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Your Own Newsletter
Starting Your Own Profitable Newsletter ...
© 2002 by Detlev Reimer
Today it is not enough anymore to just have a website and then
trying to sell the prospects on their first visit. Unless you have
an absolutely convincing and high quality sales letter, you will
only make a very small percentage of sales if any at all.
What Is The Purpose Of Your Ezine ?
In order to make your visitors return to your site and to buy
something from you, you'll have to develop a longtime relation-
ship with them. The easiest way to achieve this is to build a list
of opt-in subscribers.
With an ezine you'll build trust and credibility in the eyes of
your prospects. One of the biggest advantages of your own
ezine is that it costs you almost nothing to maintain regular
contact with your customers and prospects.
Building Your List Of Opt-In Subscribers
This list can either be for a newsletter or it can just be a re-
minder email that is sent every now and then if you've made
updates to your site or if you want to announce a new product
you've developed.
You will get more people to subscribe to a newsletter which
focuses on quality content than for a list with your sales pitch
only. The reason for this is quite obvious : Most of us are just
fed up with advertisements; we want to get content which is
useful to us .
Deciding On Your Topic
Answering the question which topic you should choose might
take some time but is essential to your success. You must
decide on a topic you are familiar with and which you would
like to develop into your own special knowledge area - your
area of expertise .
How To Deliver Your Ezine
With small lists (< 500 subscribers) you don't have to use ex-
pensive hosting solutions. In most cases, you will be able to
use a desktop solution, a program like Aureate Group Mailer
or Mailking 3.0 will do the job for you and these also have
the feature to personalize your newsletter with first name/last
name, date etc.
If you have a list that is larger than let me say 500 subscribers,
you can use a web based service like Yahoogroups or Topica
which are both free. Their main disadvantage is a little ad for
their service in their emails. But adding and removing subscri-
bers can be done very easily. Importing larger lists of more
than 100 subscribers at a time can cause problems, though .
The other solution is to use a web based autoresponder
service like Getresponse, AWeber or Postmaster Online.
Using these services means that you are able to prepare a
message series in advance and it is triggered if a prospect's
email address is entered into the database. Important is the
feature to email all your list members at any time to be sure
that you can have a fixed publishing day.
Developing Multiple Streams Of Income
Now how do you make money with your ezine ? The most
obvious way to make money with it is by selling your ad
spots if you already have enough subscribers. Wait until you
have at least 1000 subscribers before selling those spots or
you won't be interesting enough for advertisers.
The next possibility is to announce affiliate programs which
you've joined. Try to "soft sell" these products, i.e. describe
how the products have helped you to achieve something parti-
cular.
Almost similar to affiliate programs is a joint venture. You
also introduce products produced by others and you recom-
mend them to your list. If you have an established relationship
with your readers, they will trust your judgement concerning
the product and the joint venture will be profitable for both
parties.
The next and best step ( because you can keep all of the
money) is to announce products which you've produced your-
self. Not only will you be able to sell products but you'll also
have the possibility to announce your own affiliate programs
for the products which you've created yourself because it is
very likely that you will have other ezine publishers on your
list.
Last but not least you can turn your newsletter from a free
into a paid newsletter once you have enough subscribers. If
you offer content which is very valuable to your readers, you
might get a lot of subscribers who will gladly pay a monthly
subscription fee for your ezine.
This means residual income and you are not so dependent on
your advertising revenue anymore.
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Written by Detlev Reimer, CEO of 1A IMS-Marketing. In his
Web Money Marketing Newsletter, he shows regular people how
to earn an income online. Subscribe to the free version by sending
a blank email to: webmoney @ dreimer.par32.com (Remove spaces)
or visit his website at: http://www.internetmarketing-success.com/ .
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Article reproduced with kind permission from Detlev Reimer
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