Welcome to your week! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther.

Case study: How VTDigger overhauled their sponsorship strategy — inn.org

This is a really good look at the before and after processes of VTDigger's sponsorship strategy, thanks to the GNI-IIN Sponsorships Lab. Back in August 2020, Digger offered ad spots randomly, with an internal process that was complex to manage. In some cases, they were selling five placements per newsletter to five different clients for $100 each.

Thanks to insights from the Sponsorships Lab on packaging and pricing, the team decided to reduce the available ad spots to three, and required clients to purchase a newsletter 'takeover' of all three positions. They also applied a similar framework to display ads on the site, so rather than lots of advertisers competing with each other, clients are sold site full-day takeovers.

Thanks to this streamlining of ad availability and a sponsored virtual event series, Digger has managed to grow revenue by more than 10%. Some smart lessons here for publishers of all shapes and sizes.

A defunct video hosting site is flooding normal websites with hardcore porn — www.vice.com

Stories on major news sites like The Washington Post, HuffPost and New York Magazine have accidentally ended up with porn embedded in them because of an old site called Vidme. This takes the problem of link rot to a new, unsavoury level. Check your backlinks and embeds!

MVP: Why sports coverage could be the next great subscription driver — digitalcontentnext.org

Chris has talked about the value of sports coverage in recent episodes, and has put his thoughts down very eloquently in this piece for Digital Content Next. The Athletic seems to have been a catalyst for some important changes, and has demonstrated that there is a hunger for well-reported sports content. The rest is up to publishers.

Twitter ad revenue crosses $1bn in Q2 — www.campaignlive.co.uk

It's all looking rosy for Twitter as it's seen a 74% increase in revenue during the second quarter of its financial year. It's surged to an operating profit after heavy losses in the corresponding time frame last year. Daily user numbers have also increased by 11%. Could the banning of certain orange-tinted political figures be making it a more appealing place to spend time?

This week's episode:

Editor and publisher of Freelancer Sophie Cross on the joys of launching an indie mag — voices.media

In this week’s episode we hear from Sophie Cross, the founder and editor of Freelancer magazine. She tells Peter about her penchant for writing business plans, the freelance community that inspired the Freelancer magazine launch, and how she kept the spark going after the initial rush of the first issue.

Support us — voices.media

If you like this newsletter or our podcast, there are a number of ways you can support us. Kick us a virtual coffee via Ko-Fi, or if you're a vendor, find out more about our special Conversations episodes. You can also support us for free by sharing us with your colleagues and media friends. Every little helps and is really appreciated by us.