Andre Plessis, CEO Savings4Merchants

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Why Should You Write a Newsletter
by Andre Plessis

If you have an online business or a web presence then you should have a newsletter (weekly, biweekly or monthly). There are two major advantages to having a newsletter.  First you stay in touch with your clients, prospects, individuals and businesses who contacted you in the past and you constantly remind them of your products and/or services.  Second your newsletter should help you build your credibility with all those individuals and businesses. 

          Your newsletter will allow you to contact your prospects as often as you want. It will establish you as an expert in whatever field you publish.  Your main goal should be to build a binding relationship between you and your prospects, as well as you and your customers.  You will be able to turn prospects into customers, and customers into advocates.  

          Your newsletter should be very valuable and offer tips and advices.  The best way to build a subscription base is to build a readership base.  If your newsletter does not offer good information, they won’t read your newsletter, they will unsubscribe and there will be no future chance for you to do business with them. 

          Everyday I have about 20 to 30 online inquiries.  I capture all emails of those prospects to stay in touch with them.  It’s not because someone inquires about your products and services that they will buy right away from you.  Probably 90% don’t and for the most part, people are not ready to make a decision.  So it is extremely important for you to stay in touch with those prospects, until they are ready to make their decision.  Your newsletter will help you build that credibility that will help prospects make their decision to hopefully buy from you. 

          Each time I send my newsletter I always have businesses that ask me for new count on lists or inquire about new services I have just added.  My newsletter allows me to reconnect with all my customers and prospects that may be too busy to inquire.  By contacting them with my newsletter, I just remind them of my presence as a marketer. 

          The second way to make money with your newsletter is when you have many subscribers you may want to have ads placed on your newsletter.  Your goal should be to build a solid readership, and once you have enough readers you can charge for advertisements.

          Think about this.  On advertising alone, how much is one subscriber worth to you?

          Here's what I mean by, “for every 1,000 subscribers you have, you can charge about $25 for an ad in your newsletter.” If you have 1,000 subscribers and charge $25 for each ad, and you sell five ads, you make $125 per issue.  If you send the newsletter out weekly, that is $600 a month of advertising revenue. Therefore, each subscriber is worth $0.60 per month to you $7.20 per year on advertising alone.

          So, if you figure this out and come to the same conclusion why not arrange a deal with a website owner or newsletter publisher wherein you pay him $0.60 for each subscriber he adds to your list. You may use some sort of email co registration. See sample http://www.listopt.com

          If you can acquire 1,000 new subscribers per month that is 12,000 new subscribers per year.  Thus you can charge $300 (12 X $25 per ad x 5 ads = $1500 per issue. NOT BAD for advertising revenue!!!

          Start your an online publication and concentrate on getting some valuable information that will build reader loyalty.  Once this is accomplished, your subscriber base will grow.  Then, you can start to market the ads in your publication.  Once you have a decent subscriber base, other businesses will approach you to place their ad. 

          You'll also want to list your newsletter in a few web directories and indexes. Follow the specific submission guidelines for each directory:

Here are some places where you can find many newsletters related to your field:

           Many newsletter owners are too lazy to write any of their own articles, so they publish other people's articles in their newsletter.  Other newsletter owners publish their own content but also like to feature articles from other great authors. 

          First, only endorse a product worthy of endorsement.  Second, if you're only endorsing each other's newsletters, operate on a per-sale commission basis.

Publisher A agrees to publish the article of Publisher B, and Publisher B does the same for Publisher A. If you have a good newsletter, you might form an alliance with another newsletter owner wherein he supplies you with a guest article to publish in addition to your own articles, and you do the same for him. The growth comes in when you write a compelling article and include a strong signature at the end of the article.  

          Other newsletter owners already accomplish this, and in fact, there are forums where newsletter publishers meet to find related publishers to arrange deals with. Here are some of those forums: 

           Once you have enough subscribers, advertisers may come to you. If you're looking for advertisers, mention how many subscribers you have, in every issue you send out.

At the end of each newsletter, you should have a list of links to various resources you offer. One of list entries could say something like:

Advertise with us. See: http://www.mysite.com/advertise.html 

or mailto: advertise@mysite.com

          The most important thing to remember is that your readers want to buy products and services, but they may be hesitant to do so.

For any person to spend their hard earned money, they must possess a level of trust with the company that they are buying from.  On the worldwide web, this is a greater challenge because the buyer cannot walk into your place of business and know that you are here to stay.

          You need to support your online business newsletter, and being a publisher is in an exceptional position to build the trust necessary to get your prospects and readers reader to buy from you.

          Through the establishment of a relationship and the development of trust in you, you will finally begin to see the true potential of your list.  You need to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. Once you have established that level of recognition with your readers, the number of subscribers will keep on rising month after month as well as your income. To me the biggest reward in writing a great newsletter is the idea of helping many individuals and businesses. That is the surest way to the route to success! 

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