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Ezine Advertising - The Fastest Way to Affiliate Profits

2007-05-31T18:20:00.001-07:00

By Derrick VanDyke

If you're on a tight budget or want to get started quickly without a website or a list of your own, then ezine advertising should be your number one choice.

Ezine advertising is the perfect solution for beginners who want to test a market and get into profit fast. Here's why:

It's highly targeted. People subscribe to ezines to receive information about specific topics. You just need to find ezines that cover topics related to the product your are promoting.
It's cost effective. You can find ezines that sell ads for as little as $8 - perfect for testing a new product idea.
It's a cheap way to test your ad copy. You can track several ads at the same time for next to nothing and find out which ad pulls the best.

What Is An Ezine?

An ezine is similar to a printed magazine except that it's delivered electronically via email. And instead of purchasing an ezine, people sign to receive it for free or a monthly subscription fee. Most ezines are published weekly, but some are published daily, monthly or bi-monthly.

Types of Ezine Ads

Classified Ads: the cheapest and the least effective ads you can buy. Classified ads are limited to two or three lines and placed at the end of the ezine. Some ezines even give away free classifieds as an incentive to subscribe. Unless you place a classified ad in an ezine with 30,000 subscribers or more, your chances of getting a response are very small.

Sponsor Ads: these are more expensive than classified ads, but will give you a much better response. Sponsor ads can be placed at the top, middle or bottom of an ezine issue. You can include more text in a sponsor ad so it's a good way to test your copy before going all out on a solo ad.

Solo Ads: this is the king of all ads because your offer is sent exclusively to everyone on the mailing list and gets full attention of the subscribers. No articles or other content is included. Solo ads can be expensive, but they can increase your response by as much a 100% over sponsor ads. You can usually expect a 20% - 30% response rate from a good solo ad.

In other words, if you purchase a solo ad for $100 in an ezine with 5,000 subscribers, you should expect about 1,000 highly targeted visitors.

Note: Solo ads can be purchased for as little as $10. You will get a much better response from a $10 solo ad sent to 500 subscribers than you will from a $10 classified ad sent to 5,000.

Here's your step-by-step guide to successful ezine advertising.

Step One: Subscribe to 10 or more ezines.

Subscribe to ezines that offer top sponsor and solo ads within your budget. Subscribing to ezines before you place your ads will allow you to determine the quality of the list and potential profitability of your campaign before you spend any money. You may want to set up a specific email address for your subscriptions and filter them into a specific folder in your mail program for easy access.

You can search Google for "ezine directories" and "ezine advertising to find quality ezines.

Step Two: Select three quality ezines.

Here are some guidelines for choosing a quality ezine:

1. Does the ezine have a domain name and website where you can subscribe and purchase advertising? This shows that the publisher runs a serious business and is not likely to take your money and run.

2. Is there an article archive? This shows you how long the publisher has been in business and how consistent the publication is.

3. Are subscriptions confirmed opt-in? After you subscribe, you will receive an email to confirm your subscription. This is a sign of a high-quality list. However, this should not be the only determining factor.

4. How often does the ezine owner publish? A weekly or bi-weekly publication is optimal. If you receive daily ads, that's a good sign that people may be desensitized to your message.

5. Does the publisher offer solo ads? A solo ad is one that is sent to the entire list all by itself and usually the most profitable type of advertising.

6. Do the solo ads display the advertiser's subject line? If the subject line is not personalized, results will not be as good.

7. Does the body of the message contain a lengthy disclaimer from the ezine owner that explains their SPAM policy and that they aren't associated with the advertiser and aren't responsible for the content? This is a red flag to me because it makes the reader less receptive to your ad.

8. Do you see the same advertisements multiple times? This is a good sign that the advertiser is getting a good response. One way to be sure is to contact the advertiser and simply ask.

9. Is there waiting period to run your ad in the ezine? A responsive list becomes popular fast and may have a waiting period of a month or more. If you find one, book your ads quickly and mark it on your calendar. It will be worth the wait when your ad finally runs.

10. Does the publisher respond personally to your questions? No response could mean that your mail was filtered. And if you mail doesn't get through, you can bet your ad won't either. Get a solid response before you pay.

Step Three: set up your ad trackers.

Never advertise unless you can track the response. You need to know how many visitors and sales you get for each ad you place so you can determine whether or not you want to run another ad in a particular ezine or upgrade from a sponsor ad to a solo ad.

This information is critical for determining how well each ad campaign does and how well you're converting visitors into sales. Sometimes you just need to tweak your ad copy and run the ad again for better results.

If you get good results the first time, run your ad again in a week or two. Not everyone will buy the first time around. And many who were "on the fence" the first time they saw your ad, may purchase the second time around.

You can find a good ad-tracking service on Google.

Step Four: write your ad.

There are numerous books on writing good copy that you can find by searching Google. But, the best way to come with ideas for good ads is to read the ads in other ezines.

Look for ads that catch your eye. Modify them to fit the product you are promoting and then add your own personal touch. You can include an exerpt from an ebook you are selling, a section from the sales letter, or your personal endorsement.

Step Five: place your ad.

This is the easiest part. You simply fill out a form with your ad copy and credit card information. After you process the order. You will receive a confirmation of when the ad will run. And since you are already subscribed to the ezine, you can verify it yourself. Don't rely on them to send you a "courtesy copy."

Step Six: put half your profits back into advertising.

Okay, sounds simple enough. But where do you put the extra profit?

That's why you track your ads. So you can make an informed decision and maximize your profits.

So if you were going to put half your profits back into advertising, where would you put it?

Let's say you're total profit was $400. Take two hundred and invest it back into the successful ezines and invest the other two hundred into two new ezines. And then multiply your profits from there.

The profit potential of this method is incredible. Once you tap into the strategy and see it working you'll see exactly what I mean. And until you do, you'll have a hard time understanding why I get so fired up about it.

Note: it can take up to two weeks (or longer) to get into some ezines. So it's important to get your spot as soon as possible.

Once you set this system up and find some good ezines to advertise in, you'll be making money completely on autopilot!

To learn more about this automated marketing system, download my free report "Three Steps to Affiliate Profits" at http://affiliatecashsecrets.com for tips on affiliate marketing. Derrick VanDyke - All Rights Reserved. Feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box. You can also include your affiliate link when you sign up at my Affiliate Cash Secrets website.

Writing for Dollars - How To Get Started

2007-05-31T00:40:00.001-07:00

By Heidi Richards

When you provide good information from which readers can learn and profit, people are more likely to buy your products and services.

