How To Start Your Own NewsletterYour Road Plan To Email Marketing Success |
How to Start Your Own NewsletterHow To Start Your Own Newsletter 1. eZine Marketing Intro Which One is More Important – Product or Mailing List? If you would ask this question, “Which one is more important – the mailing list or the product?” any savvy marketer would answer you “The mailing list” Principally, any wise business person puts the importance of hungry demand (and not just any demand) in front of the product. In other words, there is no product if there is no demand! And a mailing list represents the demand or your business if you would like to call it. If you frequent the Joint Venture forums and membership sites of any kind, you will find that product and service owners need mailing list owners more than the other way round. This is because the mailing list owners have the prospects that the other type of partner is looking for to sell to. And if you are a mailing list owner, you do not have to necessarily make money from selling your own product. You can sell advertising space or craft a Joint Venture with product owners in return of commissions, recurring or not. Most of the biggest success web businesses on the Internet today often establish the mailing list (or subscribers) first before the product. One fine example is Friendster.com. Friendster.com, in the nutshell, is a website that connects friends and potential friends from around the world through a free membership access. While Friendster.com does not make money from the number of members who join the site, the business makes money from selling advertising space and partnering with other big time merchants and businesses, owing to the established number of members Friendster.com has recruited. This business is perfect example that demonstrates why every business should establish a need or demand before the product itself, and why you should do the same, whether you run a friends site or not. Publishing Your eZine – the Pros There are several advantages publishing your own eZine can offer to you. Thus if the pros appeal to you, then publishing your own paperless newsletter can be ideal for you. The most obvious reason publishing an eZine can be the most ideal business to you is that it is so easy to start that any individual can do. There is no need to invest in starting a brick and mortar business or even staff and heavy machines for that matter. In fact, you can do this from the comfort of your home as the most important thing you will need is an auto responder equipped with broadcast feature. Auto responders such as GetResponse.com and aWeber.com are highly recommended when it comes to publishing your own eZine. In spite of the low start up cost and monthly fees, you can make money from several profit centers within the spaces of your eZine issues. You can make money from selling advertising space, just to name one. Most importantly, you get to build your own personal media and spread your marketing influence, making you more valuable to product and service owners thus do not be surprised if you receive Joint Venture proposals every so often. Given some of the best reasons in the world of Internet Marketing, publishing your own periodical eZine can one of the best money vehicles you will ever acquire or even build. Publishing Your eZine – the Cons As with any other types of businesses, publishing your own online newsletter a.k.a. eZine has its share of drawbacks, in spite of the several benefits it offer. The purpose of this article is not to scare you away with the disadvantages of publishing your own eZine, as the benefits are often more attractive. However, I will also show you how you can easily tackle the cons. One obvious challenge most beginning eZine publishers face is the creation of eZine content. Creating your own content can be tiresome, especially if you are not a gifted writer and that you run out of ideas every so often that your publishing schedule is threatening you. A way of taking care of this problem is to create your content in advance. You can compile 30 days worth of content in one day, for example. If you are not blessed with writing skills, you can broker the writing task to capable freelance writers which you can find at places such as http://www.elance.com/ or http://www.rentacoder.com/. While you need to pay for such services, you are at liberty to take the credit for written articles. Alternatively, you can republish articles from article directories such as http://ezinearticles.com/. This is a free method you can use in making content, provided you include the resource box of the original author and that the article has republishing rights conveyed. In conclusion, you can easily tackle the content creation challenge using the mentioned methods that do not require writing on your part, free or paid. Deciding the Nature of Your eZine When choosing a topic to publish your eZine on, you must consider some important success factors that can determine the flow and goal of your eZine. You are encouraged to write non-time sensitive contents such as short tips, mini stories and interviews. Doing so enables you to create content in advance so that you can conveniently dispense to your subscribers at a later schedule. Topic-wise, you will do well to cater to a starving market that will always be on demand for the kind of content you offer. And by this, I mean that you should zero in onto a demand that has been, is and will always be there. Relationships and dating are niches that have been on Earth long before the World Wide Web came up, for example. The food niche will always be there as long