How to Publish a Freelance Writing Newsletter

A freelance writing newsletter can be a great resource for any writer. Use it as a way of promoting your services and past articles to gain more clients, as well as readers.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Decide on your subject matter. Try to think in terms of what you would want to know if you were researching the topic. Freelance writing is a vast field. Focusing on a particular topic in each issue will make it a much more valuable resource for your readers.
   
   One of the best ways to find out what your readers may be interested in is to visit freelance writing forums. If a particular string has 2,797 responses, and the others have only a few hundred responses, then that’s a big tip off that the topic is popular with potential customers and needs more exploring.
   
   Publishing a freelance writing newsletter is an effective way for freelancers to increase their income. They do this by allowing the publisher to collect information that can later be used to market, for example, ebooks, seminars and writing workshops.
   
   One of the most effective ways to attract readers and continually grow your subscriber list is to interview experts. Freelance writing newsletters featuring experts are very effective because many freelancers read newsletters to learn how to do something. And, getting inside information from first-hand sources is one of the best ways to do this.

2. Conduct Internet search for interviewees. Once you’ve settled on your freelance writing newsletter’s subject matter, conduct an internet search for subjects to interview. Many are intimidated by this step, thinking that anyone of note they’d want to interview would not be interested. This could not be further from the truth. Most of the time you will find that they are more than happy to be interviewed.

3. Compose contact email. Once you have found an appropriate subject to interview for your freelance writing newsletter, send them a brief email.
   
   It may take a few days for them to get back to you, so send out numerous requests at the same time. If you’re lucky enough to land more than one interview, simply feature them in subsequent issues.

4. Compose questions. Once an expert has agreed to be featured in your freelance writing newsletter, it’s time to conduct the actual interview. This can ostensibly be done via phone, email or in person.
   
   The vast majority of the time, it is more convenient to email questions. This way, they can answer them at their leisure, and they usually provide more detail.
   
   Be sure to send the questions in plenty of time. You don’t want to run the risk of being turned down for an interview simply because of timing.

5. Format the newsletter. Once you receive the responses back from the interviewee, it’s time to format them. This can be done with any type of word processing software. You don’t need specialized newsletter template software.

6. Distribute the newsletter. The final step in publishing a freelance writing newsletter is to distribute it. As many freelance writers start out with no subscribers, or very few, simply attaching the document and sending it via email is all that’s needed.
   
   
   
   Other alternatives include publishing it to a website and distributing it via list management companies like AWeber.com.

Tips & Warnings

• Besides minor grammar, I rarely make any changes to the responses that I receive back from interview subjects. Like an interview for a national publication, you want all the nuggets of what the subject said. What you might think of as unimportant, irrelevant or common knowledge may not be to your readers. The best course of action is to leave all responses intact.

Resources

• List Management Software to Increase Subscribers
• Resources and Tips for Newsletter Publishers

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on 6/15/2009 Thanks for sharing.