- Heidi Richards -

So just how do you get started? The first step, of course is to write the article. The second step is to find the right medium. I have a small business in the floral industry. So the floral community would be my first likely target. Industry experts are generally the most sought after writers for targeted publications. Since I write mostly about sales and marketing for small business, my second likely medium would be business-related publications, such as those published by Chambers of Commerce, small business journals and other retail industry publications.

I have also found that each type of media that has printed my articles has different criteria for submission. Some want you to send a letter outlining your ideas while others will allow you to submit the actual article. However, most editors prefer that you send a query letter first and include a paragraph about yourself. I also include a link to both my websites in case they want additional information. However, many ezines and online publications allow you to send the actual article. Visit your library, online or local bookstore or do an Internet search with the words query letters for the how tos of writing them.

It should go without saying that the article must be grammatically correct and free of spelling errors. A publisher is looking for quality content that will make her or him look better to the reader. The more unique your article, the better your chances of getting it published. Real-life, personal examples and stories have a much greater chance of getting published than do book reports. Make sure the article is yours! No plagiarism allowed. If you do copy someone elses work, not only will you open yourself up to all sorts of legal problems, you will destroy any credibility you hoped to establish.

Whether you write articles for print media or for online publications, follow these guidelines to increase your likelihood of getting them published.

Read the publication. Become familiar with the writing styles and content. It took several months, before one of my articles was accepted by Balance Magazine. It was an article on leadership, which they liked and found space to include. Because I was patient, tenacious and had developed a relationship with the editor, I was asked to be the South Florida Profile Editor and now write an ongoing series of articles called the PMS Principles. I interview successful women in South Florida and write their stories. What a great way to gain exposure! By the way, the PMS stands for Partnering, Mentoring and Service, which is also the title of a new book I am writing.

Send your article to the assistant editor when there is one. You will find her or him listed in the publication.

Ask the publication for their editorial calendar (often found on their website). An editorial calendar lists the focus or theme of each issue. This is a great tool to use when deciding what to write and submit.

Find out the submission requirements (writers guidelines). These will include length of article, format, number of words, dos and donts, as well as deadlines for submission. In some cases it will also include writers compensation, if and when they pay for articles.

Write about what you know. Its easier to sell and easier to write when you draw upon your own experiences and those of others you know. You could also write about a personal experience or a hobby you pursue (if it is newsworthy).

Keep it simple plain text, simple fonts, 12-point type are generally the most widely accepted format.

Use short paragraphs. Commercials use sound bites to keep the audiences attention. Short paragraphs have a better chance of keeping the reader interested.

Dont over-punctuate. By this, I mean the use of the exclamation point!!! or or ??? mark. Overusing punctuation will make your words have less impact over time. And if you are submitting your articles on the Internet, these are often flagged as spam and may never even be read.

Ask questions. Then answer those questions. This will keep the readers attention and interest.

Bullets can accentuate your points. Since people read in sound bites, bullets help the reader absorb the information in bite-sized pieces.

Use creative headlines to sell your message. Instead of How to Write Articles, use Writing for Dollar$ or something more enticing. Send me a note with Headlines in the subject line and I will send you the article on Headlines that sell.

Keep track and follow up. This gets more difficult over time, since your articles might be reprinted and you dont even know it, unless the publisher sends you the courtesy copy. Keep track of where you submit your articles, and follow up with editors to find out if and when they will be used. If editors dont use your work, ask for feedback. This will help you become a better writer. Create a record for yourself of the publication, the URL (web address) and the name and contact information of the person to whom you submitted your article.

You can submit your work online to some of these more popular places. Keep in mind, there are literally thousands of ezines out there, below are just a few sites to submit your work:

http://www.ezinearticles.com

http://www.netterweb.com/articles

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.ideamarketers.com

http://www.articlecity.com

http://www.authorconnection.com

http://ezinelocator.com

Never give up! Be patient. As the saying goes, timing is everything, and editors and publishers are busy. If your content is good (and interesting) eventually someone will notice and you will get published. Once that happens, capitalize on the momentum and keep going. The purpose of writing articles is after all to get people to start talking about you. Oscar Wilde said The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Make writing a part of your marketing plan and who knows, several articles later, you could be the talk of the town.

Excerpted from The PMS Principles - Powerful Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business 2005 - Heidi Richards

Heidi Richards is the author of The PMS Principles, Powerful Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business and 7 other books. She is also the Founder & CEO of the Womens ECommerce Association, International Heidi@wecai.org.

Ezine Advertising for Home Based Business

2007-05-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

By Willie DeJarnette

Have you ever considered ezine advertising for your home based business? If not, youre truly missing out on some valuable exposure to your business. Ezine advertising can be a powerful tool if you follow the right guidelines and you will be successful.

Always include quantifiable benefits when writing an ezine advertisement and actually tell the truth. For instance, if you say lose 5 pounds in 5 days, people will actually be interested in that and believe it is possible at the same time. Distorting the benefits wont help at all; it will make the advertisement look like a scam more than anything else.

When creating a solo advertisement, alter the copy so that it specifically portrays the product as a solution to a specific problem. Purchase several solo advertisements to test how well this version converts when compared to other versions. Testing is vital if you want to continually improve the conversion rate of your advertisements.

This is very vital for ezine advertising members to realize. Always look for word of mouth referrals for ezine before you place advertisements. In many cases, no matter how good your copy is, you will find that certain ezine simply will not be responsive to your email. This might be because the ezine isn't actually as big as the owner claims it is and it might also be because the owner hasn't promoted the list in a year.

Think on a professional level. Make sure you format your ezine advertisement correctly before you send in to a publisher. In most cases, you will have to format your advertisement to 60 65 words; and you may even want to perform a spam check. If the text isn't formatted properly, lines will be broken and wrapped unprofessionally; and if you don't perform a spam check, it may never even go through in the first place.

When creating a top sponsor advertisement, avoid making an attempt to sell anyone on anything. Instead, give something away completely free that will up sell the reader later, such as a subscription or a special report. Additionally, make sure you clearly communicate that nothing is for sale and that you simply want them to take action for free.

Become a software application provider for ezine owners. Ask ezine owners what software applications they need and then hire someone to create an application for you. Distribute this software to all of the ezine owners who have a use for it. Make sure there is some back-end component build in that will drive users to your site.

