Maybe it shouldn’t come as a big surprise, but most people on the internet and some self-possessed ezine distributors do not know what the word EZINE really means. Ezines are electronic publications distributed by email or posted on a website. Ezines are typically focused on a certain subject matter. Ezines are just like your typical magazine format of monthly or weekly topical publications in an electronic format. The title EZINE does not come from the phrase Electronic Magazine, cause you might be thinking that the E in electronic and the Zine in magazine are joined to form this word. Actually Ezine came from the word FanZine which was a publication with a small subscriber base back then. FanZines were targeted publications that were usually geared towards specific topics like Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Football clubs. Those printed publications were called 'FanZines', but were frequently referred to as 'Zines' instead. Back to modern days, most Ezines are focused around specific topics and interest groups, just like the way the Zines once were. Adding an ‘E’ onto the beginning of the much coveted publication name “Zines” brings us to the word Ezines. This offers a much more logical explanation of where the word "ezines" came from. Now that we know what ezines are, lets now discuss the basics of creating and doing business with ezines. Ezine publishing is a very important factor towards a business' success for many reasons. Basically, it keeps you in contact with your potential customers. The relationship between your clients is formed and that is what is needed for trust and respect. You can also profit by selling advertisements through your own ezine publication. Ezines can be used both as an advertising platform for your business as well as an income-generating endeavor. When starting out with your ezine publication, keep in mind the basic and most important elements of a good ezine. 1. Keep your ezines clean, short, and full. Don’t add too many unrelated decorations or pictures to your ezines. Ezine page decoration sometimes makes it hard for readers to read your content. People are more drawn to reading short ezines than those long ones that keep on making discussions that go on and on. 2. Minimal advertisement is a must. It is a good point that publishers must advertise in their ezines, but always keep it to a reasonable number of about seven or less, depending on the length of your ezines. 3. Make it personal. When creating your ezines, add your personality to it. Talk to your subscribers. Make it warm and inviting. Let them get into you as you get to know them better. 4. Put in some interactivity. Make your ezines fun as we can all use a bit of fun. Put a form in there, some survey questions, a bit of trivia, and other forms of interaction. 5. Put in quality content. If your ezines talk about something that deals with paper crafts, then make sure it provides information about how to make paper crafts. Tips, articles, links, resources, products, tools, news, etc. - these are all the things you can and should give your readers. 6. Be on time and consistent. If you posted that you will be sending out ezines once a week every Monday, then do it that way. If ever something happens that is beyond your control that might prevent this, just explain to your subscribers in your next release and they will surely understand. 7. Make it a priority to have original content. If you are not sure about articles, then just write editorials or short scripts with news updates, interesting tips, and product reviews. 8. Always proofread your content. You don’t want your ezine to look like a 10-year old child has done it. But most importantly, Enjoy your ezine, have fun with it, be yourself, and wonderful things will start to happen. At least they did for so many success stories - they met great new people and their businesses flourished. This can all happen for you as well with your very own quality ezine!
