How To Make an Extra $100,000 a Year By Publishing Your Own Newsletter

June 23rd, 2003 Posted in Advertising, Approaching, Business Monitoring and Reporting, Case Studies, Creating Sales Opportunities, General, Offline Marketing

How To Make an Extra $100,000 a Year By Publishing Your Own Newsletter

Do you remember this fairy tale?

There once was an old lady who lived in a shoe. She was so poor she couldn’t afford to eat more than one meal a day, or buy a new dress for herself. She couldn’t afford to go to the movies, go on vacation or invite friends for dinner. Her only joy in life was saving up enough money each month to attend her local bingo game.

One day, during her regular monthly bingo excursion she got thinking.  “Gee, I wish I could go to another bingo game next month. This one bores me stiff and I get the numbers all mixed up. And the prizes are lousy.  There must be a better game around!”

Anyway to cut a long fairytale short, our little poor lady who lived in a shoe travelled all over the country looking for better bingo games. As she travelled and spoke to other “little old ladies and men”.  She discovered that they too were interested in finding out where the good bingo games were and because so many people were asking her about the bingo games she decided to write a monthly newsletter called …

“Where to find the best bingo games in Shoesville.”

In the next three months our dear old lady sold $500,000 worth of subscriptions, and moved out of her shoe into a luxurious Malibu Beach House. …..and this my friend …

Is an absolutely true story.

Cross my heart. An elderly lady did make $500,000 selling a newsletter about the best Bingo games. Pretty amazing story, don’t you think? What could we learn from this? Firstly, that every fairy-tale has a happy ending. Secondly, that you can make an awful lot of money if you’re selling information to the right market. In other words ………

Find out what the people want and give it to them.

Hey, is this something one of my subscribers could cash in on?? Hmm, I wonder.

You see, not being over 60 and not playing bingo myself means that I never considered that market. But with more and more older people in our population, targeting that market with a newsletter such as that one seems a pretty logical thing to do. Especially given the average Australian’s passion for gambling!!

Sounds too simple? Well don’t laugh. It’s true. You see the secret to amazing success in direct mail, or any business for that matter, is simply …

giving (or selling) the right kind of information to people that want it.

What is “the right” kind of information? It’s simply what your target market wants to hear. Look, I’ve been subscribing to various newsletters and buying books and having success in direct mail for years. I kept reading about all the incredible amounts of money people were making and selling examples of successful ads, letters and businesses. Even though I went broke in my first business, some of this information must have rubbed off somewhere along the line.

As I started to help other people become more successful, I learnt that information is very valuable …  and this is what I write about in my newsletters.

So what is the most important ingredient in a successful newsletter? The most important thing in a newsletter is the topic. You should write about the lifestyle you can achieve with the topic you write about. A good newsletter will always have facts that people desperately want to know about. I write about direct mail ads, letters or promotions that someone used to make lots of money with.

The number of topics for a newsletter is almost limitless. Here are a few examples of who could benefit by publishing a newsletter and what you could write about.

•        If you are a clothing retailer, you could tell your customers about dressing well and selecting and caring for clothes.

•        If you are a lawyer, you could write about how to settle a dispute without going to court, and how to legally protect yourself in business.

•        If you are a doctor, you could write about how your patients could improve their health and well being.

•        If you are about to retire, what do you want to know? (Other people who are about to retire will also want to know this.)

•        If you are a fisherman, you could write about where the best places to catch fish are.  Where people caught fish last month and what bait they used.

•        If you are a parent, what do you desperately want to know about raising your kids?  Other parents will also want to hear about it.

•        If you have a hobby, any hobby, what do you want to know? Tell others about the same topics.

•        If you own a four-wheel drive what do you want to know?? How about all about the beautiful off-road adventures and places to go to??

The key to it all is …

giving people what they want to buy.

I’ve just read an article that says that 40% of Australians now use alternative medical services such as Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Acupuncturists, Herbalists and so on. This tells me people are sick (literally) of going to doctors who push pills and surgery which at best do little good and, at worst, actually makes you feel far worse than the disease itself.  (I know all about this, not having taken any pills for eight years and feeling much better for it.)

So what sort of newsletter topic would these people be interested in?  How about …

“How to stay healthy and get rid of your _______ (Arthritis, headaches, Cancer, Diabetes, heart problems, Asthma, etc., etc.) without drugs or surgery.”

or

Amazing facts your doctor won’t tell you about your Asthma (or whatever).

or

Home remedies your doctor won’t tell you about.

Let’s face it. Anyone with a specific problem or interest, be it health, business, parenting or whatever else, will usually be prepared to pay for the right kind of information regarding their topic of interest. For example if you own and use a video camera you may be interested in …

“Are you earning $1,200 a week with your Video Camera?”

If not, you should be reading the “Video Marketing” newsletter.

Call (07) 5525 3455 for free info.

or if you own a computer …

“Are you earning $1,200 a week with your Computer?”

If not, you should be reading the “Making money with a PC” newsletter.

Call for free info on …

or if you are a car enthusiast …

“Are you a hot – rodder?” Want to win shows and races?

If yes, you should be reading the “Hot Rodder” newsletter.

Call for free info …

or if you have cancer

“How I cured myself of Cancer without drugs or surgery”.

For free information call …

or if you have migraine headaches

“How I got rid of my migraine in less than three minutes without pills”.

Amazing medical breakthrough reveals a sure-fire technique anyone can use to get rid or migraines and tension headaches. Call … for free info.

Are you seeing a pattern here? The key, as I said, is to have the right topic for the right market. One way to make sure you’ll be successful is to test the market before committing to any project or newsletter.

Let me repeat that …

Test the market first.

Test the market first.

Test the market first.

The way you do that is to run some classified ads to see if anyone is interested in what you are selling – your topic. The next thing is to prepare a sales letter and try to convince them of the value of your product and sell it to them

…and then you write the newsletter.

It never ceases to amaze me how much money many people will spend to set up a business, write a book, develop a product, take out patents, copyrights and trademarks – without having any idea if anyone is actually interested in what they are selling. Doing it that way is a recipe for disaster.

Don’t do it.

Don’t do it.

Don’t do it.

Find a market and test if they are interested in what you want to sell them … before you invest in the product. Believe me, you’ll save yourself a lot of money that way. But now I guess you are thinking. “Sure, Peter, but I am not a hot shot marketer, I don’t know how to write a great selling ad and letter and I certainly can’t afford to pay your fees, yet. What do I do?”

Well don’t worry. You don’t have to know how to he a hot-shot marketer or copywriter. All you need is a good example for you to follow. And being the great guy I am, I just happen to have such an example.

Here’s how a newsletter called “The Video Marketing Letter” is being sold. You can use this as your template for virtually any newsletter topic you want to write about.

Here’s the style of ad you should run.

This ad runs in video magazines. All callers who order the subscription are sent a four page letter.

There you have it. The complete template for success. In fact, it’s so good I just subscribed to this newsletter myself.

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