Turn Your Old Articles Into Profitable E-mail Courses

By Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ
Posted Thursday, August 19, 2004

If you've written numerous articles, you can use them to further promote yourself and your business, e-zine or web site.

You can re-use your old articles by transforming them into another form of promotional tool.

And one way to re-use them is by turning them into e-mail courses. By doing so, you'll be able to offer a new product that will help you establish your credibility as a business owner, e-zine publisher or web site owner.

Even though you'll make use of old articles, you won't be offering a re-hash.

Why? Because once you transform your old articles and gather them together to form an e-mail course, you add a more focused learning dimension to them. For this, you're able to create a new and effective marketing tool.

So how do you do it? In a nutshell:

1. Gather all your articles and find a common theme among them. If you've written a number of articles aimed for beginning online business owners, these articles can make up one e-mail course. Your e-mail course can be a short one (2-4 articles) or a long one (5 or more).

2. When you've identified a common theme, arrange your articles in a way that provides some sort of logic or flow to them.

3. Assign one article as one e-mail module or follow up. If you're using 4 articles, your e-mail course would consist of 4 modules or follow ups.

4. Take a good look at each article. Does it look like you can weave the activities within 'lessons' or will it require you to separate the 'lessons' from the 'assignments' -- information first (your re-written article) and then hands-on activities or tests after?

5. Do your articles use the 'you' voice? If not, re-write as if you're telling your friend a story. Do your articles sound formal? Even though you're 'teaching' something, strive to keep it lighthearted. Be engaging and friendly, but never be too flippant or condescending.

6. Include additional resources at the end of each module or follow up. These resources could be online references and researches, and even more intensive lessons.

7. Proofread.

8. Insert your promotional texts in the beginning, middle or end of each module or follow up. However, don't overdo this. People who will request your e-mail course are going to see through you once they find out that your promotional texts far outweigh the lessons and valuable instructions in your e-mail course. Put value over the content of your e-mail course first and your workshop takers will trust you and believe in your expertise.

9. Put your e-mail course on autoresponder and set the time each module or follow up will be sent. You can use free or fee-based autoresponders.

Before you announce your e-mail course, test and re-test it thoroughly. When you're certain everything is fine, go ahead and announce it.

About the author:
Shery is the developer of creative, motivating and fun e-mail courses for writers. Sign up and take an e-mail course today -- free! -- at (http://WritingBliss.com). She also authored the e-book that lets you create your own original and profitable E-mail Workshops, eCourses and Tutorials in only 3 days! Visit (http://EmailWorkshopsHowTo.com) for more info.