| I Want to Do an Ezine! |
| Written by Terri Seymour | |
| Saturday, 11 January 2003 | |
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Part 1 - What is an Ezine? I have been getting numerous emails lately from people who want to start publishing an ezine, but really don't know where to start. So, I am going to write this series of articles from start to finish in the hopes of helping some of my associates get started with their own ezine! Please feel free to email me if you have questions about anything stated in these articles. First of all, what is an ezine? An ezine is simply an electronic magazine or newsletter sent out periodically to a list of Opt In subscribers. Opt In means they have voluntarily signed-up to receive your ezine and were not added to the list without their knowledge or permission. This is one of the reasons an ezine is so valuable to your business. Your subscribers have given their consent to receive announcements, promotions, ads, recommendations, etc. from you! BUT, let me stress this, you must treat your subscribers with respect, provide valuable and helpful content and be there for them when they want or need you. You do not want to USE them as a mailing list for every ad that comes down the pike. Ok, to get started, one thing you should do is look over a few successful ezines to get a feel of how they are done. Each publisher will add his/her own style, personality, and soul to their ezine which in turn is what makes it unique and successful. A few ezines I would recommend are: Rim Digest at http://www.rimdigest.com Simple Biz Ezine at http://www.simplebizpublications.com Ideas By Post at http://www.ideasbypost.com and also, My Own Ezine at http://www.myownezine.com ;-) These ezines are very well written and each publisher has a very distinct style and personality to go along with the useful content. What you want to do with your ezine is establish a trust relationship with your readers. You want them to get to know you and learn that they can trust you and your recommendations. Be there for them if they have questions, if they need advice, or support, or if they just want to talk with someone who has more experience. Your ezine is much, much more than an advertisement for your business. It is a bond between you and your readers. Treat it as such! Ezine publishing can be a very rewarding, fun, challenging and if done right, profitable venture! In Part 2, I will be dealing with layout, design and format and also naming your new ezine. When starting your ezine, the first thing you want to do is name it. I would suggest keeping the name as close to your website/business name as possible. If you do not have a website or business yet, use a name you could name your business as well. For example: If you sell gifts/products for you & your home and your business name is Gifts Galore, you could then name your ezine "Gifts Galore News" or "Gifts Galore Ezine". For content, you would include home decorating links, beauty tips and ideas, articles on frugal decorating home remedy recipes, camping tips and resources, whatever pertains to the gifts you are selling. This type of ezine would be great fun to publish! Now to get started with the design and layout of your ezine...the first thing you want to do is to find a good text editor such as Textpad. You can download the free version at http://www.textpad.com. This is what I use and I love it. It is very easy and efficient. A lot of people format their ezine to 60 or 65 characters per line, but I prefer 55. That means that after every 55 letters/numbers/spaces typed, you would press enter and start a new line. You can set the Textpad to do this automatically, but I find it works better to do it manually. Just watch the number at the bottom right of the TextPad screen and hit enter when you get to 55 or 60/65. Create a template for your ezine so each week you can just open up this template and fill in the necessary sections. This will save you lots of time. At the top of the ezine, you want a centered heading with your title, and contact info. It should look like this:
You should have all your contact info in your closing at the bottom of your ezine as well. If you are not sure how to do the layout of your ezine, there is a free template you can use or use as a guide here: http://www.myownezine.com/tutorial/page1.shtml. Just read through the info and take a look at the template. Try a few different ideas, change things around a bit until you find the layout you like and are comfortable with. You can make improvements/changes after you start publishing as well. One thing I suggest is not to have too many squiggles and decorations. Some are ok, but keep it clean and sharp looking. Too many decorations can make it hard for some people to read. Some things that should always be included in your ezine are: Your contact info - top and bottom of ezine Subscribe and unsubscribe info Privacy Policy - at or near the top Disclaimer - towards the bottom Table of Contents - at the top of the ezine Editorial - chat a bit with your readers and discuss any current events or happenings at your site/business. Start forming that all important bond with them! Thank you to your subscribers - include this in the editorial section. Once you find the layout you are satisfied with, fill in your standards like disclaimer, contact info and anything else that will remain the same from week to week and save it in a folder on your desktop. Each week or however often you publish, just open this template and you are ready to get going. In Part 3, I will be going over content. What to have for content and where to get it. Ezine publishing is very important and you can do it! DO NOT let your doubts stop you form this rewarding and enjoyable experience! Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. When you publish an ezine, you most definitely want to provide useful, and original content as well as promoting your business. Some things you might want to include: *Original Articles/Guest Articles - If you are not writing your own articles, please try it. Although guest articles can be very effective, it is always a good idea to have some original content as well. There are lots of places to get articles: Article Announcement Lists:
Article Directories:
You could also ask for article submissions in your ezine and on your website. Provide a special email to receive the articles such as: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ?subject=articles'; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text78867 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //-->\n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it *Freebies - downloads, tools, ebooks, and any other useful Freebie you can find. Freebies can be found all over as well. Do a search for Free Downloads, Freebies, Free resources or whatever type of freebie you are looking for. There are also freebie ezines and email lists you can subscribe to. *A Forum for Your Readers - A place where readers can vent, question, complain, interact, whatever comments or feedback they might want to send in. This also helps in starting that all important connection between reader and publisher. *Human Interest Items - Inspirational stories or poems, people helping people, survival stories, whatever you think your readers might enjoy reading about. *A Little Fun/Humor - We all need to laugh, so why not have a little fun with your readers! Note: I would put the last two items together in one section because you do not want to get too far off the subject matter. *Editorial/Personality - This is where you can let your readers get to know you so they can begin to trust you. Talk about interesting news items, things you have learned or experienced, relate to your readers. You need to make a connection with your readers. Make sure your personality shines through in your ezine. Make your ezine warm, friendly, and inviting while being informative and helpful. *Ad Swaps/Ezine Ads - You want to make sure and have a section for ad swaps. Ad swapping is a great way to get free advertising as well as making new contacts and friends! I have a Free Ezine section which I use for my ad swaps. To start swapping:
*Thank You Section for Your Readers - Take a small section for your readers to get some free exposure as a "Thank You" for subscribing. Appreciate them as they will appreciate you! *Resources - Of course you want to provide lots of good and helpful resources. There are lots of places to find resources. Do a search at your favorite search engine. Mine is http://www.google.com Join discussion lists - I get numerous resources from email lists. I just save them all in an email resource folder.
