Ezine-Marketing

5 Ways to Make Money with Your E-zine

2005-10-03T03:46:00.000-07:00

By Brenda Hoffman

If you've been publishing an e-zine for at least 6 months but still aren't seeing real results from it, it's time for a tune up. Here are 5 ways to improve your e-zine:

(1.) Spend more time tooting your own horn. At least 25% of your e-zine space should be about nothing but YOU. In this space you should give promos for your services, products, books, workshops, etc. You should list testimonials from clients and customers who truly love you.

(2.) Make your subscribers an offer that they simply cannot pass up. This will kickstart them into purchasing your other products and services. This can be a very powerful tactic whenever it is used right. For instance: Put a time limit on your offer (ie a few days or by next week) for your client to take a percentage off of your product or service.

(3.) This is especially great for consultants and coaches... Your e-zine readers are already well aware that the way in which to get the BEST service from you would be to hire you one-on-one. However, there are lots of people out there who simply may not be able to afford this. So, why not offer them lower-priced options such as group coaching, teleclasses, online seminars, or a manual/e-book.

(4.) Do you often find your readers asking you about a topic which is indirectly related to what you have to offer? If so, then why not resell a resource that you heartily recommend and would put your reputation behind? Receiving commissions for your referals can make you some handsome extra cash for in your pocket. Of course, you don't ever want to recommend any service or product to your readers that you haven't spent enough time investigating so that you know that you'd be willing to back it up 100% or you'll ruin the trust that you've worked so hard to build up in your readership.

(5.) While this won't make you wealthy, you should still consider selling some ad space in your ezine so that you can get some extra cash. You could offer 1 sponsor ad at the top along with several "classified" ads at the bottom and still have plenty of room for boasting about your own product or service. Something like this would be easy to start since your own readers would be a great primary, target audience for buying such ads since they already know that they can trust you. Once they've seen their ad effectively presented within your e-zine, you'll have some power from the word of mouth. You can also list your e-zine in the numerous e-zine advertising directories that can be found all over the Internet. These services help match advertisers with appropriate publishers such as yourself. This does NOT mean that you can't be selective about the types of ads that you choose to accept though. Of course, your readers will know that these ads don't represent YOUR business, their quality will still indirectly influence your readers' perception of you.

Remember! If you're not getting any direct business from your e-zine right now, you're still benefiting from it. Your e-zine is helping to establish you as an expert in your field while giving you massive online exposure which only helps add to your credibility. It, along with blogs, will also force you to package your knowledge into concise articles on a regular basis, which you can then recycle for many other marketing uses that you're sure to find along the way.

Reverend Brenda Hoffman, is ordained by the Universal Life Church, and has been delivering holistic health and wellness advice for over 7 years since receiving a BA in psychology. As a home-based professional and mother of 1, she operates a holistic wellness network. She invites you over to http://www.yourhealthyfamilyhome.com/ to learn how to improve you and your family's health.

Deadly Effective Ezine Advertising for Internet Network Marketing

2005-10-03T03:41:00.000-07:00

By Daegan Smith

What are Ezines?

Ezines are online newsletter that people subscribe to because they have an interest in the subject matter described in the newsletter.

Personally, I love Ezine advertising. I've used this very strategy that you are about to learn right here and I've created some exceptional growth in my business. Just to give you an idea, one Ezine ad that I sent to a list of a little over 2,000 subscribers that cost me $31, generated 55 new leads and 12 new sign ups in the course of 24 hours. That's a 22% lead to sign up conversion ratio! I've had people in my downline that have had better results than this.

The best part is, the people that joined my business from this mailing were focused savvy Internet marketers. They joined my business and just ran with it. I estimate that those 12 sign-ups account for about 40 new down line members in the course of a month and 100s at this point.

Wouldn't you like to have the same happen in your business?

It gets me excited just sitting here writing about it!

So let's get on with it . . .

Which Ezines will we target?

We want to advertise in Ezines that target Home Business Entrepreneurs, Network Marketers, Biz Opp Seekers, Internet Marketers, Affiliate Marketers, and your companies primary niche. These are the people that are actively interested in making money online and in what you have to offer and will see the most value in what we're offering. There are free places as well as paid places to find highly targeted Ezines to send your ads to.

I personally only advertise in the Directory of Ezines because I find it to be the best and most up to date listing of quality Ezines. There is a membership cost but I personally think it's worth it.

QUICK TIP: If you decide to buy a membership I would advice going with the one year membership as opposed to the lifetime membership. Because by following the method that I am about to describe to you this time next year you will have developed so many strong relationships with great Ezines that you'll have your own rolodex of great places to advertise.

You can also use Ezine-Universe.com which is a free resource.

What type of ad do we want to place?

There are two ways to go about this, the fast way and the slow way.

To go about this the slow, way would mean we would first place a small classified ad in the Ezine that we plan to target. We would then track our response to see if a larger ad is warranted.

