Newsletter Resources

Welcome to New Rules of Investing’s Resource page full of all the resources you’ll need to devise, write, publish and distribute your investment newsletter.  To add your company or to obtain a featured listing, email me to let me know.

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Newsletter Management Services: you’ll need a 3rd party service like the ones listed below to manage your email lists, automate trials to your investment newsletter, and help deliver your newsletter beyond the spam filter.


Featured Listing: I’ve used StreamSend for years to manage my outbound email marketing.  You absolutely need a firm like StreamSend to ensure that your marketing emails and newsletter copies don’t end up getting lost in spam filters.  StreamSend is a great solution to grow your circulation, manage your subscribers, and increase your advertising revenue.  Easy to use templates with a trigger-based messaging system I use to send free trial issues out to prospective buyers.

ConstantContact
Aweber
iContact

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Copywriting Resources: learn how to write great copy for your blog and newsletter and how to make people feel the need to subscribe.

CopyBlogger

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Web Marketing: Marketing is 90% of the sale and these resources provide real advice for the real world and will make you a better marketer. Selling is not easy — the better marketer you are, the easier you’ll close the sale.

Problogger
Chris Brogan
Gary Veynerchuk

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Blogging Software: You’ll need a blog as your home on the Internet and a place to prove to prospective subscribers how smart you really are.  These are the best blogging platforms around.

WordPress
Blogger
Typepad

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Project Management and Collaboration Software: Publishing a newsletter is a big commitment and takes a lot of planning and execution.  You’ll need project management software to stay on top of all your activities.

Basecamp
Featured Listing: We use Basecamp to manage all facets of our newsletters and it’s become an indispensable tool for our business.  We use it to get our whole team collaborating on our monthly publishing cycle, complete with team to-do lists, file hosting, messaging and deadlines.  It’s a great way to manage your business.
Jive’s Clearspace

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Contact Management Software: Publishing is just the first step.  You’ll need to create distribution partnerships, enlist sales help and contact prospects to close the sale.  Use these software packages to stay organized and track all your conversations.

Highrise
Featured Listing: Highrise is our choice for contact management.  While we use StreamSend (see above) to manage our email list contacts, we use Highrise to manage everything else.  It’s got an incredible fast interface to input contacts, business coordinates, and details of all conversations.  Think of it as an ACT 2.0, slimmed down for speed and ease over the Internet.
Act
Zoho CRM
Goldmine

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Billing programs: You’ll need to process credit cards after you close the sale.  Each one of these payment platforms addresses payments a bit differently.  Spend the time to figure out which one is right for your newsletter business.

Paypal
Google Checkout
Amazon Payments

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Newsletter Distribution Companies: You may end up partnering with one of these companies to help promote your newsletter.  Regardless, these are a couple of firms acting as clearinghouses for financial newsletters.

Forbes Newsletters
InvestorPlace
Taipan Publishing Group
Agora Financial

  • http://newrulesofinvesting.com/2009/01/07/how-to-start-an-investment-newsletter-pros-and-cons-of-publishing-a-portfolio/ How to start an investment newsletter: pros and cons of publishing a portfolio « New Rules of Investing

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  • http://newrulesofinvesting.com/2008/12/13/how-to-start-an-investment-newsletter-learn-from-timothy-sykes/ How to start an investment newsletter: learn from Timothy Sykes « New Rules of Investing

    [...] Newsletter Resources [...]

  • http://newrulesofinvesting.com/2009/01/15/being-patient-with-your-investment-newsletter-as-it-grows-revenues/ Being patient with your investment newsletter as it grows revenues « New Rules of Investing

    [...] Newsletter Resources [...]

  • http://newrulesofinvesting.com/2009/01/19/investment-newsletter-all-stars-zachary-scheidt-zachstockscom/ Investment Newsletter All-Stars: Zachary Scheidt, ZachStocks.com « New Rules of Investing

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  • http://newrulesofinvesting.com/2009/01/20/how-to-start-an-investment-newsletter-give-away-content-to-get-more-sales/ How to start an investment newsletter: give away content to get more sales « New Rules of Investing

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  • http://newrulesofinvesting.com/2009/02/05/how-to-start-an-investment-newsletter-choosing-a-payment-platform/ How to start an investment newsletter: choosing a payment platform « New Rules of Investing

    [...] Newsletter Resources [...]

