Amazing Insider Secrets from Internet Millionaires

Amazing Insider Secrets from Internet Millionaires

CHECKOUT THE ONLINE WEALTH HANDBOOKS

How To Publish and Sell E-Mail Newsletters and E-Zines

Magazine and newsletter publishing is one of the most profitable parts of the printed publishing business, with over 3,000 magazine titles published at least monthly in the UK.

Now the Internet makes it easy for you to publish and sell your own regular e-mail newsletters and e-zines. You can publish a newsletter or e-zine either to sell in its own right or use it to promote another product or service.

E-zines and newsletters are very similar products.

However, an e-mail newsletter is essentially just one long e-mail.

It is very easy and simple to compile and is often in text form only, without illustrations. An e-zine, however, is a formatted electronic publication, often with multiple pages.

Each topic is usually given its own specific page or pages, just like in a printed magazine, and you can also include attractive layout, typography, images and illustrations.

Since e-zines are a more sophisticated format they take more time to compile than a newsletter. E-zines, however, have much more customer appeal and value than newsletters.

One important feature of a newsletter or e-zine is that it is a regular publication, unlike a book. This enables you to keep in contact with your subscribers and build a solid relationship with them – to persuade them to keep reading, subscribing and, hopefully, purchasing the products which you promote or advertise.

If you aren’t already familiar with Internet newsletters and e-zines, subscribing to existing publications in your field of interest is a good way to become familiar with how things work, and what sort of material to include.

How To Create Your Own Newsletter Or E-Zine

You can publish a newsletter or e-zine on virtually any subject you wish, including most of the ideas we outlined earlier. Popular subjects for these products include current affairs, finance, investment and personal development areas. Newsletters and e-zines aimed at business readers are also popular.

Before finalising an idea it is important to establish that you have enough material for the publishing frequency you envisage. You can send newsletters and e-zines on a regular weekly or even daily basis if you have enough benefit-rich news, tips and offers to include something new every day/week.

Another interesting possibility that electronic publishing permits, which paper publishing does not, is to send your publication out on an ‘as and when’ basis – as soon as you’ve some current, worthwhile information to share.

E-zines and newsletters should always be content driven. Some might disagree, thinking that a newsletter in particular should only promote another product or service.

However, although promotion can be an essential part of these publications, it should not be the sole component otherwise people will not read it!

If you promote only selectively, your subscribers will be much more ready to buy when you recommend something.

A good e-zine or newsletter should interest, inform, educate and entertain.

An e-zine or newsletter can include some or all of the following:

An editorial, news, a news digest, articles, features, product/service reviews, investigations, offers, freebies, surveys, resources and further contact information.

You should also add your personality to your publication – this is what makes it special.

Fun and motivational elements are good in most newsletters and e-zines. Create an editorial in your own distinctive style so your readers can get to know you and can interact with you.

Guest writers also help to develop a strong identity for your publication.

The great thing with an e-zine is that you can experiment with new and unconventional ideas, and quickly see what the response is!

Tips for Writing Newsletters and E-Zines

•   Start with a strong subject line. Make each customer want to read your bulletin immediately. For example, put ‘Property Hotspots Breaking News ….Just Released’. The words ‘Breaking News’ and ‘Just Released’ all create urgency.

•   Give strong reasons for reading on, in the introduction or editorial. Hook your customer by bullet-pointing the topics you’re covering at the start of the publication. And make these topics sound so fascinating, exciting or downright intriguing that they’ve just got to read on. Remember, uninteresting e-mails are very easy to delete.

•   Mix up the various elements you include in an interesting way – some short, some long pieces, some newsy snippets, some article style.

•   Use a structured format for articles. Start each topic with a benefit-driven headline in bold letters. Follow this with the key details and the ‘how to’ of receiving the benefit. End each topic by encouraging your reader to take that ‘how to’ action now, whilst you’ve got their full attention and enthusiasm.

•   Remember, successful newsletters or e-zines are a long term project for both publishers and readers. If you go for non-stop, hard-sell topics one after the other your customer may delete your bulletins straightaway. By using ‘soft sell’ the customer will really feel you’re giving them something worthwhile and valuable, and that puts them in a positive mood towards you.

• End with a warm and friendly sign-off. The most effective writing builds that one-to-one relationship between ‘you’ (the customer) and ‘I’ (the writer).

