Start Your Own Email Newsletter Service

Email gets into all our lives, and while we may sometimes wish we didn’t have it – as the deluge of junk mail gets ever larger – it is still one of the best ways to get information that we want sent directly to us.
And this is where you come in. There are plenty of possibilities for running an email newsletter service which is either free or fee paying, and you can make a decent profit from either option.
The key to success is to pick a topic that will attract the attention of a lot of people. If you can do that you could be sitting on a goldmine…
Let’s start at the beginning here. A free newsletter? How can you make money with that?
The answer is to provide something that is worthwhile and has plenty of unique content in it. You need to be reliable as well. A weekly or monthly newsletter is the best option, although weekly will certainly keep you in the mind of the subscriber more easily than a monthly one. A month can be a very long time online.
If you already have a website then you could create a newsletter to tie in with that. If you don’t, and you have thought of a good and popular topic to create a newsletter on, then it’s a good idea to create a simple website around it as well, as this can help you net more subscribers. You may even have a product – let’s say an e-book for example – that has its own sales page. If you create a newsletter based on that same subject you can promote it as a bonus to everyone who orders the book. Alternatively it could be a freebie to entice them to order at a later date.
What you don’t want to do is populate every newsletter with lots of affiliate links. It’s okay to include them but you don’t want to overdo it. You need to provide a newsletter that has plenty in it that can’t be found elsewhere. If you don’t do this you’ll get a high drop out rate.
But what about charging for a newsletter?
You can only do this if you provide something truly unique. Some newsletters that charge a fee to receive them are based in the financial and money market arena for example, and you are getting specific financial information on stocks and shares that you can use to help make you some money.
The bottom line is that you need to be able to save or make your subscribers some money in return for asking them for a subscription fee. It is well worth taking the time to think about whether or not you can do this, as well as researching other similar newsletters online before you design your own.
The best shot you have of charging money for your newsletter is if you can create something unique that fills a gap in the market and answers a specific need. You also need to have a real enthusiasm for your subject – otherwise the weekly work of writing the newsletter will soon wear thin.
One final tip – plan a few issues out in advance, long before you send out the first newsletter to your first handful of subscribers. This will give you the time to start promoting the newsletter right from the beginning, as well as doing away with the possibility of panicking when you can’t think of anything to put in the next issue!