  • http://unknownstockreport.blogspot.com/ eric

    I went to the four sites you mentioned above but don’t see any indication they market third party newsletters.

    Forbes Newsletters
    InvestorPlace
    Taipan Publishing Group
    Agora Financial

  • http://unknownstockreport.blogspot.com/ eric

    I went to the four sites you mentioned above but don’t see any indication they market third party newsletters.

    Forbes Newsletters
    InvestorPlace
    Taipan Publishing Group
    Agora Financial

  • http://www.tradestreaming.com Tradestreaming

    Hi Eric,
    Thanks for your comments. They all market 3rd party newsletters. Take Forbes for example — any newsletter that doesn’t have Forbes in the title, is run by someone else. If you want to email me offline at zack.miller at gmail.com I can explain in more depth.

  • http://www.newrulesforinvesting.com Zack Miller

    Hi Eric,
    Thanks for your comments. They all market 3rd party newsletters. Take Forbes for example — any newsletter that doesn’t have Forbes in the title, is run by someone else. If you want to email me offline at zack.miller at gmail.com I can explain in more depth.

  • http://www.mdcapitalmanagement.net/ Matt Darrah

    OK maybe I am not too web savy, but can you help me with something?

    I know that I need a minimum of three (3) services to start a newsletter

    1) Website
    2) Billing Program
    3) Newsletter Management Program

    My question is how do they interface with each other?

    For instance, let’s say someone reads my blog or seeking alpha, and they go to my website. Are there specific webhosting programs you recommend that work well with the billing programs or will any hosting service work? If someone subscribes by paying with my billing service, will it automatically tell by newsletter management service to begin sending them the newsletter?

    Thanks and great site!

    Matt

  • http://www.mdcapitalmanagement.net Matt Darrah

    OK maybe I am not too web savy, but can you help me with something?

    I know that I need a minimum of three (3) services to start a newsletter

    1) Website
    2) Billing Program
    3) Newsletter Management Program

    My question is how do they interface with each other?

    For instance, let’s say someone reads my blog or seeking alpha, and they go to my website. Are there specific webhosting programs you recommend that work well with the billing programs or will any hosting service work? If someone subscribes by paying with my billing service, will it automatically tell by newsletter management service to begin sending them the newsletter?

    Thanks and great site!

    Matt

  • http://www.tradestreaming.com Tradestreaming

    Great questions, Matt and thanks for reading.
    Exactly correct — you need a minimum of three services to run a newsletter:
    1) Website
    2) Billing Program
    3) Newsletter Management Program

    There isn’t one company that manages all three of these services but most services are built as such that they can interface or plug-in to one another. We’ve suggested using WordPress.org as your website content management system (it’s easy, well-built and free). Any webhost worth anything will offer wordpress hosting and anyone, regardless of technical skills, should be able to manage their website via WordPress. If you use a newsletter management program (really, it’s an email management service), like AWeber, I believe that you can automatically program (an autoresponder) the paid newsletter product to go out based on a user’s actrivity, like payment or submission of email address.

    In the beginning, I’m pretty sure that your consumption will be as such that you can manually send out the paid product to paid subscribers. That’s what I did in the beginning.

    Even using Google Checkout, which I recommend for its ease, you’ll have to plug in some code and manually approve credit cards — so, there’s some manual work involved.

    Hit me a zack.miller at gmail.com if you want to chat more about this.

  • http://www.newrulesforinvesting.com Zack Miller

    Great questions, Matt and thanks for reading.
    Exactly correct — you need a minimum of three services to run a newsletter:
    1) Website
    2) Billing Program
    3) Newsletter Management Program

    There isn’t one company that manages all three of these services but most services are built as such that they can interface or plug-in to one another. We’ve suggested using WordPress.org as your website content management system (it’s easy, well-built and free). Any webhost worth anything will offer wordpress hosting and anyone, regardless of technical skills, should be able to manage their website via WordPress. If you use a newsletter management program (really, it’s an email management service), like AWeber, I believe that you can automatically program (an autoresponder) the paid newsletter product to go out based on a user’s actrivity, like payment or submission of email address.

    In the beginning, I’m pretty sure that your consumption will be as such that you can manually send out the paid product to paid subscribers. That’s what I did in the beginning.

    Even using Google Checkout, which I recommend for its ease, you’ll have to plug in some code and manually approve credit cards — so, there’s some manual work involved.

    Hit me a zack.miller at gmail.com if you want to chat more about this.