How To Start An Ezine

If you think about it, Ezines are really wonderful marketing tools that you can use for your business. You may use them to promote programs or products and even services or other websites. Some people even make extra cash by publishing an ezine and getting money from people who advertise on their ezine. As your ezine experiences growth, you may also need to get upgrades in your services so that you can get more features added to your publication and so your subscribers get a better experience with your ezine. But when you are just starting out with your ezines, there are good free ezine services that you can try out. If you want to make an ezine of your own, then there are some steps that you may want to try out at first. One thing you can try is to compare the free ezines that are out there. Take note of things like how many subscribers they have and also how many are allowed. Then look at how the process of subscribing is done and also check if you can get an upgrade on your service later on. Take notes on whether you are able to export your list to other services in the event that you feel dissatisfied with the service that you get.

Starting your own ezine could be tricky if you fail to do any research beforehand. You can easily fail to start an ezine of your own if you fail to check out the necessary steps to make sure that your attempt at starting an ezine do not crash and burn. Another thing that you can do is to sign up with a provider that provides ezine services so that you do not have to make a commitment that involves money right away. Once you have signed up, you can get started on your first issue. It is but normal to not have any subscribers at first but it is important to have an issue in your archives at least. This is because there are people who want to check out what your ezine has to say before they subscribe to you.

When you have your ezine, you can choose to write your own content or you can choose to get your content from other places. You can get contributors or you can get free articles from various article directories so that you do not have to spend money. Publishing ezines can be a lot of fun but they are also a lot of hard work. If you plan to use your ezine to make some money then you will want a lot of subscribers so that advertisers will deem it worthwhile to get ad space from you.

Ezine Marketing Strategies For Getting More Subscribers

Do you know how to get more ezine subscribers on a daily basis? If not, then you probably will want to follow the tips in today's lesson. Getting ezine subscribers can be challenging if you don't want to spend money on advertising. Advertising is the fastest way to get traffic to your site, and you can turn a lot of this traffic into subscribers if you have the right strategy.

To capture more ezine subscribers, you have 2 options. The first option is to build a 10+ page website, and host your opt-in email box on every page of your site - hoping that someone will subscribe. The next option that you have is to create something called a "squeeze page", and host it on the root of your website.

A squeeze page is nothing more than a webpage whose sole goal is to get someone to subscribe to your ezine. Nothing else is present... no articles, no testimonials, no products, no sales letters... just a simple sign up page where people can subscribe to your ezine. And truthfully, you will get a ton of more subscribers this way than hosting the opt-in box on every page of a 10+ page website.

So by now, you should know the option that I prefer. Hands down I think you should roll with the squeeze page route. After your viewer signs up for your ezine, redirect them to a page where you can sell them on your product. Some people will buy immediately this way, and some will buy later as you follow up on them via your ezine.

Now some people like to lead their visitors to a "pre-sell" page where they provide a review of a product along with some articles that leads to a product, and etc. The people who do this most often are people who are into affiliate marketing - and they do it because a lot of websites and services don't allow the direct linking to an affiliate link. Therefore, they need a website and need to "pre-sell" their visitors on buying a product.

But if you ask a lot of the top internet marketers in the world, they will say that it's best if you can get someone to subscribe to your ezine. That way you can have a better looking URL that redirects to the affiliate page, and you can follow up and build a relationship with these people in attempts of getting them to buy the affiliate product your promoting.

But this is only doable with an ezine. You can start an ezine for cheap, and it's your best interest to submit it to something called the "Directory of Ezines." To start your ezine, go to Aweber.com and sign up today. Follow all the prompts and 30 minutes later, you'll have your own ezine set up and ready to go. The next step is simply driving people to your website where they can sign up for your ezine.

An ezine is absolutely essential for the success of your business. Without it, you're limiting your profits because you will need it to contact your past and current customers - and this is where 80% of your business profits will come to. Depending on the price, niche, and nature of your target market.... you will have to decide whether or not you want to lead prospects to your sales letter page, or to get them to opt-in to your ezine.

An ezine is critical for your business, and I think it can help you to make more money in your business than you ever thought possible. So be sure to start using one today.

Good luck with using ezines in your business today.

How Often Should You Send Your Ezine? Eight Considerations

Ezines can be a fantastic marketing tool for almost any type of business. But what's the right frequency? Daily? Weekly? Fortnightly? Monthly? Quarterly?

Here are eight considerations to help you make this important decision.

