E-zine… A Sensational Way to Build a Responsive List

What exactly is an E-zine?

It’s like an electronic newsletter sent by e-mail to a list of people who have visited your website and opted in to receive the newsletter.

Some people argue that e-zines are longer in length, offering more content, more articles, more advertisements, and isn’t published as frequently as an e-newsletter. They define an e-newsletter as a publication that’s shorter, and put out more often.

We’ve noticed though, that these two terms seem to be used interchangeably now, so for the sake of just keeping things simple, were going to refer to them both as just “e-zines”.

Don’t get hung up on over-complicating the concept. Otherwise, you might think you could never publish one yourself. Which is absolutely not true.

So what we are going to do here is show you why you need to do an e-zine, and a bit on how to get started. We won’t get into the nuts and bolts and technical details, but we’ll give you enough to chew on to get you moving in the right direction.

So Why Should I publish One?.

1. Drive traffic to your site. Sending out your e-zine on a regular basis will keep you in front of everyone on your list. It will remind them that you exist, and that you have a website that would be beneficial for them to visit.

2. Develop a relationship with your list. This gives you an opportunity to get in front of a large group of people, and let them know who you are and how you can help them.

It gives them a chance to feel like they know and like you. People like to do business with people they know, like and trust.

3. Establishes you as an expert in your field. If you provide good, quality information, people will begin to see you as a real professional in your area of expertise.

People will begin to trust you when they can see you as knowledgeable.

4. Lead generation, building your list. Often, when people visit a site, they don’t purchase right away.

But if you’ve provided good useful information, they’ll be more motivated to sign up for your newsletter. And you’ll have a much better chance of these people becoming future customers.

Also, if you produce really exceptional articles, people on your list are more likely to forward them to their friends and family.

5. Promote your product, service or business. Yes, you can do this through E-zines, if you do it in a way that provides value to your readers.

Share with them information about how your product can help them. Don’t make it an advertisement about how great your business or product is. They don’t care.

They care about how it will benefit them in their lives.

6. You can potentially make money with your e-zine. If you put out a quality one, and have a good list of a lot of subscribers, advertisers may pay you to place their ads in your newsletter.
I Need to Do an E-zine – Where Do I Start?
Hopefully you already know what your content is going to be. It will be based on whatever your website is all about. If you haven’t yet figured that out, stop and go back to our article Website- Do I need one?

Can you publish an e-zine without a website? Of course. There are people doing all kinds of things out there on the internet. Like anything else, some are good at it, others flop.

What we want to do is supply you with a comprehensive “program” to run your online business successfully.

We recommend that the backbone of your business is your website. And your e-zine is just one part of the whole pie.

If you’re going to rely solely on a blog, and not do a website, then you can incorporate an e-zine sign up link into your blog.

What if you’ve fallen in love with the idea of becoming an e-zine publisher as your online business venture? Great! You still need a website.

Next, decide how often you want to put out your newsletter. It can be once a week, every two weeks, once a month. Whatever you think you can consistently do.

You want to pick a frequency that you will follow through on. If you promise your subscribers a weekly publication, you better do what you promise – or you will eventually be considered unreliable, and will most likely lose your subscribers.

We don’t recommend high frequency of publication – once a day may be annoying to some people. Or too low a frequency – going longer than a month is not advisable.

How do you get “subscribers”?

Well, there are a few ways…

1. You need to give them a reason to want to subscribe to your newsletter. The way to do this, is provide them great information on your website.

2. Be original, and really try to do something a bit different than everything else that’s out there.

3. People are very scared of spam these days. Make sure that on your “opt-in” sign up form, you have your privacy – anti-spam policy spelled out clearly.

4. Another way is to publish articles in other’s publications. This is a great way to start getting your name out there. Read our article Articles – Write Now! To learn how and why to do this.

Basically, when you publish your articles in someone else’s publication, you are allowed to place your site info at the bottom of the page for readers to click on if they want to.

If your article is interesting enough to draw them to your site, you have a greater chance of them opting onto your list.

5. Social media is another way you can build your list of subscribers. If you are active on arenas like Facebook and Twitter, you can promote your e-zine.

Of course there are ways to do this, so check out our article on Social Media to learn this great way of generating leads.
How to Get Started
So now the next step is the “how to” step. The nuts and bolts… We won’t go into this process here, but will give you some ideas how to approach this task.

But first, I know some of you reading this are thinking “ …but I couldn’t possibly write articles myself! I can’t write!”

To that we say “Yes you can. And yes you must”.

Lots of E-zine publishers buy articles, but we don’t think this is a good idea if you are trying to convert your list of prospects into buyers.

They need to get to know you.

The only way they can do that is through your “voice”, your thoughts, your ideas. If you need to brush up on your writing skills, or need to develop them, do it.

We recommend a couple great books on the subject in our Resources page. Just start writing. Write like you were speaking to someone. Be real. Be you–let your personality shine through your writing.

Designs and templates. You can find ideas on the internet – there are actual kits or programs you can buy that will help you format your e-zines in a user-friendly, acceptable way.

Just remember that you never want to send an article or newsletter through an “attachment”. It won’t ever get opened because of virus concerns.

Managing your list. This is another important part of the process. You can do it yourself, but probably not once your list grows to a substantial size.

You can use free list managers like yahoogroups.com, purchase list management software, or you can use a list management/auto-responder service like Aweber. We personally like this service because it is user-friendly and dependable.

It takes time and effort to build a list. You want to make sure it’s in safe, reliable hands.

Comprehensive programs. Yes, there are those out there, that will help you with all of these steps. They will co-ordinate all of these things for you–managing your list, formatting your E-zine, and sending it out.

I will only mention the one we personally know and can recommend – Site Build It. Not only do they walk you through website development
, but they assist you in coordinating, developing, and managing your e-zine and Blog.

So that’s the How – What – and Whys – of e-zines in a nutshell. We recommend that you just start writing. Your first step is writing an article, so start with that.

Once you’ve done that, then you can start submitting them to other e-zines. Take a look at ezinearticles.com, to get ideas. They’ll also let you publish your articles, which will give exposure to your website or blog.

This will get the ball rolling. Just do it….

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