Secrets of Successful Ezines
Minicourse Part #5
What’s the Best Way to Distribute Your Ezine?
You have several different options for distribution your ezine.
Factors to consider include:
Price – How much do you want to spend?
Format – Are you sending a Text ezine, HTML, both Text and HMTL or PDF
Reporting – Do you want to know how many people opened your ezine or clicked on the links in it?
Do it yourself
The most basic way to distribute your ezine is to just send an email. Many people will use this method when just starting out. It’s free and your email is less likely to be flagged as spam than other methods.
However, you are pretty much limited to a plain text ezine and you don’t know how many people got your ezine and opened it. You have to manually handle subscribes and unsubscribes.
Yahoo Groups
Although Yahoo Groups is typically used for groups of people with a common interest, they can also be set up in a way that makes them a good way to distribute your ezine.
Some of the benefits of using a Yahoo Group is that recipients can subscribe and unsubscribe themselves, you can send attachments and you can include images in the body of your message. And best of all, it’s free.
On the down side, several ISP’s including MSN, block Yahoo Group messages.
Subscribers need to either already have a Yahoo account or set one up in order to subscribe to your group. And like sending an email, you don’t know who opened your message or visited the links in it.
Distribution Services
There are dozens of ezine distribution services ranging from free to several hundred dollars a month. The services geared toward small businesses run between 15 and 50 dollars a month, primarily based on number of subscribers.
The general process is pretty much the same regardless of which service you use. However, there is a fair amount of variance in the number and quality of features each service has.
Most distribution services will allow you to send both HTML and Text ezines; however, they typically won’t allow you to send an attachment. A distribution service will completely automate the sign up and unsubscribe process; they even provide the sign up form code for your website.
Since there is a lot of variation in features, it’s important to do your homework and make sure the service you have is going to grow with your business.
Changing distribution services is not a simple matter. Each time you change services, you have to re-invite everyone on your list. You can expect to lose about 50% of your subscribers each time you do this.
Want to know more? We have compiled a list of services that distribute your ezine and done a comparison chart of the different features. This valuable resource is only $9.95. You can save hours of research time and be sure to choose the best service for your needs.
To purchase the Distribution Service Comparison Report, click here.
In the meantime, keep writing, and use your articles to reach potential clients through the ezines and blogs.
For those of you wanting to create a web presence in just a couple of hours for under $10, you really should learn about blogs. Next Tuesday, Denise Wakeman and I are presenting a free teleclass about how you can use a blog as both your web site and ezine with little or no tech skills. To register, go here.
Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.
Elge Premeau
P.S. To buy the ebook Secrets of Successful Ezines, click here. It’s only $47 until Jan. 31.
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