1. Each ezine you produce requires the time it takes to provide quality, valuable content. Recognise that you aren't just competing with other ezines, you're competing with EVERY OTHER ITEM IN YOUR RECIPIENT'S INBOX. To be successful over the long term, your ezine must provide value to your well-defined audience.

2. How much time can you afford to spend on your ezine? Keep in mind that one article, produced from scratch, and put into your ezine template, will probably take you at least four or five hours to do.

3. What frequency do your business objectives suggest? If you want your ezine to generate a steady stream of two new business appointments a week, it's probably not much use sending it quarterly. You may need to adjust either your objectives or frequency in the cold light of day.

4. What frequency best suits your defined audience and their needs? Your ezine will only succeed if it gives your audience what they want, in a timely fashion.

5. What do the length of ezine you plan, its format and content lend themselves best to? Consider that the type of information you plan to offer is likely to influence your frequency. Compare stock market news with an ezine offering painting and decorating advice - the first is ultra-time critical with information changing every day, the second is likely to be time-sensitive only in the sense of slow-moving interior design trends, if at all.

6. My advice is that your ezines should be sent at a frequency of between weekly and monthly. Most ezines are sent once or twice a week. I would suggest that you look to send an ezine at least monthly. Send quarterly, these days, and there is a good chance people will just forget who you are and may report your mail as spam.

7. Assuming quality is good, it's better to be there more often than less. It's well known that most consumers require multiple exposures to a service or product before they have built up the familiarity and trust to purchase. It follows that more frequent contact cuts down the length of the sales cycle and therefore the time it takes for you to see the benefit of your ezine in your bank account. With this in mind, many existing ezines would be better served by doubling their frequency, and halving their content. Could you put out one article once per week, instead of two articles once per fortnight?

8. That said, don't be overambitious on frequency! Don't paint yourself into a corner unnecessarily - if you promised a weekly interview at signup, and run out of suitable people to interview 10 ezines in, you've got a problem! Not sticking to your schedule gives very poor signals. Make sure, if you're starting out, that you can sustain quality output, to a regular deadline, at the right frequency. If in doubt, be cautious on your frequency to start with - you can always increase it later!

Six Great Ezine Content Ideas

Ezines are fantastic marketing tools but good content can be hard to come up with. Here are six great ideas for content you can use to get those creative juices flowing.

1. Solve typical (or topical) customer problems in an article.

Take a moment and think about the questions your clients are always asking you, or the problems they're always complaining about.

Look through your own personal 'sent items' emails - what have you been saying to clients? Your audience is likely to share similar interests and concerns, so can you adapt, expand upon, or reproduce some of what you've already said or done?

As a rule of thumb, about 400 words is a suitable length; if you've written more, and the quality is consistently good, think about splitting it into parts you can run over two or more ezines.

2. Five to 10 tips on a particular topic, or area of your professional expertise.

A list of how-to tips is very reliable, and easy to produce content. 'Top 10 customer service tips for small businesses', 'The 7 biggest management mistakes', '5 ways to get better fuel efficiency out of your car'.

These don't need to be long; 5-10 tips of 50-75 words each is perfectly adequate. Put your best tips first, and consider only giving a partial list in the ezine so you can drive traffic through to the full list on your website.

Later on, you can expand a single tip into a longer article to generate new content.

3. Interviews.

Just look at any bookstore, magazine rack or TV chat show to see the popularity of interviews and autobiographies of interesting people.

Whether you provide them as text, audio or video, and whether you conduct them over email, telephone, or in person, interviews with clients, celebrities or relative industry figures can be a very compelling type of content.

And, if you know you have an interview coming up, what about trailing that fact in your ezine and asking subscribers to submit potential questions for your interviewee?

4. Humour can make your ezine unique.

If you can do it in such a way that it doesn't send out the wrong impression, is there a way you can incorporate humour in your ezine?

You can have great success by making a point of always including something humorous at the top of every ezine, or maybe better still at the bottom, so people have another incentive to read down.

Go online and find relevant or topical jokes, funny images or videos. Just be careful to get your tone right - remember that one person's idea of a joke can be another's idea of offensive, and whatever humour you use must be congruent with the image you're trying to get across.

5. Teasers.

Adding a 'teaser' about forthcoming content in your next ezine can help build anticipation and improve open rates.

6. 'Evergreen' content.

Obviously you have your niche. But don't forget that there are areas of interest common to nearly all business people or consumers.

Time management, saving money or avoiding tax are just three that spring to mind. These can be useful standbys, especially if you can put your own brand's spin on them somehow.

Happy writing!