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How to Turn Your Old Articles into a Profitable E-mai Workshop!
by Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ

If you've written numerous articles, you can use them to further promote yourself and your business, e-zine or web site.

You can re-use your old articles by transforming them into another form of promotional tool.

And one way to re-use them is by turning them into an e-mail workshop. By doing so, you'll be able to offer a new product that will help you establish your credibility as a business owner, e-zine publisher or web site owner.

Even though you'll make use of old articles, you won't be offering a re-hash.

Why? Because once you transform your old articles and gather them together to form an e-mail workshop, you add a more focused learning dimension to them. For this, you're able to create a new and effective marketing tool.

So how do you do it? In a nutshell:

1. Gather all your articles and find a common theme among them. If you've written a number of articles aimed for beginning online business owners, these articles can make up one e-mail workshop. Your e-mail workshop can be a short one (2-4 articles) or a long one (5 or more).

2. When you've identified a common theme, arrange your articles in a way that provides some sort of logic or flow to them.

3. Assign one article as one e-mail module. If you're using 4 articles, your e-mail workshop would consist of 4 modules.

4. Take a good look at each article. Does it look like you can weave the activities within 'lessons' or will it require you to separate the 'lessons' from the 'assignments' -- information first (your re-written article) and then hands-on activities or tests after?

5. Do your articles use the 'you' voice? If not, re-write as if you're telling your friend a story. Do your articles sound formal? Even though you're 'teaching' something, strive to keep it lighthearted. Be engaging and friendly, but never be too flippant or condescending.

6. Include additional resources at the end of each module. These resources could be online references and researches, and even more intensive lessons.

7. Proofread.

8. Insert your promotional texts in the beginning, middle or end of each module. However, don't overdo this. People who will request your e-mail workshop are going to see through you once they find out that your promotional texts far outweigh the lessons and valuable instructions in your e-mail workshop. Put value over the content of your e-mail workshop first and your workshop takers will trust you and believe in your expertise.

9. Put your e-mail workshop on autoresponder and set the time each module will be sent. You can use free or fee-based autoresponders.

Before you announce your e-mail workshop, test and re-test it first. When you're certain everything is fine, go ahead and announce it.

Copyright © 2001 Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ

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