Paid partnership is a compelling monetization method for bloggers for two main reasons. First, it doesn’t require high traffic. 10,000 monthly visitors (333.33 per day) are enough to monetize your blog with this method.
Second, it is an evergreen monetization model which you can apply today, tomorrow, and years to come.
The best part when you run a WordPress-themed blog is that you have more potential clients to partner with. There are tons of theme and plugin developers you can approach. Not to mention hosting providers and SaaS companies that are still related to web design and development.
Before I continue, you can think of the following post deeply. Close your eyes and take a deep breath.
For bloggers like us, sending paid partnership proposals is the easiest way to make money quickly. You don’t need to wait for your affiliate posts to generate sales. You don’t need to wait for your blog to get thousands of visitors per day to install PPC ads.
You can send the proposals anytime you need money.
This particular monetization model has saved me countless times every time I struggle with my affiliate marketing revenue.
Shortly, I will walk you through the steps to land your first sponsored post.
But first.
What Do You Need to Start Sending a Partnership Proposal?
The very first thing you need to prepare before you start sending your first-ever proposal to offer a sponsored post is yourself. Especially if you haven’t done any sponsored post before.
You need to believe the value of your content. You need to believe that the content you will write can give extra value to your potential clients. You need to be confident.
It’s okay if you get nervous. It’s normal. You will get used to it after you have sent several proposals. All the nervous will release eventually once you have managed to land your first client. Trust me!
Once you are mentally ready, you need to prepare the very basic thing you need to send your first-ever partnership proposal.
What’s that?
Set up a Professional Email Address
If you truly want to be a professional blogger, then you need to make sure everything looks professional. Apart from your blog itself, one aspect you need to notice is email address.
Make sure you have set up a professional address before you send your first-ever proposal.
What is a professional email address, by the way?
A professional email address is an email address that uses your own domain. For instance, if your domain is yourblog.com, then you can create an email address like yourname@yourblog.com, hello@yourblog.com, hi@yourblog.com, etc.
I have written a dedicated post covering how to set up a professional email account with Gmail and Hover. Go read it to learn more.
Why does a professional email address matter?
Because you are a professional blogger. I am not sure you are committed to your job if you even don’t have a professional email address.
Also, I have a personal story you can learn from.
I have been a professional blogger since 2013. During my professional blogging journey, I have dealt with countless email proposals. Every time I get a new email from someone who doesn’t use a professional email account, I rarely reply to him/her.
Why?
Because those who send an email via gmaill.com, outlook.com or other free email accounts usually look for a cheap service from you. They don’t care about the quality.
If you offer a $100 service, for instance, they will make an extreme negotiation to something like $10. I am not even kidding!
You don’t want — and should not — partner with these kinds of people. Even worse because they will have too many silly requests.
Partnering with these kinds of people is a waste of time and energy. If you don’t want to be a part of this group, then there is no other option than creating a professional email account.
Stay Away from ChatGPT and the Likes
It’s true that ChatGPT and similar tools can help you get something done quickly. But, have you truly analyzed the end outcome of a work that is done using ChatGPT?
Does it really have a good conversion?
I personally don’t involve ChatGPT and similar tools in my workflow. People may call me ancient or something like that. I am okay what that label.
These days, many people use GenAI to generate content (including content for email) to the extent that everyone sounds the same. You definitely don’t want that.
It’s okay if you say that you don’t have experience with sponsored content yet but you are excited to start. Opening up this way will give them a reason to trust you even more.
The Steps to Send a Paid Partnership Proposal
Once your professional email address is ready and you already have the minimum number of monthly visitors (10,000), then you can start to send your first-ever partnership proposal.
But first, which content type you need to propose for a partnership?
As you have learned in the previous post, there are three main content types you can write on your blog. Those are:
- Tutorial
- Listicle
- Review
Out of these three, the content type you can propose for a partnership is review.
Why?
When a theme or plugin developer is serious about the product he/she develops, then he/she cares about the brand. Brand a crucial aspect in business.
Every business wants to build a brand.
When a product is reviewed by many people, it can be an indication that the product has a strong brand.
There are tons of themes, plugins, and other WordPress-focused products that don’t have a strong brand yet. You can take advantage of this situation to offer your review service.
Apart from review, you can also include listicle and tutorial as a bonus to make your offer more appealing to potential clients.
Here are the steps to send a partnership proposal.
Step 1: Spend Minutes to Learn the Product
Before you start writing the email, it’s crucial to note that you really know the party you want to send the email to. If you know the developer personally (maybe you met them in a conference), that’s great.
If you don’t know the developer personally, no worries. You can visit the official website of the product you want to write the review of to learn what problem it tries to solve.
If the free version of the product is available, you can try it first to better understand the features it has.
I will give an example.
When I was trying to offer a partnership to Bundler, I installed the plugin on my WordPress website first to learn its core features and functionality. From here, I knew that Bundler is a WooCommerce plugin designed specifically to create product bundles and quantity breaks.
After trying several plugins that have similar functionality as Bundler, I got a clear idea about the value that Bundler tried to offer.
I then sent an email based on my findings. In the email I, of course, included a review offer. To make the offer irresistible, I also included a listicle as the bonus.
