Your sponsor page

Every newsletter has a sponsor page at /sponsor on its own website, and it is linked from the footer of every page of that site. It works from the day you sign up, on your {slug}.issuemint.com address, and moves onto your own domain if you add one.

The page has two modes, set in Settings on the Website tab. Enquiry mode is a pitch with a form. Calendar mode is the same pitch plus a dated grid a sponsor can pick from. The inventory is identical either way.

What a sponsor sees in both modes

Both modes open with your newsletter’s name, one line about how often it goes out, and the list of what you sell.

The line underneath the heading reads from your schedule, so it says something like “weekly, by email”, or that the newsletter goes out when there is enough worth sending if you publish to no fixed schedule. Underneath that, each active slot type is listed by name with its description and a price shown as a “from” figure, because individual dates can be priced above or below the default. Turn a slot type off and it stops appearing here.

Enquiry mode

Enquiry mode shows no dates. A sponsor reads what you offer, writes to you through the form, and the two of you work out which issue they want.

This is the mode a new newsletter starts in, and it is the better one while your dates move around or while you would rather quote a price in a reply than publish one. Everything else about sponsorship still works: the enquiry lands in the same inbox, with the same email to you, and you can book dates from it as normal.

Calendar mode

Calendar mode publishes your upcoming dates and lets a sponsor tick the ones they want, then send a single enquiry covering all of them.

Each date lists its slots in your own order. An available slot is a tickable line with its price. A slot that is held for somebody else reads “on hold” rather than “sold”, because a hold can lapse and claiming otherwise costs you the booking if it does. A slot that is sold reads “sold”. A date with nothing left is marked fully booked and stays on the page, because a run of sold-out dates is itself a piece of sales copy. If you have no dates at all, the page says so and invites the sponsor to write anyway.

Calendar mode answers the two questions every sponsorship email opens with, what is free and what does it cost, before anybody has to type them. That is the argument for running sponsorship this way rather than out of your inbox.

The subscriber count is optional

Your subscriber count is hidden by default and appears only if you turn it on, as “4,182 people read Newsletter Name” above the slot list.

The toggle is in Settings on the Website tab, and it counts active subscribers at the moment the page loads. Some publishers lead with the number. Others would rather talk about who reads the newsletter than how many, particularly early on, and a sponsor who cares about the number will ask. Nothing else on the page implies a size.

The form, and what stops it filling up with spam

The form asks for a name and an email address, and optionally a company and a sentence about what the sponsor wants to promote.

Three things guard it, none of which a real sponsor has to think about: a Cloudflare Turnstile check that most people never see, a hidden field that only automated submissions fill in, and a rate limit on how often the page accepts a submission. An enquiry that gets through arrives in your enquiry inbox and emails you at once, and in calendar mode the dates the sponsor ticked go on hold while you decide.

Nothing is charged on this page

Underneath the form, the page says that nothing is charged there and that you will invoice the sponsor directly once the details are agreed.

That sentence is not decoration. Issue Mint processes no sponsorship payments and takes no cut, so a sponsor who leaves the page believing they have paid for something becomes your support problem a fortnight later. The confirmation message after a submission is worded the same way, as a message passed on rather than an order placed. Where a date the sponsor ticked was taken in the meantime, the message says so and asks them to mention which dates they wanted when you reply.