Do You Want To Publish An Ezine?

Are you thinking about publishing an ezine? Well this article could help you out. Don't know what to do? This article takes you through the setup process of planning out your ezine.

First of all you will need to decide what the purpose of ezine will be. Will it be just to inform customers of new products, improved products and such? Will it be to educate people on a certain topic? What will your purpose be?

Once you have decided on a purpose then you can decide how often you will be sending out your ezine. Will the publishing schedule be monthly, weekly, daily? When making this decision you will also need to think about how much time you will have to devote to your ezine. After all, you want a quality ezine not one that get thrown together half hazarded because you are short on time. You also have to consider your subscribers. How often will you be able to deliver valuable fresh content. You don't want your subscribers to feel like they are being bothered with ANOTHER one of YOUR emails.

Now that you have decided on a purpose and a publishing schedule, you need to decide on a theme for your ezine. What is your ezine going to be about? There are many topics to choose from so be sure to choose something you know about. Make sure your topic is specific enough that your ezine won't resemble a patchwork quilt with hundreds of different patterns. However, you also need to choose a topic broad enough that you won't run out of information to talk about. After all, you want an ongoing publication not a publication that cancels after a year because you ran out of information to talk about.

Once you have decided on a theme you can decide what will go in your ezine. Some suggestions are: a feature column, an editorial column, a Questions and Answers column, an ask the expert column. These are just a few suggestions. You have many possibilities on what you can include in your ezine.

After deciding what will go into your ezine you will need to decide how your ezine is going to be arranged. The first part you will need to decide on is the header. In your header should be the ezine's name, the ezine's slogan, the issue number, the date and the ezine's URL. Are you going to center all of the header information? Are you going to put everything at the left margin. How are you going to arrange your ezine's information in the header?

I strongly recommend that you include a privacy policy in your ezine. Where you put it is up to you. Some ezine publishers have their privacy policy towards the top, some have the privacy policy towards the bottom and some publishers don't include a privacy policy in their ezine at all. Your privacy policy can be as simple as the policy below. You can copy and paste this one into your ezine if you want.

(beginning)
Privacy Policy:

Our subscriber list is confidential. It is not rented, sold, lent or otherwise disclosed to a third party. We respect your privacy. Subscribe and unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of this newsletter.
(end)

Next you may want to include an itemized list towards the top of your ezine. Your list should mention each section title in the order it appears. An Example:

(beginning of example)
In This Issue:

Welcome
Sponsor Ad
Freebies
Feature Article: title of article and author.
and etc.

If you will be running sponsor ads you may want to include them in the list example above but you don't have to. That is up to you. The above list is only an example. You may have something totally different or have the same items but decide to have them in a different order.

As to the position of the top sponsor ad, that varies. I've seen the ad right below the header and some I've seen a little lower than that. Here is an example showing a placing of a sponsor ad.

(beginning of example)
Header
Privacy Policy
In This Issue
Top Sponsor Ad
Welcome Message
(end of example)

What will be in your ezine partly depends on it's purpose. It also will depend on what you want to put in your ezine. Also your ezine's theme will also play a role in what will appear in your ezine.

Don't forget to include subscribe and unsubscribe directions, which can be put towards the bottom. These directions should be in every issue you send out. Why? You can only send your ezine to opt-in subscribers. If someone is receiving your ezine and later decide they no longer want to receive it then they are no longer considered opt-in. To make it easier on your subscribers and yourself include unsubscribe directions. If one of your subscribers pass on your ezine and you don't have subscribe directions you could be missing out on a new subscriber. Very few people will search for subscribe directions. If they can't subscribe easily more than likely they will end up forgetting about you and your publication.

Also, contact information should be included in every issue of your ezine. At a bare minimum you should have your name, email address and URL in this section. At the optimum would be your name, your email address, your URL, your phone number, fax number if you have one and snail mail address including city, state and zip code.

Now that you have decided on all that information you now need to decide on how you are going to deliver your ezine. You need to keep your subscriber list somewhere. There are several options that you can choose from.

First: You can host your own list on your own computer and use a group mailer to send out your ezine to your list

Pros: inexpensive
you have complete control over your list

Cons: time consuming

Second: You can use a free hosting list server such as topica, egroups, listbot, etc.

Pros:everything is taken care of for you
automatically and the service is free

Cons: you don't have complete control over your
own list and ads appear on your mailing

Third: You can use a commercial list host (if your budget allows).

Pros: no ads

Cons: expensive

Fourth: You can own your own software installed on your own computer, meaning you host your own list

Pros: You have control over your own list

Cons: Besides being expensive the software can be
hard to install and hard to learn how to operate

Note: This option is not recommended for the beginner.

Even though you have decided on how you are going to deliver your ezine your planning still isn't done. There is still more to go.

Now that you have planned your ezine and have made all these decisions you need to get the word out. If you keep quiet people will not know about you and/or your ezine. People can't read your mind.

There are many ways you can promote your ezine, here are just a few of them. You can put a signature file on all of your outgoing email, you can put short signature files on your postings at newsgroups and discussion boards. You can place ads in various ezines. Promotion is a never ending process. You will always be promoting one way or another.

If you have the chance promote your ezine for 2 or 3 months before you publish the first issue. If that isn't possible promote your ezine for as long as you can before publishing the first issue. Once you start publishing you won't have as much time for promoting as you did before. Remember plan out your ezine and don't forget to promote, promote, promote.

copyright© 2000 Heidi Ross All Rights Reserved

About the Author

~If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.~ If you want to get ~Your Angel Wings 2 Success~ subscribe to EzineAngel today and when you do join us you can subscribe to a private archives that has publishers resources. Join us today and get freebies. EzineAngel-subscribe@listbot.com

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