Now, moving from our last point about ezine advertising we will now discuss when outsourcing any work you are doing as part of an ezine marketing campaign, remember to carefully check for plagiarism and theft. This is definitely an unpleasant thought, but plagiarism has become quite rampant on freelancing sites. If you own several websites, you can use Copyscape to do this for you; however, each site will be limited to 20 scans.

Simply knowing what you read in this article isn't enough. You have to put it into action to be successful. To learn how you can do exactly that and to learn more about Willie DeJarnette business, SU, you will want to visit Willie's website at the following URL: http://www.success2thetop.com

Newsletter Pain or Pleasure?

2007-05-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

By Glenn Harrington

Some businesses have an attitude of burdensome obligation about their newsletter. That leads to corner-cutting and a poorly performing newsletter that discredits the business and its clients.

For other businesses, producing a newsletter is a smooth, rewarding process, yielding a valuable tool that contributes to rising client loyalty, business, and profits.

Is a newsletter a waste of time or a goldmine? That largely depends on your attitude. A newsletters potential as an investment in a loyal, growing clientele is greater than many imagine. Like other ventures in marketing and customer relationship management, newsletter success begins with positive attitude.

Your attitude in the beginning is essential in shaping the newsletter that ends in your clients hands. This article points the way to newsletter success for those who recognize the potential for success and start with a positive attitude.

SUCCESS FOR READERS: You must communicate effectively with your clients and demonstrate your relevance to them.

A good newsletter focuses on client interests. Recognizing themselves in it, they feel involved. With intrinsic loyalty, they look forward to each issue, and pass it on with referrals. If they like your newsletter, then it should aid growth and profit.

Your newsletter is a reflection of your target-market profile and a barometer of your dedication to your brand.

OF BRAND ALIGNMENT: Your brand is how your market perceives your business. So, your newsletter should honestly convey the client experience.

A newsletter put together from content gleaned elsewhere cannot be truly yours. Nor is a generic, third-party newsletter with your logo pasted in. If authenticity is important, then either could compromise your brand.

As you compete with others who want your niche, the right style for your newsletter depends on the status you need to maintain among loyal, profitable clients. If, for example, your business thrives on a low-key, earthy reputation, then your newsletter should reflect that. Big-city style might confuse people. Be genuine.

Your success should be your own expressing your attitude, propagating your brand, following your formula. Indeed, your brand should permeate your newsletter formula.

DEVELOP AND TEST A FORMULA: Just as you can make endless batches of satisfying cookies by following the right recipe, so you can make a great newsletter by following a good formula. Your newsletter formula consists of:
style (look and feel)
content (articles and graphics)
medium (paper or computer screen)
frequency (issues per year).

Your brand is the cookie sheet. Your market is the oven.

A good newsletter formula trumps what style appeals to you or fits your budget. Indeed, you should look beyond the style that appeals to you, and beyond your current budget. From a good formula, appeal and affordability result.

START WITH A PROFILE: What clients do you want more of? What interests do they share? In developing your formula, look to your target-market profile to guide your decisions. Develop your target-market profile: age, gender, neighbourhood, occupation, household income, and other characteristics that typify good clients for you. Then, address their interests.

ON PAPER OR ON SCREEN? : Since this profile shapes your formula, be careful what you assume. If, for example, you target people who are very technology-oriented, you might assume that they want an e-newsletter. Yet, they might find a printed newsletter refreshing.

My research has found that a newsletter distributed by e-mail is:
less likely to be read entirely
more likely to be plagiarized
less likely to be read more than once.
more likely to be deleted without being read at all.

Moreover, people like to hold a newsletter in their hands and take it on public transit, to a waiting room, or a coffee table (where others might notice it incidentally). Each decision about your formula should be rooted in your brand and guided by your target-market profile.

WHY BOTHER: There are other ways to attract and retain clients. You can advertise, offer discounts, run incentive programs, and train staff in client relations. Your newsletter need not replace these. Rather, a great newsletter integrates marketing and client-relations economically. It should harmonize them.

GOOD FORMULA + GOOD ATTITUDE: No aspect of customer relationship management or marketing should be a burden or obligation. Bear in mind the low cost of intrinsically loyal clients and the high potential of a brand-aligned newsletter. With a winning attitude and a winning formula, you could replace newsletter pain with the pleasure of success.

Glenn Harrington is Principal Consultant of the Harrington Newsletter Company in Victoria. doctor@harringtonnewsletter.ca

Most Newsletters Dont Work - part one: Success and How to Monitor It

2007-05-21T04:50:00.000-07:00

By Glenn Harrington

Some people think newsletters dont work. Often, theyre right. In a world where most newsletters dont work, it is common to be confused about how to define newsletter success.

Whats it good for?
Over the past ten years, I have paid attention to newsletters. I can tell you why most dont work. It starts with confusion about what newsletters are good for. Confusion about how to monitor success comes from that.

How many next-day phone calls?
Many marketers expect a newsletter to generate results as soon as it arrives. Most newsletters do. However, when the results expected are new sales and referrals following each issue, most newsletter issuers eventually conclude that newsletters dont work. By the way they gauge success, theyre right.

Check your perspective.
From a sales perspective, an ineffective newsletter should be canned. But first, consider other perspectives. For example, think from the perspective of the impression left on readers. What impression would it make on you to receive two or three newsletters, then none at all, from your accountant? your lawyer? your investment advisor?

What newsletters do
Because of mismatched expectations, many who issue newsletters conclude either that newsletter success is harder to achieve than they imagined, or that newsletters just dont work. Yet, I see something in these situations that often escapes people struggling with an unsuccessful newsletter: A newsletter shapes peoples perceptions of you.

Four Brand Effects
It can do other things, such as announce news and complement advertising; still, every newsletter is a reputation-shaping instrument of brand management. Any newsletter will:
*leave a first impression, or
*mould an already-formative impression, or
*validate a formed impression, or
*confuse a formed impression.

A newsletter makes an impression.
How does this fit into a context where more sales and good referrals are wanted now? Consider the following example.

Maintain meaningful contact.
There are people who receive newsletters from their credit union who would never attend a competing banks grand opening in their own neighbourhood. Theyre so loyal to the credit union that they dont want the banks cupcakes or door prizes. The credit unions newsletter refreshes their loyalty every three months. It maintains meaningful contact with them. Its a tool of client retention.

Effective at what?
The problems solved by the credit union newsletter in the example include:

*competition of extrinsic incentives (e.g. Free gift when you sign up!).
*vulnerability to client attrition.
*the cost of acquiring new clients.
*the opportunity cost of losing profitable clients future business.

