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3Jul/100

Ways to Improve and Make Money from Your Newsletter – Ezine-Marketing

Ways to Improve and Make Money from Your Newsletter

Our last three newsletters have covered the hot topic of email newsletters and their importance: Keeping Your Customers Informed, How to Build Your Subscriber List, and How To Write Your Newsletter. If you're new to our newsletter or have missed out on any of these editions, to view the complete series see the link at the end of this article.So having accepted the importance of producing an email newsletter, you've begun to establish your subscriber list and have started writing, or gathering content for it, how are you going to improve and make money from your publication? This month we are going to tackle Ways to Improve and Make Money from your Newsletter.Getting Your Newsletter DeliveredThe first issue is to make sure that your subscribers are opening your newsletters. It may sound obvious, they've subscribed to receive this free but valuable information of course they'll open and read it, right? Wrong! There's a whole host of delivery issues that can stop them.This can be a particular problem if you are using an html template style email as opposed to a plain text version. You may need to educate your readers about the need to add trusted senders to their address books as it is a fact that many email programmes and email address providers wont display the html content of emails sent by sources not in the recipients address book. Some won't even include the html by default even if you are in their address book! Unless your subscribers have added you to their address book, there's a good chance they won't see your HTML graphics and if your important text is contained within a graphic, they may therefore not see any part of it.So what should you do?Well, you have a few options:

3Jul/100

The News About Newsletters – Ezine-Marketing

The News About Newsletters

"A newsletter is the paring knife of communication tools. It seems simple and is easy to take for granted. Handled well, however, it's a highly capable tool." --Al Czarnecki Communications(http://www.topstory.ca/newsletters.html)Test yourself Newsletter Quiz:Q. Do I need a newsletter?A. Yes, because ?a) my business coach says I need one.b) most speakers have one.c) I believe it would be a perfect component for my communication strategy and action plan for building platform. It will be consistent with the strategy and congruent with all the other tactics (advertising, brochure, business card, web site, new book, sponsorships, etc.) It will also reinforce my messages in a cost-effective way.d) I want an additional tool to promote advance sales of my new book.e) It will cost nothing, won't take any time and I haven't any time.f) It's a project I would enjoy, or could easily delegate.B. What's in it for whom? Scratch your head. What are specific benefits for me? What's in it for the reader? Who are my mover and shaker recipients? If content is king, what would compete with their golf game? How much subtle sell should I include, what value-added? Will it be interactive? Will you survey your readers for preferences and suggestions for content? Will you run competitions? Offer prizes?C. Once you've drawn up your list of proposed recipients, what would you like them to do with your newsletter? Choose only five of the following:a) delete unread and block further deliveryb) print out and use to wrap yesterday's fishc) sign up, enjoy, share with a friend, request information, keep on file.d) Sign up and offer you either a media interview on your new book or to review your book for the Globe and Mail/New York Times.e) Sign up, praise your communication to the skies, sign two other friends and suggest you use their compliments for a testimonial.f) sign up and book you for the 2008 International Speakers Federation's convention keynote, hire your training company for an eight-year contract and buy 10,000 copies of your book.D. Next, take a tour. Study your colleagues' newsletters. Venture onto sites such as: www.companynewsletters.com/index.html;
www.bcentral.co.uk/marketing/ebusiness/writing-your-newsletters.mspx. Review email campaign software, such as ConstantContact, www.constantcontact.comE. Identify awards your newsletter could win. Newspapers vie for awards each year. Then you can advertise: ''my award-winning newsletter ?''!And finally, when you send out your newsletter, put us on your list?By Lindsay Kellock, whose own newsletter is available at www.yourbooksbestfriend.comJ. Lindsay Kellock is a writer, editor, and writing consultant with a background in print journalism and communications. Lindsay's email counseling service enables writers to create sentences that sing. Her email Grammar Person is available Mondays through Fridays at http://yourbooksbestfriend.com

