Yesterday, I fixed my hair and smiled and fired up Zoom.
On the other side of the Zoom tube was the writer and publisher of a free newsletter, which promotes a premium content subscription.
The cost of this premium content subscription?
$2,625 per year. And yet, many individual readers happily pay for this subscription, and a few companies buy 30-40 user packs for their employees.
Eye-opening stuff, when you compare it to $9.99/month paid Substack newsletters, or even to $97/month print newsletters by marketing gurus.
The reason I was on Zoom yesterday was that this was the first of three paid newsletter consults I offered last week.
The reason I offered these paid newsletter consults was that, as I said when I made the offer, it was research for my own projects. I’m thinking of creating newsletter community or mastermind, and I want to know what problems newsletter publishers have.
When I made that offer last week, all three available spots were snapped up in the first ten minutes after the email went out. And as I raced to turn off the cart, a fourth buyer sneaked in.
One of the people who got in, in fact the person I talked to yesterday, said that getting one of the three spots felt like winning the lottery.
Compare this to when I offered free coaching some five years ago, as a way of preparing for a book I was planning to write.
Out of my entire list, just one dude from Germany signed up. I think somebody else scheduled a call and then canceled last minute.
Granted:
Stuff has changed in past four years. My list has grown… I’ve written 1,000+ additional emails… I’ve learned a lot about marketing and copywriting… I’ve worked with several large clients with whom I made a lot of money… and I’ve built a name for myself in the copywriting and email marketing field.
But with or without all that, the point I want to share with you still stands:
You can get paid to do research for your own projects.
Or you can get paid for a diagnostic call.
Or to learn stuff that you’re interested in learning. Or for content that you’re currently giving away. Or for answering questions that you currently answer for nothing.
Somebody smart said it, and I believe it’s true — it takes as much work to give something away as to sell it.
So why not sell it instead?
If you don’t have the status or the experience yet, then charge a little bit.
If you do have the status or the experience, then charge accordingly.
But pretty much anything you are currently doing for free, you can ask money for.
There’s nobody and nothing stopping you, except your own beliefs of what the market will accept. And those beliefs are often wrong.
All right, on to my offer:
I am not offering any more one-off newsletter consults. But I do offer ongoing coaching about publishing a newsletter — everything from audience selection to zero-cost ways to grow.
My coaching program is expensive. It’s not right for you unless you already have some experience, or even better, an already running newsletter.
If you think this might be for you, reply to this email. Tell me a bit about who you are, what you do, and what the current situation or ambition is with your newsletter.
If I think it could be a good fit, we can get on a call and talk more.
Thinking of it now, maybe I’ll take my own advice and start charging for those calls. But that’s in the future.
For today, it’s still free. If you’re interested, you know what to do.