Watch the numbers.
Watch-the-books managers should direct attention to:
*business per client segmented by profitability per client.
*referrals per client with a profile of clients providing referrals.
*client attrition with a profile of clients lost and why.
*net increase in clientele (including clients gained and lost by all means).

Monitor over time.
Review these metrics on a quarterly basis and compare each quarter. Use this review to set newsletter performance goals in tandem with business performance goals (even if your newsletter is not a quarterly). Why not measure newsletter success this way?

Steady, no spikes.
A good newsletter might not cause a spike in sales. It can prevent losing a client who is being wooed by competitors, though. What business problems do you want to solve? Is it reasonable to expect a newsletter to help solve them?

Client relations success
Newsletters shape market perception, first and foremost, and can help to maintain hundreds of business relationships with meaningful engagement. Those who accept this and apply it wisely can find great success with newsletters. Those who expect each issue to boost sales or to bring new customers are wise to consider other methods. A good newsletter as a client-relations tool improves business measurably over time.

Glenn Harrington is Principal Consultant of the Harrington Newsletter Company in Victoria, BC Canada.

doctor@harringtonnewsletter.ca

Freelance Copywriter Secrets: Nine Ways Newsletters Pull In New Business

2007-05-18T06:40:00.000-07:00

By Charles Brown

Its hard to imagine any business, organization or professional practice that couldnt realize dramatic results from publishing a well-written newsletter (either in electronic or paper form). As a freelance copywriter, one of my favorite projects is writing a newsletter for a client that wants to generate new profits and new exposure.

Here are a few ways a newsletter can make wonderful things happen to your organizations bottom line:

A newsletter (actually any type of published information) positions you as an expert in your field. Given a choice, customers naturally take their business to the experts. Moreover, once you become perceived as an expert, business comes to you, so you have to spend less time pounding the pavements for new customers.
As an add-on to becoming perceived as an expert, a newsletter can enable you to charge higher fees for your services and endure less negotiations over how much you charge. People expect to pay more for an expert, especially when they approach you.
Assuming the recipient of your newsletter opted in or was referred by another reader, newsletters are a non-intrusive form of marketing. It does not create the annoyance of a cold call or the total disregard of most forms of ambush advertising.
A newsletter can often take on the characteristics of viral marketing, in which one reader prints or forwards your newsletter to an associate. This requires that you write quality material your readers will find useful enough to pass along.
Electronic newsletters cost nothing to produce except time.
Generally a newsletter is the follow up for leads you generate by other means, such as a free offer or an ebook, but it can also generate its own leads if you occasionally offer additional information on a subject you write about.
A newsletter can create a need for your services. Often your articles help readers to understand they have a problem they have never been aware of before. For example, if you are an attorney who specializes in estate planning, an article on how creditors can deplete your estate may cause a reader to realize a problem exists in his or her own estate and call you for help.
A newsletter keeps your name and business in front of your readers minds. It might be years before they actually have a need for your services, but when they do you will be the first person they think of.
The material your newsletter forces you to produce on a regular basis can later be recycled into articles for trade publications, booklets and even books. In every new form, the same material increases your exposure and has the potential to create new business.

Well-written newsletters are among the few marketing tools that never fail to set you or your organization apart from your competition. It places you on the top shelf of your potential customers minds and is a powerful way to pull in new customers and business.

freelance copywriter, freelance commercial writer

Download your free copy of http://dynamiccopywriting.blogspot.com or contact him at 817.715.3852 or **charbrow@gmail.com**.

Marketing Your Home Business through Newsletters

2007-05-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

By Paul Jesse

Newsletters are a wonderful way to market your business when on a budget. You can opt to write them yourself or hire a writer to do the job for you.

Newsletters do not have to be long and involved. They do not have to contain a specific number of pages. In fact, many readers prefer a newsletter that can be digested in a matter of a few minutes as opposed to one that is several pages in length.

When writing your newsletter, try to be basic, provide important, relevant information. While it is acceptable to include such content as humor pieces, puzzles, trivia or even recipes, remember the main purpose of your newsletter is to sell your product or service and to increase your customer base.

One of the most important elements of a newsletter is the title. Not only the main title itself but also the title of each separate news piece, as well. You want something that will peak your customers interest grab their attention.

There are many companies that offer low cost newsletter management packages, for businesses of all sizes. They are well worth the money when you consider the time you save when utilizing this service. Depending on the size of your newsletter (number of pages) and the number of subscribers that receive your newsletter each month, you can literally save hours of work with one of these packages.

Most of these budget newsletter services offer free trial periods, online tutorials and some form of live help, via either a toll-free number or live online option. They do their best to offer more, to ensure you will choose their particular service.

You should be able to find one of these services by doing a simple online search. Packages start at just $10.00 per month. Many offer a 30-day free trial, unlimited subscriber lists, unlimited email layouts and unlimited campaigns. Some also offer image hosting which eliminates the need to place newsletter images on your website.

Submit your newsletter information to various no-cost online newsletter directories or submit a press release. You will certainly notice an increase in subscriber numbers. You wont receive hundreds of subscribers overnight, but you will attract readers that probably would not have found you otherwise. Lets face it, every new subscriber is a potential customer and obtaining new customers is what you are striving for!

Newsletters do work. With a little effort on your part they will work for you, even if your marketing budget is a small one.

Copyright 2005 Paul Jesse

Paul Jesse is a retired government employee and author of numerous home business articles. http://www.breastfeedbaby.com

Elements of a Successful Newsletter: 5 - Pictures

2007-05-16T01:20:00.000-07:00

By Simon Payn

While a picture may say a thousand words, the pictures you see in some printed newsletters -- unfortunately -- say a thousand words of gibberish.

Why are so many pictures not up to scratch? First, it's difficult to get high-quality photography -- unless you've got a big budget or you know where to go.

Second, it's hard to get pictures to look right in print if you're not an expert with image manipulation software such as Photoshop. You've probably seen printed images that are blurred our 'blocky' -- that's often because they are not created at the right resolution (300dpi) or they've been enlarged more than the image quality can bear.

While you can get away with writing the words yourself, a sub-standard picture will shout out 'amateur'. (Of course, if you are going for a kitchen table design, then you can get away with home-made pictures to some extent!)

So I say this: unless you can use quality pictures (and be sure they'll print well), it's better not to use pictures at all. After all, there's nothing wrong with a text-only newsletter. In most cases it's words that do the selling for you, not pictures.

