Business At A Glance
Startup Costs: $2,000 – $10,000
Home Based: Can be operated from home.
Part Time: Can be operated part-time.
Online Operation? Yes
Business Overview
The newsletter is one of the hottest marketing vehicles around. It’s aterrific way for businesses and professionals to keep themselves intheir clients’ minds and promote new business. It’s also a great wayfor the word-wise entrepreneur to develop a subscription publicationwith far less cost than a full-fledged magazine or newspaper wouldentail.
If you’ve got a flair for the written word and a talent forturning out new material in a specific field on a regular basis, thenyou can shine as a newsletter publisher. You can write custom-tailorednewsletters for clients to send to their current and potentialcustomers.
You can develop a boilerplate newsletter for a particularset of clients such as dentists to send to their patients–you changethe masthead and add in a few personalized tidbits for each dentist. Oryou can design, write and publish your own newsletter on any area ofinterest that appeals to you and enough readers to make it pay.
Theadvantages to this business are that you can immerse yourself in thesubjects that interest you and write about them to a built-in audience(once you’ve sold your subscriptions). And once you’ve developed a nameas a newsletter publisher/expert, you can go on to publish audiotapesand videotapes, books and special reports, and conduct seminars andworkshops.
If you plan to publish your own newsletter, you’ll need aninsider’s knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, your area of interest. Ifyou’ll publish newsletters for others, you’ll want a workingfamiliarity with the subject matter and the same enthusiasm.
You shouldhave a copywriter’s talents including top-notch writing, spelling,punctuation and grammar skills. In addition to all of this, you’ll needto be a desktop publishing demon with the graphic skills to design avisually appealing and readable composition.
The Market
Your clients will be the businesses and professionals for whom youdevelop newsletters or, if you develop your own concept, businesses orindividuals who subscribe. If you plan to publish for others, forinstance dentists, send direct-mail pieces, perhaps in the form ofsample issues, soliciting work.
Network among associations for whom youwant to write newsletters, and establish relationships with printerswho can refer their customers to you. The best–and by the far theleast expensive–way to develop a subscriber base for your ownnewsletter is to make up a sample issue and a really good pressrelease.
Send this press kit to editors at every publication thattouches on your specialty. From the ensuing articles, you’ll get scadsof people requesting sample issues, a fair number of whom will becomesubscribers. Be sure to require a nominal fee–$1 to $3–for yoursample as insurance against ‘looky-loos’ who just want to get a freebiein the mail.
Needed Equipment
You’ll need a computer, a laser printer, a color printer, a scanner,and a fax machine. You should have top-notch word-processing software,a desktop-publishing package, a few clip-art programs, and a databaseprogram for maintaining your mailing list.