3 Tips To Profit From Newsletters Without Writing Them Yourself

I'm sure you have heard many online marketers touting the
benefits of having a newsletter. I have used newsletters in the
past for many sites. I've used them as a source of revenue by
having advertisements embedded within the newsletter content.
They are also effective as a means to keep a site sticky - to
"anchor" clients and bring them back to the site. Newsletters
can also be a great selling tool to provide free information,
samples of your expertise or services, and as a taste of your
full product/service. The lure of free content from newsletters
can help you to turn casual surfers to potential customers and
then finally paying customers. 

I find the biggest problem for me personally is to consistently
provide new content (which is strange since I have no problems
writing a daily blog, go figure!). Consequently I have looked
for methods to get around this problem.

Many of the sites I control I enjoy for the business management
side of things and don't actually provide the core services
myself. For example at BetterEdit.com I don't do any of the
editing. I have professionals on staff that handle that aspect
of the business. Consequently I have found it difficult to write
newsletters that appeal to my target audience. Other times I've
just grown bored of the subject matter and it becomes a chore to
write a newsletter. If you don't have enthusiasm your output is
not going to be very good.

Over the years I've developed ways to make money from
newsletters without writing them myself.

1. Hire Writers

The first and most obvious way is to hire people to do it for
you. I did it this way for a community site I built with over
1000 members. In this case it was quite easy to find people that
had experience and enthusiasm for the subject matter; I posted a
news announcement looking for newsletter writers. I hired two
people and paid cash on a per newsletter basis though at one
point my writers were happy to write for free, they just enjoyed
contributing to the community (though I made sure to pay them
whenever there was advertiser revenue). To make a profit I just
made sure I had more revenue from advertisers than I had to pay
my writers. A simple equation but one that takes time to balance
since you need an audience, advertisers and writers. If you have
a popular site (the audience) the other two variables should
come easily. Alternatively you could try searching for a
freelancer to write for you. 

2. Other People’s Content

Another method that I've utilised is to put together a summary
style newsletter that simply links to content online. You take
the time to find the quality articles and links for your members
but you don't have to actually do any writing yourself. IncWire
is a good example of a newsletter like this. It provides links
to great entrepreneurship articles that have been drawn from all
over the net. The newsletter is free and sponsored by
advertisers. Of course you can also make use of article
repositories such as EzineArticles.com and simply use other
people's articles in your newsletter. This is a reliable and
easy option since there is no shortage of great articles
available for free publication everyday. 

3. E-Course

You can also try an e-course style newsletter. This is a bit
different to a traditional newsletter. Your visitors sign up and
then over a period of time intervals they get sent the course
via email. You can use plain text emails (this is the best
method in my opinion - keep it simple stupid - kiss!), or HTML
email or Adobe PDFs. You can send them out once a day for the
next seven days or once a month for a year. It's up to you but
generally the sooner the better because you want to continually
build up interest over a short period of time. Will Swayne at
Marketing-Results.com.au recommends a consecutive seven day
e-course. 

While initially you do have to write the content yourself once
it's written your done. You don't have to constantly provide new
content and your course can be sent out to unlimited
subscribers. The benefit of an e-course is that you can really
focus on what your speciality is. Your course acts as a
showpiece for your core competency, your skills, and allows
people to try before they buy. You can monetise the course by
inserting affiliate links, advertisements or selling your own
services/products (or all three!). 

Newsletter Software

You might be thinking this is all well and good, but how do I
manage my newsletter. How do I handle an e-course being sent out
every day for seven days to hundreds of different people without
being blocked by SPAM blockers. What technology is available and
what do I recommend.

Personally I use Marketer's Choice to handle all email
communications but if you just want a newsletter service it's
definitely way too expensive - it's more of an all-in-one
marketing tool. 

I've tried a few different newsletter software packages. Some
you install on to your own server and then manage online, others
that are externally hosted subscriber based services and one
that functioned a lot like an email client that sits on your
desktop and sends out emails through your mail server. All of
these have pros and cons. Of course it depends on your budget,
but as I have stated you often get what you pay for so be wary
of the free packages out there. 

I recommend you try my favourite script source, The PHP Resource
Index (http://php.resourceindex.com), in particular the Mailing
List category should be your first port of call. You can try
good old Google search as well. 

Anti-SPAM

Before you commit to any newsletter software make sure you check
how they deal with SPAM. Do they have an official policy and
description of how your newsletters will be received? Are they
just mass broadcast? Your newsletter software should provide
double-opt in protection which means your subscribers have to
opt-in and confirm their subscription via email before they
receive anything. This helps to keep you from being accused of
spamming. 

One of the main reasons I chose Marketer's Choice was because
they have a very good system to make sure your mail is delivered
to your subscribers. They have an in-built SPAM checker which
reviews email you send out and tells you the likelihood your
mail will be blocked by anti-SPAM software. It has the
capability to personalise every email that is sent out so it
appears with "Dear clientname" rather than just a generic
"hello". This is an important feature both as a sales tool
(people tend to read emails that start with their name) and it's
more likely that your mail won't be classed as SPAM by anti-SPAM
software, which flag non-personalised email as potential SPAM.
It's the extra benefits that professional services provide that
make them worth the cost, but you do have to go out there and
test to find what suits your needs.

Newsletters Are Ace!

Really I can't think of many reasons not to have some form of
newsletter or e-course on your site. Yes it does take time to
set things up but it's worth the effort. I suggest you write it
in your to-do list now if you don't have a newsletter already!