as there are chefs cooking for anyone with a stomach to fill. Having said that, you also want to have a steady stream of products or services of your own or an affiliate for you can endorse to your mailing list and make even more money. This is also the reason why the Internet Marketing niche will remain one of the hottest niches there is, as products and services are created almost around the clock. As long as there Internet Businesses cropping out, there will always be needs to be fulfilled. Why Publish an eZine? On the Internet, it is very possible to make money without selling any product. One way of doing so is through starting your own eZine, also known as an electronic newsletter. In a nutshell, you send out your eZine issues on a periodical basis to your subscribers. The good part is that you have a flexible choice in automating the process of sending out your eZine issues for you or manually sending them on a periodical basis. As an eZine publisher, not only can you easily achieve the benefits a conventional newsletter publisher enjoys without having to chop down several trees in the process, you can easily and conveniently spread your marketing influence and expertise to your base of subscribers from the shoes of an ordinary individual. In other words, you do not have to invest in expensive printing equipment, brick and mortar business, and hiring staff just to run your own newsletter publication, resulting in a lot of time, money and effort saved. Basically, all you need to start your own eZine are an auto responder and broadcast feature to go with, enabling you to reach out to your massive subscribers whom you can regard as your prospects, too. All in all, if you do not have the commitments of creating your own product for sale, then publishing your own online newsletter can be one of the wisest decisions you will ever make, given the benefits of impressive marketing power and influence it can offer to you. Ezine Newsletters are one of the fastest and most effective ways of delivering relevant information to your audience. A good ezine will have many benefits for the publisher. It can target its audience, learn its preferences, and provide subscribers with what they need. An ezine can be a free (or low cost) method of increasing your revenues, and helping you reach the right customers for your products. You can use your ezine to establish your credibility, and earn free publicity. Besides, you can also sell advertising space in your Ezine and earn additional profits. An Ezine offers what everyone needs – free useful information! You have the liberty of writing and publishing anything under the sun, anything that you feel passionate about, anything that you firmly believe in. You not only get others to listen to you, you also get them to click on the ads published within your Ezine and earn a part of your advertisers’ profit in return. There are innumerable benefits of starting your own Ezine. You can increase your business to multifold proportions if you utilize your options effectively. One major advantage is that you communicate directly with your potential customers without the help of any mediator. This makes it easier for you to enhance your subscriber base. A large subscriber base implies that your publication and advertisements will reach more customers. This also means that you can increase your sales with the click of a button. A few other benefits An Ezine is more widely read and easily accessible compared to a web page. Sometimes, web page navigation, if not well designed, can become monotonous. Plus, the convenience of having an Ezine delivered straight in subscribers’ inbox, which they can read whenever they want to, is a one-up for Ezines. Besides, you don’t need to beat around the bush when you want your readers to get your point. You can convey your message directly and go straight to the point without going through any clutter. The key to improving your subscriber base is great content. The number of active readers would multiply if you deliver quality content. You have to establish your reputation in the minds of your readers and prove incessantly that you know what you are writing about. The more credible your content, the easier it would be for your readers to appreciate your work. Ezines, like I said earlier are great marketing tools for other products. However, to be successful at it, you need to carefully plan each of your strategies. First, you should do some research and find out what should be your target clientele. Once that is done, you need to find information like names and email addresses of targeted readers and feed it in to your Ezine database. All you have to do is simply write a few interesting and effective articles about the product. For example, if your product is a vacuum cleaner, search for customers interested in this and write articles that will arrest their attention. You can write about ‘effective cleaning techniques’, ‘why vacuum cleaners are the best and most efficient cleaning gadget’, ‘what are the newest gadgets available in the market’ and so on. Your readers would surely appreciate interesting, unique as well as useful information; and, just when you know that you have convinced your clients to invest in a new vacuum cleaner, you can place your ad for the vacuum cleaner strategically in your Ezine. Through effective Ezine marketing techniques you can achieve phenomenal increase in sales. You can not only minimize your total cost but also earn huge return on investments through Ezine publishing. Compare it with other ways of advertising and you will realize how easy it is to save money when you