• Add a benefit-driven ‘PS’. These publications should close on a high note, leaving your subscriber wanting to discover more, order those special offer goods, or just feel good about having read them! Including a PS that gives them just one more, extra-special benefit, will help to do this.

Selling and Marketing Your E-Zine

There are two choices when you produce an e-mail newsletter or e-zine. Firstly, you can sell it on subscription. Secondly, you can give it away free. If you give your publication away, you can finance it either by using it to promote goods or services which you are selling (for example, an e-book or software), or you can sell advertising space within it – more about this later.

You can also include affiliate links, where other companies selling products on the Internet pay you for every click-through, or a commission on anything your subscribers buy from their site.

As you might expect, it is much easier to build up a subscriber list for an e-zine which you give away.

However, although it may attract a large subscription base because it is free, not all of the subscribers might be serious buyers for the products being sold. Charged-for publications are harder to sell initially but your subscribers are likely to be more serious, value them much more and keep subscribing long term.

As well as using conventional paid-for advertising you can build a list of subscribers for free by advertising and promoting your e-zine in the following ways:

• Announcement Lists: Run by organisations such as Smartgroups and Yahoo. Follow their guidelines for posting and get some free exposure.

• Writing Articles: Offer free articles to printed newspapers and magazines as long as they promote your e-zine in the copy.

•   Ad. Swaps: Running ads for other e-zines in your own e-zine and on your website (if you have one), in exchange for them running yours, is a great way to get a lot of free advertising. Also use pop-ups and banners.

•   Signature Tags: Always add a ‘sigtag’ and an attention grabbing headline about your e-zine to your e-mail –including a link to a site where people can subscribe.

•   Discussion Lists: Similar to announcement lists on Yahoo and other services. Get involved in the discussions as often as possible.

•   Message Boards: Similar to discussion groups. Establish yourself as an expert who is there to help, mentioning your e-zine whenever appropriate.

Managing Your E-Zine Subscriptions

An e-zine or newsletter should always be an opt-in (or permission based) information product. Opt-in means that these subscribers have signed up for or requested to receive your e-zine.

Don’t send it out to anyone and everyone, even by way of a ‘freebie’ to promote subscriptions. This will not only devalue the information you are providing but could result in ‘spam’ complaints.

If you are promoting or selling your publication on a website locate a ‘subscribe now’ button for it in a prominent part of your home page, where it is virtually impossible to miss. Pop-up boxes also work well for subscriptions, especially free ones.

When customers subscribe to your publication always send them a confirmatory e-mail.

In the e-mail, tell the new subscriber how frequently you will be e-mailing them so that they come to look forward to your mailing – and also how they can unsubscribe. Don’t be offended if someone unsubscribes, especially from a free product. It actually improves the quality of your subscription list!

If possible automate your subscribe and unsubscribe processes. Automating your subscriber process will make your site more professional and will also save you time, instead of having to manually add and remove subscribers. There are several ways you can mail out your newsletter or e-zine easily:

• Your Own E-Mail Server: When you first start out, using your e-mail server is an easy and inexpensive way to mail out your newsletter.

• Autoresponder Systems: This is a system that automatically sends out your product in response to a subscription request from new readers.

A major autoresponder company is Aweber, but as of late they are a bit pricey and they have had issues with running with internet explorer.

A cheaper, but still high quality option, is Wizardresponder. This is the one I currently use and it has been excellent, and a much lower cost.

• Mailing List Management Software: Services like Yahoo and Topica etc. offer free mailing list management. These are a good way to get started on a tight budget, but lack advanced control functions and may result in your subscribers being sent unsolicited advertising.

How To Make Money Selling E-Zine Adverts.

The sale of advertising space can be used to finance a free newsletter or e-zine, and make extra profits from a charged-for one.

Advertisers find e-mail publications very attractive, not only because rates are low compared to other media, but also because, by choosing the right ones, they can target their chosen market.

Most marketeers consider e-zine advertising to be more effective than placing ads on websites.

Ideally, you need at least one thousand subscribers to an e-zine or newsletter to make it attractive as an advertising medium. If advertising is selected carefully your readers can see ads not as an intrusion, but as a service.

How much money you can make by selling ads in your newsletter depends on several things.

Of course, the number of subscribers you have is an important factor. (Publishers often think in terms of cost per thousand.

