Web Business Resource

I remember ezines use to be fairly common. Most websites would have some type of email newsletter.

However, now it seems that ezines have become mostly obsolete.

Email marketing has already become much less useful because it has been so abused by spammers. Additionally, people do not use email to keep in touch as much since they can use internet messengers, social networking websites, and cell-phones.

Most of all, I think the massive influx of blogs and blogging over the last few years has made ezines redundant and pointless. An email newsletter could just be published as a blog. People can subscribe to the blog using RSS, and webmasters can easily turn their RSS into an email update service. Also, non-subscribers can come to the blog to see new posts.

What do you think? Do you ezines are obsolete?

by Raymond Nesa

Ezine publishing is the new way to market anything from newsletters, brochures and e-books at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Whether you are looking to either begin or advance your ezine publishing career, here are just a few suggestions on how to kick-start or ride the wave of publishing success.

1. It is important for you to be diligent in your efforts in this field of publishing as you need to know how to identify the audience you are trying to target. This means that you need to look at market research of what you want to publish before actually publishing. Also use the resource box on the ezine site, as this will provide valuable links needed in order to create traffic to your site.

2. Graphics are extremely important in ezine publishing as what holds the visitors attention is a well thought out ezine that embraces the visitor as they are reading what you are publishing.

3. Along with the need for attractive and engaging images comes the need for interesting, factual, informative and engaging articles. It is important to look at your ezine as a combination of library and information kiosk in one. You need to be the one that people will come to and after reading the articles be totally taken aback by what you’ve told them.

4. Look for those ezine sites that have the highest level of traffic.

5. Make all your articles in the range of no more than 1,000 words. If you go longer than that limit, you will lose your audience.

6. Publish not only what you are describing as your product or service within the article, but also your contact information so readers know how to reach you should they like more information.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? Secrets of Article Marketing

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Want to learn more about driving traffic like I do? Download my free traffic guide here: Traffic Generation

Raymond Nesa is an experienced web marketer specializing in article marketing, traffic generation, and list building.

by James Krawder

Ezine is a well-known publishing site there is the Internet. In fact, when one wants for some relative information, Ezine is one on the list to do the researching. With the potential of Ezine to promote your product on their site, getting a spot on their site is one thing that every businessman would desire. You may find the reasons below qualified enough to make you encouraged to publish your articles with Ezine.

• Ezine allows for your personal bylines to appear for every article that you submit to them. The byline can contain your personal name, the business or the company you are representing to, your merits as a businessman, your own link address and even your contact information such as e-mail address or business phone numbers.

• The Ezine site allows you to build your image as an expert on what you write because it does not take away from you your right in owning what you have written and submitted. All credits of the material goes directly to you.

• Ezine offers a free service. It is one advertising avenue that a businessman can use without spending money. What is good about this is that, the money that is saved out of using the Ezine can be used to cover other promotional expenses.

• The Ezine site has a repository box where they keep your materials. From time to time, they send out these materials to people who are on their list; this is an extra mile of advertising for you because a lot of people are subscribed to Ezine.

Want to learn more about it? Download the free ebook, Steps to Article Marketing Success.

by Mark Abrahams

You should ask yourself the reasons why you would want to build a list. Sometimes building a list can be very time consuming and it may seem like you are hitting a brick wall trying to attract prospects. Or you could build a huge list and none of the prospects are responsive and actually buy your products. Mastering this skill will definitely make your internet business extremely profitable. You need to focus on quality and not quantity. If you had a hundred thousand subscribers and very few people actually purchased your products that would be worthless. Now if you had only ten thousand subscribers and they were very responsive you could easily make a few thousand dollars for every email that you send out.

I am going to go through some very powerful techniques that you can use to build a highly responsive list. Article marketing is one of the most powerful techniques as people who click through your web site already trust you. These leads will convert ten times better than leads from other sources. Write informative articles and submit them to the top article directories. This will generate traffic and webmasters will also pick up the content to submit to their email lists and post as content on their web site.

You can also create an email list of webmasters who subscribe to your content. Every time you write a new article you can send it to this list and some webmasters will publish your article. I also suggest that you create a squeeze page where you can capture the details of your visitor and market to them over and over again using a back end system.

