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Business With Content: Paid Newsletters

This is the sixth article from the series “Business with content“. You can read the previous article here.

Paid newsletters are another rather old and never dying method of making business with premium content.  It’s probably one of the first methods used from the times when sites were mostly static HTML pages and having a server side software on hand was expensive and clumsy. So people were sending newsletters using desktop programs for windows or even (for smaller customer base) one by one through their regular email client.

Newsletter

Now there are all kind of web apps and services for sending newsletters so that’s no more an issue at all. All you need to do is to figure out what kind of newsletter to make and to start working on it. Some ideas:

  • Stock and forex picks. These could be daily or weekly, or at random times.
  • Sport betting picks. With all kinds of picks you obviously must be really good and probably have to publish your average success rates.
  • Email courses. Although this works better with online e-learning sites, there are still people who prefer sending courses entirely over email, using autoresponder software.
  • Newsletters with discounts, special gifts etc. These are newsletters which are used to send discount codes or downloadable goods to the subscribes.

There are certainly more types of paid newsletters you can think about. Any premium content can be sent out as a newsletter which lets you control exactly how much content the customer receives over time.

The Good

The main advantage was just said: you control how much of your content is given to the subscriber. So if you are sending a course or other kind of pre-planned newsletter you know exactly how long the subscriber needs to stay subscribed to study the whole module. It’s not like in the membership sites where they could study / download the whole content quickly (unless you use some kind of delayed content access system).

Because all the content is delivered by email, it’s harder to pack it and upload on pirate sites. Of course it’s not impossible, but requires effort that most people won’t put. It’s even harder with any kind of picks newsletters because the pirate would need to re-email your content each time you send email. In general you have to worry much less about piracy issues than for example when selling info products.

Regardless what kind of premium newsletter you are sending you don’t have to prepare all your content in advance. It’s an ongoing process and all you need to do is to have the upcoming newsletter contents ready before you send it.

Finally, newsletters are typically just text and are easier to create. They generally require lower upfront investment than most of the other premium content business models.

The Bad

Creating a newsletter is usually an ongoing process. Unless yours is entirely based on pre-formatted autoresponder sequences, you need to prepare a new mailing campaign each week, month, or whatever period your newsletter is delivered on.

Newsletters often have lower perceived value unless your insights are really great / secret / unique. People rarely pay more than $20 – $30 monthly for premium newsletter (there ARE huge exceptions though).

Newsletters get no organic traffic because all the content is delivered by email. Unless you also publish the newsletter online after being sent but in many cases that will defeat the purpose. This can work however with stock / forex / sports picks: you can publish your content after the picks are no longer valid to demonstrate your success rates AND attract search engine traffic as well. Very powerful method if your picks are successful.

People often ignore email newsletters even when they paid for them, because the content gets delivered at time when they are busy. So it’s easier for them to forget to read it and at some moment to decide this newsletter has no value for them. This could lead to lower customer retention rates compared to other kind of subscription based content business.

The Ugly

Delivery problems and spam issues. This is huge problem with online newsletters and can cost you from few to 10%, 20% or more of your business. The more severe email filters become against spam, the lower overall delivery rates are. Of course, email service provides take measures and fight this but some percentage of your emails will never be delivered. Or with email clients like Gmail some will end up in the “Promotions” folder.

This is something you have to live with: there will be complains and refunds from paid subscribers who don’t get their newsletters. There will be users who unsubscribe because the email goes to the Bulk / Promotions folder and this cheapens its value. You’ll have to deal with all of this, and ensure the highest possible delivery rates of your newsletters.

You may prefer to use a service like MailChimp but they are expensive. If you are using your own newsletter / autoresponder software (like our Arigato for example), make sure to use reliable SMTP account. Combining a self-hosted software and reliable SMTP service like Amazon SES or Sendgrid is good and cost efficient method to get your premium newsletters delivered.

You can also have issues with the quality / formatting of your newsletter, displaying graphics etc. Email is a tricky matter so I recommend not making the design of your newsletter too fancy and having a backup online URL. This URL will need to be protected / contain unique code for each subscriber, otherwise it kills the incentive to pay for subscription.

Don’t let the few issues scare you off though. Running a premium newsletter is very suitable for some businesses and nearly the only good route for them. It’s also a low investment and relatively simple in terms of technology. Just make sure you have a customer acquisition strategy because your newsletter won’t usually generate any organic traffic from search engines.

In the next article we’ll talk about various mixes.

WatuPRO Bridge for Easy Digital Downloads

This free bridge lets you sell access to paid WatuPRO quizzes through EDD

Download The Bridge Here – v. 1.0, 12 KB

This plugin works simpler than the WooCommerce bridge.