This method works well with direct marketing online because it decreases risk, but it will drastically increase the time frame until we see our most wanted response - sign ups.

Why?

We'll have to wait and track responses at each step.

The fast way:

I have been using a faster and a little bit more risky method. What I do is I call or email the list owner to ask about their lists to try to get a feel if it is a good match for my ad.

Here is what I want to find out:

How many mailings do they send out a week?

You don't want to send an ad to an Ezine that sends out more than 2 solo ads a week because most likely no one will read them.

How many new subscribers does the Ezine get in a month?

-You want an Ezine that gets a steady flow of new subscribers.

Have similar ads to mine for my same business run in the recent past?

=You don't want to advertise in an Ezine that has had similar ads run in the past month or so.

Does the Ezine owner have a list of references?

-I ask if the Ezine owner can provide a short list of references that I can contact to see what their response rates have been like in that particular Ezine.

Is there a newsletter archive that you can take a look at?

-Since you're going to be running the ad you want to see the layout of the Ezine so you know how your ad will look.What do you do next?

Find a few good Ezines and ask the List Owner some of the above questions to help you decide if their list is a good match for your offer.

After you've done your homework you'll want to go ahead and place your solo ad. Place about 3 or 4 at a time and be sure to track your click-thru rates.

Daegan Smith is the Author of "Internet MLM Success" - The Next Generation in Network Marketing! Learn the Secret to using the Internet to Exploding your Downline Growth the Simple, Fast, Rejection-Free Way!" For the exciting New Free Report click here ==> http://www.internetmlmsecrets.com

Your Newsletter Marketing Strategy: Five Things to Consider

2005-10-03T03:39:00.000-07:00

By Stephanie Diamond

Sending out a monthly newsletter takes a good deal of effort. You need to determine your goals and how to measure them, prepare your mailing lists, develop content, and make sure everything is delivered correctly. Can you confidently say that you are generating justifiable revenue from this effort —or are you sending out a newsletter because everyone else does?

With all the new technology available today, the term "newsletter" has morphed into a dozen different formats. You can certainly find one that fits your needs. One thing is clear—do not continue to send out a monthly newsletter unless you are getting a real return on your investment.

Some things to consider when evaluating your current newsletter:

1. Get an independent evaluation of your current newsletter strategy from a marketer you trust. Make sure to develop tangible success measurements. You need to know if what you are doing is actually worth continuing. Your communication with your customers needs to be personalized and targeted to sell. You are building a mailing list for a reason. Make sure that mailing list pays off.

2. Is a monthly format the right one? You may want something published regularly, or you may discover that a few targeted one-offs a year give you a greater return. Just like everything else you do for your business, you need to test and revise ideas, products and methods.

3. Take advantage of new technology. There are new ways to personalize your content and develop a dialogue with your customers that won't be cost prohibitive. Consider using audio to announce your newsletter on your website or add audio in the body content.

4. Make reading your newsletter pay-off for your customer every time. Always offer discount links or other value-add information that separates your content from all the "value-free" content on the web today. Think about what the reader will be interested in, not what your company wants to tell them. Think about what they want to BUY, not what you want to SELL.

5. Use your support area to launch new newsletters. Many e-commerce businesses miss an opportunity to communicate with their customers when they go to the support area. Customers want quick answers. They also like knowing that the company cares about what they want and need. A newsletter that focuses on FAQs and support would be a welcome change from all the ‘marketing’ newsletters they receive. This idea is a simple one that only the most successful companies use. Don’t overlook a way to stand out.

About Digital Media Works

Digital Media Works, Inc. is an Internet marketing and design firm that specializes in solutions for e-commerce companies. . A seasoned 25+ year management/marketing professional, founder Stephanie Diamond is experienced in building profits in a broad range of product and services businesses. She created a highly successful line of multimedia software products that sold millions of copies for America Online. Check out her website at (http://www.DigMediaWorks.com )

Increase Your Ezine Sign-up Rate By 500% or More Starting Today

2005-10-03T03:37:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Pattison

If you’re satisfied with a newsletter subscription rate of five to ten percent, then you don’t need any of the information I’m about to share with you. If you’re serious about converting up to 50%, or more of your website visitors into newsletter subscribers, though, then read on. It’s time to leave your low sign-up rates behind by following these two easy steps.

1. Make signing up for your newsletter your visitor’s only option; otherwise they miss out on all of the free sign-up bonuses and your incredible website content. Give them something to lose. Let them know that they could be making a huge mistake by not subscribing, and back up your words with valuable free bonuses and information-rich content that makes them glad they did.

Do this by making your entry page your ezine sign-up page. If you have to write 1000-1500 words to convince them to subscribe, then do it. Treat this page like a sales page.

Tell them all of the features of subscribing, and more importantly, all of the benefits.