This refers to the rate charged for an ad for every thousand subscribers.) Another important factor is the nature of your readership. Some e-zines have general appeal and are read by all kinds of people. Others are aimed at a very specific profession or trade, people in a certain age or income group, or who are interested in a special subject, residents of a specific region, men or women only etc.

Usually, if your newsletter caters to a specific niche market, you will be able to command higher rates from advertisers aiming at that market.

It follows that the more information you have about your readership profile, the stronger your position in attracting advertisers.

If you run a sports e-zine, for example, you can assume your readers enjoy sports, but through surveys or contests you can collect information about which sports, and what products and services they buy, in order to attract the right potential advertisers.

You can also consider sponsorship. Sponsorship is often just advertising that appears right at the top of the issue, or unique ‘mentions’ in relevant articles. However, it commands higher than usual advertising rates.

To decide on the right rates to charge in your particular case, usually requires a certain amount of trial and error.

Study what similar publications charge for what type of ads to determine the supply and demand and what the market will bear. Also consider what percentage of the ad. space they seem to be actually selling. Many publishers charge a high price for ads, but they sell very few ads at such high fees.

Once you have decided on prices, what type of ads you will carry and where, put together a media pack for advertisers. Also include in your media pack your USP(unique selling point) or mission statement, your current subscriber numbers and whatever demographic information you have about them. Send the pack out either by e-mail or conventional mail to likely potential advertisers.

If you prefer, you can outsource the sale of all or part of your advertising. Several companies on the Internet offer to sell advertising on your behalf, thus saving you the work of soliciting and processing orders and collecting payments.