Step By Step Instructions

  1. Install and activate the plugin.
  2. Create some products in EDD. It doesn’t matter how you call them – that’s up to you, but if these products will be quizzes it makes sense to use same names as the quiz titles.
  3. In Edit Quiz -> Intelligence Module tab select the product that corresponds to the quiz.
    edd-bridgeSetting this will affect only EDD orders made after that. It will not make the quiz paid for customers who purchased the EDD before you connected the quiz to it.
  4. Direct users to your EDD store. From version 0.7 of this bridge AND version 5.4.6.2 of WatuPRO there is a setting that allows you to select how the user will be directed to the EDD product page when visiting the paid quiz page. Go to EDD Bridge link in your WatuPRO menu and select one of the following options:

    The first will automatically redirect. The second lets you output some text along with a link.
    If you are using older EDD/WatuPRO version you can use the “Other payment instructions” box in the WatuPRO Settings page -> Payments section to display some generic text with a link to your EDD store – something like “Access to this product can be purchased from our web store“.
  5. Paying in EDD will not automatically direct the user to the quiz page. It’s up to you to place a link in the product description for example. The best place for such link is the “Download notes” section in EDD:So after payment the user will see a link to the quiz:

Note that access to the quiz  will be given only after the payment is COMPLETED! If you are not getting access to the quiz after paying check in Downloads -> Payment History and ensure that the payment is not Pending or anything else than “Completed”.

 

Business With Content: Selling Info Products

This is the fifth article of the series “Business with content“. To read the previous one click here.

The good old method of selling info-products is still alive and vital. And it remains one of the best ways to do business with premium content – because of the high perceived value of info products. It’s not an exception to see a good e-book sold for $97 for example, while at the same time you’d rarely pay the same dollars for paper book (which is odd and funny, don’t you think?).

Before diving into the main advantages and disadvantages of selling info products let’s dive into what an info product is. The main thing that makes it different than most other methods is that info products are not subscription based. You may offer different parts on sale, upsells and so on, but you charge once for each of them. The buyer downloads it and owns it forever (or until their hard drive crashes and they have no copy). Ideally you’ll allow some kind of member’s area where buyers will be able to re-download the product at least several times.

FMSC Distribution Partner - Ghana

What can be an info product:

  • An e-book. This is still the most common info product. E-books that help people make money, get laid, be healthy or improve themselves are always hot and can make plenty of profits.
  • A video or audio guide. Or usually a set of videos. Very often combined with some kind of an e-book.
  • A whole course. While this sounds like LMS, it’s not. To call a course “info product” it must be downloadable. So this is typically a set of e-books, reports, videos, etc that the user can download to study. Sometimes it can be on CDs or DVDs shipped by mail, but with today’s fast internet such method of delivery quickly gets outdated.
  • Some combination of the above.

While some folks would call everything info-product – including newsletters, membership sites etc, I prefer to make the difference between service and product.

The Advantages

Selling info products is one of the oldest methods of making business with content. And there are reasons for this:

  • It’s well accepted. Even a high-priced e-book or course is just one time payment and doesn’t scary buyers like an ongoing subscription.
  • It’s lower commitment. People can buy your course or book and read it when they want (sometimes never). It’s not like joining a subscription site or LMS where they are expected to commit to studying the material long term.
  • It doesn’t require complex technical infrastructure. In fact if you go through a service like e-junkie you need not be technical at all. Or, using WordPress you can sell your info products through WooCommerce or a similar and simpler plugin. It’s easy either way, just upload and sell.
  • Requires less investment. I know people who make business of 200 pages e-book. This is much less investment than building a membership site or e-course with fifty lessons and videos in it.
  • One leads to another. Most sites selling info products use the upsell technique: one product recommends another one (typically more expensive). Since buyer has trusted you once to buy from you, and provided the product they bought was good, they are very likely to buy the upsell too.

The Downsides

As with every business model, this one has some  downsides too:

  • Piracy. Since info products are downloadable and typically unprotected (DON’T focus on protection to make it hard for your buyers to use the product) they quickly end up on pirate download sites. And the more popular your product is, the quicker it will end up there. While piracy isn’t as big problem as some make it sound, it is still a serious problem not to be underestimated.
  • Typically short life. Because of piracy and the popularity effect of social networks etc, most info products have a peak after their initial release and quick drop in sales after that. There are only a few that continue selling for years. In most cases you should make a new product at least once every year to survive in this business.
  • Huge competition. Everyone and their grandfather wrote an e-book. And then a second one. It’s not easy to stand out in this crowd.
  • No organic traffic. Unless of course your info product is so great that you get natural inbound link. Most aren’t so they don’t get much organic traffic from search engines, if any at all. One solution to this problem is to make a blog and use it as a way to demonstrate your knowledge and sell the info-product from the blog. This may also give you traffic from search engines. But, as you guessed, it can be a lot of work and is no longer one-time effort.
  • One-time payments. The advantage to the buyer is disadvantage to you. You sell once and don’t make money of this customer again unless you have other info products to upsell.

Next in this series we’ll review another old but gold business model – paid newsletters.