Once you have mastered this skill of list building you will corner the market in the niche that you focused on. You will be able to use that list of prospective customers and market to them over and over generating repeat sales. If you do not have a list then you need to advertise to generate sales and it is much easier to sell to a list that already knows and trusts you.

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Mark Abrahams is a full time internet marketer who has helped others to earn a living online.

by Anita DeFrank

This is one of the most direct ways that you can advertise online. Newsletters, often referred to as ezines are like magazines online. Most of the time they are presented in a newsletter format rather than an actual magazine. But they have one very big advantage over most types of online advertising. They are very targeted to a particular topic. They are not paid for, except with a few exceptions such as financial and scientific ezines, but are usually sent free to their subscribers. The way that the owner makes money from their ezine is through advertising, either for their own products, or other people’s products that they have an affiliate link for, so that they get a percentage of the sale.

Because the readers of the ezine have signed up for them and receive them on a regular basis, they are very targeted on their market. After all if the readers were not interested then they would just unsubscribe. Any ezine owner that has a successful ezine also knows that they have to give their readers good content and not just advertising. There has to be a balance where the main emphasis is on the content, providing good informative content for the readers that is both interesting and useful and occasional advertising. But even then to be really effective the advertising has to fit in with the context of the article so that it is more seen as helping them to find something that could help them with a problem than just trying to sell them something.

A lot of ezine owners sell advertising space in their ezines because it is a good way to make extra money. But you have to be very careful that the ezine audience is the same as you need for your product and if the owner gives you advice on how to write your ad you should listen, as they know their readers.

It can’t go unsaid that you should also start your own ezine by collecting subscribers from your site and from your customers. If you give them quality content and occasional offers, especially if you give them a good discount, then you will be able to sell to the same readers again and again. But you need to make sure that the ezine is good so that they keep reading. Ezine advertising is a really good way to start getting good conversions for your products and when you start to get your own subscribers then you will begin to see your profits grow.

Anita DeFrank, owner of http://www.MommysHelperOnline.com is a busy work at home mom. MommysHelperOnline.com is the leading resource available online built to assist you with your home business. Whether you’re brand new to the work at home game or you’re an old pro, be sure to stop by today.

by Michael Fleischner

Let’s begin with defining what an “ezine” is and how it can help you drive tons of traffic to your website and help you sell products and services. An ezine (electronic magazine) is much like a traditional magazine or newsletter. However, it is only delivered via email. People sign up to receive ezines for free or a monthly subscription fee. Most ezines are published weekly, but some are published daily, monthly or bi-monthly.

Generating Traffic with Ezines (Ads)

Classified Ads: the cheapest ads you can buy. Classified ads are limited to two or three lines and placed at the end of the ezine. Unless you place a classified ad in an ezine with 30,000 subscribers or more, your chances of getting a response are very small.

Sponsor Ads: these are more expensive than classified ads, but will give you much better response. Sponsor ads can be placed at the top, middle or bottom of an ezine issue. You can include more text in a sponsor ad so it’s a good way to test your copy before going all out on a solo ad.

Solo Ads: these are the king of all ezine ads because your offer is sent exclusively to everyone on the mailing list and gets the full attention of the subscribers. No articles or other content is included. Solo ads can be expensive, but they can increase your response by as much a 100% over sponsor ads. You can usually expect a 10% response rate from a good solo ad. In other words, if you purchase a solo ad for $100 in an ezine with 10,000 subscribers, you should expect about 1,000 highly targeted visitors.

Note: Solo ads can be purchased for as little as $10. You will usually get a better response from a $10 solo ad sent to 500 subscribers than you will from a $10 classified ad sent to 5,000.

Here’s your step-by-step guide to successful ezine advertising.

Step One: Subscribe to 3 or More Ezines

Subscribe to ezines that offer top sponsor and solo ads within your budget. Subscribing to ezines before you place your ads will allow you to determine the quality of the list and potential profitability of your campaign before you spend any money. You can also make sure your ad goes out.

