But getting someone to sign up for a hefty monthly payment is not as easy as it used to be. And if you do, most members tend to cancel after 1-4 months.
So why do they cancel? Because in their minds, you are not delivering enough value for the money. They see that their finances are tight and look for ways to save money. “I’ll cancel that monthly membership because I wasn’t using it anyway.”
The only way to prevent this is to be indispensable to their business or lives. If, for example, your membership gives them the software or the content that enables them to run their business, they’re not going to cancel. If you provide them with something, they can immediately turn into profit, such as high-quality PLR. But these things tend to take more time and resources than the average marketer, at least initially.
So how can you start a continuity program that people readily join and don’t quickly cancel? By offering an inexpensive newsletter on a topic, they’re passionate about. If your newsletter is in the $5 to $12 a month range and if it’s providing value, they’re not likely to cancel. After all, what’re a few bucks to read something they enjoy? It’s less than a pizza, and it provides value. And it’s almost too much effort to bother to cancel – it’s easier to let it continue.
But you might be wondering how it can be worth selling a newsletter for a $ 9-a-month subscription. After all, 100 subscribers is only $900 – is it worth your time? And how long will it take to get those 100 subscribers?
Frankly, it generally doesn’t happen overnight. You may only get a handful of subscribers the first month and another handful the second. But if your subscribers are sticking around, your income is steadily building monthly.
Better still, your work stays the same whether you have one subscriber or 10,000 subscribers. This means you can continue adding subscribers to infinity, and your workload never increases, but your income does.
Plus, it doesn’t have to take a tremendous amount of effort. You can write about your topic in your spare time if you’re already knowledgeable. If you’re not, you can interview others and transcribe the interviews or get other experts to write articles for you. If you’re smart, you won’t spend most of your time creating content because you’ll spend it growing your subscriber base. This way, you’ll earn more every month than the month before, and that’s a great feeling.
You can also market additional related products and services to your newsletter subscribers, increasing your income. Remember, your newsletter is far more likely to be read than regular emails, articles, and blog posts because people are paying to receive it. This means you can build great rapport and power with your readers. And so long as you never steer them wrong, they are more likely to follow your suggestions.
Here are 16 tips to get your newsletter up and running and make it as successful as possible.
1. Choose a topic with a high perceived value for the market. Making or saving money is always good. So is any niche with fanatical followers, many health niches, hobbies, and even dating and relationships. If you can find something people are obsessed with, you have a winner. For example, bodybuilders are obsessed with finding better/faster ways to gain muscle, and they’ll subscribe to numerous magazines and websites to find the latest techniques.
2. Write a bullet-rich sales page with tons of teasers on what they’ll discover in the newsletter.
3. Write one monthly newsletter or break your newsletters up into weekly editions. To begin with, the monthly newsletter format is more accessible and feels less overwhelming to produce. Plus, it can look more impressive when subscribers see one big monthly newsletter instead of several small ones. However, if there’s a lot of news in your niche, you might want to go with two or smaller newsletters since you’ll be able to put the word out in a much more timely manner before it gets old.
4. The amount of content you put into each newsletter will depend on your preferences, the niche, and what your readers want. Remember that quality is much more important than quantity. For example, suppose you write a newsletter about making money from home. In that case, one exact method they can implement monthly is worth more than 100 pages of generic information they can get anywhere.
5. You don’t have to limit yourself to written content – you can also do podcasts and videos.
6. Use experts in your field to help you generate the content. If you rely just on yourself, you’ll run out of info. But with a steady stream of experts, you’ll always have something fresh to say. Do interviews, use guest authors, and even hire people to write articles for you.
7. In addition to information, negotiate discounts on products and services they might need. Getting these “inside deals” can be an added benefit of subscribing to your newsletter. For example, if your newsletter is about best using WordPress, you might negotiate discounts on popular themes, plugins, or hosting. They could even pay for members’ subscriptions if you’re good at negotiating these deals,
8. Use a $1 trial to bring in more new subscribers.
9. Convert your newsletter to PDF and deliver via autoresponder or download link.
10. Ask your subscribers to submit tips and advice and offer them a link in your newsletter or some other reward if you publish what they write. Do this in every issue; you won’t have to produce as much content over time.
11. Survey your subscribers to find out what they want to see covered in your newsletter.
12. Once you know the value of your subscribers, you can purchase advertising to bring in new subscriptions. For example, if you know that your average subscriber stays for six months and you charge $9 a month for your newsletter, that’s $54. If it costs you $15 in advertising to get that subscriber, you’ve made (on average) $39 for every new subscriber that advertising brings in, not including other sales you might make to them.
13. Have a back end. It should be something more expensive than your newsletter and needs to fit your niche perfectly, but it doesn’t have to be your product. You can offer an affiliate product – just be sure it’s something you genuinely believe in yourself.
14. You might offer a “fixed term” membership depending on your niche. This is generally used when teaching specific skills that don’t change much over time, such as how to run a membership site or how to survive a disaster. You wouldn’t want to use this model if the information were constantly changing – for example, investing.
If the fixed-term membership model applies to your niche, it offers a double benefit: First, you write the content once and continue to get paid for it for a long time. Second, members see the end in sight and are even less likely to cancel. Weekly publication tends to work well for a fixed-term membership.
15. Rinse and repeat. Once you get one newsletter and are successful, you might consider doing a second one. This might directly relate to your first niche or an entirely new place.
For example, if your first newsletter is on Commodity trading, you might start a second newsletter on Forex trading. Then you can discount your commodity subscribers when they subscribe to your Forex newsletter. This will give your new newsletter a financial jump-start and enable you to begin paying for content if you have it outsourced immediately.
16. Cash out. If there comes a day when you’re ready to move on, sell your newsletter. Remember that having built-in recurring income and a list of paying members makes your business VALUABLE, so you should get an excellent price for it.
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