For the netrepreneur seeking targeted free and low-cost advertising, ezines are an excellent resource. Using the following strategies you can get hundreds of dollars worth of ezine advertising on an ongoing basis, absolutely for free. You can also use these resources to structure an advertising campaign to fit your budget. Before you get started, make sure you set up a special email address just for your ezine subscriptions - this will be very important to help you stay organized. Be careful about using a web-based email account, if you go out of town or miss a few days, there’s a chance it might fill up too quickly. If your emails start bouncing, your ads will not run. If you do not have access to a separate email alias from your current ISP and need to set up a free web-based account, it’s best to use one with a large amount of storage space, such as: gawab To get started with your free ezine advertising campaign, first visit: subscribeme. net This is a free service you can use once every three months to get your classified out to over one million subscribers. Submitting your classified to the service above is just the beginning of your new free advertising strategy. When you use this service, you will be automatically subscribed to many excellent ezines. A number of them offer free weekly classifieds to subscribers, so your next step is to read through the ezines, looking for the directions provided as to how and where to submit your next free classified. If you’re the organized type, here’s where you might start making note of which ezines offer ongoing free ads, and tracking your ad submissions. After your ad is published, you can record it’s publication date also. Each ezine will have different specifications for the size of your classified. You will need to format your ad to a certain amount of characters per line, and a certain amount of lines. It will help if you set up a text file with multiple versions of your ad formatted to the varying guidelines. There are several great resources you can use you can use to make sure each line is a certain amount of characters. You can use this online text editor, simply enter your ad copy and specify the number of characters per line: formatit Or you can download this free software (NoteTab Light) and format the characters per line on your computer: notetab Next, you can find more ezines which offer free ads, some only for new subscribers, others on a regular basis. The links below contain ezines which offer free advertising: ezines-r-us/freeadvertising. htm ebizwhiz-publishing/ezines2.htm motherearthpublishing/journal/freeezineadvertising. shtml You can also search through various ezine directories to find more ezines to subscribe to, such as: ezinelisting/index. html internetmarketing-success/email-marketing/ezine-directories. htm Now that you're subscribed to a wide variety of ezines and have your ongoing free classified ads, you have another great opportunity to get even more high quality free advertising, such as free banner ads, top and bottom sponsor ads, solos, and more. As you take the time each day to go through your subscription inbox, you will find tons of contests you can enter to win advertising. If you take the time to diligently enter every contest, you may find yourself winning high quality free advertising once or twice a week! Another great benefit of being subscribed to multiple ezines and actively reading them is that you will sometimes find the publishers sending specials and discounted advertising rates straight to your inbox that you would not have access to if you had just ordered an ad without subscribing. You can track the results of all of your ads to test different ad copy and see what is pulling the most, and which of your ezines are performing the best. This will give you a real headstart when you want to order some paid advertising. Subscribing to many ezines is an excellent business strategy for gaining ongoing free advertising, winning additional free advertising, testing your ad copy, discovering which ezine subscribers are most receptive to your offer, and accessing valuable discounted advertising rates. So subscribe, and invest a few minutes to go through your inbox daily. Your attention will pay off. The time you spend will be a worthy investment.
If you publish an email newsletter, do you convert the issues to HTML and archive them on your website? If you haven't been doing so, you should start now, today. "But the free mailing service I use already archives them." you say. That's great! That means the search engines will find that many more links to your site online. But it is worth the effort to put them on your website also. You can do it simply and quickly. First, here are three good reasons why you should take the time out of your busy schedule: 1) It shows your subscribers and potential subscribers that your newsletter is a vital part of your service to them. Isn't it worth preserving for posterity? 2) Your newsletter will contain many keywords -- those subjects for which people and consequently search engines often search. If you submit them to the search engines, they'll draw traffic to your website. You can create an index page for them and put them all in their own directory, or even put them on their own domain, and submit it to the search engines and directories as a stand-alone online business resource. 3) Advertisers love the fact that their ads will live on. Statistics show that website visitors read archived newsletters fairly regularly. That is especially true if you add a search function to your site so that your archives may be searched by subject. Here's how to do it: It should take you at the most about 15 minutes to convert your newsletter from text to HTML. Most of that time is spent in coding the many URLs to make them clickable. There are many text editing software programs that will convert text to HTML quickly. Some HTML editing software programs will do it also, with a single copy/paste action. One great and free text editor is NoteTab Light. If you don't have it, you are missing a great resource. It works with text and HTML both, does almost everything but slice bread, and it's free! No ads and no nags. (There is a low-priced Pro version that does even more!) Here's where to get it: notetab We'll use NoteTab Light for our illustration. Got it installed now? Okay, open up your newsletter in NoteTab Light. On the toolbar at the top, click on "Modify." On the drop-down menu, choose "Document to HTML," and on the menu that pops out, choose "With Paragraph Tags." Save the resulting document with a. htm or. html extension. If you want the page width to conform to the reader's web browser size, click search and remove all the BREAK tags. Add a title, meta tag description and keywords, and upload it. Now you have a resource for your visitors and a draw for the search engines, and all for only a few minutes' work. Stick some Google Adsense or your own ads on the page, and you also have a money maker!