employ these tactics. If you use postal mail to send flyers, information brochures, etc. to your potential customers, your message might not reach the right person and besides, it can cost you a lot of money. Similarly, billboards, hoardings, sticking up flyers on public places and other offline marketing gimmicks cannot ensure that your ad will be noticed by the right people. Ezine Marketing is probably one of the smartest marketing techniques, especially when you are just starting out. Another advantage of ezines is that you could also place ads from external parties and can earn additional income through the revenues generated by these ads. Besides earning revenues generated by ads, you could also increase traffic on your website as people who receive your Ezine will probably want to check it out. By adding feedback forms and asking for inputs from your readers, you can even make changes to your website, thus benefiting even more. You should also make it a point to regularly seek feedback about your ezines as well. Feedback generates a sense of credibility amongst most people. They start thinking of you as a real person. It instills a feeling of security in their mind that your Ezine is not spamming their system, but is operated by a real human being who makes an effort to improve the quality of the information provided. As time goes on and you get well acquainted with the market trend and consumer behavior, you can introduce surveys, bulletin boards, questionnaires, and contests to encourage more reader participation. This is not just an interesting pastime for your readers, but it also helps in developing community spirit among them. An Ezine can gain you a lot of insight into your target audience. Like I said earlier, the data that can be collected about your readers through ezines is crucial. However, you have to understand that any unauthorized use of the information you collect from your subscriber’s is considered felony and you can be prosecuted by law. Hence, you should judicially use all that information. What You Need to Start an eZine Publication Starting your own eZine can be a lot easier than you think. This is because in the most basic necessity, all you really need to get started publishing your own paperless newsletter are wealth of content, auto responder with broadcast feature, and a website (which is optional). Content. You can compile weeks of content ahead in advance and slowly dispense them to your subscribers. For example, you can compile 100 short tips in one day and dispense 10 tips once a week. In other words, you can compile 10 weeks worth of content in just one day! Auto responder. Your auto responder is your asset. You need an auto responder to send your mails and eZine issues to your subscribers and store your data base of people subscribed to your newsletter. Some recommended auto responders include GetResponse.com and aWeber.com. Website. You may be surprised that this is actually an optional component. In short, there are eZine publishers publishing their newsletters without a website! But of course, having your own website can offer you tremendous advantages, such as the ability to bring in more subscribers and having your newsletter indexed in the top Search Engines. These are the things you need to get started on publishing your own eZine at its bare minimum. Do not underestimate the little you need, though, because several eZine publishers today succeed well with only an auto responder and contents, with or without a website. And you can, too! You may have multiple reasons for starting an Ezine, but you cannot focus on all aspects at the same time. Keep all your reasons at the back of your mind, but focus on that one reason, which motivated you to create your own Ezine. Throughout your campaign, you must stick to that singular reason, come up with ways to be resourceful, and devise a plan that ultimately helps you reach your goal. Sounds easy doesn’t it? Most successful publishers would disagree. Ezine publishing requires considerable dedication and careful planning. There are numerous strategies, tips, and guidelines out there on how to be successful in this business – some really good and some really dire! This is where you would find this eBook so useful! It presents a number of proven tactics based on successful models. It goes beyond the haze and claims of many experts and tries to put before you a plan that actually works. So let’s get started! When you have your goal in mind, the first thing you need to work out is determine your target customers and their demographics. I can’t lay enough stress on this phase. Most publishers tend to ignore this absolutely vital aspect and eventually suffer. See if your ezine is for young people, middle-aged or old people. People of a variety of age groups use Internet so don’t restrict your mindset. Will your Ezine be read by those who are experts or just plain amateurs? Are your readers going to be active shoppers? Bored housewives? Students looking for information that can be used in school projects? Freelancers? The range is almost boundless. Make sure that you are targeting the right age group and right type of readers, so that your Ezine reaches where it should reach. Once you have enough information with you, you need to at least have a name for your Ezine! The name for your Ezine must not be misleading or excessively flashy. It should give a clear idea to your readers about what to expect when they start reading the Ezine. An ezine that gives information about the stock market should not be titled ‘Tips and tricks on how to make big bucks!’ Although, you might feel that you are giving them valuable tips about the stock market, it does not mean that they will make big bucks! The key is to have a title that justifies its claim. Simply put, your Ezine can be titled ‘Tips and tricks of stock market investments’. When you send your Ezine to various subscribers it is important to identify whom your Ezine will be from. This helps your readers relate more to your Ezine since it will appeal to them on a more humane level. Even if your Ezine is from a company and not specifically from you, it still makes more sense to set the tone of your Ezine very interpersonal as if you are talking directly with the readers. These are just a few pointers to help you get into the ezine mode. We will be discussing each of these and many more in detail as we progress through the eBook. Ezine is ‘Electronic Magazine’ in abbreviated form. It does what it says; it is a magazine in electronic format. Just like a standard magazine subscription through postal mail, readers can opt to receive the Ezine regularly in their email inbox. With Ezines, spam is not acceptable. Readers can cancel their subscription at any time with the Ezine publisher. You can publish an Ezine on any topic you fancy. Generally, an Ezine consists of two or three articles on the subject of the Ezine, a few relevant advertisements or classifieds, some information on the website that publishes the Ezine and information on how to cancel a subscription. Most of the Ezines are free, but in order to pay the Internet writers, web space providers, Internet Service providers, and other expenses, you need to find out a way to balance out your expenses and earn desirable income to keep your Ezine publishing business afloat. There are plenty of Ezine publishers all over the Internet. An Ezine acts as a platform for communicating with your readers, and how you utilize this platform depends on your foresight and the quality of information you provide. The purpose of your Ezine is to establish your credibility as a reputed writer/publisher over the Internet. Hence, it is advisable that you stick to writing effective articles that interest and amaze your readers. You can also occasionally publish articles from guest writers, freelancers or articles that you can borrow from the Internet and publish them for free. One good strategy is to give a little bit of information about the author or article just before the article begins. You may give your opinion about the article which gives an impression to your readers that you are extremely thorough and professional. You need to develop a reputation in the market, you need to establish in the minds of your readers that your Ezine has good content and they will be able to enrich themselves if they subscribe to their Ezine. Flooding them with too much information too soon, in fact, flooding them with too much information is a no-no. There are so many Ezines written about any topic imaginable. What can you possibly do to stand apart? Well, for starters, you can start thinking positive. Start believing that you will create a unique, extraordinary and highly informative Ezine which will be one of its kind – an ezine that will rise above the ordinary run-of-the-mill Ezines. To create a successful Ezine, you should always feel confident and optimistic and never sway from your determination. A successful ezine is an ezine that is profitable to you - the costs of creating it, publishing it and sending it across to hundreds of thousands of readers should not exceed what you earn from it. Study your competition and how they market their Ezine. Take a tip or two from them. You must figure out your niche market and your USP that sets it apart from the rest of the competition. Do understand that no matter what industry you are in, you can produce and promote your ezine as well as other products successfully. For instance, if you consider publishing an Ezine on the wine industry, do your market research and narrow down the topic by choosing the right demographics, industry, country, and so on. In this case, think about the language you want your Ezine in, French, Italian, English; wine from what country/region are you thinking to write on – France, Australia, Chile, California, Italy, etc. Sure, you want to write on wine, but what exactly? Wine making, wine storing, selling wine barrels, cork making, wine glasses, the choice is unlimited. You can be creative and choose a new topic for every issue of your Ezine and make it an all-encompassing Ezine exclusively on wine! This only establishes you as an expert on wines in the minds of your readers. There may be plenty of Ezine publishers writing on the same topic as you are. From a reader’s point of view, if I am interested in a topic, I might subscribe for lets say 10 Ezines, however I might not read them all. I might just skim through them, and read only those articles that really arrest my attention. Why would I want to read a very similar article in all the Ezines that I am receiving? If you want me to really read and appreciate the content of your Ezine, you have to make your Ezine extra special. You should aim at making me unsubscribe from all the other Ezines ensure that I subscribe only to your Ezine.
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Browse Site3. Invite Guest Writers to Write in Your Ezine 5. Free Resources on Writing Skills 6. Write Attractive Descriptions 8. Free Hosts – a Definite No No 10. Suggest the Change Subtly to Your Readers 11. Creating a Comprehensive Online Media Kit 13. Always Look for Opt in Ezines 14. Auto Responder Improvements |
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