How to Start A Niche Newsletter

Running your own niche newsletter is a great way to keep in contact with a group of people who share a common interest. Beyond merely communicating with those who share your interests, your newsletter will allow those in your niche to have a platform to share their views and to receive up to date information on news and coming events. These newsletters were once costly endeavors, but the age of the internet has changed all that by removing the need for paper, ink, postage and other expensive overhead items. If you have a hobby or interest that you are passionate about, and feel that others share your passion, why not try to start a niche newsletter of your own.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Identify your niche. The first and most critical step to starting a niche newsletter is to determine what niche you will focus on. This should be a niche in which you have a true passion, because managing a newsletter can be a lot of work, and the burden is eased if you enjoy what you are doing. You should refine the niche to the finest degree possible. Rather than making a newsletter about “sports” or even “baseball” (for example), try to refine the niche down to a specific team, or perhaps even go a step further and make your niche newsletter about a specific player on that team.
2. Set up the internet services associated with your web site. These services basically include a domain name (web site address) and a web hosting account (to host your files). You may or may not wish to develop a complete web site based around the niche you have selected. Your web hosting account will certainly provide you with the proper tools should you wish to go that route. Even if not, having a domain and web host will provide you with a place to post copies of your niche newsletter, as well as to provide people with a method of signing up for your newsletter.
3. Establish an opt in form on your web space for people to sign up to receive your emails. This is essentially a short form for a person to enter their name and email address, in order to join the niche newsletter. Most newsletters operate on what is known as a double opt-in format. This means that once the information is entered, an email is sent to the address with instructions to verify that they wanted to join. This prevents people from signing others up for the niche newsletter without their knowledge. You should also include some form of opt-out feature, which allows people to leave the newsletter any time they wish.
4. Decide if your niche newsletter will be made up of text only, or if you will have an html newsletter. Text newsletters are often adequate as long as they are well organized, however, html newsletters have all of the pretty graphics that make a newsletter pleasant to look at. Of course, should you choose to make an html newsletter, you should take the time to learn a basic level of html so that you can program the layout of the niche newsletter. Even if you choose to use the html format for your newsletter, you should also include a plain text copy, just in case some of your readers use old email readers that can not view html. The subscriber’s email software will automatically deliver the appropriate version to them.
5. Write the content of the niche newsletter. You will probably write most, if not all, of the content yourself in the beginning. As you take on more subscribers, you will find that your readers will often send you content for the newsletter to help lighten the load that you must carry. You can also barter with web sites related to your niche, whereby they will contribute content to your newsletter in exchange for a link to their web site being included at the end of the article.
6. Obtain an email client that is designed for managing mailing lists. EasyMail by G-Lock Software is a popular choice for those who manage professional newsletters. It allows you to securely send messages to your entire mailing list, without compromising any of your subscribers’ addresses. Under no circumstances should you ever use your regular mailbox to send messages, and whatever you do, do not simply CC (carbon copy) everyone’s addresses onto the message. This will reveal everyone’s address and make your subscribers angry.
7. Sign up for a SOCKS Proxy service. This step is purely optional, but will allow you to cloak your IP address when sending emails to your newsletter subscribers, thus protecting you from spam complaints being sent to your ISP. Even when you operate a double opt-in email list, there is always someone, somewhere who seems to forget that they signed up for your niche newsletter, and will send complaints to your internet service provider. Even though you are operating a legitimate newsletter, you may find your internet service suspended as a result. Using a simple SOCKS proxy will prevent this from happening. You can subscribe to services such as those offered by Unique Internet Services for a small monthly fee, which will include a private list of SOCKS proxies for you to use.
8. Sell advertisements in your newsletters. As you are probably beginning to see, it takes a lot of work to make your niche newsletter a reality, and you have to repeat this effort for each and every issue. If you are putting this much work into the newsletter, you may as well earn a few dollars for your efforts. At the very least, you can recoup the money that you have invested in a domain and web hosting. You can either sell advertising in your newsletter for a flat fee, or you can use affiliate programs, which will pay you a commission for every customer generated by the ad.
9. Send your newsletter. That’s really all there is to it. Load your mailing list up into your email client, copy in the newsletter that you wrote, and click the send button. What could be easier?

Tips & Warnings

• You will undoubtedly have some number of bounced messages each time you send out an issue of your niche newsletter. These are email addresses that are no longer valid. It is generally a good idea to take the time to remove these addresses from your subscriber list each time you receive one.