Adviser dispatches

For small businesses, including financial advisory firms, newsletters are getting to be like opinions — everybody has one.

Registered investment adviser Matthew V. Pixa wanted a monthly newsletter of his own, but he wasn’t happy with the practice of using a professionally prepared product.

“I looked at vendors who offer newsletter templates,” said Mr. Pixa, president of My Portfolio Guide LLC. “But when an adviser sends that out, you can tell he had nothing to do with it.”

Mr. Pixa thought that readers would prefer a homemade product.

He was right.

The first issue of the guide, which took Mr. Pixa “at least a week and a lot of elbow grease to put together,” went out last month.

Now that he has a template and editorial plan, future issues should take about five hours to prepare, he said.

Mr. Pixa sent it to his 80 or so clients and to another 700 prospects and other professionals with whom he works.

It was a big hit, and he thinks it is because the content reflects him and his practice.

Mr. Pixa created a chart to track performance of a variety of his investments.

One article explained technical analysis for the layman, complete with illustrations.

Mr. Pixa included an update on his recovery from an operation to repair his hip joints, which were damaged by years of athletic competition.

More than a quarter of his clients responded with a call or e-mail. Nonclients also got in touch, and several said that what they liked the most about it was that it was obviously not boilerplate.

Only one recipient asked to be taken off the list.

“Some of my readers are very passive, and some are newshounds, but they all said if it was written by me, they wanted to see it,” Mr. Pixa said.