You can find a wide variety of ezines in these directories: http://topezineads.com http://www.directoryofezines.com

Step Two: Contact the Advertisers

The surest way to maximize your results from any ezine is to ask people who have already advertised. Take a few minutes to contact one or more people who have placed ads similar to the one you want to place. Tell them you’re new to ezine advertising and are afraid of losing money. Most people will be glad to help you out. And if they had a bad experience, they’ll definitely let you know.

In addition, if you see the same ad running multiple times, that’s a good indication that it was profitable. Smart marketers will run the same ad at least three times if the first one was successful.

Step Three: Contact the Ezine Publisher Contact the publisher to find out if anyone has else has purchased an ad within the last month for the same product you want to promote. This is critical because you don’t want to advertise the same product to people who may have already purchased. Here are some additional questions to ask (if they are not stated on the website):

• Can I personalize the subject line?
• Can I personalize the message?
• If yes, what are the personalization codes?
• How often to you publish?
• When is your next opening?
• What is the maximum word count?

Step Four: Set Up an Ad Tracker

You will want to create a tracking campaign for each ezine that you advertise in. The system will create a link for you to use and it will track your visitors and commissions just like your regular affiliate link.

Never pay for adverting unless you can track the response. You need to know how many visitors and sales you get for each ad you place so you can determine whether or not you want to run another ad in a particular ezine.

This information is critical for determining how well each ad campaign does and how well you’re converting visitors into sales. Sometimes you just need to tweak your ad copy and run the ad again for better results.

If you get good results the first time, run your ad again in a week or two. Not everyone will buy the first time around. And many who were “on the fence” the first time they saw your ad, may purchase the second time around.

Step Five: Write Your Ad

Most affiliate programs provide pre-written ads for you to use. While that is convenient, you’ll get much better results if you don’t repurpose them word for word. Make them unique and follow some of these suggestions:

• Add a personal endorsement. With all the hype online, people are more likely to read and click on something that you personally recommend.

• Use a testimonial from the sale letter for the product you are promoting. That’s an easy way to get content for a good solo ad.

• Use other people’s ads. One of the bests ways to come up with ideas for good ads is to read ezines. Look for ads that catch your eye. Modify them to fit the product you’re promoting and add your own personal touch.

Step Six: Place Your Order

This is the easy part. You simply fill out a form with your ad copy and credit card information. After you process the order you will receive a confirmation telling you when the ad will run. And since you are already subscribed to the ezine, you can verify it yourself. Don’t rely on them to send you a “courtesy copy.”

Step Seven: Put Half Your Profits Back Into Advertising

Once you start generating sales from your ezine ads (this is why you need to track them accurately), take half of your profit and use that to purchase more ezine space. This ensures profitable growth and proper allocation of your marketing spend.

Ezine marketing and advertising is the same as any other online marketing vehicle. The key is to start small, test, evaluate the results, and channel your marketing to those ezines that produce a positive return. Once you’re up and running, continue to tweak your ad to see if you can increase response rates.

About the Author: Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. He has appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. For your copy of the free SEO report visit MarketingScoop.com.

by Steve Nash

It’s all very well promoting your website, but how many people that do actually visit your site *ever* return?

Not as many as you would like, I bet.

The thing is, it’s a lot easier and less time-consuming to promote your site (and your business) to people who have *already* visited.

So how do you do that?

Well, there are several ways to encourage people to return to your site. Some of these ways include asking people to bookmark your site, or asking people to make your site their homepage, or by providing a service that they can’t do without (like free email, or free blogging, or free sms).

One of the best ways to encourage return visitors to your site, though, is to publish an ezine or newsletter. Writing a newsletter is also one of the best ways to stay in touch with site visitors and existing customers.

The very least you can do with a regularly published newsletter is to remind your subscribers about your website. Much more importantly, though, you get a chance to develop trust between your site visitors and your business; i.e. you get a chance to develop a business relationship with them.

How To Publish A Newsletter

There are many considerations to publishing a newsletter out of the scope of this article. For example, do you publish in text or HTML? What about RSS feeds? Do you use third party email software or do buy and install your own? Which software is best? How do you avoid the spam filters? Etc.