Don’t sell them on your product, sell them on your newsletter and the valuable bonuses they’ll get get by subscribing. Your home page and your newsletter signup page should be one and the same.

Here’s the logic behind this strategy. Imagine that your website converts one percent of your visitors into paying customers, and ten percent into ezine subscribers, ten percent of which buy your product as well. That means that only two percent of your website visitors end up purchasing your product.

While not bad by any stretch of the imagination, imagine converting one percent of initial visitors into sales, and 50% of the remaining visitors into newsletter subscribers. Simply follow step two and your previous sales attempts will pale in comparison.

2. Now all you have to do is pre-sell them with an autoresponder that comes in seven or more installments. Assuming you’re able to convert ten percent of your subscribers into paying customers, you’ve just converted six percent of your visitors into sales, a 200% increase!

If your product is related to the self-development field, for example, your autoresponder could be a seven-day self-help mini-course that whets their appetites and that, while helping them, leaves them wanting more.

Regardless of whether or not your ezines subscribers ever purchase the product that you are selling, you can still make back-end sales of other products, either products that you have created or that you can earn affiliate commission from.

Bear in mind that you can also use this strategy even if you’re not selling your own product. You can include a link to a product offering affiliate commission at the end of each installment of your autoresponder. Do whatever affords you the best opportunity to profit!

How good your sales page and your product is, is totally in your hands. But by combining a great product, a great sales page, and the above two-step formula, there are no limits on how much you can profit!

**Attn Ezine editors/Site owners** Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your site so long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content and include our resource box as listed below.

Feel free to substitute your referral link in place of ours in the resource box. Thanks!

Wanna learn how to generate thousands of highly targeted visitors, absolutely free? => http://www.iwantchoices.com

Ezine Advertising Strategy Exposed-16 Tips to Boost Your Profit

2005-10-03T03:29:00.000-07:00

By Greg Root

In my opinion, Electronic Magazine (Ezine) advertising is the greatest, untapped source of online advertising available today.

The reason: Ezine Advertising (EA) matches your product or idea to people with similar interests.

Example: who better to sell your health product to than a large group of people subscribed to a health newsletter? Or, you could pitch a business opportunity to a group already subscribed to another ezine about MLM and Biz Ops!

The idea of EA is fairly simple - but to make yours a success, you have to first determine which ezines or newsletters produce results, and which ones to avoid.

After a year and a half of EA, I've created a formula that produces increasing profit because I’ve learned how to avoid poor performing ezines and rip offs, while revealing the gems.

Strategy for Profit

I used to get ripped off about once for every 2 or 3 ezines I advertised in. They either took my money without running my ad (and ignored my subsequent emails), or my proven ads did too poorly for the money I paid.

The reasons ranged from abandoned ezines with working payment links, unethical newsletter owners, to a lot of ignorance and impatience on my part.

If you follow my proven strategy, you'll discover the best sources of ezines to advertise in - no matter who your target group is. And, you should see positive results every time.

This article outlines the steps to making your EA a successful return on investment (ROI).

Writing Your Ad

I won't go into details about ad writing, but if your ad is poorly written or untested, you should start with the cheapest ezines first. If you’re really unsure of your writing abilities, I further suggest hiring a professional to write your ad for you.

Because you can run your ad as many times as you want, your investment in a professional will more than pay for itself in the end.

Target your advertising

p>If you leap into EA without first researching your target group, you'll end up wasting a lot of time and money. Plus, you probably miss some of the best ezines available.

To determine who your prospect is, take the time to list the possible keywords that directly relate to your product and do keyword searches for ezines, newsletters, and ezine directories.

For example, if you sell herbs, a good keyword search would include: herbs, health, nutrition, supplements, etc.

Avoid Co-ops

While doing your ezine research, you will probably stumble upon the offer to use Co-op (bulk) advertising as the means for your EA.

To be blunt, you should never pay to use Co-ops for your EA because they are too difficult to track and usually contain untargeted ezines. Worse still, you’d find that most never run your ad.

Now that you’ve found your ezine target group, you’ll want to know whether the ezines you found are a good option (i.e. profitable) for your EA.

I’ve found the best strategy for making this determination is to subscribe to the targeted ezines.

To keep the subscriptions readily available for further research, I recommend creating a separate folder to store your subscription data.

And because you’ll need to subscribe to quite a few ezines, I also suggest creating separate email accounts dedicated to your ezine subscriptions.

Double Opt-In Subscriptions

In the process of subscribing, you’ll quickly determine possible ezines to avoid. When you subscribe and get a notice that you must confirm your subscription, the ezine is referred to as “double opt-in”.

Double opt-in ezines indicates a better quality of subscribers with a lower risk of bulk email addresses. For you and me, this means better ad responses (yeah!).

p>Solo Ads

Within the first week of your new ezine subscription, you should see solo ads from other advertisers. If not, the ezine may be too new, or worse, no one is advertising because of poor results. Worse yet, the ezine took the advertiser’s money and failed to run the ad.

