Advice for marketing a print newsletter

[Dien Rice]

Originally Posted by Georjina

I'm on Dien's Hidden Business Letters list (and a past paid subscriber too). There are some business ideas in them that I did research on but never implemented (life got in the way). Now I want to turn some of those ideas into a paid newsletter, and offer generic business plans to go with the ideas from my newsletter.

Here's where advice and suggestions are needed, because it's where I'm stuck: How do you market a paid newsletter when no one knows you?

Here's what I came up with after contacting Dien (thank you for suggesting the post here):
1. Classified ads in business opportunity magazines.

2. Articles on business opportunity blogs with link to trial sign-up page.

3. Comments on small/ homebased business sites with link to trial sign-up page.

Have been online since the dinosaurs roamed the earth, so doing my own sites isn't a problem. Also see the "for your email address, I'll send you a free report" shtick being done well for internet marketers. I can put together a freebie sample of a newsletter, but at some point it's going to wear thin with the 'freebie' thing.

Experience: Accountant, community program newsletter editor/publisher/researcher, Bookeeper association newsletter writer/editor.

Inexperience: Copywriting, selling (took me a year to sell one set of pots and pans) and ended with using an auction house to sell items I picked up after reading the Chattel report.

So any help, advice or suggestions would help. Thank you.
Georjina

P.S. Sorry this was so long.

Hi Georjina,

Thanks for asking...!

About the "free report" shtick being done by internet marketers... It's actually been around for decades (at least).

Here's an ad I pulled from the classified ad section of Popular Science magazine...



As you can see, it offers a "Free report" to find out the "secrets!"

This ad is from December 1970!

I don't know what was in the free report promoted there, back in 1970... But people are more skeptical nowadays than they were back then. Now, if you offer a "free report" or "free video" or "free course" or something else, it should have some good stuff in it. People are not going to buy unless they feel you are offering good information, and they'll judge you by the free information that you give them.

One mistake I see many people make with their online promotions (including to email lists) is to just send out pure advertising. If you do that, people will soon unsubscribe from an email list, or (at best) they'll stop reading your emails...

I'll write a bit more later, too...

Best wishes,

Dien