To learn much more about publishing a newsletter (or ezine, as it sometimes called) I highly recommend you visit Christopher Knight’s Email Universe website. It is full of tips and articles written by newsletter publishers for newsletter publishers.

In the words of EmailUniverse:

“The E-mail List-Owner Resource Network is an excellent source for today’s Email List Owners, Managers, and Editors. Features include educational announcement lists, discussion lists, and resources that will benefit all related to List Ownership.”

(Note: A list is just another name for an email mailing list, or collection of email subscribers.)

You get the idea. EMail Universe will help you learn how to publish a newsletter, and a lot more besides. You can find Email Universe here - http://emailuniverse.com

How To Promote Your Newsletter

As with your website, you need to promote your newsletter or ezine and get people to sign-up (subscribe). By all means mention your newsletter to your friends and family and then try these legitimate methods:

- You MUST promote your newsletter on your own site

Put the newsletter sign-up form at the top left or top right of as many of your web pages as possible. Offer an incentive to sign-up and sell the benefits of your newsletter (e.g. a first notice of the next sale, for instance, or a chance to win something)

Use a pop-up window to encourage sign-ups. This is a little bit controversial, admittedly, but pop-ups *do* increase subscriber sign-up rates!

- Announce your newsletter to the web via the many newsletter announcement mailing lists and newsletter directories

- Make your newsletter a good and informative read

This is probably the most important aspect of publishing a newsletter. There are several considerations to help you make your newsletter a worthwhile read:

* Add your personality
* Publish regularly
* Stick to a similar format
* Proof your newsletter and remove mistakes
* Encourage feedback and act on that feedback
* Have clear publishing objectives and meet them, and
* Enjoy yourself.

If nothing else, keep it short.

Note: a good newsletter gets shared around; whilst a bad one gets unsubscribed from or, worse, just ignored.

Again, if you subscribe to Ezine Tips (the newsletter for Ezine Universe) you will learn more about promoting your newsletter or ezine. In the words of the site:

“Ezine-Tips strives to be the number-one source of free information for email newsletter publishers. It covers:
- Content Creation
- Ezine Format Issues
- List Management
- Ezine Promotion
- Ezine Advertising and other forms of Revenue Generation
- Strategies to achieve success with your email publication.”

Or, in other words, it covers almost everything you need to know to about building, growing and using your mailing list.

–

Writing a newsletter on a regular basis is a great way to keep people returning to your website. There are many tools and resources that show you how, like Ezine Universe. Publishing a newsletter is not difficult to do, but it’s a great way for you to get to know your site visitors and for them to get to know you. And, remember, building trust online helps boost sales.

About the Author: Steve M Nash is owner of several sites including http://www.textmefree.com - a directory of free sms text messaging sites, and guide to bulk sms marketing. He promotes all of them using the basic principles and tips detailed in his free website promotion guide, http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com

by Deanna Mascle

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot of rumblings around the internet marketing community that say ezine advertising is dead and gone.

I have to tell you that ezine advertising is alive and well — and still one of the most effective and powerful forms of internet marketing available.

There are several reasons this is true but I’ll simply concentrate on three main points.

Today’s ezines and newsletters are permission-based which means subscribers want to receive these messages in their emailbox. Responsible publishers are proactive about giving subscribers total control over their subscription and working closely with their mailing service to ensure as close to 100 percent deliverability as possible. Ezines deliver because they have to do so or shut down.

The experts in internet marketing and search engine optimization offer wide ranging and diverse opinions about what the best marketing technique may be, but they all agree on one point — content is king on the internet. Content is attractive to search engines and visitors alike. It is content that makes a site sticky and successful. And content is one area where ezines and newsletters reign supreme. In today’s permission-driven environment they need to deliver quality information or they’ll quickly be out of business. Imagine your ad placed in a prominent position beside high-quality information that your target audience wants. That is what ezine advertising can deliver.

If content is king then links are the lifeblood of the internet. Without links surfers could not navigate around the internet and without links search engines will not locate web sites and pages. Oneoften overlooked aspect of ezines and newsletters is the powerful text link benefits offered by ezine advertising. While most people are attracted by the immediate return of their message appearing before X number of subscribers, they do not realize that their ezine ad could work for them weeks, months and years after it was read via email. Almost all ezines and newsletters are archived on the web and because of the content they provide often those archives are crawled regularly and ranked high by search engines — and provide you with valuable back links to help increase your search engine standing.

