(Beer) Distributor Productivity Letter: "Instead of charging $1,000+ a day to consult with one wholesaler at a time, why not publish a newsletter that delves into productivity topics in detail, and charge half that for the entire year? And why not limit circulation, so only a select few can benefit from the ideas that are generated? Thus the monthly Distributor Productivity Letter was born. Unlike other newsletters, it does not cover news. It only covers the operational aspects of running a distributorship productively. In the end, it strives to save you a nickel-a-case a year, and circulation is limited to 500 wholesalers at a time."

Vertical B2B online offers based on mutualized research and expertise make a lot of sense. If there's enough volume to make it up for the loss in unit value, everyone stands to benefit: customers pay a lot less than for ad hoc consulting, while category experts can gross more money overall. The key is to reach the right buyers and establish credibility in order to quickly get enough subscribers to go beyond break-even. Here's the well-known mixture of reach and richness brought by the Internet put at the service of fee-based business models.

The additional marketing advantage for such offers, is that they increase competitive pressure by spreading best practices rapidly accross their industry. People who don't buy their research risk to fall behind, not knowing what everyone else already is aware of. Sounds like a "can you afford not to know this stuff?" pitch. Here "circulation is limited to 500 wholesalers at a time". Well I don't know anything about beer wholesalers, but a 500 "limit" (while the NBWA has 2,300 members) seems a smart way to say "don't be among the unhappy few left-outs".

Link found on ContentBlog.