Secrets of Successful Ezines
Minicourse #3
What You Need to Know BEFORE Starting Your Ezine
Yes, you can start right now, write 500 words and email it to all the people on your email list. Bingo, you’ve got an ezine published. It can be that easy and simple.
But stop and think for a minute. What happens when your list becomes too large, more than a couple hundred subscribers? Do you want to have to enter and remove subscriber requests yourself each time?
What if you want to create a graphic design and include your logo and photo into your ezine? How do you do that?
In the next couple of lessons from the ebook The Secrets of Successful Ezines, we will reveal what you need to know from the very start of your ezine. If you don’t make the right decisions from the beginning, you will lose subscribers as you grow because you will probably have to change distribution services along the way.
Every time you switch distribution methods, you have to ask your subscribers to re-confirm their subscription, and many people won’t do it because of email overload.
Here are the questions you need to answer before setting up your ezine with a distribution service (yes, even the free ones).
1. How many subscribers do I have now, and how many do I believe I will have in 2-5 years?
2. How often will I write and publish my ezine? (Depends on readers’ and your preferences).
3. What is the desired length of my ezine? (Relates to frequency and to your readers’ preferences).
4. How will my readers want to receive my ezine: in plain text, rich text, PDF or HTML? Will I send out a brief email with a link to the full article on my web?
5. Will I give my readers a choice of which format they prefer?
6. Do I have a virtual assistant to manage my subscription list or will I want this done for me automatically?
7. Do I have an effective welcome message each time a new person signs up?
8. Can I post my ezine on my web site or do I have someone who can do this for me?
9. Do I have someone who can create my web page sign up forms, or do I want my distribution system to create these forms for me?
10. If I want to use a graphic version of my ezine, do I want to use my logo and colors similar to my web site, do I have someone who can create a template for me, or do I want to use a standard, generic template created by one of the services.
11. Do I want to write all my content myself, use other people’s content, buy content and revise it for myself, interview people, use Q & A’s, and/or book reviews?
12. Do I want to submit my ezine to directories and my articles to content sites, or do I want a system or a v.a. to do this for me?
13. How will I grow my subscriber list?
14. What actions do I want my subscribers to take upon reading my ezine?
15. How will I track open rates when I send out my ezine?
16. Do I want to pre-load my ezines into an autoresponder that delivers them automatically every month or week, or do I want to keep them timely and spontaneous by broadcasting them at a certain date each month or week?
The answers to these questions will help you decide which distribution system will meet your needs now and in the future.
And, on top of all that…!
As you can see, there is a lot that goes into creating a successful ezine, one that grows the number of subscribers, one that reflects you and your professional services, one that gets delivered in a professional manner on a regular basis.
On top of all the planning for your ezine, you must keep in mind the primary purpose for doing an ezine: creating value for your readers and getting business results!
If any of these tasks seem overwhelming, do not despair. There is help available and user-friendly systems have sprung up everywhere you look.
A start would be hiring an ezine coach, taking an ezine teleclass, and buying an ezine how-to book.
Hey there, we just happened to have all three of these solutions for you!
Click here to buy your copy of Secrets to Successful Ezines, where many of the top ezine publishers share the history of their ezines, which systems they have used, what mistakes they made along the way, and how they grew their ezines from 50 to 5,000 and even 20,000 readers in a few short years. Buy HERE.
For ezine help, contact Patsi Krakoff, patsi@customizednewsletters.com
And Elge Premeau, Elgep@e-marketingstrategist.com.
For upcoming teleclasses, go to www.teledevelop.com.
Click here for a comparison chart on ezine distribution systems (a steal at $9.95).
Here’s to better ezines in 2005!
Patsi
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