99% of all ezines are not "being a reporter" on current events; that is the first and most important thing to understand. This means that you don't have to be publishing your ezine one day before the "deadline" of when you've decided you'll be sending it out, and going into a great tizzy over the whole thing. Most ezines are highly topical and related to a business, a market or futher products and services of one kind or the other, and their function is to keep customers in touch, as well as to convert interested parties into customers. This gives you a constantly "rolling" audience of old hands and newbies, and an ebb and flow of subscribers and unsubscribers. There are certain evergreen topics in any context that you can always write about, and write about over and over again, from many different angles, and it will always be interesting and well received. This is the key to successful ezine publishing. It's not so much about "news", but about enjoyable content - and that can be as old as the hills, including a 2000 year old quote from a Roman senator; if it is interesting to your target audience, it is applicable, and it can become an ezine article. With that understood, the production of an ezine can change, and it can become far more manageable. Tip 1: Prepare a number of issues in advance so you have at least 3-6 in hand and ready to go, all the time. That's what columnists do so they don't go mad and explode from the stress of constantly trying to beat deadlines. Tip 2: An ezine does NOT need more than ONE GOOD ARTICLE, tip, suggestion etc. In this day and age, people do not sit around with email as though it was the Times Magazine. Too long and too much content, and they'll put it aside for later, and later never comes as you well know with your own email. Tip 3: As you're the publisher, you can have a flexible schedule. Base your ezine on something manageable, weekly, bi-monthly, but be flexible within this to suit yourself and take things like public holidays, major events in your market like the SuperBowl or the Olympics into consideration. Tip 4: You can have a "news space" in your ezine which you can fill with news, or leave blank and just send out the prepared column you have already waiting to go. You don't always have to have some amazing news item in every newsletter, that's way too stressful (and probably even too much for your audience!) Tip 5: Make it as easy for yourself as possible! Don't go mad over mail merging or complicated html formatting if it's a challenge - it isn't necessary. There are people having fantastically successful newslists and ezines who stalwardly send in plain text, without any bells and whistles, but the content is good and it's appreciated all around. Tip 6: Remember your floating audience and go back to basics every third newsletter. Advanced subscribers never mind going over the basics again, and it's essential for the new subscribers. So this may be YOUR ezine No. 266, but how many people were even there for the first 100? Tip 7: If you are planning to have a commercial newsletter that carries advertisements, include advertisements right from the start and as a matter of course. It is the easiest thing to add a short advertisement for a book on Amazon with your own affiliate link in the "ad space section", even if you have only 3 subscribers at present. Then, it is there, and later, when you have 3 million subscribers, you can rent out a space that already exists without disturbing your recipients or changing the format. Tip 8: On that topic, pick a format and stick with it. That makes it MUCH easier to prepare and send newsletters on a regular basis and takes the stress right out of it. Something like: Personal greeting - Advert - Article - News - Advert, for example. That way, you just need to fill in each one and that's easy. Customers also LIKE a format they can trust and it relieves THEIR stress, just the same. To sum up: Make it easy for yourself with pre-prepared, ready to go, ready formatted ezines that just need a "season's greeting" or a short topical comment to make them right up to date. Have a number of them in hand so you can take a holiday when you want to; keep it short and sweet and stick to a simple formula. That's what the professionals do and if you do the same, you'll find having a top quality, interesting email newsletter or ezine that goes out on time, a breeze. (c) Silvia Hartmann 2006
People are busy these days. While we may still have time to read a good novel on our summer vacation, a lot of us are limited to the two or three minutes we can get in before we fall asleep at night or maybe that quiet time in the bathroom. Magazines are great for people on the go. You can get valuable information in small pieces, they’re light and portable, and these days there is a magazine (and sometimes many) for everyone from equestrians to quilters. The problem is that purchasing many magazines can get expensive. But there are ways that you can cut these costs and still get your favorite magazines. First of all, subscribing alone is usually a great cost savings over buying a magazine on the newsstand every month. Plus, this way it comes straight to your house and you don’t have to go to the store to buy it. Subscribing also can give you benefits you won’t get from purchasing individual issues. Most magazines have companion websites these days, and subscribers can get access to extra content and archived materials. One time buyers may get limited access for the time period of the issue they purchased, but subscribers will be able to see everything. When you do subscribe, there are a couple of things that can save you money there, too. Buy in bulk, like you do to get the best price for paper towels or dog food. In other words, if you really like a magazine, pay for two to three years at a time and you will usually pay less than you would if you subscribe a year at a time. Not only is the per year price lower, but you are also protected for a couple of years against the magazine price going up. Another idea is to see if you are eligible for a professional discount. For example, if you work in the financial field, you may qualify for a discount on personal finance or business magazines. Also, if you have a business that has a waiting room, you can often purchase magazines at a discount for your customers to read while they are waiting, then you can read them on your breaks or take them home at night or when the new issues come in. Finally, you may be able to get discounts on magazines with credit card points, or on websites selling discount subscriptions. If you take a little time, you can find great reading for a little money.