	Easy to learn and simple to copy!
HOME INFO PRODUCTS EZINES & NEWSLETTERS BLOGS SHAREWARE LIST BUILDING GAMING GAMBLING HOME INFO PRODUCTS EZINES & NEWSLETTERS BLOGS SHAREWARE LIST BUILDING GAMING GAMBLING HOME INFO PRODUCTS EZINES & NEWSLETTERS BLOGS SHAREWARE LIST BUILDING GAMING GAMBLING HOME INFO PRODUCTS EZINES & NEWSLETTERS BLOGS SHAREWARE LIST BUILDING GAMING GAMBLING HOME INFO PRODUCTS EZINES & NEWSLETTERS BLOGS SHAREWARE LIST BUILDING GAMING GAMBLING HOME INFO PRODUCTS EZINES & NEWSLETTERS BLOGS SHAREWARE LIST BUILDING GAMING GAMBLING HOME INFO PRODUCTS EZINES & NEWSLETTERS BLOGS SHAREWARE LIST BUILDING GAMING GAMBLING HOME INFO PRODUCTS EZINES & NEWSLETTERS BLOGS SHAREWARE LIST BUILDING GAMING GAMBLING HOME INFO PRODUCTS EZINES & NEWSLETTERS BLOGS SHAREWARE LIST BUILDING GAMING GAMBLING	Amazing Insider Secrets from Internet Millionaires CHECKOUT THE ONLINE WEALTH HANDBOOKS How To Publish and Sell E-Mail Newsletters and E-Zines Magazine and newsletter publishing is one of the most profitable parts of the printed publishing business, with over 3,000 magazine titles published at least monthly in the UK. Now the Internet makes it easy for you to publish and sell your own regular e-mail newsletters and e-zines. You can publish a newsletter or e-zine either to sell in its own right or use it to promote another product or service. E-zines and newsletters are very similar products. However, an e-mail newsletter is essentially just one long e-mail. It is very easy and simple to compile and is often in text form only, without illustrations. An e-zine, however, is a formatted electronic publication, often with multiple pages. Each topic is usually given its own specific page or pages, just like in a printed magazine, and you can also include attractive layout, typography, images and illustrations. Since e-zines are a more sophisticated format they take more time to compile than a newsletter. E-zines, however, have much more customer appeal and value than newsletters. One important feature of a newsletter or e-zine is that it is a regular publication, unlike a book. This enables you to keep in contact with your subscribers and build a solid relationship with them – to persuade them to keep reading, subscribing and, hopefully, purchasing the products which you promote or advertise. If you aren’t already familiar with Internet newsletters and e-zines, subscribing to existing publications in your field of interest is a good way to become familiar with how things work, and what sort of material to include. How To Create Your Own Newsletter Or E-Zine You can publish a newsletter or e-zine on virtually any subject you wish, including most of the ideas we outlined earlier. Popular subjects for these products include current affairs, finance, investment and personal development areas. Newsletters and e-zines aimed at business readers are also popular. Before finalising an idea it is important to establish that you have enough material for the publishing frequency you envisage. You can send newsletters and e-zines on a regular weekly or even daily basis if you have enough benefit-rich news, tips and offers to include something new every day/week. Another interesting possibility that electronic publishing permits, which paper publishing does not, is to send your publication out on an ‘as and when’ basis – as soon as you’ve some current, worthwhile information to share. E-zines and newsletters should always be content driven. Some might disagree, thinking that a newsletter in particular should only promote another product or service. However, although promotion can be an essential part of these publications, it should not be the sole component otherwise people will not read it! If you promote only selectively, your subscribers will be much more ready to buy when you recommend something. A good e-zine or newsletter should interest, inform, educate and entertain. An e-zine or newsletter can include some or all of the following: An editorial, news, a news digest, articles, features, product/service reviews, investigations, offers, freebies, surveys, resources and further contact information. You should also add your personality to your publication – this is what makes it special. Fun and motivational elements are good in most newsletters and e-zines. Create an editorial in your own distinctive style so your readers can get to know you and can interact with you. Guest writers also help to develop a strong identity for your publication. The great thing with an e-zine is that you can experiment with new and unconventional ideas, and quickly see what the response is! Tips for Writing Newsletters and E-Zines • Start with a strong subject line. Make each customer want to read your bulletin immediately. For example, put ‘Property Hotspots Breaking News ….Just Released’. The words ‘Breaking News’ and ‘Just Released’ all create urgency. • Give strong reasons for reading on, in the introduction or editorial. Hook your customer by bullet-pointing the topics you’re covering at the start of the publication. And make these topics sound so fascinating, exciting or downright intriguing that they’ve just got to read on. Remember, uninteresting e-mails are very easy to delete. • Mix up the various elements you include in an interesting way – some short, some long pieces, some newsy snippets, some article style. • Use a structured format for articles. Start each topic with a benefit-driven headline in bold letters. Follow this with the key details and the ‘how to’ of receiving the benefit. End each topic by encouraging your reader to take that ‘how to’ action now, whilst you’ve got their full attention and enthusiasm. • Remember, successful newsletters or e-zines are a long term project for both publishers and readers. If you go for non-stop, hard-sell topics one after the other your customer may delete your bulletins straightaway. By using ‘soft sell’ the customer will really feel you’re giving them something worthwhile and valuable, and that puts them in a positive mood towards you. • End with a warm and friendly sign-off. The most effective writing builds that one-to-one relationship between ‘you’ (the customer) and ‘I’ (the writer). • Add a benefit-driven ‘PS’. These publications should close on a high note, leaving your subscriber wanting to discover more, order those special offer goods, or just feel good about having read them! Including a PS that gives them just one more, extra-special benefit, will help to do this. Selling and Marketing Your E-Zine There are two choices when you produce an e-mail newsletter or e-zine. Firstly, you can sell it on subscription. Secondly, you can give it away free. If you give your publication away, you can finance it either by using it to promote goods or services which you are selling (for example, an e-book or software), or you can sell advertising space within it – more about this later. You can also include