In a previous article, I mentioned that successful and wealthy people are successful and wealthy because of the amount of value they give to other people’s lives.
Take Google for example…
Google (under the umbrella name of Alphabet Inc) is an internet and software service business that is worth a colossal $1.30 trillion.
I cannot imagine how much that is in real money.
But, here’s the thing, Google started in a small garage at the rear of a property in Menlo Park, California. It supplied free access to the internet and still provides a lot of free tools like Gmail, Google Docs, and Chrome etc.
They have made their money by giving a huge amount of value to people’s lives with the software tools and services they provide which has built brand loyalty and resulted in a lot of people using their ‘paid for services’ such as paying Google to show adverts across their network.
This article is not to focus too much on giving away a ton of free value but focus on giving value itself.
When you give away value, and by value I mean information, advice, help, services or tools which help people do the things they want to do and achieve the things they want to achieve, people will pay you for it.
Value is all about ‘giving’, it’s not about ‘taking’.
This is why people who give a lot, are more often than not, far more wealthy and successful than those people who are simply out to take as much as they can from others.
There are really only two ways to give value to a person’s life.
- Entertainment.
- Help. (Supplying information or doing.)
There are seven main ways to deliver value to people:
- Books, eBooks and reports.
- Podcasts, audio (inc music).
- Emails.
- Newsletters and magazines.
- Videos, live broadcasts (inc television shows).
- Social Media posts, website articles.
- Services such as doing something specific for them.
In this article I want to focus on one of the above which is incredibly powerful… yet sadly overlooked by many.
What I want to focus on are newsletters.
The Underused Business Builder
Newsletters have made a lot of money for those who use them.
Some people charge $97 per month for a printed (and sometimes a digital newsletter) whereas others charge as little as $4.99 per month for a digital newsletter which is delivered either as a PDF, as an email, or as a page on a website.
There are a lot of people who provide newsletters at prices that fall somewhere in between.
As with most things, how much you charge is down to what you provide and the value you give to people.
If you create a newsletter like Dan Kennedy’s NO B.S. Magnetic Marketing Letter which teaches people how to master online marketing, direct response marketing, and successful business building that can earn the reader tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and for some people, millions of dollars, charging $97 per month is acceptable… and expected.
If however, you are simply publishing a newsletter that supplies information about how to live with and care for dogs properly, it’s unlikely that you will get many subscribers if you charge more than $19.99 per month.
Don’t get me wrong, I have said before that if you can charge higher prices so that you have less work to do and less people to deal with without compromising on earnings, do so.
But if your newsletter is a digital PDF that requires no printing and no posting and is about a subject that is not overly life-changing, then charging high could actually mean that you earn less money.
If what you publish is more entertaining and helpful rather than life-changing, then more people might happily pay a smaller fee to access it.
10 people paying $97 is $970 (which is great)…
But 1000 people paying just $5.97 is $5,970 (which is a lot nicer).
The price difference between $97 and $5.97 is big enough to attract a larger number of paying customers.
For most people, it’s easier to afford $5.97 per month than it is $97.
There needs to be a big payoff to charge a high price.
Those types of payoffs are life-changing such as learning how to easily make an extra $1,000 or more each month. Anyone who learns how to make an extra $1,000 per month is not going to struggle to pay $97 per month.
Someone who is learning how to stop their dog ‘humping’ their sofa cushions is not going to want to pay $97 each month, no matter how much they save on laundry powder. 🙂
Build Relationships
Newsletters are a great way to build relationships as well as give value to the world, especially if they are from you as a person and not from a faceless company.
People buy from people… that is a marketing truth.
They buy from people they trust, which is why big companies pay celebrities to endorse their products in adverts.
Organizations and charities have celebrities as ‘ambassadors’ because it helps grow awareness for their cause and increases donations.
Companies use social media ‘influencers’ because they have huge followings of people who ‘like’ them and will very likely purchase the products they recommend.
Think of Oprah Winfrey as an example; when she gave a glowing review of a book on her show during the Oprah’s Book Club segment and slapped on that famous sticker, sales of the book would skyrocket.
