The first thing you need to do is decide on a topic that you are interested in and your potential customers would also like to know more about. Then all you need to do is decide if you have enough knowledge on that subject to write confidently about it, and if you don't, there are ways around that too. Then decide what format you want to use to present the information and bingo; you have a winning formula for your newsletter.



The first thing you need to do is decide on a topic that you are interested in and your potential customers would also like to know more about. Then all you need to do is decide if you have enough knowledge on that subject to write confidently about it, and if you don't, there are ways around that too. Then decide what format you want to use to present the information and bingo; you have a winning formula for your newsletter.

Choose a topic.

You should pick a subject that interests you, and if possible, one that you already know something about. It should also be a topic that is relevant and interesting to your potential customers. It should also be linked to the products and services you sell so that throughout your publications, you can refer readers to your web site for further information or relevant products or services.

For example, if you sell second hand cars, you may want to write a newsletter about “What to look for when buying a second hand car” or “Basic car maintenance”, if you sell houses, you may want to write about” Tips for preparing your house for sale”, or “How to profit from the buy-to-let market”, etc.

Do you have the knowledge?

If you don't feel you have enough knowledge to write on specific, relevant topics, another strategy for producing a newsletter is to ask others to write it for you. Why would an author give you an article for your newsletter? Because they can include their contact information and links to their web pages, that's why. The more copies of your newsletter that you give away, the more traffic they get to their web sites. More traffic equals more sales.

There are many article syndication agencies that take articles from experts in all fields for reproduction in newsletters and on web sites. It's a great place to start looking for articles you can use and as long as you reproduce them in their entirely, including the authors details and links, there will be no problem with copyright infringement. Try typing “article syndication” into a major search engine such as Google along with your particular area of interest and see what comes up.

I would also advise that if you use an article from a particular author, you email them and let them know you have reproduced it and are interested in any other articles of a similar type. You may then find that they send you new relevant articles as they are finished and this will provide content for some of your future newsletters without having to go looking for it.

Another way of getting experts to write articles for you is to seek them out and interview them. Ask yourself:

- What problem can you think of that could be solved by experts?

- Who are these experts?

- Where can I contact them?

Ask them if they agree to be interviewed for your newsletter. You can interview them by telephone, email or in person. Often, experts who would not take the time to write an article would be more than happy to answer a few questions and let you publish their answers in return for the free publicity, the publishing of their contact details and a link to their web site.

Don't get discouraged if they don't all respond. Remember to be courteous and respectful as they're doing you a favor.

How to present the information

If you are using someone else's articles or interviews for your newsletter, the format will present itself. You can't change the format of a prewritten article for copyright reasons and an interview is usually easiest to present in a question an answer format. When writing your own articles you can also use question and answer format, using yourself as the expert or you can explore a topic in depth in an article style format. Another popular way to present the information is what I call the “tip-list” list option.

For example:

- 21 maintenance tips for your car

- 10 ways to prepare your home for sale

- 101 things you can with your digital camera

- 25 easy ways to say money on your household bills

All you need to do is decide what question or problem you want to solve and come up with a list of answers. Easy! And if you get stuck, go back to those experts again.

The truth of the matter is, today anyone can become a published author with a subscriber based newsletter in no time at all.

Now that you're a newsletter author, you're going to be interested in ways to improve and make money from your newsletter. But that's a topic for next time…