Secret to E-Zine Sucess

Title: You can’t write an e-zine, because you didn’t start with Us!!

Start NOW! rEAD BELOW:

A Crash Course in Ezine Publishing

By Ademola Aderemi

An ezine, is also known as an email magazine, online publication or electronic newsletter is simply a newsletter available via email and/or online. There are millions of e-zine available online for a little or no fee.

The e-zine will not only enable you to keep in touch with your established or potential visitors, but it will help you build a huge database of targeted customers. From experience, you will agree with me that it will take several contacts with a prospective customer before closing a sale. But here is better way of making that sales without stress… In addition, you can eventually make a nice income selling sponsor advertising and classified ads.

There are many servers that will publish your ezine free of charge. Why not try these ones out: 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. For the starter using one of these servers will be ideal.

- CONTENT -

Your ezine should contain at least some original content. Your can’t write or can’t take the pain to write Don't worry. 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

Also you can contact a person to write your ezine for you for a fee.

there are some additional resources for obtaining free content for your e-zine. Before using any article make sure you review the copyright statement and that it can be published. If you're not sure, contact the author and request permission to publish their article. Most of these articles are actually free as long as the author is acknowledged.

For some free articles try any of these below:

- FREE CONTENT -

Web-Source.net - Free Articles
http://www.web-source.net/free_articles.htm

AutoResponder Central - Articles For Publication
http://www.web-source.net/links/

Article Announce - Writer & Publisher Connection
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 -

You should only write on subject in which you have a great deal of knowledge . Your focus should not be in contrast with the contents of your web page. For example: If your web site's focus is on base ball, you wouldn't want to have your e-zines focus to be on "Animals & Pets," you would want it to be on "Base Ball."

- TITLE -

another very important part of your e-zine is the title. Many e-zine listing sites list their e-zines in alphabetical order. So it goes to say if you have a title like: “Advertisement” instead of " Online Income," your publication will be listed towards the top instead of the bottom. This will give your publication a star attraction and an advantage over the other e-zine published below yours.

Potential subscribers should see your e-zine first thereby being more apt to subscribe.

Your title should not sound un-intriguing and be straight to the point. Tell your potential subscriber exactly what your publication is all about.

- PUBLISHING SCHEDULE -

there is actually no prescribed schedule to publishing your e-zine. This should be based on preference. If you like you can publish once monthly, twice a month or weekly.

- SIZE -

There has been a great deal of controversy over the size of an e-zine. In my opinion, the size of an e-zine doesn’t matter. If your publication has a quality I feel your subscribers will not care about its size. However, you should take into consideration that your subscribers may not want to download it. If it is too large, AOL will automatically turn it into a file attachment. Consider either of the followings: condensing it or separating it into "Part One" and "Part Two." , or a page format.

- WEB SITE -

there is no rule that states that your e-zine should have it own web page, however, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Having your own site will enable you to give your visitors a focus and an un- diverted attention and also an in-depths look at exactly what your publication is all about. This will avail you an opportunity to inform your subscribers of upcoming editions, polls, archives and a subscription box to allow your visitors to easily subscribe. You can get a splash page for this purpose.

- ADVERTISING -

it is recommended that you wait to build your subscribers to at least 1000 subscribers, before you begin selling advertising space. Some might play with the idea of offering free ads space initially for competitors. If you succeed in having 1000 subscribers you can sell a space for $25. 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 for as low as $20 or try offering some form of special incentives; i.e., Buy two weeks of advertising for $20 get a free spotlight space or the next one free.

It is ideal and great idea to limit the number of ads per page to say ten and make sure they are placed in the center of the page. You can also use a single colour for at least a half of the page and different colour for the other page. Make sure the page is crystal clear, white is the perfect illuminator for the beginner. “This will not only ensure adequate exposure for your advertisers, but your subscribers won't be overwhelmed with advertising as well.”

- STYLE & FORMAT -

another aspect of the e-zine is its appearance. This will go a long way in determining the very success of the e-zine. As impotant as getting subscribers is, so is keeping them! And this will take a little extra work. A professionally written, well designed, content rich publication will ensure your e-zines success.

When formatting your e-zine, make use of plain text only. Why? Many email programs use different text format. And thereby downloading them may be difficult for the subscribers who are using a system with limited text readers. As a general rule, it is probably best to write your e-zine in plain text.
When writing business letters, sales letters, etc. your regular word processing programs may come handy but not with writing an e-zine due to formatting issue.

A good program to consider using is Notepad. If you don’t have one. Install it now!

Another factor worth considering is your e-zine length. Lengthy text are difficult ot view by some email programs that aren’t configured for viewing long text and this will force the last few lines to another page or line.

A generally rule is a line-length of 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.

Type in outline mode to enable you to create a template.

Set your email preferences 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 show as an improperly formatted text.

Another important point is to send a copy of your e-zine to yourself, this will offer you an opportunity to view your publication before published it to the web proper. By so doing you will have an idea of what your subscribers will see and also you can make any correction in formatting.

Publishing your own e-zine is one of the best marketing decisions you'll ever make. So take your best time, research well your subject and design a publication of the best possible quality, and with useful content.

For further information you may e-mail me @ aderemi.ademola@yahoo.com
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About the ME:

Ademola Aderemi is the Webmaster of www.advertshere4free.blogspot.com A complete resource portal for the Internet advertisers. The site provides free adverts space for up and coming publishers.