Spam - Yes, spam. I have found lots of resources from spam that I have received. Sometimes the sender has some useful information to check out. ( Some spam is just plain junk) You can soon learn to tell the junk spam from the "might be useful" spam! ;-) Announcement Lists - Also a good source for resources.
Tips & Tricks - Provide shortcuts, helpful hints and ideas to save your readers time and money! Ask your subscribers to submit their tips and tricks and use your own as well. There are so many things you can have in your ezine! You will learn to keep your eyes open for useful items for your ezine. They can pop up anywhere at anytime! Make it a habit to save useful things you come across in folders in your email or on your desktop. Keep them organized so whenever you need them, you can get to them right away. Ezine publishing is not hard, but you need to be able to organize and provide a quality ezine for your readers to stick with you. Be available to help and support your readers if/when they need you. This will go a long way in strengthening the reader/publisher bond! You will find publishing a quality ezine to be very rewarding, not only financially, but personally and emotionally. Good luck with Your Own Ezine! ;-) In the next part of the series we will cover ezine promotion. See you next week! Now that you have your ezine named, designed, formatted and ready to go, who do you send it to?? To get subscribers, you need to promote your new ezine. There are several ways to do this that are effective and free. Included in these are:
Some of these methods take a lot of time, so what you want to do is work out a system and get on a regular schedule to save time. Ad Swaps You will need a few subscribers before you can participate in ad swaps. Ad swapping is simply running another publisher's ad in your ezine and in return he/she will run your ad in their ezine. Most publishers will participate in ad swaps, however there are a few that are quite fussy about the number of subscribers you have. In my experience, I have only run a cross a few who will not swap with the smaller ezines. To find fellow publishers to swap with, you can read other ezines. The publisher will very often have his swap request in his ezine. There are also ezine swap lists, ezines, and directories. Below are a few to help you get started:
To find more places, simply go to google.com or your favorite search engine and do a search for ad swaps. Writing Articles This has to be one of the most powerful methods of promoting yourself and your ezine/website. Writing quality articles gets you established as an authority and people will begin to trust you and believe in what you say. Do Not Abuse This Trust! Publishers and Webmasters all over the web will publish your articles and you will begin making a name for yourself. There are a few things to remember when writing an article. Do not make the article a sales letter. You want to provide helpful, real information that the reader can actually use. You can put your business info in the resource box at the end of the article. Provide the links/email so the reader can go directly to the resource and utilize it and the instructions you provided. Add your own personal experiences where applicable. People are interested and do benefit from others who have "Been There, Done That"! ;-) Provide basic, real information that can be easily understood and utilized. People are not interested in big college words, they want useful information! Follow these guidelines and you should be able to write quality, helpful, publishable articles. After you have written your article, you will need to submit it. Here area few places to get you started:
Announcement Lists This is not the most power packed method but for a few minutes work each day it does bring in some subscribers. Subscribe to some lists, get your system set up and send away. I have my announcement for each list saved in a folder on my desktop ready to just click and send. I also keep note of the date each announcement is to be sent so I know exactly which ones go out on which day. Each day it takes me about 5 minutes to send out my announcements. Get started with these lists:
In the next part of the series [Part 5 - More Promoting!], I will discuss networking with discussion lists and message boards and also joint ventures with other publishers. Until then, please feel free to email if you have any questions about this or any other article. Good luck to you and see you next week ;-) To continue on with the promotion part of this series of articles, I would like to discuss networking with discussion lists and message boards as a way of promoting your business/ezine. Those of you who know me, know that I am a big believer in online networking as an effective method of promotion. I enjoy it for other reasons as well, such as meeting new people and making friends, but that is the icing on the cake! ;-) Participating in message boards and discussion lists gives you a chance to make yourself known as an expert in your field and also to build your reputation. What you need to do is give advice, help, support and share your experiences whenever the opportunity arises. This will draw people to you and get them to check out your site and/or subscribe to you ezine. There are a few things to remember when getting involved in boards and groups.
Here are some lists and boards to get you started: Message Boards
Discussion Groups
Another effective way of promoting your ezine/business is by getting involved in joint ventures with other publishers. This would include things like:
Things like this have proven to be very effective in gaining subscribers. I participate in each and everyone of these methods and am very satisfied with them. You can find an example of the sharing a thank you page at http://www.myownezine.com/subscribing.shtml You can also see a group pop-under at MOE. This is just to give you an idea of all the different and varied ways you can promote your ezine by working with - not against, your fellow publishers! This is the last article in this series. I hope they have given you some useful information and have helped you. Please feel free to email if you have any questions about this or any other article. Good luck and much success to you! |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 17 August 2004 ) |