A few minutes of giving a glowing review of a book on Oprah’s show could make it a bestseller. People bought those books because they liked Oprah and they trusted her judgment.
I want you to think for a minute about what was happening there… Oprah was giving her loyal followers a lot of valuable content. I’m not talking about the book review either; I am talking about her shows.
Oprah’s television shows were a live visual equivalent of a newsletter. Every show was full on entertaining and informative content.
People would look forward to her next show and regularly tune in to be entertained and to also learn new stuff. Oh, and she publishes her own magazine too, which is basically a large newsletter.
Oprah gives a lot of value to people.
That is what you need to do; you need to give a lot of value to those who follow you.
You can do this in two ways:
- For free using the Freemium Model.
- For a paid fee.
I recommend doing both.
Be Like Oprah!
You can give a lot of value for free by sending emails, publishing articles to your website, and posting videos and podcasts to social media.
You can also give a lot of value to paying customers in the way of a course, access to a membership area, eBook, services, and a newsletter.
Newsletters are great because you can get paid for giving regular value while at the same time, strengthening your relationship with the customer.
Once a week, or once a month, people receive your newsletter which will be crammed full of incredibly useful and entertaining information, including your thoughts and opinion’s on specific things.
By giving the readers a lot of valuable content, you are nurturing a powerful relationship with them.
You become liked and trusted; you become the ‘celebrity’ that endorses products or organizations. You become Oprah.
Publish Your Own Newsletter Today
Digital newsletters which are delivered as PDFs, emails, or pages on a password-protected website are great as they can be accessed on laptops and smartphones, but you cannot beat a real printed newsletter.
There is an anticipation of what is in the newsletter as you wait for it to be delivered.
When a physical newsletter drops through your letter box, you eagerly rip open the envelope and pull it out. It’s an enjoyable tactile experience as you hold it in your hands.
You can flip through the pages as you walk through the house, it can be thumbed through as you enjoy a drink on the sofa, it can be laid within easy reach on the desk ready to be referred back to when the time is right.
It can even be left open on the page you need to refer back to at a later date. You can’t do that very well with a PDF document.
When it comes to creating your own newsletter, you can either:
- Write it yourself.
- Pay someone to write it for you.
- Buy PLR and/or buy a license to rebrand and sell an already professionally pre-written newsletter.
If you enjoy writing and are fast at it, then you may enjoy writing your own newsletters. If you don’t enjoy writing or you want it created quickly – remember, money loves speed – it might be best to either pay someone to write your newsletters for you, or you buy/license content that has already been created.
Paying someone to write it for you is great, but you will still need to wait for it to be written and delivered which can take time. It can also be costly.
Paying someone to write something for you can cost more than simply to buy some pre-written material.
Just take a look at some of the prices writers are charging to write just one article over on Fiverr.com. One woman’s starting price is $125.
Yes, there are some people who will charge as little as $15, but a decent newsletter needs at least four or five articles and when you add them all up, they will cost you at least $60. Plus you will be left to layout and format the newsletter.
It makes more sense to buy the rights and license to one already created than trying to create your own.
As you will know, I am a big advocate for buying licenses and PLR content. I have made several million dollars (profit) by selling information products that I licensed from other people.
It is how I started in the Information Publishing business.
Before I started selling products of my own, I sold other people’s pre-made products under license.
It is why I teach people to start by licensing products to sell and why I also provide PLR and licensed material to others.
You may be interested to know that I also create a pre-written newsletter that you can license each month, complete with the full private label rights for a fraction of what it would cost you to hire a writer to write just one article on Fiverr.
You’ve seen how much it could cost to have someone on Fiverr write the articles you need… Now take a look at how much it will can instantly save you, if you were to choose using this ready-to-go professionally written and designed newsletter instead:
>> The Internet Marketing Newsletter <<
Each issue also comes with an audio interview as a free bonus. This was you can also have your very own ‘ready-to-go’ Podcast at no extra cost. As you look at the page, remember you are not simply licensing a newsletter; you are licensing a business that builds relationships in the same way Oprah Winfrey did with her television shows.
Once you have that strong relationship with your readers, they will want to buy more products from you, because they know, like and trust you.
