Say what you want, but Timothy Sykes is a master marketer. The young upstart money manager and stock analyst is seemingly ubiquitous these days. He’s cocky – sure, he’s pretty full of himself. But there is so much to learn from Timothy, it’s worth spending some time to understand how a master builds his investment newsletter business. I say “business” because he’s not only publishing research that investors are paying for but he’s created more revenue streams based on his reputation and performance shorting penny stocks.
Defining the core offering and build the brand
While Mr Sykes has broadened his reach into new revenue streams, he stays focused on his core offering: himself. Timothy has a knack at picking penny stocks that go down and profiting from them. He’s parlayed his money-making ability into a persona that transcends selling an investment newsletter. He’s become the go-to guy for investors looking to make profitable trades. In good markets and bad, Timothy is riding high in roiling markets and taking his game to a new level. No matter what, Tim is building out his most valuable asset, himself.
Spreading the theme
After establishing his penny stock short selling theme (see our article on how to pick a theme), Tim has established himself as a trading god persona. He’s capitalizing on his success via participation in Covestor, the leading expert investment community. He’s been a top investor there in 2008 and if this works as it’s supposed to, Tim stands to gain from additional subscription revenues as well as the potential to manage additional assets.
Tim is on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. His presence can be felt in the many channels that I interact with on a daily basis. I can’t turn (virtually) without seeing how well Tim is performing this year. It makes me not only want to subscribe to his stock newsletter but need to subscribe to his newsletter.
Expand laterally with products
Old school newsletters were pretty much basic blocking and tackling. Marketing’s goal was to sell more stock newsletters. Some broader thinking newsletter publishers also created asset management businesses to capture more business (see Al Frank Asset Management/Prudent Speculator).
Once a solid value proposition has been established (Tim is the bomb in shorting penny stocks and can seemingly do it under many different circumstances), Tim blows it out in terms of productizing his brand. In his store, he’s got training DVDs, stock alerts (his version of a newsletter), seminars and personal training sessions. The descriptions, high-res photos and the overall feeling that I can make money with some of this stuff, shows that Tim Sykes has got it going on in terms of his newsletter business.
I pulled together a summary of what I think makes Timothy Sykes so successful.
Tim’s 4 Rules for Success in Building a Investment Newsletter Business (according to New Rules of Investing)
- Have a strong value proposition (short selling penny stocks)
- Explain the value proposition (How can I make money from it)
- Explain it again and everywhere (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
- Blow it out via great packaging (training videos, alerts, seminars, etc.)
Whether you’re at idea stage with your fianncial newsletter or already publishing, it’s important to look around and learn from those who are doing some things right. Even if you can’t short penny stocks (who does that?? as well as Timothy Sykes can, you can certainly learn from what he’s done with his business.
For more tips, read more about how to start up an investment newsletter and check out our page of all the newsletter resources you’ll need to get your newsletter off the ground and making some dough.
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