The trick is to sell the ads yourself directly to marketers who want to reach your audience without networks or middlemen.

It looks like the trick is to balance direct marketing with other income streams, so that no advertiser feels like they have leverage over your content.

Linus Tech Tips has merchandise in part because it means that their single biggest income source is not a sponsor.

Swag might not be your thing, but the message I got was pretty clear: make sure you can always walk away from any advertiser, either because they're a small part of your revenue, or you're living below your means.

Sure, like any business it's a bad idea to rely on only one or two big customers.

I think people don't give readers enough credit. They can tell if you start compromise your coverage for an advertiser. And you'll never be able to recruit and retain quality journalists if they get even a whiff that they won't be editorially independent.

Is your Industry Dive content all ad supported? I'm mostly asking because I recently took a position on the board for my city's municipal utilities and I've been looking for a source to follow some news in the sector, and Utility Dive looks interesting. Others I've come across have pretty steep paywalls. Given I'm already donating my time to my community, it's hard for me to justify spending on those.

Correct, it's free to read and we make money off the ads. We hope you'll sign up for the newsletter, but you can also see all the same content on utilitydive.com without an account or paywall.

If you refer 10 other board members we'll send you a shirt :)

How does one find these marketers?

Sales and lots of business development. I know people running ad-monetized newsletters who have entire sales teams just for this.

Kinda like how magazines work. Because really a newsletter is just a digital magazine.

Yup. Our largest team is editorial, but the second largest is sales.