Yes, it is work to keep up an ezine or newsletter. You need to constantly come up with new content – your own articles, other people’s articles, tools and sites of interest, new sales and products. You need a way to send it out, to delete bad addresses, to get past the spam filters – is it worth it? For some, yes – for others, no.
If you are tired of writing an ezine, that is understandable – the challenges have become great in publishing successfully. You are not able to stay consistent with the schedule, or you are having trouble thinking up new content. Or you haven’t been able to grow your list or sell advertising. The spam filters have been bouncing back a high amount of your issues, and when you ask for feedback, no one writes back to you unless it says “remove.” Frustrating.
If you are thinking of starting an ezine – think it over carefully. Are you up to the task? Do you know how to promote and to write, to get people to want to read what you have to say? Do you have a program to use that will send out your ezine for you? Can you manage your list of subscribers? Will your ISP allow you to send out bulk emails? Do you know how to find good resources to share?
Start with your site – is it a good one people want to look over? If so, ask them to subscribe for new news related to the site content. If not, fix your site. Make it one that people will want to return to. If people see usefulness in your offerings, you’ll get them excited to see what new things you can show them and tell them.
Think about ads – don’t put many into any issue, and if yours is new, don’t sell ad space until you are past 1000 subscribers. Make the issue one to give information and resources to the reader – not to push ads and your newest program. That does not build trust.
What is the content you will use? Your own writings? Other’s articles? Either way, you need to spend time either writing, or reading the articles to make sure they are of appropriate content. Keep each issue to a similar overall theme – do not scatter topics that are not related, or that have nothing to do with the site that people subscribed from – this is the information they expected to target.
You will need to have a reliable program to send the issues with or through – either a bulk mailer, such as WorldMerge, or a list server, such as topica.com – and your ISP must support the sending of bulk email on their terms if you send them yourself.
Email addresses bounce for varied reasons – people switch to another email program, or have moved, or quit paying, or have gotten canceled for spamming, etc. It is a chore to remove the bounces on your own list – especially when the person set up a forwarding address – which makes it hard to track down. When this happens, I send a “test” email to all readers using their subscriber addresses in the mailing – and bounces come back to me with the subscriber address.
Each issue needs to be written, and proofread – then edited for correct format. If you are horrible at grammar – get someone else to check it for you – you do not build up credibility by sending out issues full of errors.
You need subscribers – ones who will be READERS. The only way to do this is to make sure they are targeted – interested in the topic you will send them. That does not come from offering free ads to subscribers, or from buying non-targeted subscribers. It comes from promoting your site and signing up with programs that target that topic, giving people a choice to ask to sign up for your ezine. You need to give them what they want to read, so they will open up your issues and read them.
Yes – it’s a lot of work. You can make it work, though, with some assistance, or with a lot of perseverance. You’ll have challenges, and be caught in spam-traps. You’ll sometimes feel you have to start your subscribers again from scratch. You’ll get frustrated – but keep your focus on each issue and it should pay off. When things seem hopeless – send out a plea to your readers to tell you what they want to see that you can change. You can ask that of those who ask to be removed (by the way, you have to “get over it” when you get removal requests – you WILL get them). Hang in there or give it up – only you can know what feels right for you.
P. Roe does website optimization work, and is working on her sites all the time – many are in number 1-10 ranking on Google and Yahoo! Subscribe to “Wise Little Tidbits” for more optimization tips. mailto:ezineshere@aol.com?WLT http://doubleii.com/webservices.htm