On the other hand, if you see two or more solo ads a day, their list is probably burned out due to over advertising. You're looking for no more than one ad a day, or a minimum of one ad a week. Keep watching!

Subject Line

Does the ezine put the advertiser’s subject line in the subject of the email or do they just say something like "Solo ad from xyz ezine"?

Your subject line is the most important part of your ad and definitely should be in the subject of the email.No subject line equals no response.

Advertiser Response

Repeat (or regular) advertisers in an ezine is a very good sign that the subscribers are responsive. To further test responsiveness, I recommend looking through the ezine’s online archives (if available).

Archives are previous email publications that the publisher has posted to their website for visitors to view. The archive search is not only quick and easy, but archives can also provide an extra trickle of visitors when your ad gets archived.

Testimonial Page

After passing the above steps, see if your prospective ezine has a testimonial page. If the ezine has gotten this far, chances are it will.

Waiting Period

Another indicator of responsive subscribers is the waiting period to run an ad in the chosen ezine. If the waiting period is a month or more, this indicates a very popular ezine with responsive readers. You've uncovered a real gem!

Web Forms

I've found that the better ezines have web forms that get your ad to the publisher’s inbox and usually send auto confirmation of receipt. If there is no web form, try emailing the publisher a question first, like when the next ad run date is.

No response may indicate a poor choice in the ezine, or your email was filtered or blocked as spam. Wait at least 2 days and try emailing again using a different email account.

If your emails still don't get through, neither will your ad. (Ironically, your payment always go through). Trust me, if they fail to communicate, save your money and time and move on.

Free Classifieds

If the ezine offers free classifieds, this is another good place to run your ad. Since classifieds usually don’t produce responses, any activity from your ad here would further indicate an active readership.

Ad Tracking

Never advertise without using an ad tracker. You can purchase one or better, use one of the many available online for free. Ad trackers give you a url that you use in place of your website address.

The new url gives you important information like how many visitors you had, where they came from, and some list the number of sales per visitor.

This tracking information is crucial to the direction of your ad campaign because you’ll learn of the need to change your ad and/or the sales page. More importantly, you’ll know for certain whether the ezine produced enough visitors for the advertising price you paid.

Run Your Ad Twice

If your ad produced a great response, wait a week or two and run the ad again in the same ezine. I’ve found you'll probably get as good if not better results the second time around.

I would advise against running the ad a third time in a row because most of your prospects will be found in the first two runs.

Using a Capture Page or Auto-Responder

To maximize your efforts, you want to "capture" your visitors so you can send them additional information about your product, elated merchandise, and pertinent updates.

This is done with a capture page that provides a place for visitors to put their name and email address. There are different methods to accomplish this and you may want to hire someone to do it for you if you're not comfortable installing scripts on your website.

You might also want to send your visitor directly to your autoresponder, where you have a series of messages set up to "warm and inform" your prospect about your product or service.

Rotating Ads

Once your ad has been tested and you have a base of 5-10 solid, performing ezines, start rotating your ad between your ezines.

For optimal results, make sure 2-3 months have passed before running your ad in the same publication. Keep building your base and watch your profits grow!

Greg Root started using ezine advertising almost exclusively since 2003 and owns and maintains 'The Ezine Ad Tester' at http://www.maxprofitpro.com/ See the results of his ezine advertising campaigns to find the best ezine marketing resources on the internet.

How to Make Your eZine Work for You Long After It's Published

2005-08-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

By Mary Rita Earle

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: http://www.notetab.com/

We'll use NoteTab Light for our illustration. Got it installednow? 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!

Mary Rita Earle is the owner of Duchess Marketing. Here is how she stopped fooling around and learned how to do this business right! http://www.duchessr.biz

Newsletters in Plain Text or HTML - Which Work Better?

2005-08-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

By Yaro Starak

A common question asked when you first set out to write an email newsletter is whether it should be a plain text email or HTML (web page style). This is an important consideration since your choice impacts on how many people read your newsletter and how they respond to it. Let's look at the obvious pros and cons of each format.

HTML Emails

THE GOOD

Interactive - active elements can be inserted into emails limited only by what email clients can handle. May include movies, games, surveys or any active content.

Metrics - Code can be placed into emails to provide detailed statistics on whether your email newsletters are read, for how long and which links are clicked and followed.

Formatting can be controlled to the finest details including fonts, spacing, and design.

THE BAD

Creating HTML emails take a lot of time and technical proficiency.

Not everyone has an HTML capable email client in which case you will be excluding some people.

Your basic message may be lost by the excessive content and "eye candy".

The range of options available in HTML are extensive and can lead to what I call "TMOS" - Too Many Options Syndrome, which is the antithesis of the concept "KISS" - Keep It Simple Stupid. TMOS can stop you from functioning efficiently because you are bogged down with how many things you could do, you end up doing nothing.

