Are ConvertKit Email Ads Worth It? 6 Week Case Study Review

ConvertKit (now Kit) launched programmatic email ads in their newsletter as a beta program in spring 2024. I love to test things, so I signed up and ran a 6 week trial to see what the ads look like, and if they’re worth using for your lists.

I liked the idea of additional revenue for bloggers, especially as many are pivoting to an email-first approach.

But ads on websites have always been controversial. Users hate them. They can cause major speed issues. And sometimes they show up where you don’t want them.

I tracked how easy it was to use the ads, how it affected my email deliverability – if at all, if it made my readers unsubscribe more, and how much I made.

After my test, I have a clear answer: No, I don’t think ConvertKit Ads are worth it. And I’m going to show you a better way to monetize your email list.

At the time of publishing this case study, ConvertKit Ads have a waitlist to join the beta program. You can sign up for it here.

🤩 While I don’t think ConvertKit Ads are the best, I am a big fan of ConvertKit for it’s Creator Program, complex automations, and 10k subscriber free plan. Check it out here!

Are the Ads Easy to Control and Set Up?

Score: 3/5 ⭐️

Before we talk about the numbers, let’s talk about actually using the ads.

I opted in to the beta program for the ads, so the final applications and set ups may change over time. But it was as simple as clicking to opt in.

After you get approved, you have to set up your ad preferences. ConvertKit has over 770 brands that you can choose to allow or block from appearing in your emails.

While the ads are sorted by niche, a lot of them fall into vague niches or the niches don’t reflect the style of the ad.

For example, I had a few emails letting me know that a meal program – Factor Foods – that I had allowed to show in my emails was displaying weight loss content.

I am very vocal about having a history of eating disorders and not being ok with weight loss ads on my sites. But nothing about the selection for the brands led me to believe that this meal program would focus on weight loss. And you can’t vet the physical ads ahead of time or preview them anywhere.

It’s also incredibly time consuming to go through brand by brand to approve them for your emails.

I wrote ConvertKit to suggest a “banned content style” option to prevent anything to do with gambling, weight loss, etc. to show up in our emails. I wasn’t given a clear answer, but I’m hoping they take it into account.

Brands that deal with children or sobriety will need to be especially careful with this.

Once you select the brands you’re ok to promote, you have to give the system up to 24 hours – this goes for any edits as well. Then you can start promoting ads in your email.

Is It Easy to Add the Ads to Emails?

Score: 5/5 ⭐️

Yes, it is very easy to add the ad blocks to your email.

ConvertKit’s block editor has an “Ad” section that you can select and add into your newsletter draft.

It won’t show which ad will be displayed – as that will vary per recipient – but it does allow you to customize the placement.

This ability to control placement is a 10/10 for me. You don’t have to ruin your newsletter flow with random ads breaking up sentences like you might in a blog post.

But you do have to remember to add the blocks, or no ads will show.

So if you’re forgetful, this could be an issue. You’ll have to build it into your templates or your routine.

I put 2 ads in my emails – 1 about 1/3 of the way and the other about 2/3 of the way through the email.

Do the Ads Impact Email Metrics?

Score: 4/5 ⭐️

Before using ConvertKit Ads, my average open rate was 48.2%. It went down to 41.67% after the 6 weeks of running the ads.

My unsubscribes usually average 22 per email. With the ConvertKit Ads, it rose to 31 per email.

However, I have to caveat this. I was testing the ads on different types of emails, so it is possible that some of the varied types of emails (i.e. a “click to watch on Youtube” style email) caused these numbers.

I also ran this test during the Google algorithm leak and Google IO Keynote. People weren’t loving SEO at the time, which also could have impacted my email rates.

It’s too small of a sample to say for sure whether the ads impacted my email metrics. I suspect it played a small role, but nothing statistically significant.

🤩 While I don’t think ConvertKit Ads are the best, I am a big fan of ConvertKit for it’s Creator Program, complex automations, and 10k subscriber free plan. Check it out here!

Ok, But How Much Do You Make From the Ads?

Score: 1/5 ⭐️

Yes, you make some money from email ads, but not nearly enough.

I sent 7 emails that got over 51,200 opens from April 23 – June 4th and I made … 🥁

$46.87.

That’s an RPM of $0.91.

That’s only slightly more than I got from Ezoic for 8k pageviews a month.

This is a FAR cry from the $3,729.41 estimated by ConvertKit’s calculator (admittedly, for 10k subscribers but that’s not far off what I have). Even at their lowest estimate on the calculator, it suggests $2,200 a month.

If the ads actually made thousands of dollars, yeah they’d be worth it.

But I haven’t seen anyone reporting numbers like that.

It’s unethical to have a calculator showing such high amounts when the real numbers are far lower.

Either they need to adjust the calculator, or they need to seriously improve the program to get people much closer to those numbers.

I would have needed to make at least $500 in 4 weeks off the ads to say that the ads are sort of worth it.

Here Are My Complete Stats

How Do the Ads Look?

