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Welcome to The Niche Fix. Each week, we will share insights from experts and professionals in the niche publishing industry. Have questions or thoughts about the industry? Reply to this email, and let’s chat!

But first…

The Nichee Awards have returned and submissions are now open!

This is your opportunity to showcase the work that is moving niche media ahead. The Nichee Awards recognize outstanding achievements in publishing, sales, editorial leadership, and audience growth, with winners revealed live at the 2026 Niche Media Conference in Orlando.

Categories range from Publisher of the Year to Sales, Editorial, and Marketing and Audience Development leadership, celebrating the people and brands shaping the future of the industry.

Finalists will be notified and invited to join us in Orlando for the live awards ceremony.

Ryan Dohrn’s Sales Corner: How AI Personality Profiles Make You a Better Salesperson

If you are sending the same pitch to every prospect, you are making sales harder than it needs to be.

One of the most effective ways to use AI right now is to build personality profiles before you ever reach out. This is not about being creepy or over engineered. It is about relevance.

As Ryan Dohrn explains, tools like ChatGPT make it easy to understand how someone thinks, communicates, and makes decisions. Start with a prospect who is active online. Copy a public profile or website and ask your AI tool to build a personality profile as if you are trying to sell to that person.

The output is more than surface level data. AI can identify job roles, industry context, experience, communication style, motivators, and likely decision making traits. When done correctly, this information is surprisingly accurate and immediately useful.

The real advantage comes from how you apply it.

Once you understand how a prospect operates, you can shape your outreach to match them. If they value clarity and ROI, lead with outcomes and efficiency. If they are relationship driven or big picture thinkers, adjust your tone and framing accordingly. The point is to meet people where they are instead of forcing a one size fits all pitch.

AI can also help you write smarter outreach. Ask it to generate email templates and subject lines based on the personality profile. You will get messaging that aligns with how that person prefers to communicate, not just what you want to say.

This approach works across advertising, sponsored content, subscriptions, and services. The goal is not automation for speed alone. The goal is relevance at scale.

Sales has always been about understanding people. AI just helps you do it faster and more consistently.

Now, let’s talk sponsored content…

Why Sponsored Content Is Now a Must Have for Media Companies

By Zach O’Brien

Advertisers are not walking away from media companies. They are walking away from formats that no longer deliver attention.

Banner ads are easier to ignore than ever. Traditional print ads still have value, but many brands now want something more flexible, more measurable, and more human. That shift has pushed sponsored content from a nice add on into one of the most important revenue tools for modern media companies.

Sponsored Content Is About Earning Attention

What separates strong sponsored content from everything else is intent. When it works, sponsored content does not interrupt the audience. It earns their time.

That is why quality is the single most important factor in any campaign. Whether the content is advertiser submitted or created in house, it has to meet the same editorial standards your readers expect. Clear writing, strong visuals, thoughtful structure, and genuine relevance matter far more than logos or taglines.

Audiences do not mind sponsored content. They mind bad sponsored content.

One Story, Many Touchpoints

The biggest mistake publishers make is selling sponsored content as a one off article.

High performing campaigns treat sponsored content as a core asset that can be distributed across multiple channels. A single strong piece of content can support:

• Sponsored email sends

• Website articles or landing pages

• Social media posts

• Short form video

• Downloadable assets like whitepapers or guides

This approach extends the lifespan of the content, increases advertiser ROI, and shifts the sales conversation from placements to outcomes.

Print Still Has Strategic Value

Print has not disappeared. It has simply changed jobs.

At media companies like Spotlight Media and Utah Faces, sponsored content is elevated through Faces publications, which focus on profile driven storytelling rather than traditional ads. These pieces position advertisers as experts and community members, not sales pitches.

At AIN Media Group, they are telling stories in print through their Solutions in Business Aviation (SiBA), which illustrate the solutions that advertisers bring to the industry. That piece is printed annually and sent out to its full subscription list.

What makes these models work is what happens next. The print features become a credibility anchor that feeds digital distribution, social sharing, email marketing, and QR driven traffic back to online content. Print does not compete with digital. It strengthens it.

Sponsored Content Is a Trust Play

Advertisers are buying trust more than clicks.

Content published by a media brand carries authority that brand owned channels cannot replicate. When sponsored content is educational, informative, or genuinely helpful, it transfers that trust to the advertiser in a way banners never could.

This is why formats like explainers, profiles, and ask the expert features consistently outperform overt promotional content.

The Bigger Shift for Publishers

The publishers winning with sponsored content are not selling articles. They are selling partnerships built on storytelling and distribution.

When sponsored content is treated as a long term asset that can be reused, repurposed, and promoted over time, it becomes one of the most sustainable and flexible revenue streams a media company can offer.

This issue of the Niche Fix is brought to you by Broadstreet

Broadstreet is an award-winning alternative to Google Ad Manager built for niche publishers. Voted the #1 R&D partner by the Local Media Association, they’re famous for bringing automation, AI, and innovative ad formats to the media kids of digital publishers with direct sales teams.

CEO Kenny Katzgrau has won several industry awards for innovation as publisher of the pioneering Red Bank, NJ-based hyperlocal news outlet, redbankgreen.com.

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