A CRASH COURSE IN EZINE PUBLISHING

A CRASH COURSE IN EZINE PUBLISHING

by Shelley Lowery

An ezine, also know as an email magazine, online publication or

electronic newsletter is simply a newsletter available via email and/or

online. There are hundreds of thousands of ezines on various subjects

available on the Internet free of charge.

Having your own publication will not only enable you to keep in touch

with your visitors, but it will help you build a huge database of targeted

customers.

If you've been marketing on the Internet, then you know it may take

several contacts with a prospective customer before closing a sale.

What better way to make those contacts, without spamming... In

addition, you can eventually make a nice income selling sponsor

advertising and classified ads.

You can publish an ezine completely free. There are many list servers

such as;

Egroups (http://www.egroups.com), Onelist (http://www.onelist.com) &

Listbot (http://www.listbot.com) that will host your list (ezine) free of

charge. In addition, they take care of all your subscription requests so

you won't have to. To use one of these list servers, simply sign up and

instantly create your list. They will provide you with a subscribe and

unsubscribe email address and even a list owner email address, all

completely free. The only disadvantage is that each posting will

contain an ad for their service. This is really a small price to pay for

such a great service. If you're just starting out, utilizing one of these

free services can simplify the process.

- CONTENT -

A quality ezine should contain at least some original content. Don't let

the fear of writing intimidate you. If your ezine's focus is on an area of

your expertise you shouldn't have any problems coming up with

something to write about. If you've been out of school for a while, you

might want to freshen up on your writing and grammar skills. Visit any

of the sites listed below for a crash course.

Garbl's Writing Resources Online -

http://pweb.netcom.com/~garbl1/writing.html

11 Rules of Writing -

http://www.junketstudies.com/rulesofw/

Exploring English -

http://www.shared-visions.com/explore/english/

Simpler Words And Phrases -

http://www.smartbiz.com/sbs/arts/tpl5.htm

Here are some additional resources for obtaining free content for your

publication. Before using any articles, make sure you review the

author's copyrights and make certain the article may be published. If

you're not sure, contact the author and request permission to publish

their article. Most articles for publication can be used in your ezine

free of charge as long as the authors credits or resource box is

included.

- FREE CONTENT -

Article Announce - Writer & Publisher Exchange

http://www.web-source.net/article-announce

Subscribe: article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com

E-ZineZ.com -

http://www.e-zinez.com/

Marketing & Advertising Supersite -

http://drnunley.com/

BizWeb2000 -

http://bizweb2000.com/articles.htm

Success Doctor -

http://success-doctor.com/archive.htm

IdeaMarketers -

http://www.ideamarketers.com/

- FOCUS -

Your ezine should focus on a subject in which you have a great deal of

knowledge. If you have a web site, you should also take into

consideration the focus of your web site; i.e., If your web site's focus is

on Internet Marketing, you wouldn't want to have your ezines focus to

be on "Animals & Pets," you would want it to be on "Internet

Marketing."

- TITLE -

The title of your ezine is one of the most important decisions you can

make. Many e-zine listing sites list their ezines in alphabetical order.

By selecting a title such as, "Advertising Secrets" instead of "Working

Online," your publication will be listed towards the top instead of the

bottom. This will give your publication an advantage over the

publications listed below yours. Potential subscribers will see your

ezine first and be more apt to subscribe.

Your title should sound intriguing and tell your potential subscriber

exactly what your publication is all about.

- PUBLISHING SCHEDULE -

You can publish your ezine as often as you like. When you first begin

you may want to only publish once a month until your subscriber base

has grown. You can always increase your publication to bi-weekly or

weekly whenever you'd like.

- SIZE -

There has been a great deal of controversy over the size of an ezine.

In my humble opinion, size really doesn't matter. If you publish a quality

e-zine with a great deal of content, I don't feel that your subscribers

will care what size it is within reason. You should; however, take into

consideration that your subscribers may not want to download it. If it is

too large, America Online will automatically turn it into a file

attachment. Consider either condensing it or separating it into "Part

One" and "Part Two."

- WEB SITE -

It isn't imperative that your ezine have its own web site, however, it is

HIGHLY recommended. Having your own site will enable you to give

your visitors an in depths look at exactly what your publication is all

about. You can include highlights of upcoming editions, polls, archives

and a subscription box to allow your visitors to easily subscribe.

- ADVERTISING -

You should probably wait to begin selling advertising space until you

have at least 1000 subscribers. You can sell ad space for $25 for

every 1000 subscribers you have. There is a lot of advertising

competition to take into consideration when selling ad space so, you

may want to begin selling your ad space at a lower rate or offer

special incentives; i.e., Buy two weeks of advertising for $20 get the

third week free. Try to limit the number of ads per issue to ten and

place them in the center of your publication. This will not only ensure

adequate exposure for your advertisers, but your subscribers won't be

overwhelmed with advertising as well.

- STYLE & FORMAT -

The appearance of your ezine is one of the most important factors in

determining your e-zine's success. Getting subscribers is the easy

part. Keeping them will entail a little work. A professionally written,

well designed, content rich publication will ensure your ezines

success.

When formatting your ezine, keep in mind there are many different

types of email programs and they are not all created equal. As a

general rule, to accommodate all of your subscribers and their

different email programs, it is probably best to write your ezine in

plain text. As with email programs, word processing programs are not

all created equal as well. Your regular word processing programs are

great for writing business letters, sales letters, etc., but not a good

choice for writing your newsletter due to formatting issues.

A good program to consider using is Notepad. This program should

already be on your desktop.

Another consideration of great importance is your line length. If your

text lines are too long, some email programs that aren't capable of

viewing long text lines will force the last few words to the next line and

your text will be viewed like this:

When formatting your publication your text

length is

one of the most important factors in

determining

how professional your publication will appear.

As a rule, a generally safe line-length is 65 characters (including

spaces).

As you begin typing your text, when you reach 65 characters, use a

hard carriage return. (Hit Enter)

If you'd rather not have to worry about hard carriage returns, you might

want to use a program called "TextPad". http://www.textpad.com/.

This program can be set to automatically insert a hard carriage return

when your text has reached 65 characters.

When you're ready to begin, make an outline for the contents of your

e-zine to enable you to create a template.

After you've written your publication and you're ready to copy & paste

it into your email program, make certain your email preferences are

set to allow at least 65 characters of text per line. If your preferences

are set for less, when you paste your text to be mailed it will appear to

be improperly formatted.

It is highly recommended that you send a sample copy of your

publication to yourself prior to sending it to your subscribers. By

viewing your publication in this manner you will get an idea of what

your subscribers will see and it will enable you to correct any

formatting problems.

Publishing your own ezine is one of the best marketing decisions

you'll ever make. Take your time, research your subject and design a

publication of quality, useful content.

For further information on publishing your own ezine, you may

download the free ebook entitled, "Ezines: A Complete Guide to

Publishing." This free e-book received a 4-star Editors Pick from

ZDNet. http://www.web-source.net/free_ebooks.htm

Shelley Lowery is the Webmistress of Web Source - Your Guide to

Professional Website Design and Development. Join The Syndicator,

our new, free article syndication program and display complete

articles w/photographs on your website that are automatically updated

each week. http://www.web-source.net

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