Score: 4/5 ⭐️

I screenshotted the ads in my email each week when I sent them to my other email address.

I also screenshotted the ads from some email replies I got to newsletters from students, which showed the ads as they saw them.

All of the ads I received were for a book called “Eat the Apple” and Allianz Travel Insurance.

The ads did vary a bit, with different text and pictures. Sometimes they were squares or banners instead of the large rectangle.

But my audience sent in a few – like the Factor Foods weight loss one and one about Keurig clickbait from Angelinos.

The ads filled up the space nicely and never seemed to have any major loading issues or design issues.

But I did expect them to have “ad” somewhere on them to make it clearer to users that these are advertisements – like you see with Mediavine or Raptive ads on a blog.

I found it deceptive to not make it clear it’s an ad, especially when users aren’t used to email ads.

3 Better Ways to Monetize Your Newsletter

Just like a blog, ads are NOT the best way to monetize your content.

Ads are one of my lowest income sources with my blogs – and definitely my lowest income source with my newsletter.

You give away such a large chunk of the profits to the ads managers – in this case over 23% to ConvertKit.

And you’re likely to annoy your audience with these ads, so you can’t use too many of them.

Here are 3 much better ways to monetize your newsletter and increase your income without hurting your audience.

1. Email Sponsors

Sponsored emails can take a few forms: a custom ad in a newsletter, a newsletter you’re paid to write on a specific topic, or even a sponsored link in a newsletter.

I primarily do custom ads in my newsletter. I have a full page automating the process here so that I can sell and insert the ads largely on autopilot.

I charge about $100 per 1,000 engaged subscribers, but it varies. I’m pretty lax about updating the page so usually I’m $100 to $200 under my own metric cause I get lazy.

You can charge even more for a dedicated email that you’ve written on a particular topic for a brand.

For example, I’ve written travel safety emails for a travel insurance brand before.

They sponsored the content, but I wrote it and inserted a couple links to their company.

Rates for sponsored content vary greatly based on the amount of effort required, if you can still use an affiliate link, and your email engagement.

A very rough, top of the head number, would be $2,000 for every 5,000 engaged members of your list.

I also recommend negotiating these prices. I offer different packages for sponsored content. You can usually upsell brands easily to include a blog post and social content that you might have been planning to make anyway.

2. Affiliates

If I put 1 affiliate link in a custom made banner, instead of the ConvertKit Ads, I could make $50 immediately.

In fact, I have before! My email footer of affiliate links regularly makes $100 passively.

You can either write dedicated affiliate emails, or use more passive methods of promoting affiliates like I do in every email. I mix it up between the two.

A dedicated affiliate email usually converts from 1-5%, depending on how engaged your list is and how relevant the affiliate is.

For a list of 1,000 people, 10 people would need to purchase something with a $5 commission for you to have made more than I did from 6 weeks of disruptive ads.

3. Digital Products

Selling your own digital products means you get 100% of the income from a sale. No more random percentages – that could get taken away at any moment by a program shutting down.

I’m a massive fan of digital products. My $110k month in 2023 was largely thanks to a digital product and a service.

You can sell digital products on autopilot, much like affiliates. But you’ll always sell best from a launch sequence – usually a 1 week push to your email list with some sort of limited time offer (sale, bonus, price increase, etc.).

Even if you have a $5 digital product, you would only need to sell 10 to make more than I did from ConvertKit Ads for 6 weeks. A $5 product will likely convert at more than 1%, but even if it did that just requires a 1k person email list.

Bonus: 4. Paid Newsletter

You can also monetize your newsletter itself by making it a paid subscription.

Think of it like a Patreon version of your email list, which is super common for podcasters. People get an extra bit of content for paying to subscribe.

This could be a bonus newsletter, a monthly live Q&A, extra analysis of a topic, or special deals emailed to them regularly.

You can set this up with Patreon or ConvertKit, and then segment out the members of the paid tier to get a different newsletter.

I’ve seen these in multiple niches and they can make over $100k a year easily, with an engaged audience and a clear topic.

🤩 While I don’t think ConvertKit Ads are the best, I am a big fan of ConvertKit for it’s Creator Program, complex automations, and 10k subscriber free plan. Check it out here!

Should You Use ConvertKit Ads?

I always recommend testing things for yourself.

But based off of my test, no I wouldn’t recommend using ConvertKit Ads for your email list.

Unless you have a list of over 50k people and you literally cannot monetize in any other way for some reason, you won’t make decent money and you’ll do far better with other monetization methods.

I also like the idea of keeping emails programmatic ad-free. We get ads in so many places in our lives now, that having an ad-free inbox (or at least, curated ads when they’re going to be there) is more pleasant.

If ConvertKit can adjust the program to have better RPMs, I’d reconsider my take. But right now, they go with Ezoic in the “Nina doesn’t recommend these for monetization” bin.

Looking to grow your email list? Here are my best methods without paid ads from a case study I ran.