking into the best ways to figure out how to support the agency model! We do have a couple of brands on the platform who's profiles are managed by an agency, so that can work well in the interim while we're building a more proper structure!
Looks like I've been missing out on Swapstack - Jake Singer is top class and I'm sure his co-founders are too! Can't wait to try it.
@petergyang Singer is certainly top class! Jury is out on me yet, but I'm confident :) Thanks for the note and hope to see you in the community, Peter!
Such a big fan of what you're doing @jake_schonberger1! Will be sharing this with my networks because I know how valuable it is. Congrats to you.
A lot of my friends who recently started writing have wondered if they're too small or if their audience is too niche to make any money or benefit from any sort of platform. I think this is where Swapstack really changes the game - you don't need to have thousands of subscribers to help brands. Similarly, brands no longer need to go to a place like NPR to get the word out. At its core, it's a simple, elegant exchange but I think at a high-level, it's really democratizing standard advertising. Excited to be a part of this community and see the future of Swapstack play out. Congrats @jake_schonberger1 and @jake_singer! (If you're a writer or brand, hit them up!)
@jake_singer @kushaanshah Yes exactly!! Thanks Kushaan. As you said - many of our writers just ticked over the 1k subscriber mark, and are working with brands to run sponsorships.
A newsletter with ~2K readers can start generating meaningful revenue as a side hustle, compliment to their day job, or support themselves in other ways. Really excited to have you as part of the group.
@jake_schonberger1 @kushaanshah thanks Kush!! Extremely well said. Have you considered doing marketing for a living?
I'm a happy customer! I've been using this for months as an advertiser and we've been impressed by the quality of the newsletters and responsiveness of both Jakes and the newsletter editors. Couldn't recommend this enough - we're absolutely going to continue using Swapstack.
@daveschatz Awesome to hear Dave. Thanks for the comment and psyched to be a part of the Circles story :)
This is an interesting idea and I can definitely see potential in a marketplace that connects newsletters & brands. Just signed up and added my newsletter. Pretty quick and seamless experience. Also submitted my first pitch to a potential sponsor. Fingers crossed!
@anferneec awesome! will keep an eye on the pitch. Excited to work with you Anfernee. Also would love to chat about how to support your podcast as well :) !
@jake_schonberger1 happy to chat. Want to drop me an email or hit me up on twitter? @anferneec
Hey all! Super excited to be launching Swapstack on PH! As the author of The Flywheel, I got a first hand look at how hard and time consuming it can be to find sponsors for my newsletter. We're creating Swapstack to help make it easy for writers to monetize and brands to reach an amazing audience for their products.
Since we started onboarding users a couple of months ago, we've seen a bunch of folks make their first $ online through Swapstack, which is extremely exciting for us. We've worked at big tech companies before, and think people should have more options to go indie!
Great work on this and love how you keep adding more features to make the experience for better.
Also think the community you created is a genius way of keeping your audience / customers engaged.
@paul_metcalfe thanks Paul. This is very much appreciated especially from a newsletter legend like yourself 😀. Excited to keep building and getting feedback from you & others!
@trevor_cobb thanks Trevor! hoping to match the Bramble newsletter to a brand to do some sponsorship work (or onboard ya'll as a brand too!). Appreciate the comment :)
I've been on it for about one week and they've already connected me with three brands.
Great product and a great community - keep up the awesome work.
@keevin_orourke thanks Keevin! Glad we could turn our FB Messenger chats into a win-win! Excited to catch up soon and hear how these brand relationships go.
Cool stuff! Over at SparkLoop we work with thousands of newsletter creators to grow their audiences faster — and finding sponsors is definitely one of their main challenges!
This looks like a great tool to make the process easier for all involved. Excited to watch it grow in the future :)
@louisnicholls_ Hey Louis! Thanks for the note, and yes exactly - we hear our writers talk about A) Growth and B) Monetization. We provide some suppport to help our writers do cross-promotions, but have mainly focused on driving the sponsorship funnel and creating high quality matches between writers and companies.
Would be great to link up and talk about potential ways to work together! Think that would be a potential win-win
@samaneezm1 Really excited to see a couple of these Secureframe <> Swapstack writer sponsorships come to life. Thanks for the support Samanee - keep us posted as you work with our writers on any improvements, feedback etc that you run into!
Perfect timing as I was looking for a marketplace like this where brands can easily find writers with like-minded audience! Definitely going to use it for !Shoutout
Congrats guys on the launch! Can't wait to see where this takes-off!
@5harath thanks Sharath!! We can't wait to have you onboard for Shoutout and help you get the word out! Would absolutely love your feedback as you go through the experience.
Congrats team! Amazing to see what's evolved. Want to give people just a taste on what they can expect in the future? :)
@eriktorenberg Thanks Erik! Lots in store for the future...
Our vision is to be every creators sales team...and every brands hub for creator partnerships. Right now, we're focused on supporting writer & brand relationships in a sponsorship fashion.
In the coming months, we'll expand our creator support:
- Podcasters
- Conversational media
- Community leaders
...across many different engagement types:
- Sponsorships
- Guest writing
- Creator contracting
etc.
AMPED to realize this vision!
Best Writing