Ezine Publishing

When I began using the method of Ezine publishing and first submitted my articles, I found it a challenge as it was a new venture for me and quite difficult to learn the system. I experienced difficulties initially in getting my articles approved but after a small learning curve I confidently use this medium as a way to enhance my online marketing efforts.

By using Ezine publishing owners of businesses have one of the most powerful tools available to develop and market a business on the internet and over time build a recognised brand. This has been one of the greatest assets of the internet since its conception to provide the opportunity and actively promote e-commerce.

With Ezine publishing success is quite simple, all you need to do in order to be successful is to research information and allow yourself sufficient time to become familiar with the system, have patience with yourself and the system when first submitting your articles. Ensure that the content is interesting to the people you are trying to attract to your website. When starting with Ezine publishing it is best to write about subjects that you are comfortable with and that you have a sufficient knowledge of to produce an interesting article.

When using Ezine publishing you will want to determine the main purpose of using the site, do you want to attract visitors to your site, bring in traffic, or just advertise your products or services? You should then write your article with this in mind.

Another way to succeed with Ezine publishing is to learn about your competition. It is always beneficial to seek out and subscribe to the Ezine publications of your competitors and by doing this you will find out what is good and bad about their articles, you can learn from their mistakes and apply those findings to your articles.

Once you have completed the first steps and launched your first publication you will then need to decide how often you want to publish your Ezine articles. The frequency is left entirely to you and the time that you have allocated in your business schedule. Ezine publishing can be used daily, weekly or monthly alongside other marketing mediums. You also need to determine what format your Ezine publishing will take, some great articles have just been be a list of tips, a list of ideas, step by step instructions on how to do something or just a straight forward informal article. The next step is in to decide whether or not you want to write this content by yourself or invite other guest writers to supply content for you. When looking to make money with Ezine publishing some sites allow you to offer classified ad space as well.

The last step for your Ezine publishing is to find a hosting site for your publication. Most marketing experts recommend that you use a professional Ezine hosting site to send and receive your Ezine publications. Websites such as Topica are among the best sites to use when running an online marketing campaign. Sites like these will help new publishers with all phases of the process and they will also help make managing the Ezine publishing site easy. The site will even help new publishers grow their list of subscribers.

If you take all of this information into consideration you will be assured success when you begin an Ezine publication site for your business it is very important to use all of the resources available to make a campaign successful and effectively promote your business.

Six Great Ezine Content Ideas   

How To Sell Your Products Through Ezine Ads

Businesses are constantly looking for ways to expand their business, including online ones, and that means advertising. There are a lot of different places you can advertise, but not all of them provide really specific sources of traffic. One of the more targeted ways to advertise is using ezines.

Ezines are basically online newsletters, used by companies to create a closer relationship with customers, by keeping them up to date with what's going on. They're rather effective in doing this, but quite a lot of the time their primary focus becomes getting paid to advertise, especially after they become more popular.

Selling your products through ezines can be very effective, because of the targeted traffic you can get from them. All you need to do is find an ezine that specifically targets the kind of people who would honestly be interested in your product. Once you have found a good possibility, you can place an ad. Prices vary depending on the amount of subscribers and placement of the advertisement, so you need to be willing to fork out a little money.

Of course, finding a specifically targeted ezine is no easy task. An internet search is a simple enough way to find them, but then you do need to do a little trial and error when trying to get the best results. Testing out a few different ezines is beneficial, so you can work out which ones are going to work for you and which ones are going to be a waste of your time and money. The more specific to your niche, the more sales you are potentially going to make.

It is worth the extra money to get an advertisement slot on an ezine with a lot of subscribers, or to get a position that is nearest the top or the most noticeable, as these are definitely going to get more attention, and therefore hopefully rake in more sales. Always try to avoid the cheaper, less noticeable spots. Despite the fact that these don't cost as much money, they aren't going to make you much money either.

Solo ads are also very good investments when using ezines to sell a product. Using solo advertising means to be the sole advertiser on the ezine, therefore taking more of the viewer's attention. You can see how this is worthwhile.

You will also need to have an advertisement designed. You can outsource that to someone else for a price, usually quite a low one, or you could create it yourself. Either way, it is a good idea to be flexible with it, and be able to change it at a minute's notice, maybe even keeping a few different versions spare, just so you can figure out which ones are having the most impact and getting the most sales.

Ezines are very useful to businesses, as they do help a lot in selling their products, thanks to the advertising they provide. You can get thousands of sales using these online newsletters, and there is nothing better than that.

