How Justin Moore Has Made Millions from Teaching Others How to Land Sponsorships

He’s made over $5 million from brand deals and sponsorships alone.

And now he teaches others how to do the same with his newsletter and brand called Creator Wizard.

There are very few people who have been on both sides of the negotiation table when it comes to brand partnerships:

• Having the experience in closing millions in deals for their own personal creator brands
• And knowing what the brands are looking for in their negotiations

Add on top of that a teaching mindset and there might only be one person who is the perfect combination of these things. His name is Justin Moore.

How It Started

In 2009 Justin’s wife, April, started a lifetstyle and beauty YouTube channel. Justin was helping edit the videos and even started appearing in some.

Her videos quickly took off and April started getting free products from brands in exchange for creating videos about them. She was thrilled.

But after a while, one brand actually offered to pay her to get in front of her audience. That was a game-changer.

Justin was in business school at the time and felt like he could help manage these sponsorships. So he did, learning on the fly and figuring out how to negotiate with brands.

After years of doing this, he realized that their other YouTube influencer friends struggled with this and by now he had connections on the brand side of it.

Justin started an influencer agency, called Trending Family, helping to connect brands with lifestyle and family influencers.

He ran that for 7 years. Sadly, he ended up having to close it down.

While closing the agency had to hurt an incredible amount, it has given him the most incredible gift: experience.

Through running the agency, he’s learned the ins and outs of what brands look for, how much they’ll pay and who is actually in charge of the deals. And because of their experience on YouTube, Justin knows what creators wanted from deals as well, making him uniquely positioned to teach this type of content.

It’s hard to think of a better fit person to help other creators land and negotiate their dream brand partnerships. And that’s exactly what he does now with Creator Wizard.

How Justin Moore Makes Money

Justin is one of those “under-the-radar” creators who’s quietly making millions. And it’s not like he isn’t talking about it, but if you look at his follower count and email subscriber numbers you might write him off.

Well, you’d be making a huge mistake because there is a lot we can learn from Justin’s business. So let’s dig into how he’s making his money today.

Brand Deal Wizard

Brand Deal Wizard is the name of Justin’s course where he teaches you the full process of finding, pitching, closing your dream brand partnerships.

Brand Deals & Sponsorships

It would be crazy to talk about the “brand deal” guy and not mention his own brand deals. Justin works with sponsors for his YouTube channel, newsletter, etc.

When he had a 3,000-person email list, he told Nathan Barry he sold a $2k sponsorship deal.

I’m not sure those numbers hold up if you extrapolate them out to the 35,000 subscribers he has now, but Justin is a deal-making machine so it’s possible 🙂

Asynchronous Coaching

Justin runs an asynchronous coaching program called The Wizards Guild, where people can pay $1k per month to essentially have his team there to answer their questions.

He has a few sponsorship coaches on retainer to help clients out a few days a week with any questions they might have about pitching, pricing, contracts, etc.

I love this business model because there are so many nuances to sponsorships that having a team ready to help at any moment is a big deal.

While I don’t have numbers for how much his courses and coaching programs earn, in May 2023 Justin said he made over $400k from courses and coaching for the last 4 years.

Coaching Calls

Justin has experimented with doing public and private coaching calls for creators. The public ones go up on his YouTube channel – which makes for great content and is probably an effective channel for getting new coaching clients as well.

His private coaching is $1000 per hour:

Note: I also love that subtle down-sell to his Wizard’s Guild coaching program if he doesn’t have any spots open.

Book

Justin is getting ready to launch a book called The Sponsor Magnet.

While he probably won’t make millions from this book alone, the people who read it are going to be primed and ready for his other offerings.

Conference

Justin is also going to be launching a conference called Sponsor Games.

From what I’ve heard, many events and conferences barely break even, but knowing the way Justin operates, I have a feeling he’ll make this profitable.

The Growth Timeline of Creator Wizard

Let’s take a look at Justin’s growth timeline to see how he’s built up his newsletter and audience.

Of course, I could drag this growth timeline out to the early days and start it in 2011, but I feel like that dilutes the story of his current business.

Just keep in mind that he has years of experience in the creator and sponsorship space.