Today, many websites offer a free newsletter. Newsletters, from the receiving end, can be a great source for information that is delivered to your in-box. You can simply save the newsletter for future reference, something many people do. From the publisher's standpoint, though, a newsletter is a fantastic idea as it gives you a database of people who are interested in what you have to offer. Marketers know the value of this. But, aside from the potential financial benefit of such a mailing list, a newsletter is also a great way to keep in touch with users who may have only surfed across your website once. They may, on a whim, sign up for your newsletter and, thus, you have a way to keep in touch with them at a later date. You can also use your mailing list as a source for demographics information or opinions. Want to start a new feature on your site and want to know whether it will work or not? Survey the members of your mailing list. So, let's take a look at what needs to be looked at to start your newsletter. Length It would be easy to send your users a long, winding email that requires them to scroll a long way to read the whole thing. However, in practice, this doesn't work very well. You want to keep your newsletter as brief as you can. If you include an article in your mailing, keep it brief and to the point. If the article is long, you could publish a portion of it and direct them to your website to read the rest of it. Size Newsletter size goes hand-in-hand with length, but with HTML newsletters being the norm today, it is possible to have very bloated HTML that does something that could be done otherwise with much less code. In short, then, keep your HTML efficient so that the size of the newsletter in kilobytes does not become too large. Remember, you're sending a lot of them (stress on the server) to people who may still have dial-up (slow download speeds). Frequency You need to decide how often you will publish your newsletter. Most are published weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. If anything is published more often than that, be sure to make that very clear to new subscribers because mailings that are sent too often will cause some to unsubscribe because they find it annoying. Also, once you commit to a frequency, stick to it. If a newsletter is sent irregularly, people will find it useless or will not respect it. However, if it comes at the same time with constant frequency, they will come to expect it and you will gain the respect of having done what you said you would do. Format Most newsletters are offered in both HTML and Text formats and this is your best bet. Most users prefer HTML and HTML provides you with more flexibility to get your message across. Text emails are very plain looking, however they are smaller in size and readable in any email client (some email clients still have a hard time with HTML). It is best to publish in both formats and give subscribers a choice. Method of Sending You need to research and find a way to send your newsletter. Sending mass email is fairly server intensive, depending on the size of your mailing list. For very large lists, it is usual to go to an outside newsletter hosting company to publish the newsletter. These companies have dedicated servers and powerful mass email software in order to send your newsletter without a burp. If you send the newsletter in-house and your list is large, you will want to pay attention to how the mail is sent. We use a PHP-based system designed in house which throttles out-going email depending on site traffic - our way of placing a governor on the rate of sending and not drag our sites to a crawl. Promotion When you start your newsletter, you will need to promote for subscribers. If your site is already pretty well trafficked, your job just got a lot easier. Put the subscription form up on your website and begin to collect addresses. You will find that the rate of sign-ups will be very dependent on your site traffic. This action will result in sign-ups, however you may find that the rate of new sign-ups is still rather slow. You need to get their attention. A popup window is a popular and very workable way to do this. While many users don't like pop ups, this is a use of the popup which makes a lot of sense because it is so workable. Your subscription rate can easily double with this alone. When setting up the popup, use a cookie to ensure that a user does not see the ad more than once for a certain timeframe. You might even want to mention this in the popup itself so that people who are more easily annoyed by them may calm down a bit. Set the popup to appear on their first page view or some other interval. When your code opens the popup, set the cookie. In subsequent page views, your code will detect the cookie and not open the window again. Aside from the popup, make your subscription form prominent on your website. If you have a forum, see about putting an option into the registration process which will add them to your mailing list when they sign up. Also, invite people to invite friends to your mailing list. Opt in and Double Opt In An opt-in mailing list means that a person can visit your site, enter an email address and that address is subscribed. Double opt-in means that when they enter the email address, the system sends them an email which contains a link which they need to click to confirm their subscription. This two-stage setup provides more security because you know the address is valid and that the person signing up is indeed subscribing their own email and not somebody else. The opt-in method will result in much higher subscription rates because you do not need to get the user to do anything else once they enter their address. Double opt-in is more secure, however you will have people who simply do not confirm, therefore the subscription rate will be slower. IF you are after sheer numbers, opt-in is you best method of address collection. However, this method is more open to fraudulent emails. If you use double opt-in, you may want to have a system which will send them a few reminders over time if they do not confirm. In using opt-in, at least send them an email confirming their subscription, with an option to unsubscribe right then and there if they are not the ones who subscribed the address. You might even want to include the IP address of the person who signed them up. A newsletter is an excellent marketing resource for your website and, if you have not begun one, you should strongly consider it.
