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Start a Home-Based Newsletter Business
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By Peter Engelbrecht
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Do you have a passion, something you love and enjoy talkingabout with others? You have heard people say that you should dowhat you love, sometimes what we do is not necessarily, what welove but we do it because it pays the bills. Here a homebusiness opportunity to change that and to make some money fromsomething that is dear to you by starting a home-basednewsletter business.
The newsletter business is a huge business in of itself. Manynewsletters are distributed by a variety of organizations, fromfor-profits to not-for-profits such as schools or charities. Forthis reason, newsletters can be an easy sell since your audienceis not only accustomed to receiving newsletters but many peoplelook forward to receiving a short 4-page booklet about somethingthey find interesting and useful.
To get started, find a niche topic that you think others in yourcommunity may find interesting and would like to hear about on aperiodic basis. Your topics could range from local birdpopulations and species to bikes and bike trails. The topics toselect can be endless, but may be a product of your localcommunity and what the community finds interesting.
After you have decided on a topic, consider the frequency ofdistribution, weekly/monthly/bi-annually. The period you selectmay also depend on the amount of research you will have toconduct. Even though you consider yourself an expert on thetopic, you may find yourself conducting research more often thanyour first thought in order to keep the newsletters contentfresh and unique. You may even try to find a guest columnist orconduct an interview with a local who knows something about thetopic. Lastly, you need time to sell a few advertisements tooffset the production costs of the newsletter.
To make your newsletters interesting consider a seasonal flare,where the colors for instance of the newsletter match with theupcoming seasons, bright reds, yellows and green for spring andbrowns, grey and purple for autumn. Whatever you decide, make itfun.
When it comes to pricing, the simplest method is to take yourproduction costs and add 20% to those costs. You may have toabsorb much of the initial costs if you do not have manysubscribers, which you should account for during the earlieststages of launching your newsletter. If you have a computer anda good laser printer, you can cut your costs dramatically.
Now that you have started up and are producing a qualityproduct, you have to distribute the newsletter. The quickest wayto get new subscribers is by word of mouth, which is when peoplebegin telling or referring others to your newsletter. You canstart by giving free copies to friends and family and ask themto pass them around to their friends. You can drop off a fewcopies at the local hair salon, dentist and doctor's office.
To create a buzz, you can run a price promotion, half off forthe first six months. Yet even better, you can run a combinedpromotion with another complimentary business. Let us say thatyour newsletter is about migratory birds, why not ask the localpet store if you can include a coupon in the newsletter forsomething free, such as a sampling of new birdseed. The storemanager may have birdseed that the birdseed manufacturer'srepresentative dropped off. This is a real win-win situation forall parties involved as you get to provide your subscribers withsomething free, the pet store gets traffic into the store, andthe birdseed manufacturer gets customers using their brand ofbirdseed compared with that of the competitors.
I hope that you will have fun starting up your new business andthat it will be a wonderful chapter of your life.
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