A reader replies to my email yesterday and asks about starting a NEW project:
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I’ve taken a break for a while from all emails and only just resubscribed. So I was wondering how your health project that you mentioned a while back is going.
I ask as I’m thinking of starting an affiliate content site in the sleep market but the clickbank Spark program kind of advises against pursuing health related topics unless you’re a health professional due to Google’s bias towards sites of professionals and organisations.
I was just wondering if this is good advice in your experience. I find picking a topic harder than the process of internet marketing itself.
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I can only share my personal experiences and observations, based on writing and running a health newsletter.
As I said in my email from a couple days ago, I am no health expert.
But my health newsletter is growing and has good engagement.
There seems to be solid content-to-audience fit.
In spite of writing it pseudonymously, I am even building up a kind of authority in the field.
And yet, I am very seriously considering shutting down my health newsletter, soon, unless something drastic changes.
My trouble is the offers I’m making to my audience.
As I said during “How I do it” presentation back in February, about how I write and profit from this daily newsletter about marketing:
One of the big lessons I’ve learned is you want to have a high-ticket offer as the bedrock of your email newsletter. Something that is reliably worth hundreds, or preferably thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to you.
I don’t have any such offer for my health newsletter. As for affiliate offers, at least in my corner of the health market, they will never pay out that kind of money.
I still have not given up on my health newsletter. I’ve witnessed over the past couple days at the conference in Palm Beach how much interest and frankly money there is in the space.
I’m just not sure that building up an email newsletter, and then trying to figure out how to monetize it a few nickles or dimes at a time, is the right way to go.
So if you don’t have your own high-priced info product that you’ve created or licensed… if you don’t have a service that you charge thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for… if you don’t have some kind of owned subscription that you know will on average net you hundreds or preferably thousands of dollars for each new customer…
… then my advice is to get that sorted first.
On the other hand, if you do have a good offer — your own services, or high-ticket products, or membership in a cult — then an email newsletter can be immensely valuable.
But you probably already know that, because I keep repeating it.
And you probably also know about my Simple Money Emails course, and how it can help you write an email newsletter, because I keep repeating that.
But if you could benefit from Simple Money Emails, and you still haven’t done so, you can get more info about this training here: