An ezine, also know as an email magazine, online publication
or electronic newsletter is simply a newsletter available via
email and/or online. There are hundreds of thousands of
e-zines on various subjects available on the Internet free of
charge.
Having your own publication will not only enable you to keep
in touch with your visitors, but it will help you build a huge
database of targeted customers. If you've been marketing
on the Internet, then you know it may take several contacts
with a prospective customer before closing a sale. What
better way to make those contacts, without spamming...
In addition, you can eventually make a nice income selling
sponsor advertising and classified ads.
You can publish an ezine completely free. There are many list
servers such as; Egroups (http://www.egroups.com), Onelist
(http://www.onelist.com) & Listbot (http://www.listbot.com)
that will host your list (e-zine) free of charge. In addition,
they take care of all your subscription requests so you won't
have to. To use one of these list servers, simply sign up and
instantly create your list. They will provide you with a
subscribe and unsubscribe email address and even a list owner
email address, all completely free. The only disadvantage is
that each posting will contain an ad for their service. This
is really a small price to pay for such a great service. If
you're just starting out, utilizing one of these free
services can simplify the process.
- CONTENT -
A quality ezine should contain at least some original content.
Don't let the fear of writing intimidate you. If your ezine's
focus is on an area of your expertise you shouldn't have any
problems coming up with something to write about. If you've
been out of school for a while, you might want to freshen up
on your writing and grammar skills. Visit any of the sites
listed below for a crash course.
Garbl's Writing Resources Online -
"http://pweb.netcom.com/~garbl1/writing.html
11 Rules of Writing -
http://www.junketstudies.com/rulesofw/
Exploring English -
http://www.shared-visions.com/explore/english/
Simpler Words And Phrases -
http://www.smartbiz.com/sbs/arts/tpl5.htm
Here are some additional resources for obtaining free content
for your publication. Before using any articles, make sure
you review the author's copyrights and make certain the article
may be published. If you're not sure, contact the author and
request permission to publish their article. Most articles for
publication can be used in your ezine free of charge as long
as the authors credits or resource box is included.
- FREE CONTENT -
Web-Source.net - Free Articles
http://www.web-source.net/free_articles.htm
Article Announce - Writer & Publisher Exchange
http://www.web-source.net/article-announce
Subscribe: article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com
E-ZineZ.com -
http://www.e-zinez.com/
Marketing & Advertising Supersite -
http://drnunley.com/
BizWeb2000 -
http://bizweb2000.com/articles.htm
Success Doctor -
http://success-doctor.com/archive.htm
IdeaMarketers -
http://www.ideamarketers.com/
- FOCUS -
Your e-zine should focus on a subject in which you have a
great deal of knowledge. If you have a web site, you should
also take into consideration the focus of your web site; i.e.,
If your web site's focus is on Internet Marketing, you
wouldn't want to have your e-zines focus to be on "Animals
& Pets," you would want it to be on "Internet Marketing."
- TITLE -
The title of your e-zine is one of the most important decisions
you can make. Many e-zine listing sites list their e-zines in
alphabetical order. By selecting a title such as, "Advertising
Secrets" instead of "Working Online," your publication will be
listed towards the top instead of the bottom. This will give
your publication an advantage over the publications listed
below yours. Potential subscribers will see your e-zine first
and be more apt to subscribe.
Your title should sound intriguing and tell your potential
subscriber exactly what your publication is all about.
- PUBLISHING SCHEDULE -
You can publish your e-zine as often as you like. When you
first begin you may want to only publish once a month until
your subscriber base has grown. You can always increase
your publication to bi-weekly or weekly whenever you'd like.
- SIZE -
There has been a great deal of controversy over the size of
an e-zine. In my humble opinion, size really doesn't matter.
If you publish a quality e-zine with a great deal of content,
I don't feel that your subscribers will care what size it is
within reason. You should; however, take into consideration
that your subscribers may not want to download it. If it is
too large, America Online will automatically turn it into a
file attachment. Consider either condensing it or separating
it into "Part One" and "Part Two."
- WEB SITE -
It isn't imperative that your e-zine have its own web site,
however, it is HIGHLY recommended. Having your own site will
enable you to give your visitors an in depths look at exactly
what your publication is all about. You can include
highlights of upcoming editions, polls, archives and a
subscription box to allow your visitors to easily subscribe.
- ADVERTISING -
You should probably wait to begin selling advertising space
until you have at least 1000 subscribers. You can sell ad
space for $25 for every 1000 subscribers you have. There
is a lot of advertising competition to take into consideration
when selling ad space so, you may want to begin selling your
ad space at a lower rate or offer special incentives; i.e.,
Buy two weeks of advertising for $20 get the third week free.
Try to limit the number of ads per issue to ten and place them
in the center of your publication. This will not only ensure
adequate exposure for your advertisers, but your subscribers
won't be overwhelmed with advertising as well.
- STYLE & FORMAT -
The appearance of your e-zine is one of the most important
factors in determining your e-zine's success. Getting
subscribers is the easy part. Keeping them will entail a little
work. A professionally written, well designed, content rich
publication will ensure your e-zines success.
When formatting your e-zine, keep in mind there are many
different types of email programs and they are not all created
equal. As a general rule, to accommodate all of your
subscribers and their different email programs, it is probably
best to write your e-zine in plain text. As with email programs,
word processing programs are not all created equal as well.
Your regular word processing programs are great for writing
business letters, sales letters, etc., but not a good choice
for writing your newsletter due to formatting issues.
A good program to consider using is Notepad. This program
should already be on your desktop.
Another consideration of great importance is your line length.
If your text lines are too long, some email programs that aren't
capable of viewing long text lines will force the last few words
to the next line and your text will be viewed like this:
When formatting your publication your text
length is
one of the most important factors in
determining
how professional your publication will appear.
As a rule, a generally safe line-length is 65 characters
(including spaces).
As you begin typing your text, when you reach 65 characters,
use a hard carriage return. (Hit Enter)
If you'd rather not have to worry about hard carriage returns,
you might want to use a program called "TextPad".
http://www.textpad.com/. This program can be set to
automatically insert a hard carriage return when your text
has reached 65 characters.
When you're ready to begin, make an outline for the contents
of your e-zine to enable you to create a template.
After you've written your publication and you're ready to
copy & paste it into your email program, make certain your
email preferences are set to allow at least 65 characters of
text per line. If your preferences are set for less, when you
paste your text to be mailed it will appear to be improperly
formatted.
It is highly recommended that you send a sample copy of your
publication to yourself prior to sending it to your subscribers.
By viewing your publication in this manner you will get an idea
of what your subscribers will see and it will enable you to
correct any formatting problems.
Publishing your own e-zine is one of the best marketing
decisions you'll ever make. Take your time, research your
subject and design a publication of quality, useful content.
For further information on publishing your own e-zine, you
may download the free e-book entitled, "Ezines: A Complete
Guide to Publishing." This free e-book received a 4-star
Editors Pick from ZDNet.
http://www.web-source.net/free_ebooks.htm
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About the Author
Shelley Lowery is the Webmaster of Web-Source.net -
A complete resource portal for the Internet entrepreneur.
The site assists the entrepreneur in developing a serious
Web presence by providing a wealth of free information,
resources, tools and content.
http://www.web-source.net