But if you can use high-quality images, here's some ideas:

If you have a product or service that lends itself well to pictures, use them.
Print before-and-after pictures that illustrate the work you have done for a client.
Use a picture of yourself alongside your personal column.
Use pictures of satisfied clients next to their case studies or testimonials.
Use a picture that will attract attention -- only if it's relevant to what you do or the content of your newsletter.
Use pictures and illustrations to break up text so that your newsletter doesn't look too 'gray'.
How can you get quality pictures? Either learn how to take and manipulate them yourself, hire a professional photographer or, if suitable, use stock photography. There are lots of good sources online for pictures, but check for any copyright restrictions on their use. You can't just take a picture off the web -- not only will the quality probably be not up to scratch, but you could also be violating someone's copyright. My favorite website for stock photos at the moment is http://www.istockphoto.com. But there are plenty others.

(One thing to watch for with stock photography -- if you use too much of it, you start to get a very bland, corporate look with pictures that could be equally at home in any newsletter for any business. Watch out for that...unless it's the look you are going for!)

One more note about pictures: if you use a picture, give it a caption. After headlines, picture captions are one of the most-read parts of a newsletter, so make that space pay!

Simon Payn is founder of Ready To Go Newsletters - the quick and easy way to keep your customers coming back.

For a free newsletter you can use to send to your own clients, visit http://simonpayn.typepad.com

Newsletter Formatting

2007-05-13T17:20:00.001-07:00

By Kenth Nasstrom

Formatting your text newsletter correctly can make a failure into a success! Learn how to do it, and why.

Why using a text newsletter?

Sending an email (newsletter) in text format instead of word or html format will allow everyone on the internet to read it. No special software or utility will be needed.

However, to really make it work, consider the following.

� Make sure you use a monospaced font. A font where the width of the letter i is the same as the letter w. The letters may look different in width, but if you use a monospaced (instead of proportional) font, the space each character use, will be the same. This is necessary to be able to use row length row breaks and alignment.

� As said above the monospaced font in your newsletter will allow you to format your newsletter to use for example 65 characters width. This is pretty much the standard number of characters used in a newsletter today.

� Also, remember that things like underline, bold, italic, left, center, right and justified are adjustments not allowed in pure text, as they require special formatting.

� Use white space to make reading easier. Allow for two or more empty lines between content that is different.

� Also, make sure your formatting includes some kind of planning. This will allow you to maintain a similar look for your newsletter in each issue and that makes reading easier for your subscribers.

Tools of the trade

Use things like newsletter templates to make creation and publishing of your newsletter easier. Make sure you use the correct tool to write and format your newsletter.

Spy on other newsletters

Subscribe to newsletters that have many subscribers. They will be of interest to you if nothing else for you to study their ways to format the content. Take notes on how they start their newsletter, table of index, menu and similar.

What type of information they include at the top and at the bottom of each issue.

This will help you decide and start formatting as well as make layout choices easier for you.

Kenth Nasstrom is the owner of newsletter software!

Improve Your Email Delivery Rates to Succeed with Your Newsletter

2007-05-13T15:00:00.001-07:00

By Eddie Machaalani

Introduction

There may be email delivery tips that everyone knows, but today I'm going to delve a little deeper and give you some more ideas on how to increase the number of emails that actually get delivered to your subscribers.

Is your domain's IP address blacklisted?

The first thing you should check if you feel there's something suspicious about your deliverability rates is your domain's IP address against spam black list databases.

These databases store the I.P address of domains that have been known to spam. ISP's and email administrators can use this data to block further emails being sent from that domain. In some cases, someone may have used your IP address to send out spam emails, or your emails may have been reported as spam even though they weren't.

If you're unsure what your domain's IP address is, simply open up a command prompt in windows (start menu -> run -> cmd.exe) and type in ping www.domain.com. You should see something like this:

Pinging www.domain.com [203.213.97.61] with 32 bytes of data:

Your IP address is contained inside the brackets (in this case the IP address is 203.213.97.61).

Once you've obtained your IP address you can start checking it against the different black list databases. I've supplied some of the more popular ones below:

www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml

www.spamhaus.org/sbl/

www.mail-abuse.com/cgi-bin/lookup

www.spambag.org/query.html

You can find a more comprehensive list by clicking on the link below:

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Abuse/Spam/Blacklists/

If you're IP address isn't found on any of the lists, then great. If it is you can try to contact your ISP and find out if you can get a new IP address. You can also try contacting the owner of the blacklist site to get your IP address removed from their database.

Watch your attachments

Many people don't realize that the type of attachment you send with your email can cause different spam filters to block your email and even go so far as reporting your I.P to a black list database.

You should avoid using script or any type of attachment besides PDF. Many corporate mailboxes as well as virus filters block attachments that end in .exe, .avi, .swf, .zip, etc.

Make sure your server is configured for reverse DNS lookup

Reverse DNS lookup, originally designed as a network troubleshooting tool, has become an import tool in the fight against spam. When an Internet mail server receives an email it receives an "SMTP" greeting. This SMTP greeting is how the 2 servers communicate with each other when sending and receiving emails.

In this SMTP greeting, the sending server identifies itself as mail.domain.com with an IP address of 10.1.1.1 (for example). The receiving server can now do a reverse DNS lookup, to see if the IP address actually matches the domain name. A lot of spam servers won't match and so the receiving server can mark this as one failed test on a list of many to indicate if the email is indeed spam or not.

Most reputable hosting companies should already have this configured, but it doesn't hurt to ask. If your server is not configured for reverse DNS lookup, then be very wary of sending legitimate bulk email from that server.

Don't send bulk emails using the BCC field

Some of us using our favorite email client (such as Microsoft Outlook) tend to send mass emails using the BCC field. That's okay if you're forwarding something of interest to your friends or co-workers, but don't ever do this when sending your newsletters.

Using a BCC field is another trigger for spam filters that you want to stay away from. Instead, your email program should send just one email to one subscriber at a. Don't fall into the trap of thinking it's a good idea to send your newsletter to 200 subscribers using the "CC" and "BCC" fields.

Keep your lists as clean as possible

Honor all unsubscribe requests (your email marketing software should generate an unsubscribe link for all emails you send) and process bounced emails frequently. Sending to email addresses that have bounced repeatedly can result in a blacklisted IP address. You want to make sure that each bulk email you send does go out to legitimate, working email addresses.