Plain Text Emails

THE GOOD

Easier to create - just type words.

Less chance of formatting problems making the email display incorrectly.

Less chance of a SPAM filter blocking the mail.

Message will be easily digested by the reader provided you write it well.

No distractions from graphics or over stimulation from too much content competing for attention.

You sell with words, the most powerful sales tool available on the web if used correctly.

THE BAD

Harder to capture statistics.

Hyperlinks may not be active (most text based email clients convert HTTP links to clickable but some still don't).

Limited to text to convey your message.

No multimedia can be included.

Why Do You Have a Newsletter?

Let's cut to the chase here. Why do you have a newsletter? If you are running an Internet business your newsletter functions as a customer retention tool, sending out periodic reminders to pull your prospects/customers back to your site. Newsletters themselves also function as a direct sales tool. It doesn't matter if you are selling affiliate products, your own products, a service or information, your newsletter is meant to do one thing - illicit a response from its audience.

In order for your newsletter readers to feel compelled enough to take action your newsletter must clearly state it's message AND create enough of a pull, usually via emotional tugging, to get the reader to do something. The same rules that apply to websites and copywriting apply to newsletters except you have even less time to convince your reader to do something.

Newsletters fall into the domain of email, the most popular web activity. Email is mainstream, it has penetration and people of all ages and backgrounds know how to use it. Consequently the learning curve is a little higher and your readership knows how to at least complete the basic functions with email. This means that they are quite capable of giving each email about 1 seconds worth of attention before clicking that delete button. That's not a lot of time to convince them that your email is worth reading.

Should I use Plain Text or HTML Newsletters?

In my opinion, plain text should be your choice for email newsletter format. Why? Because of the numbers. Email newsletters are a form of direct response marketing and in direct response marketing the numbers matter.

From the point of view of a small business owner with limited time and resources you want to maximise the results you get from your newsletters. You want a lot of responses to whatever your newsletter is trying to do. You should be able to easily test different copy and see which works best so you can maximise the numbers. It's all about the numbers...

Your newsletter must hit the reader quickly and compel them to read on. Any delays or presentation errors are going kill your chance of capturing the attention of the reader. While plain text emails are not immune to display errors (more on this later) they are a lot more likely to be digested by the reader even if things don't format exactly how you want them to.

A plain text email is more likely to reach a larger amount of people than a HTML email simply because plain text is more compliant to standards. Plain text emails are less likely to be blocked by SPAM filters. Plain text emails will display immediately, there are no download times waiting for graphics to finish loading. Plain text emails are more likely to display properly regardless of what email client your subscribers use. All this adds up to plain text emails being read more often...better numbers...see a pattern here?

Words Sell

Bells and whistles are nice. Interactive toys and flashy lights and sounds are great. But ultimately it's words that sell. If you write compelling newsletter copy aimed at your target audience that have been carefully selected by the methods used to acquire newsletter sign-ups, you have the perfect vehicle to illicit a response using words that sell. Why dilute your message by wrapping it within colours and images or overstimulating your readers by providing too much information when a few paragraphs can create your desired results more effectively.

Why Not Use Both Plain Text and HTML?

Good idea! If you have the resources and skills to produce a quality HTML and plain text newsletter then by all means offer both to your audience and let them nominate which they prefer, or better still have the email automatically display the appropriate format by detecting what type of email client they have. If you offer both be sure to test to make sure it's worthwhile. Are more people responding to plain text emails? Well in that case send everyone plain text.

In my case I'm a small business owner and I'm going to be writing the newsletters myself. I do not have time nor the skills to create a new HTML webpage for every newsletter I produce. I could perhaps have a nice standard template designed which I use for newsletters but as I wrote above, I believe that is a waste of time. Words sell, so I'll focus on creating emotionally compelling words for my newsletters rather than waste time trying to get a box to align right correctly.

Tips for Better Plain Text Newsletters

TELL A FRIEND

Remember how I talked about the numbers? Your efforts should be focused on ensuring the maximum number of people are exposed to your email so your emotionally compelling and convincing newsletter can work it's magic. This doesn't have to be limited to just your newsletter subscribers -- your subscribers can be turned into evangelists for your newsletter. Make it easy for your subscribers to forward your newsletter on to friends and associates - suggest it to them at the end of the newsletter. Of course for this work you better be creating a damn interesting newsletter.

WORD WRAPPING

Plain text can format incorrectly and one of the most common problems is line breaks. Either lines breaking too early causing your sentences to look disjointed and clumsy, or no line breaks at all, causing one of those nasty horizontal scrollbars to appear and your reader to read off the page to finish a sentence. The screen resolution of your subscribers computers can also impact how your text wraps causing these problems.