1. Make sub-lists from Your ezine publishers list: If you have an ezine publishers list, seperate the list based on the topic of the ezine. Send only specific content to specific ezines. For example if you write ezine articles on self improvement, don't send it to search engine based ezines. The more specific you choose your ezine publishers, the more chances of getting published. 2. URLs in Your ezine articles: Always check the urls in your ezine articles. After all, one of the purposes of writing and submitting articles is to get some prospects. Right? 3. Offer 'Win and Win Situation' to the publishers: If you are promoting your product through the ezine article, offer the chance of inserting affiliate link for the publishers. Or provide any free service to them or to their subscribers. 4. Automate the process: Use some sort of software to automate this submission. So you don't have to go through each email address and send one by one. Autoresponder that sends Your articles to your ezine publishers at specified intervals of time: scripts4webmasters/follow-up-autoresponder-pro/index. shtml Automatic and targeted submission software: webmasters-central/cgi-bin/resourcelink/resource. cgi? id=4 5. Ezine publishers Instructions: Some ezine publishers send some specific instructions like short articles, or a link back from your web site etc. Feel free to follow them to get more chances of publishing. 6. Ezine + Online publications: Some ezine publishers send ezines to their subscribers and also they publish their ezines on their web sites as archives. Tell you what... This is a big plus point for your link popularity and also it brings you visitors all the time. 7. How many and how often to send the ezine articles: Give a minimum of one month gap to send a second article again to a publisher. Ezine publishers receive many articles every day and following these tips increase your chances of getting published - = Well formatted article = Clean subheadings for the articles = Only one article per email = Thank you note for their time = Shouldn't be like a sales letter = Topic oriented and simple explanations = No spelling errors = No broken Urls
Stand Alone Advertising So what are Solo Ezine Ads? Simply stated, these are advertisements published in ezines or newsletters where no other ad competes against your marketing message. Also know as Stand Alone Ads. This ad is then sent to subscribers of ezines who have already agreed to recieve these ezines and any accompaning ads. Often referred to as the KING of ezine advertising, the solo ad allows the advertiser to reach her audience of willing to buy opt-in subscribers. These subscribers are already familiar with the publisher of the ezine and trust his or her recommendations. A well developed ad sent through this type of advertising has the potential to create fortunes. Many online professionals have used this method to build huge internet businesses. While no one can guarantee your ad will make you a fortune, using this method will offer you the best chance of getting your marketing message out to warm, willing to buy interested subscribers. Once you eliminate competiton from other advertisers by using solo ads, it's up to you to develop your advertising to get that almighty click and close the sale. How Solo Ezine Ads Work One of the beauties of using stand alone ads is the amount of words you are able to use. Generally publishers allow ads to include up to 500 words. This allows you to create headlines, bulleted points, and your URL. Think of it as a mini-mini website. Your ads should have an attention getting headline (believeable headline) subheadings, bullets, and a call to action. Above all list, benefits, benefits, benefits! Take full advantage of the amount of space being offered. Read your ad, let others read your ad. State a problem, then share how your product or service can solve it for them. Once you have an ad ready, you need to find a resource that will send your message to their readers. For those who are marketing to people interested in making money on the internet, we recommend Ezine King If your target market is outside of internet marketers, we suggest doing a search for ezine directories. Some require membership fees and others are free. There are thousands of ezines and newsletters to choose from. Not all will allow advertising. However, you can subscribe to a few to see if they are of value, if so, contact the publisher and offer your product or service for his or her review. A good review from a trusted publisher can mean profits to you. Track Your Ads Tracking your ads is very important. If you place ads with more than one vendor you will need to know which are pulling and which are not pulling. We use and recommend LinkCounter a free trial is available. We've used this service for several years, it is accurate and stats are provided in real time. No matter what type of advertising you do, if you are not tracking every click, you are losing money. Are Solo Ezine Ads Dead? With the advent of Google Adwords, and the mad rush to advertise using this effective method, Internet marketers left the ezine world. This leaves an old but still effective marketing door open, especially for niche marketers. Spend some time today searching for quaility ezines in your targeted market. A well written solo ad in a quaility ezine can still make the mortgage payment.