You can see a big jump around the beginning of 2023. We’ll get into more on that later, but I wanted to show you this big spike in a timeline form.

The Growth Levers of Justin Moore

Justin’s business is one of the most straightforward I’ve researched, but also one of the most nuanced.

Here are the growth levers of Justin Moore:

🤝 1. Do the unscalable things. Justin is relentless with his connections and building relationships and often does the things you can’t scale. And it’s one of the reasons he ends up with so many collaborations and partnerships.

🦄 2. Become “the guy” (or girl). Justin has hyperfocused so much on his mission and niche, that he is the first person people think of when someone has a sponsorship question.

💫 3. The promise of future content. Forget lead magnets. If you really want to grow, try out this method instead.

🎁 4. Super-effective referral program. Justin’s referral program is just so good it almost guarantees that every subscriber will send at least one friend his way.

🤑 5. Paid growth. Justin has used paid growth strategies along the way and he isn’t shy about it. Between recommendations, social ads, and sponsorships, it was a big part of his growth spike.

🔌 6. Relentlessly plug the newsletter. He’s not just hyperfocused on his niche, he’s also only sending people to one place. The newsletter. And there’s a very good reason why.

Before we dive into these growth levers, I want to reiterate that Justin is one of the most ruthless people I know with deleting subscribers. So that 35,000 he has now, would probably be more like 75,000 for another operator.

In fact, I’ve had him on my list of people to do a deep dive on in the future for over a year. And he always seems to consistently have 35,000 subscribers.

Maybe he kept deleting people so he’d never reach the 50k mark – that way I wouldn’t do a deep dive and share his secrets?! 🧐

Jokes on you Justin, because I dropped that 50k requirement 🙂 Alright, let’s share Justin’s growth secrets.

1. Do the Unscalable Things 🤝

While it can be easy to get bogged down with growth at all costs, and tactics that result in big numbers, Justin does a lot of “unscalable things.”

He’s more focused on the quality of his subscribers as opposed to the sheer numbers. And shouldn’t we all?

1-1 Relationships

I don’t know if it comes from his experience building relationships with brands for 15 years, or it’s just his personality, but Justin is one of the most effective relationship builders I’ve ever seen.

He and I can both walk into a room and meet the same 5 people, and Justin will walk out with each one’s number and a task to follow up on some collaboration they talked about.

Me? I’ll meet them and maybe follow up with one of them.

And it’s not some weird ploy to grow his business, he just loves being around people, helping others, and working together. He doesn’t waste any time finding a way to work with creators.

This leads to all kinds of collaborations like:

• Podcast guests
• Resource swaps
• Workshops
• Affiliate partners
• Clients and customers
• Brand partnerships

You name it, he’s done it.

I could go on and on about this but I’ll stop here because it’s really that simple. Be a good human, talk to people, and follow up.

1-1 DMs

In the early days, Justin would direct message his new followers and tell them to sign up for his newsletter.

He said that this led to connections and even people buying his course, so I’d say it was pretty effective.

Do I think this is the best, least cringey way to get people to sign up? No.

And it probably won’t work as well today. But Justin is also shameless about promoting his content.

Be Shameless

Justin has no shame about being quirky to get attention and help creators.

He’ll wear a cheesy shirt, a light-up backpack that tells people to subscribe, and even walk around a conference with a spinner to spread the word about getting people more sponsorships.

He’s having fun with his work, which builds affinity and gets people to remember you.

Give First & Say Yes

One of the reasons he is so effective at building relationships is that Justin is one of those people who will help you regardless of how much he has on his plate.

He thinks that giving first is the way to build a good business because he knows it comes back in the end, even if it’s 10 years down the road.

The other side of this coin is saying “yes” to every opportunity. In a thread about his growth, he brings this up:

Even if there are 3 people listening, that’s 3 potential subscribers who can refer others to you and become customers.

At the same time, you’re building a relationship with that podcaster or brand.

And by the time you get invited to those podcasts that have thousands of listeners, your message will be refined and much more compelling for the people listening. So it’s a win-win.

I really think 75% of his growth has stemmed from his ability to meet new people, and willingness to help others, but there are more tactics we can learn from.