You can't control the monitor resolution of your readers or what email client they use, all you can do is try and account for as many variables as possible. To compensate for this problem you have to set a characters-per-line limitation. I've researched into newsletter formatting and different people give different suggestions, from 68 characters per line to 63. I've decided to recommend to you the round number of 60 characters per line. This will give you nice compact paragraphs made up of nice compact sentences that are likely to avoid most word wrapping (or lack thereof) problems your readers might experience. On extremely high resolutions there will be a lot of white space and your email might look like one big long tower of text but that's still a lot better than broken sentences or horizontal scrollbars and won't be too common a problem.

How To Set Characters Per Line Limitations

You didn't think I would tell you what to do without giving you practical advice on how to do it would I?! Of course not.

Format Text provided by Web-Source.net will handle email newsletter formatting to any character width you specify. Better still it can even undo the current character spacing on any text you have so it's definitely a tool worth book marking.

Newsletters Are An Important Tool For Your Online Business

Many of the most successful Internet entrepreneurs are wealthy because they have massive (10,000+) lists of highly targeted subscribers that they have been building for years. One well written affiliate product email to a good list can create thousands of dollars of sales and you don't even supply the product.

Better still once you have a solid list you can contact similar focused online marketers and carefully select the right cross promotional activities that can double your exposure with one email to their list. Of course you have to have your own list to make available for cross promotions before you can expect to work with other people - the smart/persistent/rich help each other to get richer.

Even if you are using your newsletter as a step in the conversion process to generate sales of your own products or services it's a wise to stay up to date on good newsletter management techniques. By focusing on the numbers you can maximise direct responses that will lead to more sales as visitors become prospects and prospects become clients.

By Yaro Starak
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

Do you want to profit from your own successful home based Internet business?

Learn from Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia. He works part time from home on several web based business that generate between $2,000 and $8,000 per month. Get your free articles and audio now - visit his Internet Business Blog.

3 Steps to Creating Your Own Ezine to Increase Web Site Traffic!

2005-08-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

By Mark Williams

What if I showed you a simple way to increase web site traffic that could sky-rocket your sales and make you an internet expert.

Would you be interested?

I sure hope so…

First, you have to remember the primary reason people get on to the internet. In case you have forgotten, it is to get INFORMATION. If this is the only thing you take from this article I will be pleased, because it is that important!

Articles provide a great way to get your message out and increase web site traffic. However, publishing an ezine is much more effective because you have a captive audience that is interested in getting your information. The reason they are interested is because they have given you permission to send them your publication by subscribing to it.

A subscriber is a much greater asset than a web site visitor, in the sense that you will be able to communicate to them for as long as you produce your ezine, or until they decide to opt-out.

So remember, when it comes down to which you would rather have…A hit on your site or a subscriber? The subscriber should win every time.

Now that we have determined that the internet is an information platform that CAN be utilized to make transactions and the importance of subscribers to your ebusiness. Let's begin laying out the 3 steps to create your own ezine and increase web site traffic.

Step 1 - Decide on the Topic of Your Ezine Based on Your Niche.

The theme of your ezine needs to be built around your niche. Therefore, if your site is about quilting then you would need to publish an ezine about how to quilt. It could include topics and articles that would be of interest to quilters and possibly even collectors of quilts.

Make sure you stay niche driven! Don't get away from the theme of your web site.

Most of all do not try to be everything to everybody. If quilting is a broad topic you might want to focus on certain aspects of quilting.

Now that you have determined the theme or topic of your ezine here are a few things to consider before you put it all together:

- Determine how often you will publish your ezine. (i.e. monthly, weekly, etc.)

- Will you sell advertising space in your ezine? Most do, but you do not have to. You need to think about your readers, if you think they will be offended by a few ads then you might not want to. I have found that most people do not mind a few ads, just keep it to no more than 3 per issue.

- Are you going to allow other people to submit articles to your ezine? You will get tired of writing all of the content yourself, but make sure that you use quality articles that do not have a bunch of typos and grammatical errors.

Those are a few things to consider before you start to distribute your ezine.

Let's move on to the 2nd step.

Step 2 - Build a List.

It's not the size of your list that matters, it's how good it converts!

You need to focus on techniques to build your list. It is important to have a big list, but not as important as having a quality list. That is why I do not recommend buying subscribers. It is best to build the list yourself!

Below are some ideas to help you grow your list:

- Use pop-ups on your site to encourage visitors to sign up for your ezine.

- Make sure you have a subscribers box on every page of your web site.

- Give away a free e-book or mini-course to encourage people to subscribe. People like free stuff!

- Write articles on topics that are relevant to your ezine. Distribute them to article directories, announcement lists, and to other ezine publishers promoting your ezine. Make sure to put a link in the resource box to your auto-responder.

- Utilize Joint Ventures with other ezine publishers to grow your list. You could do Adswaps with them or even ad their ezine to your subscriber's thank you page in return for adding yours to their thank you page.

- Use Pay per Click advertising to urge people to subscribe.

