You know how people say “Your name just keeps coming up?”

In marketing, this isn’t just a nice to have. It’s a must have.

It takes a lotta mentions to get someone paying you, and sometimes, even just to get them subscribing to a newsletter. This need for repetition is another reason why cross promoting with other writers is important. It’s more trustworthy when people hear about your work from people who are NOT YOU.

Today, as we near the end of our Cross Promo Challenge, I want to highlight a few of our superstar community members who’ve been hyping each other up and point out some of what’s effective about how they’re doing it.

P.S. Happy Juneteenth! 🖤 

Five cross promotions that warmed my cold heart

I love to see y’all shout each other out. Here’s a few of the recent cross promos you sent me or I caught in the wild from subscribers of this newsletter. Use them as inspiration and reach out to these writers if you want to team up! Most of these folks are in our Cross Promo Network or hit me up for a double opt in intro.

Angela Hollowell and Max Pete

Angela Hollowell of Please Hustle Responsibly spotlighted Max Pete of Max’s Newsletter.

What’s great about it: 

• Angela slotted this in right up top as her opener, before diving into the rest of her issue, so it definitely got lots of eyeballs.

• I love that she set a lot of context about why she finds Max interesting and why we might too.

• The link she included goes to a post on Max’s newsletter so readers can check out his work before subscribing, making those readers more likely to be a better fit for Max.

In partnership with Outpost 🪐 

I’ve noticed lately that in the switch from beehiiv to Ghost, I’ve slowed down my newsletter signups a little bit, but it’s not because of recommendations or boosts.

It’s because I have less calls to action on the page.

Can I add them in manually to the 100+ posts I have? Sure.
Could I pay a developer to build more of them into my theme? Yes.

But I don’t want to do that so what I did was turn on more Outpost calls to action which I can design and write ONE TIME and publish to ALL MY POSTS in one place.

Want to learn more about Outpost’s smart call to action feature? They’re doing a live demo for us next week. Join us free on Thursday, June 26.

Andy Dehnart and Greg Nix

Andy Dehnart of reality blurred and Greg Nix of Chortle did a newsletter swap.

What’s great about it: 

• Andy’s “recommended” tag on this section because it clearly delineates that he’s about to share someone else’s work. It also tells us that it’s not an ad.

• His lead in of “these photos of the invasion in L.A. made me laugh so hard…” explains why this caught his attention and why it might catch ours.

• The graphic, which Greg provided, works well because the color grabs you as you scroll through text and the tagline reads fast.

Saul of Remote Queer and BJ Ferguson

Saul of Remote Queer featured BJ Ferguson of Well Beings News.

What’s great about it:

• Saul calls out a couple specific articles readers might like so you get a sense of what BJ covers.

• Highlighting the perk of free membership for people who become sources is nice because it also teases that BJ has a paid tier and that you should want to be part of it.

• The feature box with the nice big button is very smashable.

• This plug is nicely integrated into the overall flow of this newsletter too.

Seamus Hughes and Alexios Mantzarlis + Craig Silverman

Seamus Hughes of Court Watch did an ad swap with Alexios Mantzarlis and Craig Silverman of Indicator.

What’s great about it:

• The opening testimonial is quite a hook. It works because it’s so short and includes the word “greatest.”

• The image is a scroll stopper because it’s so different from Court Watch’s normal style.

• I like that the plug includes the value prop that names what you’re going to get with “fight disinformation, deceptive ads, AI slop.”

Bryan Vance and Nick Parish

Bryan Vance of Stumptown Savings and Nick Parish of Current Flow State did a local newsletter swap!

What’s great about it:

• The photos build immediate trust. The fact that you click through to those same photos on the landing page helps readers feel continuity. I know that I’m not being swindled because I clicked and saw exactly what I expected.

• Calling out “Portlanders” in the ad ensures the reader knows this is just for them.

• The big “sign up now” makes it clear what you should do.

Don’t you wish everyone was talking about you?

Join our Cross Promo Network and take part in the Challenge until the end of the month.

Huge shout out to everyone I featured today for running these creative collaborations. Cross promotion strategies can take a bit of time to dial in, but they’re well worth figuring out. They are one of your most powerful audience growth levers. You might not even realize that you’re doing them already!

Want more ideas for how to cross promote?

I’ve got 4 methods you can try, along with examples and my tips for smooth collaborations in this post. I just added Community Namedrops—a personal fave!

What’s coming up at Project C

Monday, June 23 | Your next milestone: goal setting with your fellow ambitious writers (Everyone)

Thursday, June 26 | Getting readers to take action with Outpost: featuring the team from Outpost demoing their new smart call to action feature release (Everyone)

Thursday, July 10-Friday, July 11 | SRCCON: journalism, tech and internet culture conference. Liz and I are facilitating a session as is Matt Kiser and Andy Dehnart’s coming too. Join us in Minneapolis. 

July Sprint | Winback campaigns. You’ve had subscribers cancel. How many can you win back? Register (three sessions!)

Revenue Lab is underway. A few of us are looking at the impact of race and identity on revenue growth (following up on my survey) and we’re running some experiments this summer to break through these barriers. We meet again July 1. If you’re a journalist whose racial identity could be impacting your revenue, let me know if you’d like to join us!

👀 Coming Saturday: L.A. TACO launched a reader raise last week. They’ve already surpassed their goal. What worked and why you might want try this, even post-launch.

Join our community for creator journalists