What will I be doing?

Newsletters inform and promote to a variety of readerships. Hospitals use newsletters to promote their services with publicity written as news stories. Companies promote their products and services to customers and prospects with newsletters. Associations promote themselves and their members with newsletters. A newsletter publisher designs, researches, writes and produces newsletters for business clients for distribution to their customers. Publishing a newsletter requires writing, editing, producing and printing news documents for a target group.

What will I need to start?

As a newsletter publisher, you may design and write the newsletter but leave production to a desktop publishing service. If you do your own production, you'll need a computer, a printer and desktop publishing software. You'll also need some training or experience using these tools.

To publish newsletters for others, you'll need writing, printing and promotional skills. Many of these skills can be developed as an employee of a newsletter service or in the promotions department of a large company.

Who will my customers be?

Most newsletters are published by and on behalf of business and business groups. Those done for smaller charities and individuals are produced by volunteers. So you can volunteer to produce a newsletter to develop the skills you need to offer a newsletter publishing service for money.

How much should I charge?

The hourly rate for newsletter publishing is $30 to $70, but most are priced by the issue or the page. For example, a newsletter publisher may research, write, produce and mail company newsletters for $500 to $1,000 per published page (plus printing and postage costs). That means the publisher is estimating 15 to 30 hours a published page at about $35 an hour.

How much will I make?

Marketing will take up 20 to 30 percent of your time once your business is established. Overhead expenses will take 30 to 40 percent of what you make for computer software and supplies, office expenses, taxes and other necessities. A successful newsletter publisher can earn a net income of $25,000 to $40,000 a year or more.

How can I get started?

If you don't have lots of experience, volunteer to produce newsletters for one or two of your favorite charities or an organization you belong to. They will pay costs while you donate your labor. If you do this, make sure you specify how long you are willing to make this donation. Depending on the group's budget, you may be able to ask a small fee for future work.

Contact the Newsletter Publishers Association (800-356-9302).

The SIC code for newsletter publishers is 2721-04.

How can I use computers to increase profits?

Many professional newsletters are now delivered exclusively online. There are no printed versions. Why? Because the information they deliver is outdated by the time that it is published using traditional means. Instead, online newsletters can immediately deliver fresh information via e-mail and Internet Web sites. All that's needed are common e-mail programs and some understanding of HTML (HyperText Markup Language.