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 and aWeber. 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. Converting Every Visitor into Subscriber. If a person visits your website and leaves, chances are that he or she will not come back, especially if there are no compelling reasons to do so. After all, we all behave rather impulsively on the Internet, so much so that we can easily forget where we were 10 web pages ago. But the bottom line is that your visitor may not come back to your website again. If 1,000 visitors visit your website, leave and never come back again, you can imagine the amount of potential revenue lost, simply because they do not come back. You could have converted a fraction of the visitors into your customers. Some may say that creating unique content can keep some of the visitors coming back, but very often, unique content is not the solution. The real, long-term solution lies in converting your visitors into subscribers of your mailing list. Before your visitor leaves your website, you want to convert him or her into your subscriber via a simple opt-in to your mailing list. You do this by asking for your visitor’s name and email address through your opt-in form. And if your visitor signs up to be on your mailing list, you can still follow up with him via email. You can get your subscriber to consider your offer, or endorse another offer to him or her. All in all, you want to convert as many visitors into subscribers as possible and obtain the potential revenue you rightfully deserve – the easy, wise way.
A lot of have been written about the Importance of submitting articles to Article Directories. Article Directory is a useful source for information on the Internet today. Many people including journalist, analysts, and writers among others surf different article directories in search of useful information. So if you want to share useful information or for that matter promote your website then submitting articles to such directories is the best solution. Now the question one need to ask here is how can this help in promoting your website in the Search Engines. Article directory is an important technique as far as Search Engine Optimization is concerned. As a web promoter you write the articles and submit them to article directories for approval. The key factor is that you can add a link back to your website in the resource box of these article directories. So basically if some one on the Internet comes across your article they will have a chance of actually visiting your website through the resource box. There are thousands of Article directories on the Internet. While submitting your articles to such directories you have to understand different features that will help you in distributing the article in the right way. Every article directory has a whereby you post in the entire article, keywords and most importantly the resource box. Let me show you the resource box I have used for this particular article. “ Thomas R is the author of this article on “Your website keyword” (Link back the keyword with the URL of your website). Find more information about the subject at (URL of your website) If you just check at the bottom of this article you will find my resource box. I have highlighted my primary keyword with the link back to my website. Likewise you too can write interesting articles that will enhance the readers interest so much so that they will be forced to check out your website link as well. How many article directories should I submit my article to? Now this is a very interesting question. I am sure you to must me haunted by this question regularly as to how many article directories you need to submit your article to. To be frank let me tell you that there is no limit to the number of article directories on the Internet. It will be good for your website and your business if you could submit your article to as many directories as you can. For quick results you can start submitting your articles to quality article directories that have a high Pr in the Search Engines. However this does not mean that an Article directory with Pr 0 has no value. One of the important points that you have to consider here is that these directories too will get a Page Rank on their next google Update. So basically it’s a matter of time that your article will be indexed here as well. However in doing so you have to make sure to avoid submitting your articles to directories that are plagiarized and banned by the Search Engines.
