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Deal-Room Calculator

Before you sell a placement in someone else's newsletter or podcast, check that the deal has room for all three seats at the table: the owner, the sponsor and you. This works through the method one step at a time, from whether the owner's click numbers make sense to what an empty slot is costing them each month.

It's a sequence of questions and arithmetic, and you should be able to explain every line to the owner. Get recent figures from them first, from the last five or so issues, not lifetime averages.

Inputs
The property and the deal
Every default is illustrative: a made-up weekly newsletter from the book, chosen to show how the steps work. Replace them with real numbers from the property in front of you, and label anything you estimate.

Ask the sponsor for their cost per click elsewhere; don't quote market averages as fact. The default is the book's sponsor, who said "somewhere under ten dollars."

Step 1 · Check the clicks make sense
Opens (delivered × open rate)16,200
Expected clicks at 1–3% of opensroughly 160–490
Owner's claim220–380

Inside that range, so it's plausible.

One to three percent of opens is a common working assumption, not a law. If the owner quotes a click-through rate, ask whether it's measured against opens or against delivered; the difference can be several times over. Opens are rough, so use them to sanity-check clicks, not as a selling point.

Step 2 · Price the worst case, not the average
Rate card, $2,500 · 220 clicks (low)$11.36
Rate card, $2,500 · 380 clicks (high)$6.58
Last paid, $1,600 · 220 clicks (low)$7.27

Sponsors buy people who arrive on their site. Use the low end of the click range, because that's the week that decides whether a sponsor renews.

Step 3 · Compare with the sponsor's alternatives
Rate card, worst case: $11.36Fails
Last paid, worst case: $7.27Passes

At or below what the sponsor pays elsewhere, you're selling on price. Up to about 20% higher needs a quality argument with evidence behind it. Well above with no evidence of quality, the placement is worth more to the owner than to the buyer.

Step 4 · Set the working price from evidence
Working price (the last real transaction)$1,600

The rate card hasn't sold at $2,500 in a year, so it isn't a price.

Step 5 · Check the room

Room = retail the sponsor will pay − owner's floor − your cost to sell it.

Owner's proposed floor
$1,600 − $1,400 − $150$50
Floor you'd propose
$1,600 − $1,000 − $150$450

Working rules, not laws: the floor usually needs to sit at or below about 60–70% of a retail price you can defend with the click math, and your take usually lands somewhere between a quarter and a half of retail. If the owner's floor is within about 15% of retail, there's no room for you. Your take here is retail minus the floor, before your costs.

Step 6 · Show the owner what's being left on the table
2 placements × $1,600, a month$3,200
Owner receives, at a $1,000 floor$2,000
You gross, before your costs$1,200
The owner's math "on paper": $2,500 × 4 slots$10,000

The gap between what the owner imagines on paper and what they collect today is the most persuasive number you'll show them, and their share of the filled slots is real money they aren't getting now. These are illustrations of the arithmetic, not a forecast.

Under the decision rules
Renegotiate

Only the floor is the problem. At the floor you'd propose, all three seats work.

The decision rules
Broker it when the worst-case cost per click passes, the price has evidence behind it, and there's room for all three seats.
Renegotiate when only the floor is the problem.
Pass when cost per click fails with no quality evidence, or when nothing leaves room. Good inventory with no room is someone else's inventory.
Pause when there's no click data. Offer tracked links on the next two issues and get one real number first.

After the first placement, rerun the whole calculation with the actual click count from the first send. Send the sponsor their delivered count, opens, clicks and effective cost per click, next to what they told you they pay elsewhere. That report, not the pitch, is what sells the second placement.

The room in a placement deal, with the appendix's illustrative numbers on one dollar scale. At the owner's proposed floor, $1,600 retail minus a $1,400 floor minus $150 cost to sell leaves $50 of room: a job, not a deal. At a renegotiated $1,000 floor, the same $1,600 leaves $450 of room, and you gross $600. The sponsor's seat still works: worst case, $1,600 divided by 220 clicks is $7.27 a click, against their own figure of under ten dollars.
The room, with the book's illustrative numbers. From The Un-Publisher, Appendix A.

From The Un-Publisher

This calculator is Appendix A of The Un-Publisher: A Media Operator's Playbook by Bill Eisenhauer, from Toll Stack Press. The book covers where the numbers come from: why sponsors buy clicks rather than subscribers, how to talk about the split with an owner, and the term sheet to sign before the first sale.

Not legal, tax or financial advice. The numbers this produces are only as good as the ones you put in, and the working rules are starting points, not guarantees. Many people who try these methods earn little or nothing at first. Every paid placement gets labeled as paid, where readers will see it.

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