7 Easy Steps to Building Your Own Opt-in Newsletter
What is the advantage of having a newsletter and just how hard is it?
Having a newsletter establishes your presence on the net. There is nothing more valuable to your business than having an established ezine that goes out each and every week like clockwork. People sign up for them, and if you do a great job, they even wait expectantly for your next one.
Many people think that there is no way that they can do a newsletter each week. For some it is commitment, and for others it is the feeling that they can’t do it because they can’t write. And for others it is both the above reasons.
There are many places on the net, where you can get articles for your ezine. The authors allow you to use their articles provided you keep their resource box at the end of the article, saying who they are and where their website is. It is a very fair exchange. You get great content for your readers and you
don’t have to do a lot of work to get that content.
And, last but not least, you can make money with your ezine after it grows some.
Presentation
Presentation can be crucial to the preparation of your ezine. While some webmasters are using html to send out their ezines, the standard is still measured in text format.
Many of your potential viewers may not be able to view email in html. So it is recommend you use a text format.
This does limit, somewhat, the look and feel of the publication. Make certain that you are using a table of contents at the beginning of your ezine. Use proper spacing between your subject so that it is obvious to the viewer that each topic is defined.
If you are using a text editor such as notepad, it is imperative that you make sure that "word wrap" is disabled and that you use a "hard return" at the end of each line.
If you don’t do this, your ezine will continue endlessly through the right margin and ultimately won’t be read by the viewer.
Choosing A Name And Content
Choosing a name for you ezine can be as easy as using your company name or your first name and call it your Ezine. However, many people like to choose catchy titles that one can add a zing to their ezine.
Names such as The Internet Awesome News Report Marketing Alert Weekly Newsletter Tips, Tricks and News
After it is chosen you need to choose what kind of content to offer your readers.
You need to have content that makes your readers stay with you. Great articles on what they are interested in, maybe a weekly free tip or gift. A weekly quote, and any news on the latest internet viruses, or if your newsletter is on health, new ways to exercise, tips to lose weight. Health News.
If your newsletter is light and airy, you might even enjoy putting a weekly quip or joke in… That is the beauty of having a newsletter, it is yours, and no one else.
The Importance Of Appearance And Layout
When you are in the beginning stages of publishing your newsletter, it’s a relatively simple process to mail it with your own email program.
However, you will soon discover that as your list of subscribers grows, so will the effort to send out the ezine.
If you have a good auto responder service or software this is an excellent method to use for delivering your ezine. There are many different suppliers of free or paid service.
Finding articles for your ezine is a simple task. First, you might want to place a notice in your ezine that you welcome articles that are interesting informative and in good taste.
Another method would be to join one of the article submission services that are available. These are services where authors send their articles to be used free of charge by webmasters.
Finding Readers For Your Ezine
Finding readers for your ezine can be done by first putting an easy subscribe box on your website.
Some people put a pop up box, too. Either as someone stops into visit their website or as they exit.
TIP: Here is how to install a popup on exit box
Insert the below code between the two <head> tags on the html part of your web page. Below the <head> tag and above the </head> tag:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
var exit=true;
function leave() {
if (exit)
window.open(‘http://www.yourwebsite.com/popup.html’,”,
‘toolbar=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,
location=no,height=400,width=400′);
}
// End –>
</SCRIPT>
The section http://www.yourwebsite.com/pop.html needs to be changed to your web address.
Then insert this below the </head> tag:
<BODY onUnload="leave()">
After you have inserted the code, anytime someone leaves your web site you will have a popup on exit to try and grab their email address.
Since the internet is chockfull of ezines, you must make yours different and enticing. Don’t think because there are so many, that yours won’t be useful.
There are a lot of ezines on the net, but there are not a large amount of high quality newsletters. There is a difference!
One way to entice your readers to sign up is to offer a free gift. There are many free ebooks on the net, with a shining book cover, that will make people want to download the book. In return for the book, they subscribe to your newsletter.
Ezines Can Make You Money In Four Ways
The first way is in the branding of your name on the net and establishing your net presence as an established business on the net, with a weekly ezine. This gives people a sense of security when purchasing from you.
TIP: Here is a great way to remove that long affiliate link, but you will need your own web site to do so:
Open Notepad or WordPad on your computer and copy and paste the following code:
<html>
<head>
<title>Any Title of The Page You Would Like To Put Here</title>
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="0;
URL=Insert your whole affiliate link in this section">
</head>
</html>
Next, save the file as an html file (i.e.: affiliatelink.html) Then upload the file to your website and you are finished. You have a link that will look like this:
www.yourwebsite.com/affiliatelink
A great way to start branding yourself on the Net.
The second way is in trading ads with other ezine owners.
Many ezine owners are wiling to trade an advertisement for you in their ezine in exchange for an ad
The third way is:
Once you have built your subscriber base, you can start charging for putting ads in. The standard rule of thumb, at this writing, is $10.00 per 1,000.00 readers. So, once you have 5,000 readers, you can easily charge 50.00 for an advertisement in your ezine. At four issues per month that is 200.00.. If you sell 4 Ads per issue (you don’t want more than that) That would be
200.00 per week, per issue.
(Then there are solo ads. Solo ads can easily pull in 99.00 per Advertisement) one of those a week, along with your other ads, you can see the income potential.
The fourth way to make money with your ezine is, it is your ezine. Anytime, you get a new product to talk about or affiliate with something that is cool and neat and a potential money maker for you, smack that advertisement in, woven in with your talk or your own article, and watch your income rise.
I hope you have enjoyed the article, 7 Easy Steps to Building Your Own Opt-in Newsletter
Lisa Frenzel
