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What should I write about in my e-newsletter?
This is important: as stated in my previous post, start by writing about what you know. Michael Masterson wrote his e-letter talking about his business experience. Fitness and combat expert Matt Furey wrote an e-letter talking about fitness and combat. They were both experts in their chosen subjects.
If you talk about what you know, you won’t go far wrong. The next question you are probably asking yourself is, will anybody be interested. The answer is – YES! There WILL ALWAYS be people out there who are interested in the same things you are. No matter how obscure your niche, there’ll be more people than you realise who are interested in hearing what you have to say.
And it won’t just be people who share your interest that will be interested. This may sound silly but… people are interested in what’s interesting. And the best (and easiest) way to make sure something is interesting is to know your subject. If I tried to write an e-letter about parrots, it wouldn’t be interesting – it would be dull (and most probably nonsense!) and not many people would read it. But if you really KNOW about parrots, what you write will be much more interesting. Your knowledge and passion will come across in your writing. It’s as simple as that and will engage your potential customers and aid your venture to make money online.
So, to summarise; When writing your e-letter, write about what you know (whatever it is). With that sorted, you now need to start getting people to read your e-letter…
So how do you build a potential list of customers?
“It’s easy to build a customer base but the trick is in growing it.” Building a list of potential customers is actually quite simple when starting your own information publishing business. When your list of potential customers has reached a decent size, it does become harder to grow that list, but by that time you should be making plenty of profit to be able to spend a little more time on it.
At the moment we’re only concerned with getting your list going… building your customer list up from scratch.
A quick story… A few years back, information publishing expert, Michael Masterson started emailing his colleagues. He’d write about how his present business was running and what he thought he could do to improve it. People enjoyed reading the email and hearing Michael’s thoughts. Colleagues started listening to his suggestions and began to follow his advice. After a while it became clear that these emails were useful beyond his own business and that other businesses and budding entrepreneurs would be interested in receiving his advice. Michael turned his email into what we now call an e-letter… and bang! Michael’s e-letter is now one of the biggest e-letters in the United States. It has some of the best entrepreneurs in the world contributing to it, has an enormous readership and is highly thought of in the information publishing business. And just think about the money it generates. And all that from an email Michael sent to his colleagues!
So, the simplest way to build a customer base is with an e-letter. I will discuss how to start an e-letter in another article, but your first thought is probably…
What am I supposed to talk about in an e-letter? This is important: talk about what you know and you can’t go far wrong.
How to do half the work for twice the money
You may be asking yourself: how can I make money using the internet? Well, the aim of this article is to try to get you to realise the earning potential of the information publishing business.
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the average annual wage in the UK is £30,000 a year. After tax you’re looking at a net income of £1897 per month, but let’s be generous and round it up to £2,000 a month.
Now imagine you’ve started your own information publishing business, and you’ve produced your first report and have a list of subscribers – I will talk about this in a later article.
You’ve only got 200 subscribers and you’re going to sell your report for £20. The report took you a few days to write, and the promotion a few more days. Altogether the report took you about a week to put together.
Now, let’s say half those subscribers buy your report at £20. That’s £20 multiplied by 100 – that’s £2,000 for ONE WEEKS’ work.
Let’s say you do that twice a month. From your information publishing business alone you’re now earning £4,000 a month – for 2 WEEKS’ work.
You’ve just doubled your salary. You’re now earning £4,000 a month.
Do you still need to do your regular job? You could cut your work in half, yet double your income. Instead of working for the whole month, you work the equivalent of 2 weeks, yet instead of earning just £2,000, you earn £4,000.
Right now you may be thinking that this sounds great and want to know how to get customers, how to produce the guides and promotions to start making this money…
Or you may still be sceptical in someway. That’s fine, healthy scepticism is good. But if you’re still not sure, over the next few articles I will try to allay your fears and you will begin to see how great this opportunity is.
OK. Hopefully you’re looking forward to learning more information on how to start your own information publishing business and halving your work but doubling your salary. Stay tuned…
You don’t need to wait for perfection
All too many really good information products never see the light of day because the author is striving for perfection and never achieving it . I am not suggesting that you should sell half finished products or those that are of poor quality, because by doing this you will just get requests for refunds. You may also get charge backs, and it could potentially ruin your reputation and lose you customers.
Information products are just that, information products. Most people won’t even notice the odd spelling mistake or grammatical error. I’m not saying that you should be lax. Try your best to make a great product and leave it at that – it can be great, but it will NEVER be perfect.
There is no such thing as total perfection, and if you are looking for it then you will probably never get your information products to the market. This will again lead to frustration and the urge to quit.
Mistakes to try and avoid in Information Publishing
Can you really become a millionaire by producing these products or are these claims marketing hype or gimmicks?
Whilst it is true that a few people have made millions in the information publishing business, I don’t think that everybody can become a millionaire.