You should also make sure your abuse@ and postmaster@ emails are valid and working. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has recommended these email addresses for complaint spam reporting and you may receive emails from users or ISP's if they have a complaint or spam report about your mailings.

Let your subscribers know when your emails are coming

If you offer a subscription to your newsletter from your web site then tell each and every subscriber exactly when to expect your newsletter. For example:

"We send our newsletter once a month, usually around the 20th, so make sure you keep an eye out for our next issue!"

Also, if someone has subscribed for your newsletter and only your newsletter, don't go sending them special offers and other unrelated emails unless you've told them to expect to receive them. For example:

"When you join our mailing list we may occasionally send you special offers for our products and services, but don't worry - every email includes an unsubscribe link if you change your mind."

Use double opt-in lists

I've mentioned this in my previous article but once again to make your mailing list as clean as possible always use double opt-in strategies. That is, when someone signs up they should receive an email which contains a link they must click to verify that they do indeed want to be on your mailing list. This stops illegitimate email addresses from being added to your mailing list.

Let subscribers update their details

If I switch jobs or change my email address, I should be able to come to your web site and change my newsletter subscription from me@oldjob.com to me@newjob.com using a simple "modify details" form. By allowing your subscribers to do this, you reduce the number of bounced emails and keep your subscribers active much longer.

Conclusion Improving email deliverability is one of the toughest tasks for any email marketer. While this list is by no means complete it can dramatically help to improve your email deliverability and hopefully your click thru rate and bottom line. Until next time, best of luck in your e-marketing efforts!

Eddie Machaalani is a co-founder of an http://www.interspire.com

Email Marketing Advice: That FROM Field Can Really Sting You In The Butt

2007-05-13T04:00:00.001-07:00

By Joan Pasay

It sure is a big responsibility to be in charge of the company Email Newsletter. Once a week you, and only you, are responsible to carefully craft an email marketing message and get it out to all of your sacred e-newsletter subscribers.

You take the job seriously and get started early in the week. You want this email message to be really great. The company is counting on you! Your email marketing campaign is one of your employer's core marketing activities.

1. It is Wednesday. You take the afternoon and carefully craft the weekly company email message.

2. It is Thursday. You spell check the weekly company email message.

3. It is Friday. You ask your marketing buddy across the office to proof the weekly company email message. You don�t want to embarrass yourself with grammatical errors or an article that does not make sense!

4. It is Saturday. You sleep on it and are confident the weekly company email message is ready to go.

5. It is Sunday. You take the day off and have a really great afternoon with your boyfriend. You are worry free! Your weekly company email message is all put to bed and ready to go.

6. You wake up early on Monday morning, get to the office and login into your Email List Management service and get your weekly company email message all queued up.

7. You press send and watch your weekly company email message go into cyberspace. �Oh, goody!� you exclaim. �Think of all the business I am going to bring into the company with this carefully crafted email marketing message!�

8. It is Monday, one second later. A subscriber receives the weekly company email message in their inbox.

9. It is Monday, two seconds later. Your subscriber looks at the FROM field.

10. It is Monday, three seconds later. Your subscriber seems perplexed. �Hmmm, who is Mary Franklin?� they think.

11. It is Monday, four seconds later. Your subscriber takes a deep breath, says, �Never heard of her,� and presses the delete button.

12. It is Monday, five seconds later. You are in a meeting with your new boss. You yelp, grab your butt and scream, �I think I just got stung by a bee!�

You did. And you let it out and you painted the target on your hiney.

Your name might mean something to you but your email list subscribers probably have no idea who you are and will freak out when they see a strange email in their inbox from some gal named Mary Franklin.

If you are Anthony Robbins you can get away with it.

Since I assume you:

-have never walked on fire
-are not almost seven feet tall and
-don't have a huge toothy grin

You don�t qualify to put your name in the From field of your weekly company email marketing messages.

Think about it from your subscriber�s point of view.

-They subscribed to an email list from your company.
-They expect to receive a message from your company.

Instead they receive a message from someone named Mary Franklin. Someone they have never heard of, never met, never seen, and is not mentioned in any literature that belongs to the company.

I think the only logical reaction would be to press the delete button. Wouldn�t you do the same thing?

Here are some suggestions for a FROM field that will mean something to your email list subscribers:

-Your company name and URL (Hey, you can put anything you want in here, so the clearer the better).

-The name of your periodic mailing (only if it is well- branded).

-Your company name AND the name of your periodic mailing.

Keep your name to yourself. I hate to bruise your ego, but no one cares if a message comes from you expect people who know you.

Feeling like you have a few swollen, red bumps on your rear?

Go check your FROM Field.

Brought to you by the -- Email Marketing Club: The only place on the Internet where Email Marketing is FUN!

Join now and receive a gift - guaranteed to increase your status with your friends, co-workers and boss. Click below: http://www.emailmarketingmadeeasy.com/email_marketing_club

Check out our popular ebook Email Marketing Made Easy & one on one expert Email Marketing coaching at http://www.EmailMarketingMadeEasy.com

Earn good karma, forward this article to everyone you know who has an email address.

Copyright Joan Pasay - 2005

E-Newsletters, The Best & Worst Internet Marketing Tools

2007-05-12T09:50:00.001-07:00

By Zach Katkin

Found this pertinent Internet Marketing post over at Search Engine Watch regarding the most effective and least effective digital, Internet marketing tools and techniques. Topping the list, paid search listings, but in-house E-Newsletters (targeted to a home grown list of emails) came in a very close second.

Find out why E-Newsletters are both the best, and the worst internet marketing tools. And, learn how to setup and get the most out of your own Enewsletter.

The top �worst performing� tactics named were rented e-mail lists, at 56 percent, followed by pop-ups at 45 percent and e-mail newsletter ads at 42 percent.

As many of you probably already know we love e-newsletters. Referral marketing and branding is one of the most important and successful ways of bringing in new business. As opposed to a lead from the Internet or a response from a radio ad, referrals are more likely to convert because they already know you, they already trust you because their friend or colleague has already vouched for your company or services. Referrals come pre-sold. Enewsletters are a perfect internal (client) marketing vehicle, allowing you to stay in front of your clients cost-effectively, as well as an easily forward-able tool for referral marketing.

One thing we are adamant about though, in regards to enewsletters, is creating your own list.

Purchased lists are bad.