29Jun/100

Fishing For Ezine Subscribers – Ezine-Marketing

Fishing For Ezine Subscribers

The Bible tells the tale of the fishermen who were just not catching a thing. Jesus came along and told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, which they did. Surprise! They caught so many fish their nets began to tear.Jesus had a strategy. He thought outside the box. And he knew where to go. Of course, when you're God, you tend to know a lot of things.What about fishing for ezine subscribers? Don't expect Jesus to tell you where to cast your subscription net. You will have to build some other strategy. In the meantime, here are the six steps I sued to grow my free online Happy Class ( http://thehappyguy.com/self-actualization-happy-class.html ) list by 27 last night, and my Daily Dose of Happiness (http://thehappyguy.com/daily-happiness-free-ezine.html) by 10.Step # 1: Sign up for Subscription Rocket ( http://thehappyguy.com/SR.html ) and install the code on every page of your web site. SR is a small pop-under offering your visitors free subscriptions to newsletters. Unlike some pop-ups, this pop-under is unobtrusive and nobody has ever complained. Every time the screen pops under your site, your ezine pops under four other similar sites. Most of my ezine subscribers had never even heard of me or visited my site before they signed up.Step # 2: Get lots of traffic to your site. The Internet traffic gurus will tell you to attract only TARGETED traffic. But, with SR, any traffic will do. 1000 non-targeted visitors might be useless to you, but they will trigger 4000 appearances of your ezine notice to targeted visitors of other sites. Get the most targeted traffic possible, yes, but whatever you do, get traffic. More on this later.Step # 3: Get sub-affiliates, and get lots of them. Every time web sites you referred get visitors to their sites, you earn three credits. So 1000 visitors to www.Looky-who-I-referred.com means YOUR ezine gets seen by 3000 targeted visitors at other sites.Step # 4: Replace some of the SR codes with Subscriber Drive codes. What's the difference? Not much. They are almost identical. You can see how SD works at www.TheHappyGuy.com/self-actualization-articles.html . Why use both? Two reasons.First, you don't want to run out of targeted subscribers. For instance, if you run an Internet marketing newsletter, you don't want one service to run out of similar sites on which to display your ezine and start showing it to visitors of vampire-slaying sites.Second, if you can get multiple credits for each visitor to your site ... if you stagger the two services along the well-worn surfing routes. I have SR code on my home page, and SD code on my Self-actualization Resource Center, where the largest number of home page visitors tend to gravitate.Let's start thinking way outside the box.5. How do you get big traffic to your site? Suppose, for instance, your ezine and web site are about Internet marketing, competing with 4.5 million savvy entries on Google. Slim chance getting a top ten ranking, or even a top 100 ranking.Consider your hobbies. Suppose you like horseback riding. Why not have a page on horseback riding, optimized for a couple juicy equestrian keywords, where you compete with just 700,000 not so savvy web sites? What does horseback riding have to do with Internet marketing? Everything, if it is about the publisher (you!). You might also post a page on Italian cuisine, where your keyword optimization competes with only 200,000 other Google entries. These could both be under "About the publisher".In addition to the untargeted traffic who will bring you targeted subscribers from other sites by tripping the SR and SD codes, your visitors will get to know you better as a human being, a key factor in building trust with them. You can also add affiliate links for related products (want to sell a horse?) and actually make some money from these extra pages. (If you like happiness, why not use one of my happiness articles and sell my two happiness ebooks through affiliate links from http://thehappyguy.com/earn-money.html?)6. Another way to boost traffic to your site is to keep sending your subscribers to your site. If there is a free ebook download (or software or puzzle or graphic or recipe) or a contest to enter, you can have subscribers visiting your web site each week. I set up a Daily Fun page http://thehappyguy.com/l/daily-happiness-fun-page.php for subscribers to Your Daily Dose of Happiness. Every time one of them visits, she earns me four views of my ezine notice to targeted traffic on other web sites. This page is getting an average of 100 hits a day, and that will increase as my ezine readership grows.Jesus could help you catch way more subscribers than I can. But until he offers some alternatives, these are the steps you can take to turbo boost your subscriber catch.About The AuthorDavid Leonhardt publishes Your Daily Dose of Happiness http://thehappyguy.com/daily-happiness-free-ezine.html. Learn more about ezine publishing at: http://thehappyguy.com/ezines.htmlInfo@TheHappyGuy.com