You may have heard of companies such as Streetwise Publications and they are living proof that it is possible to make a lot of money in information publishing. However, the majority of people have made nothing and these may have spent a lot of money attending seminars, buying eBooks, manuals and DVDs but at the end of it all they have nothing to show for it.
When you first start out in information publishing, it is very easy to end up subscribing to several newsletters and e-zines in the quest for information. If you are starting your business and are in this position, it becomes a distraction when you are faced with too many offers. You become susceptible to information overload, but you never take action.
When I first started in this business I bought a couple of books in the hope that I would make money, and read various free newsletters so my initial investment was actually quite low. The problem is that there is always something else to learn and you think that you need to know everything before you start. This leads to frustration – you are spending all this time learning, not earning! You may not realise that you need to act upon the information! Stop worrying about how to make money! Create a product and see if it sells – you can tweak it later but you MUST take action.
I nearly gave up, but realised that to do so would be a lost opportunity. I started to think and do things differently. I realised that this business was simple. It wouldn’t even cost much to set up.
When you start, do not spend your valuable cash attending seminars or buying lots of manuals or books. All you have to do is to follow a simple plan and avoid the following mistakes the information publishing millionaires avoid at all costs.
- Do not try to sell your products to everybody. Would you offer a lawn mower to somebody who lives in a tower block? When you want to buy a car, would you search for it in a gardening magazine? This is the number one mistake most inexperienced information publishers will make. They invest their money first in the products before they try to find their niche market. The idea here is to offer your products to only those who want it.
- Most publishers don’t put enough effort into preparing their sales copy or squeeze pages. You can have the best product in the world but without the right marketing or sales message, you WILL NOT make money.
- I find it amazing when I search the internet or read direct mail letters to find many marketers offering the same resell products with the same sales messages or letters. They have no unique selling proposition (USP). Look at it this way, would all the car dealers in your area offer the same price, discount and guarantees on their cars? If you are going to use PLR (private label rights) articles revamp them and make them uniquely yours – this small investment in your time can potentially reap huge rewards.
Now that you are aware of these mistakes, please try to avoid them. You may not become a millionaire, but at least you’ll be able to make a good deal of money and be financially secure.
Is information publishing the business for you?
Most people do not like working for someone else. You work hard and all you get is another day older and deeper in debt. Job security is at an all time low, and you could have no job at all tomorrow. People are looking at different ways to make money.
Many people think of starting a business as an alternative to working hard for an employer, but in all honesty, starting a conventional business in this current economic climate is a big risk to your investment.
So how can I make money?
Information publishing is a good business choice for many people because it offers a relatively easy way to make a significant amount of money by working smart, NOT hard.
The start-up costs are minimal. Write an e-book or guide and convert it into pdf format. Then you need to sell your product. For the beginner, writing sales copy can be daunting but you will get better with practice.
I would suggest that novices list products on Amazon and/or Ebay to start with as they have good user-friendly tools. You will also get a feel for whether there is a market for you product. If you find there isn’t, you have only lost your listing fees which are minimal.
If people are buying your product, you may want to think about hosting your own website. Once again, hosting costs and registering a domain name are not expensive.
So, to sum up, information publishing is a legitimate business with very little start-up costs and minimal risk. If you take it slow and steady, it can really work for you. It does take time but it will definitely be worth it in the end.
How do you create an eBook / information product?
Most people believe that it is difficult to create an information product. But it isn’t if you follow a few simple rules:
- Research: The first thing you need to do is to find as much information as possible on your chosen subject. There are a myriad of resources, such as books, websites, articles, videos and other information products. If possible try to pick a subject you are passionate about as this will come across in your writing. Don’t just think “how can I make money from this?” Focus on your subject and it will be reflected in your product.
- Write : The next thing you want to do is get the information that is in your head onto paper as soon as possible. Don’t worry how good or bad it is – just get it onto paper in your own words. During this process try not to do anything to distract yourself; don’t look at your notes, don’t try to edit your work. Perfection is your enemy here – don’t worry about spelling, punctuation or layout at this time. If there is something that you don’t know then just make a note to look it up. You can do all this later when you are editing.
- Edit : Now that you have written you first draft, now is the time to go back and edit your work. You want to go through your product and start correcting spelling mistakes and grammar errors and looking up what you did not know. Take your time, this is very important.
- Layout: Now that you have edited and corrected your product, you can start thinking about laying out your information product in the way that you want, adding graphics and putting the page together the way that you want your customers to see it.
- Produce: Now you can produce your product. If you plan on creating a printed manual then you will need to print it. This could be done by yourself with a good quality laser printer to keep costs down but always use at least 100gsm paper. If you’re creating an e-book it would be best to convert it into a PDF format. If you are creating an Audio CD you will need to record the content and produce the CD etc.
Remember that researching, writing and editing are very different processes and if you try to do them all at once you will hinder your progress.