# A creator can sell partners a year-round audience package

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/a-creator-can-sell-partners-a-year-round-audience-package/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Chris Williamson](https://realalpha.app/people/chris-williamson/) · Host, Modern Wisdom
- Host: [David Friedberg](https://realalpha.app/people/david-friedberg/) · CEO, Ohalo · Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.
- Host: [Jason Calacanis](https://realalpha.app/people/jason-calacanis/) · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH · Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.
- Show: All-In
- Episode: [All-In Live from Austin: Colin and Samir, Chris Williamson, and Bryan Johnson](https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/), Apr 3, 2025
- Moment: 57:42 to 1:01:14 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/a-creator-can-sell-partners-a-year-round-audience-package/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/?t=3462

## Quote

> “you get a set of impressions across the entire year let's say **40 million 60 million impressions** then you get a number of Instagram story sequences on my Instagram”
> — [Chris Williamson](https://realalpha.app/people/chris-williamson/) at [58:57](https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/?t=3537) · All-In

## Takeaways

1. He began by selling ads himself and raising his rates over time.
2. Flagship deals bundle impressions, social posts, newsletters and appearances.
3. He favors partners whose products he uses and trusts.

## About this segment

Chris Williamson describes moving from selling individual ads to year-round packages across his show, newsletter, social channels and appearances. The bundle gives brands a deeper partnership and lets him choose products he uses.

From “All-In Live from Austin: Colin and Samir, Chris Williamson, and Bryan Johnson”, Apr 3, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[57:47](https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/?t=3467) So how did you start thinking about building the business, high-quality content, authentic content? Was it a conversation about, hey, let me just put this out there, make ads and I'll figure it out later? Or was it very deliberate? And how's the model kind of evolving for you? Yeah, so it was emergent over time. You start off just taking whoever you can get. A lot of supplement companies and teeth whitening companies, whatever's available.

[58:10](https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/?t=3490) You read ads? Yeah. And they come in or you call out? I did outreach for the first five or six hundred episodes of the show. So I was managing my own ads. I was sending the invoices. I was slowly scaling up the CPMs. You can get between a $15 and $25 CPM, something like that, audio only. I made the commitment not to do ads on YouTube because if it was a virtual episode, it felt like it was such a low lift that that kind of didn't justify making people sit through baked-in ads, at least on YouTube, but we got away with it.

[58:39](https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/?t=3519) You mean where you have the option to turn them off? No, these are hard-coded into the file itself. Red-coded in, yeah. So you're just, yeah, that's what's referred to as baked-in. And then, look, we've got ourselves to the stage now where we have some pretty interesting setups. I think I'm one of the only podcasters that does this where we sell an entire ecosystem so if you come on board as one of what we call our flagship partners you get a set of impressions across the entire year let's say 40 million 60 million impressions then you get a number of Instagram story sequences on my Instagram you'll get newsletter drops on my newsletter which has got 300,000 subs and a 50% open rate lots of click through on that and then maybe I'll come speak at your AGM or I'll do something else and we build out this big package.

[59:23](https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/?t=3563) That will elevate the level of the partner too because they're being thoughtful. So you're going to remove the nickeling, diming people who should just be buying cost per quick ads on a meta. And now you've got people who are actually thinking about their brand and what they want their brand associated with. I mean, Function Health, who I think are on here somewhere. We did a two-year deal with them.

[59:47](https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/?t=3587) And I love what they do. I use them to track my blood work. and I thought, why would I not want to be in bed with a company that I use all the time? Absolutely, yeah. I mean, in our case, it's... And you deepen the relationship as well. So, Element, James from Element, if there's something... he wants to talk about to do with brand. I have a good insight when it comes to brand, especially from a creator side, or ad reads.

[1:00:06](https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/?t=3606) I'll happily just do a couple of hours of work. This is what we've seen that's been working recently. It's interesting when we were talking about the old media model. I'm new to all this stuff, so I'm not big in this podcasting space, but I just observe. So maybe what I say is super reductive and obvious, but it's like you've got these pharmaceutical ads on Fox News, and it's in between the segments, and none of the anchors give a shit about the pharmaceutical ad, nor do they talk about or promote it and they have no connection to it.

[1:00:31](https://realalpha.app/v/54wNtMZF_sg/?t=3631) There's no authenticity to it. But here there's an opportunity to be selective and to have it be part of the content, part of the experience and it actually probably does better as a result with the audience than you would get with that, you know, have you talked to your doctor about your diarrhea or whatever. In the same way, you know what it is? In the same way as following your instincts on the show when it comes to what you talk about, if you can get yourself to the luxurious position where you get to choose your partners as well, every single product that I partner with I use so let's talk about so you got leverage that's like whitelisted advertising was something we started on This Week in Startups from the beginning which was if I don't use the product or don't like it we turn it down