Six Great Ezine Content Ideas   

How to Make Your Ezine Newsletters More Interesting

What do we mean by "interesting?" Merriam-Webster's dictionary says that interest is "A feeling that accompanies or causes special attention to an object." This is what you want to create in your readers: A feeling that they want to give your newsletter special attention.

While this is certainly as true for hard copy newsletters as for ezines (also known as email newsletters), this article focuses on those nifty little messages that land in your readers' inboxes. Of course, we all have inboxes swamped with ezines. So here you can read about ways to distinguish your own ezine, to make it interesting enough to get your reader reading, saving, and even acting on your material.

Appearance

First of all, appearance is critical for creating interest. A cluttered, heavily-worded, over-designed ezine will kill interest faster than anything, no matter how intriguing your topic. Present your reader with a simple, attractive layout. Make your ezine appears easy to read. Use plenty of white space, keep your articles very short (not more than 200 words), and use links to your website for longer pieces. You want your reader to think not only "this is my kind of topic" but also "this will be a pleasure to read." Images, in small numbers, will help set your tone-be sure they are directly related to your message. You'll be surprised to learn how many free-for-downloading images you can find on the internet.

Content

Once you have mastered the appearance of your ezine, it's time to turn to content. But don't assume that content means just what you have to say in your articles, because there are several kinds of content: articles themselves, plus links to your website, plus offers, testimonials, coupons, and news.

For interesting content, understand who your reader is

To make your content truly interesting, it's wise to start with an understanding of your readers. Perhaps you know many of them, what they want, what they can afford, why they like what you have to offer. It often helps to imagine a typical reader, in some detail. For example, a mother of young children, concerned about environmental health, who lives in a suburb, feeds her kids organic food and rides a bike. Another example: a 30-something man, or woman, who loves good wine and wants to know more, especially about how to build a wine collection on a tight budget. With these "characters" in mind you'll do a better job of writing articles to interest your audience.

Links, testimonials, news stories, coupons

Make sure that you offer links of interest, for example, "View photos of our visit to the Westford Dairy Farm in July." Testimonials are useful not only because they affirm the quality of your work, but they also interest your readers by telling a kind of story about someone who has already purchased your product, or joined your club. Brief news items are stories in themselves. Have you launched a fundraising campaign? Hired a new director? Worded right, this kind of news also tells a story to interest your reader. And, of course, coupons encourage action, reminding your readers that they can easily purchase what you have for sale, and at some kind of discount.

Calls to action

Having thoroughly interested your reader, be sure to invite some action, whether it's saving the ezine in a special Inbox folder or forwarding it to a friend. Coupons encourage action, of course, but so do invitations like "visit our site for more information on how we can help you" and calls for purchase like "act now before the deadline."

Copyright (c) 2011 Jane Sherwin. You may reprint this entire article and you must include the copyright info and the following statement: "Jane Sherwin is a writer who helps hospitals and other healthcare facilities communicate their strengths and connect with their readers."

Six Great Ezine Content Ideas   

Ezine Marketing: Six Easy Ezine Content Ideas

Ezines are fantastic marketing tools but good content can be hard to come up with. Here are six easy ideas for content you can use in your ezine.

1. Share the content burden by partnering with other, non-competitive organizations and individuals.

Whether they're peers, clients, prospects, professional media organisations, industry authorities or whatever, lots of people can be persuaded to give you content if you remind them what's in it for them: exposure with a relevant audience.

This works both on the level of the business, and the individual (smart professionals recognise that their profile within an industry is a major factor in their employment prospects).

And it works even better if an interviewee, for example, has their own following, because it can provide an opportunity for you to cross-fertilize your lists.

But be careful not to come to rely on third party content - remember it is YOU and YOUR expertise that the ezine is there to showcase!

Three tips on successfully sharing the content burden:

• Brief contributors properly. Ensure contributors have sufficient information to do a good job for you: be clear on what you want and expect: format, number of words, and so on.

• Produce a one-page profile of your ezine to guide contributors. This is the easiest way to keep outside contributors and in-house staff alike 'on message'. Include information on your ezine's readership, purpose, history, usual subject matter and business objectives.

• Get your deals with contractors straight from day one. If you're planning a more obviously commercial or ongoing relationship with a contractor to produce content for you, make sure you agree, preferably in a contract and certainly in writing, expectations, rights and obligations, from the very beginning. When should they submit material? How long should it be? Who owns the material, and where and when can it be used? Consider all these issues now, before they become problems later, and take legal advice if necessary.

