If you’ve written numerous articles and have a folder full, just sitting on your hard drive, you can use them again, to further promote yourself and your business, e-zine or web site, by turning them into email courses.

You can re-use your old articles by transforming them into another form of promotional tool, by  turning them into e-mail courses. 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.

Once you transform your old articles and gather them together, to form an e-mail course, 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 this? Well, in a nutshell:

1. Gather all your articles and find a common theme among them. If you’ve written a number of articles aimed at beginner online business owners, these articles can make up one e-mail course. Your e-mail course can be a short one, of around 2-4 articles, or a longer one, of 5 or more.

2. Once 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, or follow up. If you’re using 4 articles, your e-mail course would consist of 4 modules, or follow ups.

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?” That is information first, from your re-written article and then hands-on activities, or tests afterwards.

5. Are your articles written in the abstract, like a newspaper report? If so,  re-write them as if you’re telling your friend a story. Speak to one person in your text. 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 some additional resources at the end of each module, or follow up. These resources could be online references and researches, and even more intensive lessons.

7. You could insert your affiliate links and word the articles to recommend the products, but don’t overdo this. Ensure the links are to relevant products, or sites..

8. Proofread your works. Never send out articles, or mails with mistakes.

9. People who will request your e-mail course 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 course. Put value over the content of your e-mail course first and your workshop takers will trust you and believe in your expertise.

10. Put your e-mail course on auto-responder and set the time each module or follow up will be sent. One lesson each day, is a good interval. You can use free, or fee-based auto-responders. I recommend Aweber.

Before you announce your e-mail course, test and re-test it thoroughly. When you’re certain everything is fine, go ahead and announce it.

This is a novel way to get further exposure out of your old articles. If you have articles on different subjects, try to make up worthwhile courses on several niche topics. At the end of one course, ask the recipient to consider taking another course.

Get a month free trial of Aweber, before committing to the service. Get it here: http://www.dersalsites.com/aweber/

Derek Robson is a South African Internet marketer. He has a vision of empowering all fellow South Africans and other non U.S folk, to have equal opportunity and success on the internet, by finding solutions to the many obstacles facing them. He is a syndicated article writer. He and his wife Sally, have started a string of sites, resources, courses and articles, as part of Dersalsites. For daily postings and articles, on Internet marketing, South African online business, list building, affiliate marketing, article marketing, blogging, seo, the law of attraction, rugby and other general topics, visit Derek at: http://dersalsites.com/southafricanbusiness/  

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