These are some basic, but very powerful ideas to rapidly grow your subscriber's list. I can guarantee you that if you implement these tactics you will see your subscribers grow by leaps and bounds.

Let's go to the last step.

Step 3 - Promote Your Ezine.

In order to have an ezine that is an effective marketing tool you need to promote it. People have to know that the ezine exists! Follow these tips and they will not only know that it exists, but you will have a monster on your hands.

- Submit your ezine to ezine directories and announcement lists. I have listed a few below for you to utilize:

- Ezine Directories:

1. Directory of Ezines:
http://www.directoryofezines.com

2. Ezine-Universe:
http://www.new-list.com

3. The Ezine Directory:
http://www.ezine-dir.com

- Ezine Announcement Lists:

1. 100 Sightings:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/100sightings/

2. 1_List_Advertising:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/1_List_Advertising/

3. A Announcer:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aannouncer/

- Create a web site specifically to host your ezine. Use this web site to promote your ezine, store your archived copies of previous issues, and to gain new subscribers.

- Write articles promoting your ezine and submit them across the internet. Send them to other ezine publishers for submission into their ezine. Make sure you have a link to your auto-responder in your resource box.

- Pursue Joint Ventures with other ezine publishers that will be of benefit to you and your ezine.

By using these 3 steps you can and will develop and distribute a successful ezine. Most ezines never gain the popularity that their publisher hopes for. The reason for this is that they lack quality content in their ezine and never fully promote it.

Keep these 3 key factors in mind and you will have a prosperous and profitable ezine:

1. Stay Niche driven.
2. Grow your list with high quality subscribers.
3. Promote, promote, promote.

Thanks for reading and good luck in your ezine publishing endeavors.

Mark Williams can help you Increase Web Site Traffic by subscribing to The Cash Cow-Zine. Get your free 5 Action-Steps to Online Profits Course.

The Power of Newsletters

2005-08-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

By Margie Fisher

When discussing the possibility of creating a newsletter for one of my clients, he asked me, “How will a newsletter help me get sales?”

“Great question,” I replied. Here’s how:

A newsletter is a form of contact, just like a phone call, visit or direct mail postcard. Your business (or non-profit) and any messages you want to get across will be in front of your current and prospective clients each time you send out a newsletter. If you send out a newsletter several times a year, there is a good chance that you will reach your prospects at a time when they are ready to buy. Even if they’re not ready to buy, they might be talking to a friend or business associate who needs your services – so you might get a referral.

To maximize your sales or donor opportunities, keep a few points in mind:

1. Focus content on what is beneficial to the reader. Good newsletters include a combination of information aimed at educating readers, sales messages and client kudos.

2. Decide on an e-mail newsletter or a printed newsletter. Besides your budget and access to e-mail or address information, your business or organization provides clues to the best choice. If you are a non-profit that wants to include a donor form in each newsletter, printed newsletters will be best for you. If you are a Web-based business, it makes more sense to create an e-mail newsletter.

3. Spend time on the newsletter’s design and copywriting. Your newsletter design is a branding and image opportunity for your company or organization. Correct grammar and spelling are also important. Mistakes detract from your message and image.

Spending time creating effective newsletters is well worth the time invested. Send out newsletters and watch your sales grow!

Margie Fisher is President of Margie Fisher Public Relations. Learn more about her Pay for Results Publicity Program™ and her free biweekly PRactical P.R. newsletter at http://www.margiefisher.com

Creating and Distributing E-Courses

2005-06-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

By Thomas Antion E-courses are excellent sales tools and a great way to get your knowledge out there. It is very simple to create your course and either sell, or give it away as a “give-before-you-get” sales technique. If your course is designed to be a freebie, you’ll want to give a portion of good information; but don’t tell them everything or they’ll have no reason to make a purchase. If you are selling your course, make sure to jam pack it with everything you know, that way your customer will feel like they are getting a lot for their money (depending on how much you really know.) E-courses are simple to create because there is no need for fancy formatting, heading tags or conversions. E-courses are made in the same fashion as E-zines; by using plain text. For a sample of my 7 Day Mini Course, send an email to: minicourse@aweber.com. You will receive the first portion of the course in just a few minutes, and then for the next 7 days you will get an email with a new section attached. *AOL USERS BEWARE: The only complaints I have ever received about the course not being delivered were from AOL members. Here’s a quick check list for creating your course: • Pick your topic of expertise. • Divide your material into specific sections. These topics will be your lessons. I advise starting out with a day-by-day course rather than splitting your material into weeks. • Write an introduction to the course and a list describing upcoming lessons. • If this is a free course: make sure to weave subtle hints throughout about all of the information that they are not receiving to give them incentive to purchase something (anything!) • Once you have written your course, set up an account with a sequential auto-responder company. Every company will have different instructions for set up, but basically you will be cutting and pasting and they will deliver the e-mails/lessons at the appropriate time. • Promote and advertise your course on your website, and send out a notice to your distribution list: let people know about it any way you can. Tom Antion provides entertaining speeches and educational seminars. He is the ultimate entrepreneur, having owned many businesses BEFORE graduating college. Tom is the author of the best selling presentation skills book "Wake 'Em Up Business Presentations" and "Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing." It is important to Tom that his knowledge be not only absorbed, but enjoyed. This is why he delivers his speeches laced with great humor and hysterical jokes. Tom has addressed more than 87 different industries and is thoroughly committed to his client's needs.