2. Include a dedicated client or subscriber area.

Sales authority Jeffrey Gitomer's weekly 'Sales Caffeine' ezine for salespeople always includes an area for subscribers' 'sightings': snapshots of Jeffrey's sales books and CDs, the weirder the better.

This has three obvious benefits - it showcases the products, generates light-hearted subscriber interaction, and has a viral marketing effect (how many other people do you think those featured subscribers tell about, show, and forward that email on to?).

Other sources of content from your clients might include a) news and success stories b) client-submitted profiles (individuals or business), c) people moves, especially if you operate in a close-knit industry with regular inter-company movement, d) job opportunities with your clients.

You may also be able to work out a clever way in which featuring in this kind of section is restricted to clients who give you business, or a certain amount of business, thereby acting as a cue or incentive for the non-clients or low value clients who subscribe to your ezine to get more involved with you.

3. Use subscriber feedback as a source of, or inspiration for, content.

With a reasonably sized audience, you should start to get feedback from subscribers anyway, so comment on their feedback, or ask if you can reproduce their comments verbatim.

This can be a way of garnering feedback, generating content AND getting more customer contact, particularly if you offer incentives for feedback.

For example, you might offer a 20% discount voucher for your store each month for the subscriber who provides the most useful feedback on what they like about your service.

Not only can you learn about what you're doing well, but you can package it into ezine content in the form of a 'good news story', AND get to build the relationship with your happy customer when they come in to use the discount.

4. Repeat popular content.

With even the very best-read ezines averaging open rates of 40% maximum, the fact is that any given ezine you send out will not be read by most of the people on your list.

And, of course, we hope that lots of brand new people will be joining your list every day.

It stands to reason therefore that your hard-produced content is going to waste at least some of the time unless you repeat it, at least in the form of summaries with links.

Of course, if you are repeating content, put it only after new content, and mention that it's been repeated due to popular demand, great interest or exceptional quality.

5. Ongoing glossary.

If you work in an industry with a lot of technical language, this can be a very useful service. Feature one or two words a week and explain what they mean.

6. 'Recent articles.'

Add a 'Recent articles' section to your ezine linking through to articles from recent ezines. Typical ezine open rates are 40%. That means an awful lot of people, for whatever reason, will miss a given article - it doesn't however mean they're not interested, so give them a second chance to see your best content.

Happy ezine publishing!

Six Great Ezine Content Ideas   

Why You Should Publish an eZine

Many people think you need a product to make any money on the internet. This is not strictly true as you can do so by creating and publishing an electronic newsletter, otherwise known as an eZine. This has a number of advantages which I will outline further.

This is how it works. You will have an opt-in list whereby people sign up to receive more information from you. You can then send out your promotions, articles or eZine to them on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. It's your choice how you set this up with your autoresponder. Just remember not to spam your subscribers every moment of the day. They will soon get tired of this and unsubscribe. This is not good for your business so always try to keep within the laws of email.

Now if you were to publish a traditional type of newsletter a lot of trees would be used in the process. With an eZine it is an electronic document sent via email so it is pretty ethical. Use it to spread your experience and knowledge about your subject material.

You don't need staff or any expensive printing facility. There are no wages to pay and no time gets wasted either. Just compose the eZine, proofread and then email to your subscribers. It does not get any easier. This is how business is done in the modern world and you can grab a slice of the pie right now in your internet marketing efforts.

To get started you need to be signed up with an autoresponder service such as Aweber. You will then be able to take advantage of the broadcast features available to blast out your eZine to your subscribers.

What should your eZine contain? You should aim for fresh up to date content related to your niche. People always want the latest news and you can find this by looking in publications such as magazines. You may even find something useful on the internet on another website. Whatever you do make sure you do not blatantly copy someone else's work. They invested a lot of time and effort in their work and it is not right that someone should steal it. If you find something interesting look at how you can rewrite it. Perhaps add some humour into it as this makes the eZine have a less formal tone.

It is important to develop relationships with your subscribers. You can build your credibility and show your expertise. This in turn will hopefully drive people to your site. More visitors will result in more sales for your service or products. Remember your eZine should maintain the same high quality of articles as there are on your website. Be consistent with everything you do in your internet business.

If you don't have the capability to create your own product then eZine marketing could be just what you have been waiting for. You will be able to insert affiliate links to other peoples products in the eZine and hopefully get some sales.

Six Great Ezine Content Ideas