2. Become the “Guy” (or Girl) 🦄

When Justin started Creator Wizard, he was nowhere near as niched down as he is now.

He was trying to help people with the overall “Business of being a creator.” He was talking about all kinds of things:

• Email marketing
• Social media
• Monetization
• Sponsorships
• Affiliate partners
• Finance for creators

It was honestly a smorgasbord of anything you could think of around building a business. Sadly, people didn’t know what he did because he said he did it all.

And his growth reflected that.

Now, in hindsight, this looks so crystal clear it’s almost laughable:

• He ran an influencer agency for 6 years helping creators land sponsorships
• 80% of his tweets were about brand deals and sponsorships
• His newsletter was all about sponsorships
• He had even built a full-blown course on the power of sponsorships and how to do them well in January of 2021:

Even though he had such a unique experience in the world of sponsorships, he still continued to focus on the “business of being a creator.”

Here is one of his tweets from June of 2021 where he was still on this path:

But one day in late 2021, a subscriber DMed him and told him to stop talking about anything but sponsorships and brand deals.

Thankfully, he listened.

Justin doubled down on his unique expertise of helping creators land brand sponsorships and deals.

This was probably the easiest rebrand in history because he was already doing all of the things, it was more just fixing what he told people he did.

He changed his Twitter profile to say: “Justin Moore | Brand Deal Coach”

Since he made that switch, he has exploded and become known as “The Sponsorship Guy.”

If you’ve ever asked me about learning how to do sponsorships, the answer I’ve probably given you is to “Go watch Justin” or “sign up for Justin’s newsletter.”

Why? Because it’s so specific. And since that’s all he talks about, he’s gotten really good at his messaging. I don’t have to think twice about who to send people to.

Brand partnerships = Justin Moore.

If he had stuck with the whole “business of being a creator” thing, no one would know who to send to him and what he could truly help with.

3. The Promise of Future Content 💫

This might be my favorite part of Justin’s story.

One of the reasons I think Justin’s subscribers are so engaged with his emails is the content he’s sending each week.

At the beginning of his newsletter journey, Justin was building tons of different lead magnets to entice people to sign up:

• A pricing checklist
• A money management checklist
• A glossary on influencer marketing
• A brand deal checklist

Here’s one of those:

And because the content is so good every week, people stay subscribed. They’re not just coming for the free PDF and bailing a few weeks later.

Justin calls this “the promise of future content” and I freaking love that saying.

4. Hypereffective Referral Program 🎁

Justin has done an incredible job at putting together the “prizes” for his referral program.

Instead of just offering “more” sponsorship content, he’s giving you a different type of content that’s only available through his referral program.

Here are the prizes you can earn through Justin’s referral program:

• 1 referral: Secret sponsorship research
• 5 referrals: $100 off his Brand Deal Wizard course
• 25 referrals: Free 1-1 strategy session
• 100 referrals: Free enrollment to Brand Deal Wizard

The “Secret Sponsorship Research” is my favorite referral prize of his, and it’s really interesting that it only “costs” one referral.

But the combination of this offer and the technical implementation? Chef’s kiss.

He set up some code on the backend that says:

“If this person has referred at least one other reader, show this extra content in the newsletter.”

If they haven’t yet referred someone, they will see this block:

A constant reminder to refer just 1 friend and you can get this extra content.

First, 1 referral is like a no-brainer. It’s easy to think of one person who can benefit from this content.

Second, can we talk about how badass that extra sponsorship research is?

He’s literally giving you the email addresses and LinkedIn profiles of the people they are pretty sure you should connect with if you want to work with them.

Justin’s content teaches you how to work with brands. And he’s giving you the brand deals and their contact info on a silver platter.

How Effective Has This Been?

While I don’t have exact numbers, I’d guess around 5k subscribers all in from this.

You can see in that screenshot above that he calls out that one creator shared his work with their audience one time and got 230 referrals.

Now that might be a one-off win, but clearly, this strategy is resonating with his readers.

I know you’re probably thinking, “Well his audience are creators – people who have a certain level of influence they can more easily share his work with.”

And yes, your mileage may vary here, but there is still something to the strategy behind this.

Give people hyper-relevant extras, not just “more.”