How to Get More Sign-Ups to Your Newsletter

2005-06-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

By Joanne King It never seems to amaze me how often I still see to this very day where people have gone to the effort of creating a hum dinger newsletter and paid for a good emailing responder but haven’t made their offer juicy enough on their website to get mass amounts of people to sign up. Now think to yourself, if your visiting a website would you truly sign up if it all reads is “Sign Up Here for My Newsletter” or would you be more enticed to sign up to something that reads more like “Sign Up for my Newsletter and go in the Competition to Receive a Free T-shirt” (or whatever it is you got to offer). Personally I know which one jumps out at me with leaps and bounds. The truth is when people see the word “free” it grabs their attention. And I’m no different, even knowing that; as soon as I see “free” on the page I want to know what is being given away… maybe it’s something I’d really like. What you offer for free doesn’t have to cost you a sent. It could be a free report on the product or service you are providing, a free e-book or downloadable audio file. The good thing with offering something like this for free is it gives you yet another chance to advertise to your potential customers plus build more credibility to your company or product by showing your customer “you really do know all about this stuff”. © Joanne King - http://www.joesy.com Get your Free book on “Affiliate Marketing – Quick Start Guide” by visiting http://www.joesy.com. You are welcome to reprint this article on your website or send to your mailing list however it may not be edited and the link in this bio must stay active. Cheers =)

Article Marketing: How to Submit Your Articles at Turbo Speed

2005-06-20T00:13:00.000-07:00

By Dina Giolitto Want to become an article-writing machine? Here are a few tricks for submitting articles on the internet at top speed and accuracy. As always, you should first type your article text into a Word document and save it on your hard drive. Many article sites offer space on their servers for your work, but ideally you should have a home for it on your own computer- just in case. Next, transfer your article text from your Word file to the article submission box. The quickest way to do this is to "set it all up" ahead of time. Quick Copy-and-Paste Article Transfer Start by finding a music CD of your choice that will get you into some kind of groove. Pop that into your Discman, CD player or whatever else you like to listen to your tunes on, and settle down in front of the computer. Take a deep breath, sit up straight, palm the mouse and then do the following: 1. Log in to your Ezinearticles.com account (or whatever other account you may be using to submit articles.) 2. Go to your existing Author Bio and hit Control-A (Highlight All) and then Control-C (Copy). 3. Go back to the Word file where your article is located and scroll to the end of your article, after the copyright line. Type Control-V (Paste) and add your bio text. 4. Now type Control-A (Highlight All). The text of your entire article and bio will be highlighted. Type Control-C (Copy). 5. Return to your article submission box and do a Control-V (Paste). Both the article text and the Author Bio will now be housed in the place where your article lives. 6. Scroll down to the end of your article text; that's where the Author Bio is. You are going to remove it from here and pop it into the Author Bio box. 7. Highlight the Author Bio text with your mouse and then do a Control-X (simultaneous Delete and Copy). 8. Go into the Author Bio Box and Control-V (Paste). Your author bio should now land in the proper place. Note: when writing articles for the internet, it's wise to break up your text into easy-to-read sections. Bolded subheadlines will guide the reader's eye down the page, thereby holding their attention on that excellent copy that you took such care in writing! Here's a formula for adding bold, ital and other HTML tags to your articles in a hurry. 1. Type your entire article in regular type, with no code. 2. Go to the first sentence that you want bolded and type your <> code (but without spaces). 3. Highlight the HTML Bold tag that you just typed, and hit Control-C (for Copy). 4. Now go to the end of the line where you want the Bold to stop and hit Control-V (for Paste). Now add a / mark before the B in that end tag. 5. Scan the article from top to bottom wherever you want bold, copying and pasting tags where necessary. 6. Go back to the top and repeat the process for Italic, if you have that in your article too. Bonus Tip: To get your mouse to the beginning or end of a long page of text (such as an article), type Control-A (Highlight All), and then the Up or Down Arrow. If you accidentally delete it, just hit Control-Z (Undo) and it should appear again. A quick copy-and-paste routine like the ones I just described really comes in handy when submitting articles in mass distribution. Faster is better! Have fun. Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved. Find out how crisp, targeted copywriting can make a world of difference for your business. Dina Giolitto is a Copywriting Consultant with ten years of experience. Visit http://Wordfeeder.com for free tips on branding, copywriting, article marketing and more.