This step is crucial not just to learn the product and the problem it wants to solve. This step is also crucial to find out whether the product is against your value (principle) or not.
For instance, if you don’t like a page builder and often encourage your audience to use block editor instead of a page builder, then you should never send a proposal to Bricks Builder, Breakdance, or Beaver Builder.
Step 2: Find the Email Address of the of the Prospect
If you are lucky enough, you can find the email address of the marketing manager (or anyone responsible for the partnership) on the contact page of the product’s official website. If this is the case, you can simply copy the email address and send the email to the address.
But in most cases, all you will find on the contact page is a contact form instead of email address.
Although you can also use the form to send your proposal, I strongly don’t do that because based on my experience, you will get no response when sending a proposal via a contact form.
So, what to do if you can’t find the email address on the contact form?
You can use Hunter.io to find the valid email address behind a domain. The tool is free, but you have limited monthly searches. So, use the tool wisely if you have not enough money to use the pro version.
To use the tool, first, visit its website and create an account (you can also login with Google). Open the Company name block on the Discover tab and enter the domain name of the company you want to find the email addresses of.
If the company is available on the Hunter.io database, you will see it show up on the search box. Simply click the company to learn the details. You can then see how many email addresses are under the company domain. Simply click on this to learn the details.
On the appearing panel, you can click the Find email addresses button to show the emails.
If you find multiple email addresses under a domain, you can find one who is responsible to handle the partnership (in most companies, it’s the marketing manager).
What If the Company is Not on the Hunter.io Database?
If a company is not on the Hunter.io database, chances are you will get the same results when trying other similar email finder tools.
So, what is the solution?
Important to note that not all WordPress plugin/theme developers are big companies. Some of them are indie hackers (developers) with limited resources. But it doesn’t mean that they have no money to pay for your service.
I still recommend you send proposals to this group of developers.
If you can’t find their email address using Hunter.io, you can reach out to them via LinkedIn or any social media platform they are active on.
Step 3: Start Sending the Email
Now that everything is ready, you can start to send your partnership proposal via email. Once again. Never use ChatGPT and the similar tools to write the email. Use your own words and personalize your email.
Just to make it clear that personalizing an email doesn’t always mean mentioning the name on the email body. Mentioning the recipient’s name is crucial — and the most fundamental thing in personalizing an email.
But, you also need to mention other things too. You need to mention the product name — the item you want to review. Provide your thoughts over the product to convince your prospect that you are really interested in reviewing the product.
That’s why I strongly recommend you to try the product first before sending the email because only this way you can have some thoughts about the product.
How Much Should You Charge for Your Service?
Well, there is no valid answer to this question. Everything depends on your negotiation skill.
But I will try to help you with a simple guideline.
You can align your proposal with the metrics of your blog. For instance, for a blog with 10,000 monthly visitors, $400 is a fair price for a product review.
In a perfect world, your prospects will accept the offer and you can start writing the review and get the money.
But in reality, they may negotiate the price to get their product reviewed at a cheaper price. This is where your negotiation skill comes into play.
Be careful. Never accept the negotiated price if it’s too low (under $200 is considered too low) Remember, you will spend your valuable time reviewing the product. Accepting an underpriced negotiation isn’t worth your time and effort. Even if you really need the money.
Remember, your blog has a potential to grow. And when your blog grows, so does the visibility of the product you have reviewed.
Do You Have an Example of Partnership Proposal?
Of course, I do have.
Here is the original email I sent to Bundler which ended up being a partnership deal.
Here is another successful proposal that I sent via a contact form. This was a partnership proposal with ClickWhale.
Don’t Hesitate to Follow Up
So you have just sent your partnership proposal. Congratulations!
But I need to let you know that your job doesn’t stop there. As I mentioned above. In a perfect world, the potential clients you sent the emails to will reply to your email with a yes. But in reality, only a few of them will reply to your emails.
Business is not easy. It takes tenacity to succeed. If you get no reply from your first email, don’t hesitate to send follow-up emails.
No. Sending follow-up emails is not an embarrassment. It is an indication that you are passionate about what you do and people may respect it.
But you need to do this part carefully. Give a delay before you send your second email. 3 days is a normal delay duration before you send a follow-up email.
If needed, you can create a simple sales pipeline using Google Sheets or any spreadsheet editor of your choice. You can use a sales pipeline to arrange the email sending schedules.
Here is an example of a simple sales pipeline that you can use. Click the button below if you are interested in downloading the template.
🎁 Bonus
If you truly want to monetize your blog via this model (paid partnership), I strongly recommend you create a database of potential clients. Again. You can use Google Sheets or similar tools to create one.
But how to find a potential client to be added to the database?
Easy enough. When you want to write a certain blog post about a particular topic in the WordPress world, you will naturally look for some inspirations on Google. When doing this, you will usually find blog posts from websites related to WordPress. Be it from theme developers, plugin developers, to hosting providers.
Use your instinct.
Check the homepage of the websites to check the main thing they offer. If they offer a plugin or theme and you think you can review it, then simply add the websites to the list.
To help you to get started quickly, I have created a database consisting of about 100 potential clients you can reach out to.
You can add more potential clients to the database yourself.
Remember the simple rule again. Every time you stumble on a website of a WordPress plugin or theme developer, add it to the database.
That’s it. Good luck!