You can dismiss ezine advertising as dead and gone and concentrate on other forms of internet marketing. Yes, you can dismiss ezine advertising, and you can miss out on immediate results from a targeted audience and you can miss out on valuable back links working for you long into the future.

About The Author: Deanna Mascle shares her Ezine Advertising tips in the free ebook “How To Write A Powerful Ezine Ad”. Publishers who want to reprint this article and/or give away the ebook away should visit How To Advertise With Ezines to learn how to benefit.

by Ken Hill

1. Post testimonials for your ezine on your site.

You’ll be able to increase your ezine’s credibility by sharing how your ezine has benefited your readers.

2. Include a few testimonials for your business in each issue.

In addition, to using testimonials for your ezine, use testimonials for your products within your ezine that share your customers’ favorable feedback.

3. Write articles.

Your articles can help you to share your expertise with your readers and add your voice to your ezine.

They can also help you to increase your subscriptions by building up more targeted traffic to your site.

4. Swap ads.

You’ll create a win-win situation as both you and the other ezine publisher will get valuable free promotion of each other’s ezines.

When possible, swap for multiple issues as repetition will increase your ad’s response.

5. Swap a recommendation within your ezine.

Simply plug another publisher’s ezine in your ezine (i.e., in your editor’s or publisher’s note) in exchange for that publisher doing the same for you.

6. Swap “thank you” page ads or recommendations.

You’ll be able to get valuable ongoing promotion of your ezine as everyone that fills out your swapper’s subscription form or box will see your ezine’s ad or recommendation.

7. Offer a bonus.

For example, you could offer ebooks, an email course, or access to your “subscriber only” membership site as a bonus for joining you.

8. Run subscriber only deals on your products and on advertising in your ezine.

You’ll get more first time buyers and also repeat business.

You’ll also be able to show your readers that you value them by providing them with sales and promotions that are just for them.

9. Write product reviews.

You’ll be able to benefit your readers by giving them the lowdown on products you use or have tried.

You’ll also be able to increase your commissions by publishing your positive reviews with your affiliate links.

10. Recommend affiliate programs.

After you’ve gained your readers’ trust, a powerful way to increase your commissions is to endorse products in your ezine that you’ve found to be valuable and you believe will help your readers.

11. Promote your ezine in your sig file.

Use your signature file that promotes your ezine in your day to day emails and also, when appropriate, in your posts to forums that you’ve joined and participate in.

12. Have your readers forward your issues.

Get valuable word of mouth promotion for your ezine by asking your readers to forward your issues in their entirety to their friends and colleagues that might be interested in it.

About The Author: Ken runs the Net Pro Marketer where you’ll find resources to help you grow your business and also informative articles on business, marketing, and ezine publishing. Browse through the articles and pick up a valuable free report for email marketers at: www.netpromarketer.com

by Joyce Oladipo

Is it worth keeping in touch with clients via ezine?

Yes, Yes, Yes and it does work.

Ezines are a great way to keeping in touch with your clients and an effective way to promote additional products and service to your clients. Clients will appreciate your efforts to keep in touch with them on a regular basis as well.

I am amazed by the amount of small businesses that are not using this method to build a relationship with their prospects. Some even try sending and giving up because there is no response from their subscribers.

Isn’t it hard for you to get a sales person into the home of a client sweet talking for you?

A campaign is a sustained attack on something. So in other words if we keep sending we will build out list incredibly.

Here are some things you need to know before starting your own ezine.

1. Patience and perseverance

It takes sometime to get a responsive list. Most small business owners give up after sending a few ezines or they don’t email their list often. As long as they are still on your list they are still interested in what you have to say. Do you respond to all ezines that arrives in your mail box? You may be interested in the product they are promoting but it could take six months for you to realize that getting the product could be of great benefits to you. So keep sending your ezines and keep it interesting and make sure it contains relevant information for your prospects.

