How to Promote Your Newsletter

One quick and easy trick for promoting your newsletter or discussion group is to take advantage of the free announcement lists.

If you have a website but no newsletter, consider starting one. If you don't feel you can write a newsletter, you can use the "free content" sites to get someone else to do the writing. Instead of paying contributors, you simply allow them to include their URL. They'll appreciate the free advertising, and you won't have to write for your newsletter unless you feel like it.

Why a newsletter? There are ways to promote web sites--notably search engines--and there are ways to promote newsletters--namely announcement lists. Each generates a different type of traffic. Your newsletter can mention your website, your website can mention your newsletter, and you will gain more users in both areas.

What is an announcement list? Put simply, the Internet has users who enjoy receiving newsletters, and receiving regular announcements of what newsletters are out there. These are people with some time on their hands, probably the same people who will be the most receptive to whatever it is you're trying to sell.

The way I've set things up on my computer is, I have written an ad for my newsletter. I send the same ad to the announcement lists as often as they'll allow it. So in the same file with my announcement, I have a "monthly list" and a "weekly list" of email addresses that I send this ad to. Also in the file, I record when I last sent my announcements to them.

Once a week, with a two-minute copy-and-paste job, I'm advertising. Every time I do this, more subscribers arrive. Apparently different people are always joining these announcement lists, and some of them are joining my newsletter subscriber list.

You have to join any announcement list before you can announce on it, but you don't have to receive the announcements yourself. All three of the major newsletter/discussion group hosts will allow you to set your options to "No Mail/Read On The Website."

Here are the email addresses of the announcement lists I use:

MONTHLY: AAnnounce@smartgroups.com, misterlister@smartgroups.com, AAnnounce@topica.com, AAnnounce@yahoogroups.com, List_of_Lists@yahoogroups.com, listpromote@yahoogroups.com, Newlists@yahoogroups.com, promoteyourlist@yahoogroups.com, webbyweb@yahoogroups.com

WEEKLY: AAnounce@smartgroups.com, announce_lists@topica.com, FindLists@topica.com, List_Announcements@topica.com, List-Your-Lists@topica.com, List_Builder@topica.com, List_Of_Lists@topica.com, list-announce@topica.com, PromoteList@topica.com, 00-list-announce@yahoogroups.com, announce@yahoogroups.com, announce-lists@yahoogroups.com, ezine_announce@yahoogroups.com, getmoresubs@yahoogroups.com, List-Your-List@yahoogroups.com, ListAdvertise@yahoogroups.com, List_Announcements@yahoogroups.com

To join the SmartGroups lists, log onto http://www.smartgroups.com. Each group address is http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/{listname}, where listname refers to the part of the email address before the @

To join the Topica lists, log onto http://www.topica.com. Each group address is http://www.topica.com/lists/{listname}.

To join the YahooGroups lists, log onto http://groups.yahoo.com. Each group address is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/{listname}.

And finally, visit my site at readers.freeservers.com/. My target audience is readers and writers, but there are plenty of promotion tips that will help anyone.

About the Author

Michael LaRocca

:To contact see details below.


laroccamichael@hotmail.com
http://readers.freeservers.com/