A report from the trenches:
I’m working on growing my health email newsletter, which I launched a few months ago.
One part of what I’m doing is reaching out to other newsletters to offer to cross-promote. I’ve been contacting newsletters of a similar size to mine, who share some common elements with mine:
– sent out weekly
– news-related
– “proven” — make an emphasis on providing references or sources
– is made up of actual paragraphs of text that people read, rather than just a collection of links
I’ve had a few people take me up on my cross-promotion offer. But one guy, whose weekly newsletter is for people who want to “stay on top of the current issues and that like to read more than just bulletpoints,” was not interested in my offer. He wrote me to say:
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I don’t think this partnership would work out, basically because I’ve done it before and the clicks were very, very low. Also, I don’t think there’s a great overlap in the content of our two newsletters.
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As Dan Kennedy might say about that first reason, if we all stopped doing something if the first time was a fail, the human race would soon die out. There’d be no more babies born.
But what about that other reason? About content overlap?
It’s very sensible to only sell competitive duck herding products to competitive duck herding enthusiasts.
But most offers are not that one-dimensional.
The “world’s greatest list broker,” Michael Fishman, was once tasked with finding new lists to promote an investment newsletter.
Michael suggested a list of buyers of a product called Big Money Pro Golf Secrets. The publisher of the investment newsletter said, “We’ve tried golf lists before, they don’t work for us.”
Michael said, “No problem. It’s not a golf list. Think about who would buy a book called Big Money Pro Golf Secrets. I don’t care if it’s Big Money Pro Flower Secrets. Anybody who would respond to that language is somebody whose door we want to knock on.”
Point being, if you have something that’s not as narrow in appeal as duck herding, there are many dimensions along which you can expand your market, beyond the obvious topic or content or promise of what you’re selling.
By the way, Michael Fishman is somebody worth listening to. I’ve read and watched and listened to everything I could find online by the guy. I make a habit of occasionally searching the Internet to see if anything new has cropped up.
If you want a place to start, here’s a great interview that Michael Fishman did with Michael Senoff of Hard to Find Seminars:
https://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Michael_Fishman_Interview.htm