Starting A Newsletter Business? Do These 5 Things First!

If you are ready to start a newsletter business, this will be one of the most important articles you will ever read.

In this article, you will be introduced to the the first five things that you need to do as a newsletter business owner, so that you can set yourself up for long-term success in the newsletter business industry.

Make sure that you follow each one of the steps below from beginning to end, and don’t skip ahead! Every single one of these steps must be completed first before you even think about buying a domain name for your brand new newsletter business.

Starting a newsletter business can be somewhat overwhelming for a brand new person. This article will put you on the best possible path so that you can to create a successful newsletter business when you choose to pull the trigger and take action.

Speaking of taking action…

At the end of each section in this article, you will have a very specific “action step” to complete so you can follow the proven process to creating a successful newsletter business.

Table of Contents

#1 MARKET: What Specific “Market” is Your Newsletter Going to Serve?

#2 TOPIC: What Topic Are You Going to Cover in Your Newsletter?

#3 BRAND PROMISE: What Value Will Your Subscribers Get by Signing Up for Your Newsletter, and How Will They Benefit in the Long-Run by Paying Attention to Your Future Newsletter Issues Sent to Their Inbox?

#4 TYPE: How Do You Plan on Packaging and Delivering the Content in Your Newsletter?

#5 FREQUENCY: How Often Will Subscribers Get Email Newsletter Issues Sent to Them?

#1 MARKET: What Specific “Market” is Your Newsletter Going to Serve?

After you commit to starting a brand new newsletter business, it is absolutely essential that you take a good chunk of time on the front-end to decide and determine WHO you want your ideal newsletter subscriber to be.

The specific market you choose to serve can be a community of people that you are directly a part of right now, or a community of people that has no connection to you whatsoever.

By taking the time right now to decide WHO you are creating your newsletter for, you will have the clarity you need to make the important business decisions now (and in the future) that will set your business up for long-term success.

Aside from setting your business up for long-term success…

By being clear about this very important element in your business (your market), it will also allow you to create the absolute best “Newsletter Subscriber Experience” for all future subscribers that choose to sign up.

We here at The Pursuit Newsletter can’t stress this concept enough…

If you do not take the time right now to choose your market, and are not 100% clear about who they are, what they need, what problems/challenges they have, and/or what their deep inner desires are, your newsletter business will be built on “shaky ground.”

We absolutely want you to avoid that situation at all costs.

As you work your way through this article, and the other content available on our site, you will gain a deeper understanding about what the previous paragraphs written above really mean in the context of building a successful newsletter business over the long run.

For now, let’s keep moving forward.

So…

Do you want your newsletter to serve the “Single working mom with two kids who is between 30-45 years old and working a 9-5 job,” or the “Single working male tech geek who is a programmer at a popular tech company in silicon valley?”

It’s time to take action on your business right now, so let’s start brainstorming ideas for your newsletter business!

Action Step: Set a 15 minute timer right now, and write down at least 10 “market” ideas that you are considering for your newsletter business.

#2 TOPIC: What Topic Are You Going to Cover in Your Newsletter?

After you decide who your ideal market is, you then need to start the process of drilling down into figuring out what “topic” you want your newsletter to cover.

For example…

Do you want to create a “health-focused” newsletter for your market, or do you want to create a newsletter that is centered around helping your market be more “productive” at work?

In the question highlighted above, the topic of the first example was HEALTH, and the second topic was PRODUCTIVITY.

There are so many ways to approach this step while building your newsletter, but what it will ultimately boil down for you is to figure out the answer to this one very important question…

“What is important to the market of people I want to serve with my newsletter, and what needs, wants, or desires do they have?”

When you approach this step of the newsletter building process from thinking about that question, it will allow you to flush out every opportunity available for you to choose from when it comes to selecting the “Topic” for your newsletter.

Action Step: Set a 15 minute timer right now, and jot down at least 10 “Topic Ideas” for your newsletter business while thinking about the potential market of people you want to create a newsletter business for.

#3 BRAND PROMISE: What Value Will Your Subscribers Get by Signing Up for Your Newsletter, and How Will They Benefit in the Long-Run by Paying Attention to Your Future Newsletter Issues Sent to Their Inbox?

After you invest the proper amount of time time on the front end to choose…

1. The specific market you want your newsletter to serve

2. The specific topic you want to create your newsletter around

It is now time for you to drill down even further to figure out what specific value your newsletter will ultimately provide your market (inside the context of the topic you selected).

If you explore what other newsletter business owners have done when it comes to creating a brand promise, you will see that on each one of their “Subscribe To My Newsletter” pages, there is normally a 1-3 sentence description of the newsletter and the value it provides future subscribers if they choose to sign up.

To see this in action, scroll down to the bottom of this article.

The title of our newsletter business is…

“The Pursuit Newsletter”

That title is very clear for visitors to understand.

You will then see a “Brand Promise Statement” that gives you an idea about what you will receive in our newsletter if you choose to subscribe.

This one “block” of copy you create for your newsletter business is a very important piece of copy that will be one of the last things your future subscriber reads before they decide if your newsletter is for them or not.

If you make this “brand promise statement” a powerful and compelling piece of copy on your “Subscribe to Our Newsletter” page, your conversion rate will go through the roof (assuming you are driving targeted traffic to your sign up page in the future).