affiliate links, where other companies selling products on the Internet pay you for every click-through, or a commission on anything your subscribers buy from their site. As you might expect, it is much easier to build up a subscriber list for an e-zine which you give away. However, although it may attract a large subscription base because it is free, not all of the subscribers might be serious buyers for the products being sold. Charged-for publications are harder to sell initially but your subscribers are likely to be more serious, value them much more and keep subscribing long term. As well as using conventional paid-for advertising you can build a list of subscribers for free by advertising and promoting your e-zine in the following ways: • Announcement Lists: Run by organisations such as Smartgroups and Yahoo. Follow their guidelines for posting and get some free exposure. • Writing Articles: Offer free articles to printed newspapers and magazines as long as they promote your e-zine in the copy. • Ad. Swaps: Running ads for other e-zines in your own e-zine and on your website (if you have one), in exchange for them running yours, is a great way to get a lot of free advertising. Also use pop-ups and banners. • Signature Tags: Always add a ‘sigtag’ and an attention grabbing headline about your e-zine to your e-mail –including a link to a site where people can subscribe. • Discussion Lists: Similar to announcement lists on Yahoo and other services. Get involved in the discussions as often as possible. • Message Boards: Similar to discussion groups. Establish yourself as an expert who is there to help, mentioning your e-zine whenever appropriate. Managing Your E-Zine Subscriptions An e-zine or newsletter should always be an opt-in (or permission based) information product. Opt-in means that these subscribers have signed up for or requested to receive your e-zine. Don’t send it out to anyone and everyone, even by way of a ‘freebie’ to promote subscriptions. This will not only devalue the information you are providing but could result in ‘spam’ complaints. If you are promoting or selling your publication on a website locate a ‘subscribe now’ button for it in a prominent part of your home page, where it is virtually impossible to miss. Pop-up boxes also work well for subscriptions, especially free ones. When customers subscribe to your publication always send them a confirmatory e-mail. In the e-mail, tell the new subscriber how frequently you will be e-mailing them so that they come to look forward to your mailing – and also how they can unsubscribe. Don’t be offended if someone unsubscribes, especially from a free product. It actually improves the quality of your subscription list! If possible automate your subscribe and unsubscribe processes. Automating your subscriber process will make your site more professional and will also save you time, instead of having to manually add and remove subscribers. There are several ways you can mail out your newsletter or e-zine easily: • Your Own E-Mail Server: When you first start out, using your e-mail server is an easy and inexpensive way to mail out your newsletter. • Autoresponder Systems: This is a system that automatically sends out your product in response to a subscription request from new readers. A major autoresponder company is Aweber, but as of late they are a bit pricey and they have had issues with running with internet explorer. A cheaper, but still high quality option, is Wizardresponder. This is the one I currently use and it has been excellent, and a much lower cost. • Mailing List Management Software: Services like Yahoo and Topica etc. offer free mailing list management. These are a good way to get started on a tight budget, but lack advanced control functions and may result in your subscribers being sent unsolicited advertising. How To Make Money Selling E-Zine Adverts. The sale of advertising space can be used to finance a free newsletter or e-zine, and make extra profits from a charged-for one. Advertisers find e-mail publications very attractive, not only because rates are low compared to other media, but also because, by choosing the right ones, they can target their chosen market. Most marketeers consider e-zine advertising to be more effective than placing ads on websites. Ideally, you need at least one thousand subscribers to an e-zine or newsletter to make it attractive as an advertising medium. If advertising is selected carefully your readers can see ads not as an intrusion, but as a service. How much money you can make by selling ads in your newsletter depends on several things. Of course, the number of subscribers you have is an important factor. (Publishers often think in terms of cost per thousand. This refers to the rate charged for an ad for every thousand subscribers.) Another important factor is the nature of your readership. Some e-zines have general appeal and are read by all kinds of people. Others are aimed at a very specific profession or trade, people in a certain age or income group, or who are interested in a special subject, residents of a specific region, men or women only etc. Usually, if your newsletter caters to a specific niche market, you will be able to command higher rates from advertisers aiming at that market. It follows that the more information you have about your readership profile, the stronger your position in attracting advertisers. If you run a sports e-zine, for example, you can assume your readers enjoy sports, but through surveys or contests you can collect information about which sports, and what products and services they buy, in order to attract the right potential advertisers. You can also consider sponsorship. Sponsorship is often just advertising that appears right at the top of the issue, or unique ‘mentions’ in relevant articles. However, it commands higher than usual advertising rates. To decide on the right rates to charge in your particular case, usually requires a certain amount of trial and error. Study what similar publications charge for what type of ads to determine the supply and demand and what the market will bear. Also consider what percentage of the ad. space they seem to be actually selling. Many publishers charge a high price for ads, but they sell very few ads at such high fees. Once you have decided on prices, what type of ads you will carry and where, put together a media pack for advertisers. Also include in your media pack your USP(unique selling point) or mission statement, your current subscriber numbers and whatever demographic information you have about them. Send the pack out either by e-mail or conventional mail to likely potential advertisers. If you prefer, you can outsource the sale of all or part of your advertising. Several companies on the Internet offer to sell advertising on your behalf, thus saving you the work of soliciting and processing orders and collecting payments.