Ezines are highly effective advertising tool if done correctly. One of the most important advantage ezines have is the target group of people they refer to. Of course there are rules to be followed in order to succeed in ezine advertising. 1. Write Benefits Not Features. It may sound cynical but most people are selfish. They don’t care about your company or background but they DO care about the benefits they gain. So, instead of saying that the “A” software title contains these features, try to specify that it will save money and time in the exact amount. Be as accurate as you can on that. 2. Choose very careful the ezines you advertise. An ezine of 150.000 subscribers may seem tempting but you should ask yourself, how the publisher got those subscribers? He bought the list, used FFA, or used similar methods? Does the publisher use contests for his subscribers in order to visit your website? If a subscriber visits your site because there is the expectation of gaining something how valuable this subscriber is for your business? Zero if you ask me. 3. Double opt-in much better than single opt-in. Yes, if you find an ezine that builds the subscriber base with double opt-in method, it’s highly possible that you have a goldmine here. A double opt-in ezine of 2500 subscribers has more value than a single opt-in ezine of 10.000 subscriber base. With double opt-in you can be reassured that you will have no spam complains and the value of the prospects is much higher. 4. Run you ads more than once. This is important because prospects have to see more than one time to absorb your message. One thing you can do is to run your ad 2-3 times and if the first is not successful you can modify your copy. 5. The Headline is all the money. People have their mailbox filled with emails and spam these days. Obviously they don’t have the time to read every single email they get. So the screening process starts with the headlines. It’s a simple as that, if your headline sucks your all effort goes in vain. They will just ignore the whole message. 6. Call to action – Create urgency sense. This is a copywriting rule you must follow. You must use the time pressure technique to the readers in order to act now. You can use limited time discount offers. In that way you tempt the reader to visit your website which is your first aim. 7. Track your ads. Do Not underestimate that factor. If you start to have sales, how would you know which ezines produce the results? You can’t afford to miss that. With so many tracking software and services out there is no excuse to risk your advertising budget on guessing. 8. Focus on Top-Sponsor and Solo ads. They are the most effective. Top sponsor ads are on the top of the publication and it is the first message the reader views. Solo ads are highly effective because the reader views your message alone with nothing else tracking his or her attention. Forget the classified ads, although they are cheaper. When you read a newsletter you focus on the content or the 15-20 displayed ads? Finally, as a recommendation, you can start searching for effective ezines on the directoryofezines . It’s the ultimate resource for tracking and advertising on targeted ezines.
Newsletters, or ezines, can be extremely effective marketing tools for your business. They put your name in front of your potential clients, regular clients, and peers while showing your expertise and professionalism. They are an excellent means to both market and grow your business and also show your existing clients your creative abilities. Now the only drawback is to ensure your newsletter is worthy of being read. I subscribe to a lot of newsletters, but find I regularly only read a few upon their arrival. When I decided to create my own newsletter, one of the first things I did was to look at those newsletters I regularly read and determine what it was about them that made me want to read them. What sets them apart from the rest? One of the most important things I discovered was that they provided me with valuable information to help me in my business and which in turn helped me make a greater profit. They often provided information I didn’t already know. For example, some newsletters provided tips on search engine optimization, new affiliate programs, PR resources, or software shortcuts. Since I’m always looking to grow my business, this information is valuable to me. You normally have knowledge in a given field that others don’t. When preparing your newsletter, think about what expert knowledge you have or can obtain that would interest your targeted market. Now that’s what you want to add to your newsletter. In writing your newsletter, keep the following points in mind: Your Readers - Know your readers and what they want. - Ask your readers for feedback and how to improve. - Talk to your readers. Don’t just put information in your newsletter, think about that audience out there reading your newsletter. How do they feel after reading what you’ve prepared? Your Writing Style - Use short, simple sentences; keeping paragraphs short. - Write clearly and avoid slang or profanity. - Use humor and keep a refreshing tone to your writing. - In keeping your tone friendly, also keep it professional. - Have white space between the paragraphs. - Use small graphics whenever applicable. - Include your logo for business recognition. - Use plain text. (12-14 point) Headings - Entice the reader with your heading to ensure they read the article. Most people decide whether they will even read the article from the heading. - Headlines should be slightly larger than the other text. - Use bold or italics and a good font, but don’t use all caps. - Make sure that the heading and article talk about the same topic. It’s great to have an awesome heading, but if your article is on something else, you lose the edge you just gained. Content of Newsletter - Content is king! Just like on your website, it’s