How To Write A Newsletter (Plus, How To Make $13,000 In One Month)

by John McIntyre

If you want to know how to write a newsletter that brings in truckloads of customers (and cash!), you’ve come to the right place. In this article, you’ll also discover how an ordinary guy went from $0 to $13,000 in ONE short month, thanks to an email newsletter that used a cheeky little story.

Imagine having no traffic, no leads, and no income to sell your high ticket service.

It almost seems like there’s nothing there, right?

Well, with even a little bit of a traffic, you can start earning actual money if you can convert that traffic onto a big ticket offer.

Let me tell you the story of how I taught a business owner how to write a newsletter.

He went from zero to $13,000 in just one month with the simple techniques I’m about to share with you.

First, let me back up.

I’m a dog trainer.

When I first got into dog training as a business owner, I was desperate.

I knew how to train dogs but I was working in a dead-end factory job for $12 an hour. My wife was at home with our first baby and pregnant with the second. We were on the verge of bankruptcy. I was a three time college dropout with work experience that typically ended poorly.

It was bad!

Anyway, dog training was my only marketable skill, and I HAD to figure something out…

So I studied the heck out of marketing and rapidly turned that dog training business into a success, banking six figures in the first year.

Several years later, I had other dog trainers knocking on my door to learn how to do what I’d done.

That’s when I met Felix, a dog trainer in New York.

He was a great dog trainer but was plagued by the disease that many business owners succumb to…

…he was great at his job, but terrible at marketing and selling it.

Whenever I enter into a consulting relationship, I look to see what assets the business has that are being under-utilized.

While Felix’s business didn’t have a lot, he did have a website that was receiving traffic. It wasn’t a lot of traffic, but it was something I could work with.

However, the traffic wasn’t converting into leads.

Once I saw the website, I could see why.

It’s the same two errors I see on almost every site that I start working with:

  1. No calls to action or weak calls to action and not enough of them
  2. No character and personality of the business owner on the site

Too many small business owners get too corporate on their websites.

They start listing what they do (not a bad thing) but they forget to tell about who they are.

And whether you’re a dog trainer, professional copywriter, plumber, or small business consultant the people that are looking to hire you want to know WHO YOU ARE before they’re going to let you near their dog, near their sales letter, inside their home to fix their pipes, or near their business.

So what did I do?

I made two simple changes.

Changes that you can do to just about any site; your website or your client’s website.

First, I added some opt in forms.

One in the upper right of the page and then a couple banners in the content itself.

All of the opt ins and banners pushed the visitor towards getting a free evaluation.

We opted not to do a free report or video series. People that came to his page wanted help NOW with their dog. They didn’t want a free report… they were at a completely different stage in their buying cycle.

They wanted to know who this guy was, what he could do for them, and what the next step was. That’s why the opt in for a free evaluation was perfect for them.

The next change I did was also pretty simple…

I wrote a long form newsletter style page.

It wasn’t sales-y at all.

It was the type of story that I would tell in a newsletter or even in a book.

I simply told the story of how his dog training program came about. The story highlighted the moment when a client was in a pickle and asked him to do something unique. It explained how he overcame that client’s problem by designing the current dog training program that he now offered.

That’s it.

If you were looking for groundbreaking and complex, this is not it.

I’m able to help people grow businesses but I am not a guy who understands complex analytics or give you deep insights into psychological behavior of consumers.

All I did was write a story that put the prospect into the shoes of someone who had been there and how THEIR problem had been solved.

People were then able to relate with Felix and his programs. They related with his solution. They saw the exact process that they could go through to get their problems solved.

And then I simply gave multiple opportunities to get in touch with several strong calls to action.

Is this something you can do?

You betcha.

Felix’s two main programs were $1,000 and $2,000.

He had been struggling for years with earning enough money and had even been forced to work a full time job and make dog training his side passion.

The month we started working together he made nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

One month after we had implemented those changes, he generated $13,000 in revenue.

No extra traffic.

No ad spend.

Simply capitalizing on the traffic he already had.

I’ve since run this exact same system on several websites of other dog trainers and other service professionals.

And I’ve found it to work every single time. It works especially well in industries where competition isn’t terribly savvy at marketing. It also works great in selling high ticket services.

If you’re looking to do this in an industry that is competitive and has a lot of marketing savvy, I’ve also found that this will work. However, it needs to be combined with more sophisticated email marketing and analytics and follow up techniques.

Now here’s the final rub…

Whenever I present this method to folks I typically hear ‘no duh…we’re already doing that’ and then I go look at their site only to find it riddled with corporate speak and a lack of calls to action.

Don’t let the simplicity of these techniques fool you.

Try them and see the results for yourself. Or be overwhelmed by competitors who DO use these techniques.


This is a copywriting for dummies guest post by Ty Brown. Ty tripled his business in two and a half years using stories and storytelling. Now he speaks, writes,  coaches, and consults with other businesses on how to do the same. Find him at Ty the Speaker.

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