I have never actively searched for a list to market to so I can not comment on the price of these lists, but one thing is for sure even a free list, costs too much.

even a free [purchased] list, costs too much

In addition to costing you money, lists are untargeted and likely to flag your email as spam. Enough spam reports and you and your hosting company or email provider can get in trouble, ending up on a blacklist unable to send email. As spam becomes more of a problem, and inboxes continue to fill up, people are becoming less and less tolerant of what they will flag as spam.

Additionally, even if your list is targeted (with addresses of businesses and individuals interested in what you have to offer) they SHOULD NOT be contacted if your audience has never heard of you, never dealt with you or never actively, knowingly signed up. Only contact individuals and businesses you have met, talked to, or are affiliated with and have an active relationship with.

So how do you grow your lists?

Another question Unique ID is often asked: How do I grow my list? There are a number of ways in which you can grow your list; the speed at which it grows is proportional to the role you allow email to play in your own marketing efforts and the amount of time and effort you put into it.

But, before you ask this question (how do I grow my list), and before I answer it, I urge you and your company to get started!

Go to Constant Contact, or a similar email platform and create an account. Add a small list of emails, and begin creating content for your audience. The truth is, even a large list of targeted acquaintances will lead to nothing if you or your company is incapable of creating an email with relevant useful content and consistently sending it to your audience. Go ahead, click on the link, create an account, create an email, import some addresses� I�ll give you a few minutes.

Now that you�ve created your account and know you can stick to a schedule of generating quality enewsletters, where can you get some email addresses?

Here are our typical suggestions on how to immediately create and grow your email list:

Perform an export from your email client (Outlook) and all of your employees� computers

Perform an export from your CRM, particularly helpful for sorting out lists

Go to networking events and ask everyone you meet, if they would like to be added to your mailing list, a surprising number (almost always 100% will say yes), and then immediately when you get home add them to your list

Create some kind of special free prize drawing at a networking event or seminar event. Business people who provide you with your business card, and agree to receive enewsletters can enter to win a free sample, prize, or service of yours

Things to keep in mind:

Figure out what your priorities are and organize your list from the beginning. It is a pain in the ass, and will take some time depending on how many lists are appropriate for your business or marketing efforts and your list site, but organize your list from the beginning.

Is there a possibility you may want to market only to clients with brown hair who are missing their big left toe?

You know you have a solution for these targeted individuals!

Then create a list for it, and make sure to stick with it. Often client accounts either have all emails in one account, or have jumbled dozens of half-targeted lists together, but have forgotten what list is for what purpose. Organize your self and your list from the beginning for a more successful, effective enewsletter solution.

Zachary Katkin is the founder of Naples Web Design Firm, Unique ID Web Design. Zach can be contacted via the company�s web site at http://www.webdesignid.com

For more information on creating a successful website, or to have your website analyzed and evaluated by Naples Web Design Firm, Unique ID Web Design, please visit http://www.webdesignid.com

For general information on optimizing and tweaking your web site for visitors, search engines, traffic conversion, etc. please feel free to visit our blog.

Responsive Email is a Key to Successful Email Marketing

2007-05-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

By Jilia Gulevich

Creating and sending a promotional email letter that receives the maximum response rate is at the heart of any successful online business. But what is a �responsive email�? How do you compose it? There are a few principles a responsive email letter is based on. If you follow them, you�ll never be at disadvantage:

The Subject line. The subject line is a presentation of your message. I would even say that it is the subject line determines whether the recipient will open your message or not. If you send a commercial letter, your main purpose is to have the recipient open your message. So, the subject line must to intrigue and rouse the people�s curiosity. Put some �tease� in your subject but do not reveal what your message is about completely. Teases should speak to the offer that the recipient is going to find inside the letter � but not too much � make them open it to find out for sure. A good tease may sound like: �Discover the new technique how to��, or �The amazing inside secrets��, or �Download the new improved version of� � etc.

The salutation. Yes, a personalized message beginning with �Dear John,� is better. It looks more professional and makes a feel that you care about every prospect individually. A personalized message helps build credibility in relationship between you and your prospects. That�s why on your opt-in form you should ask your subscribers to provide their first name together with the email address.

The message body. We�ll examine two aspects here: content � what your message is about and presentation � in what manner you present the information.

Message content. This is where people often get confused. What to tell to the readers so they would want to buy from you? Tell them about the benefits of your product. Remember that people don�t care about you personally or your organization, they do want to know how they can benefit from your offer, how your offer can solve their problems or make their lives easier. That�s what they need.

A great idea that always works for your is a free bonus or special offer. You should give them something for free in addition to their purchase.

Typical offers may include:

� Special Reports - you are simply promising them an instant access to some free content after their purchase.

� Software Trials - if you are developing and promoting your own software programs, you could promise a free trial of the new version of your software, or an other software in the form of a download.

� Discounts- you can offer discounts on particular goods when they become available, and the only way to gain access to these discounts is by purchasing your product.

� Email mini-course - you can also offer people an email mini-course that will teach them something specific about their market, and will then allow you continue communicating with them in the future.

� E-books � if you sell an e-book, you could offer it for free to your subscribers who purchase your product.

� Tips and News � similar to the email mini-course. You are just promising to send them regular emails with useful content that helps make their lives easier.

Always end the body of the letter with clear instructions what action you want the reader to take. There must not be any ambiguity. The reader must exactly know what you want him to do now.

But don�t stop there. Add a �P.S.� and �P.P.S.� that persuade the reader to buy from you, repeat the offer and call-to-action.

Text presentation. You may have a lot to say about your product benefits and your offer. But the trick is to say it in a way that is easy to read, and clearly lays out the main aspects. People are busy and they don�t have much time to spend on one email. Keep in mind that people don�t read the message, they scan it. So, you have to structure your letter in a manner that all important information grabs the reader�s attention.

Don�t write in long sentences. Separate the text in paragraphs with 4-5 sentences in each paragraph. Use bullets to represent your offer benefits. Use underlining, bold and italics as ways to call attention to important elements but do it wisely.

The closing. It should always be done by the most senior person in your organization � preferably someone with a title. This is about credibility.

You should always remember that you can create several email messages and test one email approach versus another. Simply divide your list in two groups, and send the version A to one half, and the version B to the other. Then compare the results. What version is more responsive and what is not. You can then use the more successful version of you email letter for future communication with your prospects.

Take care of these aspects and your email marketing efforts will be rewarded!

Author is a technical expert associated with development of email marketing programs: HTML Email Newsletter Guide.

How To Get A Newsletter Design You Actually Like

2007-05-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

By Simon Payn

I've just finished briefing a designer on the design for a new client's newsletter. So I thought I'd share some of the things I do to make sure I (and my client) get a design everyone likes.

