work from home publishing your investment newsletter
Financial newsletters have been around as long as investors have been investing. What used to be distributed via snail mail and then the fax have migrated to email and blogs. As publishing costs continue to spiral downward, the barriers to entry keep getting lower for those wanting to sell their investment advice. That said, readers have been accustomed to get relatively good investment content for free. So, it’s a marketing game trying to convince readers to pay up for your genius. As we’ve been discussing tips on running an investment newsletter business, I realized we hadn’t really captured why someone would want to get into the business. Hence, this post in which we give 5 (there are many) reasons why someone would want to saddle up and start selling their own financial newsletter .
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- Work from home: Let’s face it. Most jobs stink. Hours are bad and spending time in useless meetings keeps us away from the things we really want to be doing like spending time with friends. Enjoying our families. Writing a financial newsletter can be done everywhere. ETF Digest’s prolific David Fry lives in South America. Well-regarded Bill Cara is on some island in the Caribbean. Heck, all you need is a computer — you can really do it from anywhere.
- Little overhead: Unlike starting a manufacturing business, publishing an investment newsletter requires almost no overhead. You’ll need a website ($10 for the URL, $10/month for hosting and use free blogging software like Wordpress). After that, you’ll want to use an email service provider like Constant Contact, Aweber, or Streamsend to manage your emailings and ensure delivery. These cost a few dollars per month. You’ll probably need a graphic designer to create a template for your monthly mailings (recommended). This costs a few hundred dollars. But you’re done. No fancy office. Everything can be run via your home desk dashboard.
- Good money: Read our recent post about how much money you can make with your investment newsletter business. The potential to make a good six-figure income is definitely there. It won’t be easy but you can do quite well. Also, think about it:the turmoil in financial markets is leading to mergers and bankruptcies of the best investment research houses. Read more about how the bailouts are affecting investment research. There is a lot less (good) research out there for investors to get their hands on. I smell an opportunity.
- Career advancement in finance: Listen, making good money by working at home part time could be what you dream about. For others, the investment newsletter business may be a good source of ancillary income. For others, the newsletter may be the launching pad through which you land a job in the investment community. When I worked as an analyst in a multinational hedge fund, we interviewed new applicants by asking them to make an investment case for a particular security. By writing a newsletter, much like a graphic designer does, you’ve published some of your best work to the web. That carries cache when you look to land a job in the investment field. MBA students, pay heed as you enter a Wall Street and hedge fund workforce that is currently contracting.
- Market yourself as an investment advisor: Check out some of the best and oldest newsletters out there. It’s no secret that newsletters like the Al Frank’s Prudent Speculator and Jim Oberweis’s Oberweis Report are part of larger asset management businesses. Investment managers use a subscription newsletter as marketing and PR opportunities to attract new investors. If you’re an independent financial advisor, consider launching a newsletter as part of your marketing plan.
Check our more of our great newsletter resources.
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