There are many ways to approach the creation of this brand promise statement, but the main idea is to write something that clearly defines what your newsletter delivers, and why it would be valuable for a visitor to sign up.

If you properly package your newsletter with this “block” of copy, and fulfill on the promise you are making over the long-run every time a newsletter is sent, you will have subscribers that stay plugged in and engaged forever…which is a very very good thing.

Action Step: Set a 10 minute timer right now, and jot down a list of things you want your newsletter to provide your market inside of the context of the topic you want your newsletter to be about. In the future you will turn this list into your 1-3 sentence brand promise statement when you create your subscribe form for your newsletter website.

#4 TYPE: How Do You Plan on Packaging and Delivering the Content in Your Newsletter?

Now that you are at the point where you have already figured out…

1. Who your market is

2. The topic of your newsletter

3. The copy elements to include in your brand promise statement

Now it is time to think about how you plan on “packaging and delivering” the value you create for every newsletter subscriber.

Like everything in the newsletter business, there are many ways to go about this process.

When it comes to making this very important decision about the type of newsletter you will send, make sure you create a “newsletter reading experience” that makes all newsletter subscribers look forward to the next email newsletter issue you plan on sending them.

These specific questions below will get your mind thinking about the “Type” of newsletter you want to create for your future newsletter subscribers.

Questions to Ask Yourself When Thinking About the Type of Newsletter You Want to Send Your Newsletter Subscribers

1. What specific sections do I plan on including in my newsletter?

2. Will there be a “News” section with relevant articles that are related to the topic of my newsletter?

3. Will I include engaging content that inspires subscribers to reply back to me when I send them a newsletter issue?

4. Am I going to include a “special content section” with specific articles that I write, or will I only make the newsletter be about giving one thing away for free in each email newsletter issue?

Asking yourself these types of questions will provide you the inspiration you need to hone in on the “Type” of newsletter you want to send subscribers.

If you do some market research by signing up for other email newsletters…

You will see that some newsletters are created around providing one thing for free each week to every single subscriber.

You see this “type” of newsletter in the creative space. These type of newsletter business owners will give away one free stock image in each email.

This type of newsletter allows subscribers to use that free giveaway (image) in a particular way for a project they are working on.

Other types of newsletters are created as “news update” newsletters that keep their subscribers up to date (and on top of) certain things happening in a specific community.

This is type of “news update newsletter” is happening right now in the Artificial Intelligence community given the rate at which things are evolving in that market on a daily basis.

Another type of newsletter is one that has an “entertainment” angle.

These “entertainment type” newsletters provide subscribers a “break” from their day-to-day lives, where the newsletter business owner may give them a funny meme or joke to consume at that moment in each newsletter issue.

There are no rules that have been “set in stone” when it comes to figuring out the “Type” of newsletter you want to send out each time.

That is a great aspect to this type of business because it really allows you to create the best experience possible for those who choose to sign up for your newsletter.

To help you drill down on the type of newsletter you want to create, you can take one of these ideas presented in this section and run with it, or you can take multiple different ideas in this section, and create your own custom “type” of newsletter by mixing and matching different sections.

The sky is the limit, and the experience you choose to create for your subscribers will ultimately be up to you in the long run.

Action Step: Set a 15 minute timer right now, and think about the experience you want to create for your future newsletter subscribers from the eyes of your future subscriber. When you receive the email in your inbox, what do you want the “FROM” line to say, and what does the “SUBJECT LINE” look like? When you open up the newsletter email, what does the top of the newsletter look like, and what is the first section of copy you see? Write down as much as you can in the 15 minute period, and revisit this in more detail as you clearly define the specific experience you want to create for your subscribers. Let your creative juices flow, and really take some time to think about how you will provide the promised value to your subscribers while making them look forward to every new newsletter you send them in the future.

#5 FREQUENCY: How Often Will Subscribers Get Email Newsletter Issues Sent to Them?

Now it is time to figure out how often you want to send your email newsletter to your subscribers.

Will you send your newsletter seven days a week in the afternoon at 3PM PST, or once per week on Thursday morning at 9AM EST?

When you make this decision for your newsletter business, you want to make sure that the frequency you choose is in alignment with everything you figured out in the previous steps.

Here is one question you can ask yourself to help you decide what the ideal frequency will be for the future email newsletters you send:

1. Does it make sense for me to create and send my newsletter once per week given the market I am serving, what their needs are, and the type of newsletter I am sending?

How often you choose to send your newsletter will ultimately be up to you and what you initially believe is best for your subscribers.

As you gather more feedback from subscribers over time, you may decide to change how often you send newsletter issues in the future, but all of that will unfold in time.

Action Step: Set a 5 minute timer right now, and figure out what would make sense for the frequency your newsletter. Think about what you have already decided on for your business up to this point, and look at it from the eyes of your future subscriber to decide what you believe would be best to start out with.

Now That You Know the First 5 Things to Accomplish Before You Start Building Your Newsletter Business, Now is the Time to Take Action…

Here at The Pursuit Newsletter, we are focused on serving the “online newsletter business owner” who wants to reach their newsletter business goals as quickly as possible.

The content on our site and in our email newsletter will absolutely give you the “entrepreneurial edge” you need as you start, build and grow your online newsletter business into what you know it can become.

The content you will find on our website and in our email newsletter will absolutely help you in a major way as you continue your pursuit of being an online newsletter business owner that reaches their goals.

Make it a great day!

-The Pursuit Newsletter Team