2. Ezine Objective

Your ezine can have a variety of objectives depending on your goals. For instance, your ezine could be used for:

• Establishing your name and reputation
• Selling your products and services
• Keeping in touch with clients
• Driving traffic to your website
• Announcing new products and service.

3. Good Content

Your ezine needs to content good information relevant to your target market. It also needs to be in sync with your objectives. If it’s to build relationship you might consider using personally written articles with an interactive question and answer section and if it’s for advertising you can add an advertising section to your ezine.

Here are a few ideas for contents that you might consider for your own ezine:

• How-To tips, hints and articles
• Your answers to readers questions
• Reader testimonials, opinions, and feedbacks
• Guest experts corners
• Recommend website resources
• Contest
• Product reviews (books, tool etc.)

And if you think you can’t write an ezine you can go to www.elance.com and have someone write one for you. You can also visit free reprint right directories and use their articles. Here are a few www.ezinearticles.com, www.marketing-seek.com and www.ideamarketers.com

4. Your List

You can dramatically expand your response rate by positioning your ezine to a particular group. Try marketing your ezine on directories of your target market. You might also call a list broker to get a list for your target clients, or run ads that attracts the attention of your clients offering them free information.

5. Your Frequency

How often you send your ezine is important. There are six choices for you to decide to send your ezine.

• Daily ezine requires some commitment unless they are short. Normally this type of ezine consists of tips, quotes, or news.
• Weekly ezine are sent weekly
• Bi-weekly is an ezine sent every 2 weeks
• Monthly of just beyond the forgetting point.
• Quarterly ezine are simply a waste of time. It’s not useful if you are going to be keeping in touch with clients every 90 days. People will forget who you are and just delete your message when it arrives.
• Whenever ezine is the worst way of keeping in touch with your clients

Choose which frequency you want and stick to it.

6. Follow Ups

Follow up on everything properly. You can have your subscribers get messages in a certain way. Let them know they are dealing with a real person. Let them know you care.

7. Automated the system

Once you have decided on your objective, content, and frequency you’ll use for your ezine. It’s time to actually set up a system like:

• Gathering target clients email addresses
• Installing and setting up your email management system
• Having a subscription form on your website

The bottom line is this… if you don’t mail out to your clients you are losing or missing out on increased takings? We all need reminding of everything these days, life is busy. Your clients are no different. Keep in touch with them, set up a system where you mail them at least every six weeks and it will pay of big time for you.

Finally if you start it, never give it will pay off.

Online entrepreneur Joyce O. Oladipo, “The Home Business Sistah,” publishes the award-winning ‘Home Business Success’ ezine with 750 subscribers. To Learn to Recession Proof Your Business and Rapidly Attract More Clients, Sell More to Existing Clients, and Bring Back Your Clients More Frequently, without Pushing So Hard — No Matter What Product or Service You Sell sign up for FREE how-to articles and FREE audio class, at http://www.TheHomeBusinessSistah.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joyce_Oladipo

by Sanjay Johari

Newsletters are excellent means of marketing on the internet. The publisher of the newsletters gets a foothold in the market for standing and growing. The publisher could be an individual or an organization. But it is important for the publisher to form an identity and to establish himself in the market. The long term players in the market simply cannot do without forming an identity, a brand name. By brand name I only mean an identification to distinguish the publisher.

Newsletters can be used very well for branding the publishers.

But in the first place why do you need to brand yourself?

You are an internet based marketer. You are trying to market products and ideas. You are looking for like-minded people who would be interested in what you have to offer.

If you answer these two simple questions you will know why you need to brand yourself. These questions are:

1. Why will anyone listen to you?

2. Why will anyone be interested in your offer?

You have to first locate people who may have interest in your offer. Next, you have to build credibility so that interested people start trusting you. It is in this second process where you brand yourself. You establish yourself as an expert in the field who is there to stay and who can be trusted. You create a distinct brand for yourself which is unique.

The brand YOU.

In fact you market your name before you can expect to market your products in a big way.

