I thought an Adobe impersonator wanted to scam me…

A few months ago, I received an email from Adobe. Yeah, Adobe.

My first reaction?

“Oh nice, someone’s trying to scam me. How did that escape my spam filters and arrived in my inbox??”

Then I looked at the sender’s email address, *just in case*. Then I looked again. “Weird, it’s Adobe domain email…” Then I opened a new tab and started researching, just in case…

I was convinced someone was impersonating Adobe, yeah.

Eventually, after far too much double-checking, I realized the email was legitimate.

Adobe wanted to publish a sponsored guest post on my website about how creators can use Adobe Express as a marketing tool.

Not to mention that they offered me complimentary access to their services (~$120 value), which I’ve been using ever since (it’s an annual subscription).

What surprised me most wasn’t even the offer itself, but the fact that Adobe had found me at all.

I’m not an influencer, you know.

I don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers.

I also don’t have a business degree or any *formal* marketing education (I *do* have first-hand, trial-and-error, DIY experience tho...).

Before becoming a full-time content creator, I worked as a French-English translator and freelance writer.

My actual background is all about communications and art/music.

My blog traffic isn’t enormous either.

Depending on the season, I typically receive somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 monthly sessions. Pinterest sends me a lot of traffic during certain parts of the year, but outside of those peaks, most of my visitors come from search engines.

So why would a company like Adobe reach out to a relatively small creator?

The answer surprised me: It wasn’t because of my audience size, although it *was* because of my audience.

My readers are creators, freelancers, artists, bloggers, and people trying to build something online.

Basically, people who are exactly like me years ago: just someone trying to build an online income stream using just their laptop and skills they already have.

That’s exactly the kind of audience Adobe wants to reach in their campaign.

Sometimes we assume opportunities only happen to creators who are much bigger than we are. But often, companies aren’t looking for the biggest audience.

They’re looking for the right audience.

And that’s a lesson I wish I’d learned much earlier.

If you’d like to read the guest article Adobe contributed to my website, you can find it here:

👉 How Entrepreneurs Can Use Adobe Express to Build Smarter Marketing, Faster​

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The Weird (in a Good Way) Things That Happen When You Create Helpful Content

When I started blogging, I wasn’t trying to attract sponsors. Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about sponsors. At fcking all. LOL

With my first blog back in 2016, I just wanted the most cost-effective alternative to Facebook and Google Ads for my print-on-demand store.

I was selling, but the ads were so expensive that they left me with almost no ROI, so I decided to create blogs to attract organic visitors to my shop.

Eventually, blogging became a part-time, then full-time, business in itself.

In my current blog, BeProductiveEveryDay, when I started getting sponsorship deals, I was simply writing about things I’d spent years figuring out myself:

• How to make money online
• How freelancing works
• How to find clients
• How to network
• How to stay productive working from home when you have ADHD
• How to balance creative hobbies with work
• How to navigate the many side hustles I’ve experimented with over the last decade

In fact, I wasn’t creating content because I had special credentials, but because I had experience.

Over time, those articles began to rank in search results. And then they started appearing in AI-powered search tools.

So more people found my content and shared it, which led to more companies discovering my website.

And eventually, as I mentioned in the last email, one of those companies was Adobe.

What’s interesting is that I never actively pursued that opportunity.

I didn’t spend hours pitching brands, building complicated outreach systems, or attending networking events.

I focused on creating educational content that answered real questions people were already searching for.

The internet has changed a lot, but one thing hasn’t changed: useful content continues to attract attention.

The attention might come from readers, search engines, or AI tools. But sometimes it comes from companies you never expected to hear from.

If you’re building a blog, newsletter, or content business, don’t underestimate the value of simply being helpful.

You don’t need to know everything, have fancy credentials, or be famous on TikTok.

You just need to know something that can help someone else.

The rest has a way of compounding over time.

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Why Brands Keep Contacting Small Creators for Deals & Sponsorship

I need to get this thing off my chest today: yes, small creators often underestimate their value.

One of the biggest myths in content creation is that you need a huge audience before opportunities start showing up.

I know this because I believed it myself.

For years, I assumed sponsorships were reserved for creators with massive followings, huge email lists, or viral social media accounts. But my experience has been very different.

My blog’s traffic fluctuates significantly throughout the year

Some months are excellent, while other months are much quieter.

Overall, I usually see somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 monthly sessions, depending on the season.

Yet I still receive sponsorship inquiries regularly.

In fact, one of those inquiries eventually came from Adobe, as I stated previously.

That experience taught me something important: companies care about relevance more than most creators realize.

Think about it this way: would you rather advertise to 500,000 random people? Or to 5,000 people who are actively interested in exactly what you’re selling?

Many businesses would choose the second option. That’s why niche creators often have more value than they think.

My audience consists largely of people interested in:

• Content creation
• Building income streams online
• Blogging
• Freelancing
• Online side hustles
• Productivity
• Creative work

Those topics align closely with many of the companies that reach out to me.

The lesson here isn’t “go find sponsors,” but to focus on serving a specific audience exceptionally well. When people trust your content and consistently find value in it, opportunities have a way of finding you.

Sometimes those opportunities even come from companies you never expected.

Since 2025, I’ve been amazed by the types of sponsorship offers I’ve been receiving, ranging from small tech companies to a ​certain art gallery in Paris​ interested in connecting with the segment of my audience that wants to sell art online.

Now, in 2026, with AI-powered search, my current strategy of building niche authority through content clustering has attracted a whole new wave of advertisers interested in getting AI-powered citations through my small blog.

Like these AI citations I’ve had recently:

How much do these sponsorships earn me?

Well, it depends on the agreement, whether I write the post (as in ​this sponsored content here​), whether the company will offer me a guest post to review and publish, or whether it’s an inclusion in an existing post.

I also offer custom partnerships, such as temporary ad placements.

But on average, the earnings ​​range from $100-$600 per sponsorship.

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For the next few months, I’m planning on developing a complete guide on how to create niche authority content that attracts the right advertisers, even if you’re a small creator.

Let me know if you're interested!

Andréane @ BeProductiveEveryDay

P.S. This newsletter was sent only to my subscribers as a 3-part sequence in June 2026. To get access to everything I only share with my subscribers, don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter today!