How to Give Profit-Producing CPR to Your Dying Electronic Newsletter
By Monique Harr
Posted Sunday, January 16, 2005
If you're like most Netpreneurs you probably created and use your free e-zine for one or two purposes.
#1 -- As a promotional tool for your product or service.
#2 -- To make money selling advertisements.
The problem is, there are well over 100,000+ e-zines in existence. And as time marches on, it'll inevitably become harder and harder to stand out from the ever growing crowd. *Especially* if you run a business or marketing-related publication.
So naturally you begin to lose readers to the competition. Losing readers means fewer product sales, if you use your e-zine for promotional purposes.
Greater competition also means potential advertisers have a bigger pool of e-zines to advertise in. That's not good if you're lumped into a category with hundreds of similar publications.
Eventually the free e-zine will die out as a reliable, profit producing tool for many Netpreneurs. Perhaps you're already seeing the writing on the wall. Me... I'm already a witness. And that's why I've begun to set my sails in a different direction.
"Instead of relying on an e-zine to market my other products, or using it to sell ad space, I've transformed it into an ULTIMATE profit tool."
No longer do I freely give away my valuable intellectual property. I now sell subscriptions to my electronic news- letter.
And after 6 months of doing it, I'm actually making more money with the fee-based version than I EVER did with the free e-zine.
Even more remarkably, the fee-based version is based on the same exact content I did for a free e-zine in 1999. (I say this to demonstrate that it is possible to transform a free e-zine into a successful, cash-paying subscription model.)
Would you like to learn how I got 800+ subscribers to pay $19.95 a month for my electronic newsletter? Here are a few easy-to-implement techniques you can follow...
* Choose a Perennial Money Making Niche.
There are certain topics people are ALWAYS willing to pay for. Technology is one of them. It's one of the only things in the world that is constantly changing, plus it has become an integral part of everyday life.
Think about the growing wireless device revolution - (like Palm Pilots, cellular telephones, etc). You can develop a newsletter to help software developers keep up with the latest technologies.
And a publication like this can easily sell for $395 a year. All you need is a mere 500 subscribers, and you're making almost $200,000 a year.
* Be Sure Your Topic Has Strong Influential Power.
You want to create a newsletter that either offers a cure/ shows the readers how to gain a serious pleasure, or avoid a serious loss. If the information does both, that's even better.
So whatever topic you contemplate, ask yourself...
- Am I offering the reader a cure? - Am I giving the reader a serious pleasure? - Am I helping the reader avoid a serious loss?
* Include Access to All Your Back Issues, As Part of Your Subscription Package.
If you want to elevate the value of your publication, without having to do any additional work, I can't think of a better way to do it. Remember, people LOVE bulk.
So the more information they have access to when they first subscribe, the better impression you'll leave in their minds.
* Have E-zine Editors Give Away Trial Subscriptions, to Their New Subscribers.
A popular marketing technique used by e-zine editors, is to provide new subscribers with a free e-book. I've heard some editors say their subscriptions have gone up by as much as 30%-40%, when they enticed potential readers with a valuable freebie.
This same strategy can be applied to your fee-based, electronic newsletter.
All you have to do is compile resources or articles from your publication, into a free e-book. Then you simply allow editors to give away the e-book to their subscribers.
(And if it all sounds easy, that's because it is!)
About the Author
Monique Harris is the author of "The Paperless Newsletter Publishers Guide." Get more information about it at