vital to have your newsletter or ezine packed full of useful information. - Provide articles written by you and other experts. - Provide any new services or features you’ve added to your business. - Provide links of relevant press releases, articles, other sites, etc. This gives readers more information that they can review. - Provide case studies, facts not known, etc. Sign up for Google News so that you can get information your clients might not have seen. - Provide a collection of valuable small business tips, testimonials, etc. - When providing your tips, list them such as this: The top ten reasons to … - Provide a personal message from you. Many enjoy hearing how you are doing and what’s new happening in their life and business. Just don’t’ go overboard. - Provide humorous quotations or jokes. - Contests / Polls / Freebies / Quizzes / Games!! Let the fun begin. Why not include something that makes the reader look forward to taking a break from their busy day to read your newsletter? - If you want to make money with your newsletter – put in ads or Google Adsense. The Final Step – Proofing - Make sure everything is 100% accurate with no typos. - Make sure you have permission for any copyrighted material. - Make sure if you have sources, you have credited them correctly. - Make sure that what is about to go out reflects your business well. Most ezines are “opt-in,” which means that everyone who receives it has actually registered to receive it—they want it already. Now the only thing you need to do is provide them great information that keeps them wanting it every month. And once you find a winning strategy stick with it. No need to change every month. Let your readers get used to your style and way of writing. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter at virtualwordpublishing
The other day I happened upon a site where I was invited to subscribe to the webmaster's ezine. All good and well and of course good marketing to have a subscribe page and way of capturing visitors emails on your site. But the webmaster purported to say that the newsletter had a value of $399 but I would be one of the lucky ones and get it for free. Well I produce a newsletter and I think it is fairly good quality so what value would I put on that...certainly not $399, and I would have no idea what to value it at, after all only the subscriber can properly put a perceived value on the ezine they receive. So how can this other ezine have a value of $399? And what about all these ebooks which apparently have a resale value of $47, or $97 or more. Who are you going to get to buy these ebooks when everywhere you look the same ebooks are being given out for free...you know the ones - 'Million Dollar Emails', 'Scientific Advertising', 'Magic Letters' and so on.... Many websites and sales pages will attempt to persuade you to buy their product by throwing in a large number of bonuses.....worth hundreds of dollars of course and what are they, the same old ebooks again. And while some of these ebooks are actually worth reading, they now have no real value as they are distributed for free everywhere you look. If you want to get someone to signup for your newsletter or buy your product or service you need to offer something of real value...something they cannot get hold of anywhere else, or certainly not for the price you are offering it at. If you produce a newsletter or report, don't place a fictious value on it that cannot be backed up. We are so used to having freebies, bonuses, extras etc pushed in our faces that they no longer really work and to stand out from the crowd, you need to be different. Stick to real quality, proper value and you will get subscribers, sales and signups.
One of the common mistakes many new web site owners make when they start their online business is to think that scores of people are going to stream to their site. They spend the money for that professional look, add all the relevant information and now they sit back and wait for the visitors. The shock is quite traumatic when they find out that this is not the case. The logical question that's asked when the customers don't show is," how do I get customers/visitors". Well the answer to this is, start a marketing campaign. There are several ways to go about this. One of the options that creates quite a lot of attention are ezines. The problem the web site owner now face is how to find information on how, where and how much. Of course an important aspect of this ezine marketing technique is finding the highest targeted ezines or web sites to post your articles to. A pitfall to lookout for are the fly by night ones. They will take your money but you will wait in vain for the traffic. There is of course always a tradeoff between money spent and money made from your investment, it is therefore always important to make sure you that you find an ezine that gives you a good return on your investment (ROI). So one more time, be careful because a vast majority of ezines are a waste of time and money. The age old saying applies to ezine marketing as well "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is". Here are a few points to keep in mind. 1. You get what you pay for. 2. You must offer something that relates to the niche market. 3. Target your advertising to your audience. 4. The best things are not always free. Where you must advertise or which newsletter is right for you depend on your product or service. The good thing about ezines is, these days you get newsletters on about anything. So as can be seen, do your homework before embarking on an ezine campaign and you will reap the rewards. PS: I left the best secret for last, build your own list with subscribers. With this you will be assured your ezine is targeted to an audience who want to hear what you have to say, they want to hear about your product or service and it will cost you next to nothing to advertise to them.
