Would you launch your newsletter today?

What would you say to someone considering a new venture in newsletter publishing in 2004?

Is it reasonable to admit that the salad days of the business are behind us?

I've conducted a lot of interviews with publishers and the stories of the ones who started from scratch have a certain similarity.

They had an idea and usually not very much money, and they now freely admit they knew very little about the busines of newsletter publishing. But they raised the sail and pushed away from the dock.

And, almost to a person, they now say, "I wouldn't want to try that again today" or "I don't think that would work today." (Or are they like the anti-development "conservationist" who already has his cabin on the lake?)

What comprises today's publishing mix?

So, what does work? There are still quite a few successful newsletter publishers, but they tend to be complex operations. They usually have more (sometimes many more) than one title.

Most are also available electronically, some only in PDF versions, and often are complemented by e-zine updates. Online marketing is also common.

Contemporary publishers have websites which offer both regularly updated editorial material and marketing information. They may also be offering conferences and/or audio-conferences, as well as publishing special reports.

Often their prime marketing vehicle is expensive forced free trials, with an increasing effort toward gaining site-license agreements from their larger customers.

Whew! Not really something you can do part-time out of a home office while keeping your day job. (In truth, even in those "salad days" publishing one twice-monthly newsletter, sending out renewal notices, and conducting two or three marketing campaigns a year was also a big job to handle on a part-time basis.)

The odds of success

What are the odds on a successful newsletter start-up? Some years back The Newsletter on Newsletters used to profile new titles that came across our desk and then return to them two years later for follow-up. (We used two years as a benchmark because by that time the new title had gone through two renewal series--the minimum for calling a newsletter a success.)

Pretty consistently only about 50 percent were still being published by the founder--and that's of publishers who actually rolled out their newsletters.

When I became executive director of the newsletter association 25 years ago this March, it had about 150 members. Today the total is 600+ publisher members. Membership peaked at nearly 900 in 1983 or 1984. It was the Reagan Recession; and longtime board member Joel Whitaker of Whitaker Newsletters had a theory that newsletter launches were counter-cyclical: If in tough times executives lost their jobs, along with becoming "consultants" they launched newsletters.

Over those 25 years, however, the association has sold about 5,000 new memberships, give or take a few. So why aren't they holding their Washington meetings at Constitutional Hall or the MCI Center?

I'm sure there are a few of those 4,000+ former members who decided they had learned what the association had to offer and went their own way. No doubt more than a few were offended by something the association did or didn't do and went away disgruntled. But I'd make a reasonable wager that 98+ percent of the "missing 4,000+" are no longer in (or never got into) the newsletter business.

Similarly, Howard Penn Hudson used to present a workshop around the country, "How to Start a Newsletter," and out of the dozen or so attending each session, he would invariably get one or two thanking him immensely for the workshop because it showed them why they should not start a newsletter.

So it appears the association has held onto 500 of 5,000 new members. Maybe the people who say nine of ten new newsletter ventures fail are closer to right than we would like to think.

The internet's impact

I hear many publishers saying, "I know our newsletter is good, and the renewal rates are outstanding, but it is harder and harder to sell a new sub."

The subscribers you have, besides appreciating the quality of your editorial, are folks who like getting information in the newsletter format and are used to paying, in many cases quite a bit, for it.

Concentrate on those people. Like Stephanie Oda, profiled elsewhere in this issue, concentrate on customer retention and find ways to offer them additional products and services.

The new subs you are not getting may more and more be people who believe that "information wants to be free" or that they can find whatever information they need somewhere on the internet.

It's an education issue. We need to educate internet-spoiled prospects about the validity of the old bromide that "you get what you pay for."

But it isn't all gloom. People still need niche information and can be persuaded to pay for it.

Plus, if you've been in the business awhile, you can remember the things you do not have to deal with any longer--such as production typists or outside typesetters, addressograph plates, file drawers of 4X6 cards with handwritten subscriber records. Progress can be, as Martha would say, a good thing.