Ladder2SuccessNewsletter

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Create Newsletters (Ezines) Practically FRE^E in

8 Easy Steps

By Sally Morton



The email newsletter (e-newsletter or ezine) is

not only an excellent advertising promotion

vehicle for your business in general; it can be

a web promotion tool for your new services and

any affiliates you represent. To create

newsletters is an optimum way to stay in

contact with your customers, let them know

about new offers, and build good will, trust

and credibility. You might want a church

newsletter, a membership email newsletter,a

positive PR newsletter, etc.



There are few downsides when you create

newsletters, except it requires a time

investment. Internet marketing online (or web

promotion) can seem intimidating and you may

have looked into some Internet marketing

consultants and found they were too expensive.



If you are on a limited budget as a start-up

business, then I have great news for you. You

can create newsletters practically FRE^E.

Yes—from obtaining well-written FRE^E articles

and delivering your ezine to subscribers, to

web promotion—it can all be done practically

FRE^E.



Here is how to write a newsletter in eight easy

steps:



If you don’t subscribe to newsletters in areas

that interest you, now is the time to join

them. To find them, go to ezine directories

such as The Ezine Directory or The Directory of

Ezines. Put on your investigator hat and brew a

pot of coffee or tea. Your mission is not just

to read sample newsletters, but also to study

them to get your newsletter design. Write down

what you most like and least like about each.

Make a rough outline of how favorite ezines

arrange articles, ads, and links—in what order

and format. From this research, you will get

an idea of what you want to create. Newsletter

design as well as newsletter format is often

best when it is simple, not fancy. It is not

plagiarism to do an ezine with a similar look

and feel of an existing ezine. It’s called

“don’t reinvent the wheel.” It would be

plagiarism, of course, to copy their content or

design exactly.



Now you’re ready to begin creating newsletters.

Start with something as basic as a text editor

program. You can create your own newsletter

template with it. Alternatively, you can

obtain FRE^E ezine templates. Type in the words

FRE^E ezine templates and/or FRE^E newsletter

templates into your search engine to get

locations. If you create your own newsletter

template, place a grid at the top of your page

to help you keep the line length at 65

characters. The reason for this is that when

the ezine is sent by email, other people may

not receive it as it looks when you send it

out. Their settings may not tolerate anything

longer than 65 characters, so if you had a

longer line, it would wrap it around and cut

off part of your sentences. Alternatively, you

can use a text program to stop at 65 characters

for you. If you use Note Pad, you will have to

keep your line length manually. If you use

certain text editors like Text Pad, you can

pre-set it to stop at 65 characters.



You have your newsletter design and an outline

to go by. You should also develop a “theme”

for your ezine. Choose a short, memorable

newsletter name. What will the newsletter

focus on? Keep your topic in mind as you

develop each issue. Write down the type of

people you think will be interested in your

topic. That is your target audience. Keep

them in mind as you create newsletters. You

have several choices for your articles. Write

them yourself. Pay a writer to write articles

under their name. Pay a writer to “ghostwrite”

the articles under your name. Get FRE^E

articles. Use an exchange tactic: One FRE^E

article for fre^e classified advertising; or

FRE^E newsletter for one article. Most ezine

publishers use a mixture of all of those. To

get FRE^E articles, consult sites such as Ezine

Articles.com or Go Articles.com. Or put the

words FRE^E article into a search engine to find

more.



Now you have your articles. What ads are you

going to place in your email newsletter? Well,

what products or services do you want to

promote? You can write your own ads or you can

hire a copywriter. If you’re on a tight budget,

read through the classified advertising in

magazines, and in the ezines you subscribed to,

and study the ads. Look in several issues of

the same magazine. Notice if you see an a^d

repeated month after month. That a^d must be

pulling in orders. If an a^d asks the customer

to order, it is a direct or hard-sell a^d.

(This is rarely done in small classified-type

ads since there is not enough wording to

properly describe the product or service). If

an a^d invites the customer to call or email for

more information, or to click on a link for more

information, that’s a soft-sell a^d or a “two

step” a^d. The a^d is step one. The follow-up

info is step two. In a two-step a^d, the

follow-up a^d is the hard-sell that presents a

fuller description and asks for the order.

Write down ads that you think are really good.

With these as references, develop your own short

ads until you can afford to hire a professional

copywriter.



Now you have content, articles and ads. You

need a way to send your email newsletter to

subscribers. It is extremely helpful if you

also have a website (that’s another article,

but websites can be easily and inexpensively

done too). If you have a very small list to

send your ezine to, you can use your favorite

email program. Are you ready for this? There

are also places that you will send your ezine

out FRE^E for you and manage your subscriber

list. The exchange is they will want to put an

a^d for their company in your ezine. They are

called list servers. Two good ones are

E-Groups and Listbot. To find more, just input

list servers into your search engine.

Alternatively, purchase newsletter software or

hire a professional service to do it for you.



Now, you have your FRE^E ezine set up and ready

to go. You have secured your method of

delivery. You know your target audience. You

have your articles and your ads. Issue one,

your pride and joy, is finished. Who is it

going to? You need subscribers. If you have

an existing customer list, they should be

converted to subscribers. To get people to

subscribe, they need to know about your ezine.

It’s time to announce your ezine to the world

with web promotion tools. I’ll bet by now,

you have already guessed you can get this done

FRE^E too! (Don’t you love the Internet?) You

may start with newletter-library.com and

list-promote.com. Find more with a search

engine. Add your FRE^E ezine to the ezine

directories you found in Step #1.



Compose a FRE^E article that you will give your

subscribers as incentive to join. Now, you are

getting subscribers and issue one really needs

to hit the great-cyber-highway, doesn’t it?

Make sure that you send a test copy to yourself

first to see how it will appear before your

subscribers do!



Nothing like planting a seed and watching it

grow! But you will need to help it along with

web promotion and positive PR. Start with

producing a quality ezine. As you go along,

you will develop more expertise. The important

thing was to begin –to plant the seed. You can

achieve good PR and web promotion results in

many ways. I can’t discuss them all in the

space of this article, but I can give you some

advertising promotion ideas to think about:





Advertise your ezine by placing classified ads

in other email newsletters with large

subscriber lists that appeal to your own target

audience.



Fuel advertising promotion with a^d exchanges

with other ezine publishers (i.e. I’ll help

your advertising promotion if you’ll help

mine!)



Go all out with web promotion by placing banner

ads on complimentary web sites—you will need to

create these or have someone do it for you.



Accomplish web promotion with link exchanges.



Is it really this simple? Experienced email

newsletter publishers are shaking their heads

“no!” There is a mountain of information still

to be learned about ezine publishing, PR, and

advertising promotion. But you can climb that

mountain as surely as anyone else has. The

journey of a thousand miles begins with a

single step. If you can walk through these

eight steps, you will start a great journey.

You can learn as you go and as you grow. The

important thing to remember is that all the

information you need is readily available to

you if you’re willing to look for it. For,

when the student is ready, the teacher always

appears.



Sally Morton is Senior Writer with Partners

Online LLC (d/b/a

http://www.hobbiesgeneratecash.com and

http://www.nutsforcars.com). An experienced

freelance writer, copywriter, and editor, Sally

can be reached at sally@nutsforcars.com.



Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sally_Morton