You can use newsletters to meet both the objectives – to locate your customers and to establish yourself. Starting your newsletters is a long term strategy. Your newsletters should focus on a particular area which is related to the product you wish to market. The frequency of publication should be fixed and strictly followed. In every issue there should be fresh content to keep the readers interested. It will take time and persistence to establish the newsletter as well as the publisher, to increase the subscriber base and to grow the circulation. After initial hurdles are successfully negotiated you are poised for substantial growth.

The readers of the newsletter gradually get used to the style, presentation, periodicity of publication, the content and other features of the newsletter. They look forward to the next issue and expect to find the familiar pattern. The publisher of the newsletter should ensure that the newsletter maintains its unique features. There should be consistency in the content. The objective should be providing information which will benefit the subscribers. You can add stories and your personal experience to make the newsletters more interesting.

What should be the frequency of the newsletter? Once or twice a week can be a good frequency to maintain. It does not become a burden either on the publisher or the subscribers. If frequency is less than a month the readers may forget about the newsletter. If frequency is more the readers may lose interest.

There should not be any drastic changes from one issue to the other. The readers should get what they expect to find. If any changes are to be made in any of the features, the changes should be gradual. It often helps to inform the readers before the changes are made.

Newsletters are powerful tools for cultivating relationship. And relationship is the foundation of a successful business. The subscribers of the newsletters come to know the publisher. The owner of the newsletter gets an effective medium to share ideas and information. By inviting comments from the subscribers the newsletters can be made more interactive and popular.

The publisher should always shave in mind the best interests of the subscribers. This attitude somehow gets transmitted and readers can often see through the intentions of the publisher.

Your customers do not buy your products – they buy your recommendations. Once they have faith in you they will buy from you repeatedly with the confidence that they will get value for their money. That is the power of branding yourself, and maintaining your brand name.

It is ok to send offers to the subscribers occasionally. However such offers should not be too frequent. What is even more important is that the publisher should not send offers for un-tested and un-tried products. He should send offers only for those products which he would himself purchase. With the offer he should provide his own views, ratings and experience with the product.

I have tried to discuss how newsletters can be used for marketing your other products. Publishing newsletters can itself be a business. That is additional advantage of publishing newsletters.

by Scott Hughes

Most experienced web professionals cannot think of a worse way to market an online business than with spam emails, or anything that seems like spam emails. Spam earns a business a bad reputation, the risk of getting black-listing, and pissed off customers… nothing more. There is a way to get your business links into the email boxes of potential customers without self-destructive spam. That method is publishing an ezine, an electronic newsletter or electronic magazine, sent out via email.

As an internet business owner, having your own ezine gives you the promotional benefits of email marketing without the drawbacks of spam-like email ads. By sending out an ezine, you regularly remind old customers and potential customers of your business, by providing them with a complementary service. You not only retain your respectability with your market, but also increase it. A long list of interested potential customers happily receive a free magazine/newsletter from you. Talk about win-win.

In addition to the amount of benefits an ezine entails, starting one is rather easy.

First, you decide your ezine’s subject (e.g. sports, news, or etc.). Obviously, you should choose a subject that relates to your online business. For example, if you have a website selling fishing equipment, you can make an ezine about fishing.

The second step is to create an opt-in option on your website. If people register at your site or purchase something, a great place to put an opt-in option is on the registration or check-out page. Otherwise, the best place to add an area where a customer can sign-up is on your website’s homepage or a common-element (i.e. a part of your website that’s on every page of your site, usually a header, footer, or sidebar). You should not need to create a separate sign-up page, because you only need the customer’s’ email, and perhaps a name.

The third step is to begin writing your ezines. Unless you have a staff of writers, you probably will have to get some of the articles for your ezine from third-party sources. In most circumstances, you can just get free articles from a multitude of online repositories (e.g. ezinearticles.com). Your ezine doesn’t need to be long, just a few articles per issue. Remember to include any news with regarding your business and a link back to your website. (For more tips about ezine writing, please visit http://webbizresource.com/?cat=9 .)

Done right, ezine publishing offers internet business owners a great way to honestly market and promote their website.

About The Author: Scott Hughes creates and runs many successful e-businesses. Read more articles like this on his Web Business Resource blog at http://www.webbizresource.com/. You may republish this article if you keep all links intact and keep this “About The Author” footer.