5. Paying for Subscribers 🤑

Justin does not shy away from the fact that he’s used paid methods to grow his newsletter.

Paid Social Ads

Justin started testing Meta ads in 2023 and seemed to have gone pretty heavy into them in early 2023, when his newsletter really took off. (Remember that big spike from the growth timeline?)

But he’s never tried to hide this – in fact he shared some of the ad variations he was testing out on Twitter.

He’s not currently running ads on Meta from what I can tell.

Paid Sponsorships

While he’s a huge advocate for creators using sponsorships, he’s also playing the other side of things and paying to sponsor some newsletters himself.

He’s mentioned this a few times, and here says that

Since Dylan’s newsletter is for people building a newsletter, it makes sense to run an ad like that since 90% of those people want better brand partnerships.

I also found this one from The Steal Club, but not sure if it’s paid or just a regular swap between two creators:

If you have a way to monetize the newsletter, it can make sense to sponsor other newsletters – especially if their audience is the exact people you’re looking to get in front of.

Paid Recommendations

Justin was using Sparkloop recommendations for a while, where he would pay other people could send him email subscribers.

These helped offset the costs of his paid social ads, because if someone signs up through an ad, he’s earning money from them via the recommendations widget.

It doesn’t seem like he’s still running these campaigns, so I’m not sure if he’s just focused on all of the other things happening right now, or if they were no longer effective.

6. Relentlessly Plug the Newsletter

This one is so simple but I wanted to call it out because I see many creators doing this wrong.

Justin has content on all of the channels:

• YouTube
• Twitter/X
• LinkedIn
• Threads

He also does tons of podcasts, speaking, and workshops for brands.

But you know what he doesn’t do? He doesn’t promote a LinkTree type of link that has calls to action to tens of different places and products.

He doesn’t tell people to go buy his course.
He doesn’t tell people to sign up for coaching.

You know what he does instead? He promotes his newsletter.

Everywhere he goes, and in every interview he does, when people ask him how listeners can get in touch with him: he plugs the newsletter.

Instead of just trying to get people to go all over the place, he keeps it central and tells them to sign up for the newsletter.

And even remember those DMs he would send to each new follower on social media? He was sending them to his newsletter.

Is everyone a newsletter reader? No. But once they sign up to get brand deals, he can also promote his other content. So that person can jump off and go to his YouTube channel, or learn more about his paid products.

If he ended his videos or podcasts saying “Go check out my YouTube channel, and find me on Twitter, and oh, sign up for the newsletter” he’d probably get 1/10th of the email subscribers he does from a more focused callout.

If people are native to Twitter, they’re going to find you there. But what they won’t do is go find your newsletter (because they won’t know you have one).

Keep it simple – promote your newsletter.

How You Can Replicate His Success

How can you replicate Justin’s success?

Get a time machine and go back 15 years.

Okay, but in all seriousness, I think there are some interesting learnings we can take away from this story. Here are some of my favorites.

The Promise of Future Content

Instead of trying to build the best lead magnet, try and create the best “promise of future content.”

Something people will stay subscribed to keep getting each week.

For Justin, it’s new paid sponsorship opportunities. For a travel writer, it could be timely travel deals.

Find a type of content people will keep coming back to over and over because it’s providing value every week.

You can still use lead magnets, but having that sticky type of content people will come back for is so critical to keeping people on the newsletter.

Don’t Focus on Numbers Alone

Justin is one of the people that I know makes way more than many other creators. If you were looking at the number of views or likes that his social posts get, you would be highly mistaken.

Go scroll his Twitter feed and check out the engagement numbers. Not everything gets a ton of likes. In fact, most of his tweets have less than 50:

It doesn’t matter. The people following Justin are of higher caliber than the average account.

He’s also been at 35k subscribers for seemingly forever because he is constantly going through and deleting people.

Justin’s email list would have been at least 100,000 subscribers by now if he didn’t clean his list so diligently.

I have to wonder if he just wants to stay at 35k subscribers forever and fly under the radar.

Whatever the reason, don’t look at numbers alone. They never tell the full picture.

You can get paid sponsorship deals each week through Justin’s free newsletter, Creator Wizard.

And if you’re interested, I recorded a podcast with Justin a few months ago that you can check out here: