HOW TO MAKE MONEY PUBLISHING YOUR VERY OWN NEWSLETTER
People who sell information are still very unfamiliar with the profitable
marketing advantage newsletters can actually be to their business. In fact,
most of these people will avoid them completely simply because they don't
understand them; even though newsletters carry an air of prestige about
them.
Most of us are already familiar with what a newsletter is. Almost every
church, organization, club or group publishes their own newsletter for
their particular members. Then, there are corporate newsletters that are
distributed by the larger companies. In this case, newsletters are
normally given to employees to keep them in touch with management
activities and new policies and procedures.
There are also some national newsletters. These are normally targeted to
a specific group of people like business managers and corporate executives.
There is a BIG difference between newspapers and newsletters.
Newspapers normally contain the "whole" story, while newsletters only
present the "cream of the crop," or the "best of the best" in a condensed
format. In addition, newsletters are short, while newspapers are long. If
you receive a 4-page company newsletter, you can read every single word in
less than 20 minutes. But do you know anyone that reads every single word
of a newspaper? Don't most people just flip through the pages and only
read what is interesting to them?
Newsletters are intended for a specific target market. Look at some of
the examples we have cited previously. Club newsletters are published for
its members, just like church newsletters are published for their
congregation. You never find a Baptist Church taking out a 12-month
subscription for a Catholic newsletter. And you never see the Boy Scouts
subscribing to the Alcoholics Anonymous monthly newsletter. Newsletters
are intended for a specific target market.
When mail order and small business was a smaller industry, the total
amount of circulation (how many copies were printed and distributed) was
sufficient for generating orders and marketing. However, in the 1990's
mail order and small business has literally boomed! Large companies have
been forced into bankruptcy and laying off workers. These highly skilled
workers decided to open their own mail order and small businesses instead
of risking another unemployment crisis! People soon found it more
profitable and secure to work for themselves.
So, because the mail order and small business industry has grown so vast -
it is now necessary to narrow your market and advertise your products to a
specific target-market. Back in the old days mail order basically consisted
of marketing small gadgets, jewelry and recipe books. But now, mail order
is one of the leading industries in the world! You can purchase anything
from groceries to clothing to electronics to long-distance telephone
services through the mail - including anything in-between.
Now, because of these wide variety of different items being purchased no
business can survive unless they advertise to the target-market of their
specialized products. In other words _ you wouldn't be able to sell exotic
chocolates and desserts to diabetics or software to people who don't own a
computer. Regardless, if you are giving away your product free of charge -
these groups would not be interested in it. So your advertising would be a
waste of time.
Here's where newsletters come in. Since it is much more important in the
1990's to "target" your audience (rather than just simply market to a wide
circulation); you can effectively accomplish this goal by publishing a
newsletter.
Newsletters are different from other advertising vehicles because you
normally only mail them to a subscription list. Subscribers will pay you
a certain amount, per year, to receive your newsletter. This means, you
are paid UP FRONT but you must budget this money throughout the year, or
the length of the subscription. But don't let this scare you! Since some
publishers are used to dealing with a minimum circulation of 1,000 or
5,000 per issue _ most will feel like it's not worthwhile to publish a
newsletter to only 25, 50 or 100 people.
But, you must keep a very important fact in mind. While the amount of your
circulation will be decreased _ you will be mailing to people who will
READ and STUDY EVERY SINGLE ISSUE! That fact makes newsletter publishing
one of the big differences in your marketing efforts.
