How Muslims can start a profitable one-person business... without risking a penny upfront - PART 8
How to start a profitable newsletter for absolutely no cost.
You should now have a solid foundation to build your information based business. Today’s part will show you how to start the easiest information based business: newsletters. Every successful business will require certain things to be in place for it to work. I’ve tried to make this as easy as possible by writing them as exercises in each part of this series. If you haven’t done them yet please go back and review from PART 1. I promise you—doing the exercises will make your life 10x easier once your business is launched. You wouldn’t learn how to cook after you opened a restaurant. I’m giving you the recipes you need so you can earn a second income stream writing about the things you love… and all with free tools and services. PART 1 is free for everyone so go and have a look now if you haven’t started already.
Newsletters are a great, low-cost way to build an audience. There are also dozens of ways to monetize newsletters so you can make money without ever having paid a penny upfront. Growing an email list is the key to success with a newsletter. It allows you to create a community off social media. Your audience have given you permission to contact them directly in their inboxes—that’s powerful. And email is the second most read form of content after text messages.
No matter what your business is… even non information based… building an email list is a non-negotiable. It is the cheapest and most effective way to regularly communicate with your audience. It’s practically free advertising and you can make it as personal as you like. Start now so you already have a growing audience for every single product or project you launch. Everyone reading this will benefit from starting a newsletter today.
The next few parts of this guide will go over how to use Substack as your newsletter platform. I highly recommend using Substack to build your newsletter because it’s free to use yet allows you to make money right away and send as many emails as you like. It’s the choice of many popular writers such as Mehdi Hasan, Scott Ritter and Caitlin Johnstone. Some stats:
Substack has more than 20 million monthly active subscribers.
Substack hit 2 million paid subscriptions.
More than 17,000 writers get paid on Substack.
The top 10 authors on Substack collectively make $25 million per year.
The best part about newsletters (and information based businesses in general) is the fact your subscribers have put trust in you with or without buying something from you. They want to receive your content and are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer. Some things to consider:
Platform: There’s no shortage of choices when it comes to which platform will host your newsletter. I’m going to use Substack (you’re reading this on Substack) in this guide because it’s absolutely free to use and has lot’s great features that help you grow your audience.
Audience: Who are you writing for? Use your notes from the early parts of this guide. Substack’s features help you find subscribers through recommendations and content sharing.
Content: Substack allows you to send as many short or long emails you want. You can include images and video and can even host podcasts. You can also organise your business into sections like a real newspaper. You should already have a huge bank of content ideas—if you did all the parts in this guide of course.
Monetization: Substack allows you to take on paid subscriptions. You can offer exclusive content to paying members or simply to receive support from your fans. You can have sponsors and affiliate products and all other ways of making money on your Substack.
Design: Though not the most customizable, Substack offers ample opportunity to make your publication unique and stand out from the crowd. I actually like this because one of the things that slows a business down is spending too much time on a “perfect’ design—Substack is all about the content.
Business tools: On top of making money, you can use Substack features such as threads and chats to communicate with your audience.
Here are the basic steps to starting a successful newsletter. Use your notes from all the previous parts of this guide to help you.
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