Gone are the days where reputation alone drives sales for an investment newsletter. Successful newsletter publishers understand that it’s become much harder to get investors willing to pony up a couple hundred dollars per year for stock research. One technique that well-marketed investment newsletters are using to drive more sales is by giving away a lot of good content.
Why does giving away content get sales?
Buyers like to kick the tires: I do much of my investment research work online — for free. Yahoo Finance has a tremendous amount of content. To get me to pay up for something, you’ve got to convince me that you are a) making my life easier by helping me find stuff and/or b) providing me with a type or quality of research I can’t find elsewhere. The only way a customer can feel confident that they would find value in your work is by sampling it.
So, you’ve to to give it away. Give away a recent issue. Give away a 3 month trial subscription. Provide value for free. Give away a yearly overview piece highlighting some trends you expect to see. Give it away in the form of ebooks like Brian does.
Buyers want more in perceived value: Consumers have been spoiled by all the free content on the Internet. Those are the rules of the game. Your prospective subscribers want to feel like they are receiving tons of value in return for their hard earned research dollars. That means, a monthly newsletter, trading updates, portfolio moves, interviews, and anything else you can load ‘em up with.
Good free content must mean great premium content, right?: By segmenting content, you provide your readers with a choice. They can stick with what they know — the great, free content they’re receiving — or pay up for something unknown to them that must be of better quality. The fact that there is an option to pay up immediately positions your premium content into the mysterious world of the better. I mean, you’re charging for it. It must be better. As users consume your free stuff, they will always be thinking about the greater value you’ve placed behind the pay wall.
Free content doesn’t cannibalize premium
Some of us might be thinking: hey, giving away too much good, free stuff doesn’t incentivize users enough to pay up. There is some truth in this statement. I mean, why would I pay up for your investment newsletter if I’m getting such great free content. This requires careful planning. The free content you give away should stand on its own. But there must always be a reason to upgrade subscriptions to premium and that means doing better. Going deeper and providing a richer experience.
3 tips for giving away free content
- Segment free content like you do premium: Just like we segment free content from premium content, I believe there are different types of free content. Some of it is worth more than others. Some of it should be made freely available, published out onto your investment blog. For higher-quality, more in-depth pieces like ebooks, ask for something back from your subscribers. Like an email address. Like answering a survey. Then load up that precious email address (and it is precious, don’t squander it) into your autoresponder program like my recommendation, StreamSend or another email services program.
- Showcase your expertise: Whether it’s an investing style or industry, you probably are a whiz at something. Take this experience and knowledge and put it together in an expansive overview piece for your readers. Show that you completely understand the innerworkings of a vertical industry. By showcasing how smart you are at an industry level and giving that away for free, you’re telling prospects that you probably know how to run a portfolio made up of stocks in that industry. As we said above, prospects will pay for value — vertical knowledge of an industry is invaluable.
- Be creative: This opportunity to create valuable free content has tremendous power to bring in far-reaching readers. Do something creative. Something that’s not run-of-the-mill. Give it away as a guest post to other blogs in the industry you’re writing about. Submit it to top investing magazines. Use it as your calling card and a way to rise up above the noise. Others will link to it while others will talk about it. Whatever they do, you’ll expand your reach big time.
Don’t forget to check out our page of all the newsletter resources you’ll need to get your newsletter off the ground and making some dough and subscribe to receive free, value-added updates from us.
