E-ZINES 101:
E-Zines and Email Marketing
A Crash Course in E-zine Publishing,
by Visiting Professor Shelley Lowery
An e-zine, 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
e-zines 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 e-zine 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
(e-zine) 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 simplifythe
process.
- CONTENT -
A quality e-zine should contain at least some original content. Don't let the fear of
writing intimidate you. If you're e-zine'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 e-zine free of charge as long as the authors
credits or resource box is included.
- FREE CONTENT -
AutoResponder Central - Articles For Publication
http://www.web-source.net/links/
Article Announce - Writer & Publisher
Connection
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://successdoctor.com/archive.htm
IdeaMarketers -
http://www.ideamarketers.com/
- FOCUS -
Your e-zine 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 e-zines
focus to be on "Animals & Pets", you would want it to be on "Internet
Marketing".
- TITLE -
The title of your e-zine is one of the most important decisions you can make. Many e-zine
listing sites list their e-zines 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
e-zine 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 e-zine 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 e-zine. 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 e-zine 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 e-zine 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 insure your
e-zines success.
When formatting your e-zine, 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 e-zine
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". This program can be set to automatically insert
a hard carriage return when your text has reached 65 characters. http://www.textpad.com
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 e-zine 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.
About the Author:
Shelley is the publisher of Article Announce -
A Writer & Publisher Connection & Marketing Adzine - Marketing, Advertising &
Promotional solutions for the netrepreneur. Visit her site to subscribe.
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