Have a vision

The most important thing to do is have a vision for what you want the finished product to look like. See it in your mind, maybe sketch it on paper. See the colors, the size of the headlines, the type of pictures you want. Once you have created this vision, you will find it much easier to brief your designer.

Think: "what's it like?"

When I ask clients about the kind of design they want for their newsletter, I ask them to name a magazine they think has a great design. And then I ask them why they like that design. I find it's a great way to determine exactly what the client likes.

It's in the details

The more details you can give to your designer, the more happy you will be with the result. So describe your vision in as much detail as you can. Think of the basics, such as:

4-color or black and white?

Color scheme (the same as your company's branding?)

Will it be a self-mailer or sent in an envelope?

Will you be including your company logo? If so, where?

Will there be a space for company "about us" and contact information?

Type of masthead (the title at the top of page 1)

Space for a tagline or dateline?

Fonts you wish to use. Sans-serif fonts often look more modern; serifs more traditional (but sans serif can be harder to read for the actual text of the articles)

How many pictures you wish to use, and how big they should be. Are you using photography or another type of illustration?

Will your pictures go to the edge of the page, with a 'bleed'? This makes a big difference when you come to print it.

What article length would you like? Long articles, short articles or a mix of the two?>
Will there be different article "types". For example, personal columns, informational articles, bulleted lists...

Will there be 'spreads'? For example, will the middle two pages be treated as one, with content going across the fold?

Will you be wanting tinted panels, call-out boxes, or other design elements?
Then think of the more intangible aspects of your newsletter. These will help your designer get a feel for your readers and what you are wanting to achieve. Such as:

Who is your average/ideal reader?

What is their age? What do they do? What are they interested in? What are they wanting from you?

What kind of magazine or TV show would your reader like?

What kind of 'feel' are you looking for? Something trendy or something traditional? Something that denotes gravitas or something more relaxed and friendly?

Send example of other publications you like.
By putting a lot of thought into your design brief, it's much more likely you'll end up with a design that really meets your needs.

Simon Payn is founder of Ready To Go Newsletters - the quick and easy way to keep your customers coming back.

For a free newsletter you can use to send to your own clients, visit http://simonpayn.typepad.com

Advertising in Newsletters

2007-05-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

By Christopher Ruane

In this article we will discuss advertising in other companies� newsletters and how it can be as equally beneficial.

By advertising in other newsletters, you can reach an audience which is highly targeted and cost effective. Moreover, you can never be accused of spamming as all the recipients have subscribed to the newsletter.

There are so many newsletters out there covering so many different topics that it's easy to find highly targeted ones to advertise in. So if you've matched the newsletter to the product you're selling, you've reached your target audience.

Almost all newsletters are archived, thousands of people read these archives, and your ad will be seen by these people at no extra cost. This can bring in exposure and extra sales on a long term basis.

Newsletter publishers may have already developed a trust between themselves and their readers. Just by placing your ad in the newsletter, it's more likely to be read because it appears in a publication they like and trust.

Newsletter advertising is not only effective, it's cheap as well. A 5 line ad in a newsletter that goes to 3000 people will cost you between $5 and $25 per issue. With so little risk involved, this is definitely worth it.

Just as you can sell advertising, you can also buy advertising in newsletters. You can use those ads to promote your business or to invite people who read newsletters to read your own.

Again, you have to pick your partners carefully. There�s no point just picking a newsletter with the cheapest rates; you want to make sure you choose an outlet that appeals to the same buyers as you. You also need to think about where your ad is going to be placed.

In general, the higher the position the better. And the more the merrier too. Don�t expect a huge response from a single ad. It�s always best to think of advertising in terms of a campaign.

You�ll get a better deal�and better results�if you reserve an advertising position for four or five issues than if you buy them one at a time.I hope this brief introduction will get you thinking about the possibilities!

Chris Ruane

New to the world of ecommerce and don't know where to turn? Visit the beginners' guide to earning online at: http://www.digitalmoneymakers.com

The 12 Most Common Newsletter Design Mistakes

2007-05-08T02:40:00.001-07:00

By Roger C. Parker

Your newsletter�s success depends on its design. An attractive, easy to read newsletter encourages readers to pay attention to your message. However, cluttered, hard to read newsletters discourage readership � no matter how good the ideas contained inside.

Before they begin to read your newsletter, your clients and prospects will be judging the value of your ideas by your newsletter�s design. Effective design pre-sells your competence and makes it easy for readers to understand your message. Design also helps set your newsletters apart from the competition.

Here are five of the 12 most common newsletter design mistakes that are made.

1.) Nameplate clutter: Design begins with the nameplate, or newsletter title set in type at the top of the front page. Nameplate problems often include:

Unnecessary words. Words like �the� and �newsletter� are rarely needed. Readers will unconsciously supply a �the� in front of a title, if desired. It should be obvious from the design and content of your publication that it is a newsletter and not a business card or advertisement.

Logos and association seals. Your newsletter�s title should not compete with other graphic images, such as your firm�s logo and the logos of trade or membership associations. These can be placed elsewhere on the page, allowing the nameplate to emerge with clarity and impact.

Graphic accents, like decorative borders and shaded backgrounds, often make the titles harder to read instead of easier to read.

2.) Lack of white space. White space � the absence of text or graphics � represents one of the least expensive ways you can add visual impact to your newsletters, separating them from the competition and making them easier to read. Here are some of the areas where white space should appear:

Margins. White space along the top, bottom, and sides of each page help frame your words and provides a resting spot for your reader�s eyes. Text set too close to page borders creates visually boring �gray� pages.

Headlines. Headlines gain impact when surrounded by white space. Headline readability suffers when crowded by adjacent text and graphics, like photographs.

Subheads. White space above subheads makes them easier to read and clearly indicates the conclusion of one topic and the introduction of a new topic.

Columns. White space above and below columns frames the text and isolates it from borders and headers and footers � text like page numbers and issue dates � repeated at the top and bottom of each page.

A deep left-hand indent adds visual interest to each page and provides space for graphic elements like photographs and illustrations, or short text elements, like captions, quotes or contact information.

3.) Unnecessary graphic accents. Graphic accents, such as borders, shaded backgrounds and rules � the design term used for horizontal or vertical lines � often clutter, rather than enhance, newsletters. Examples of clutter include:

Borders. Pages bordered with lines of equal thickness are often added out of habit, rather than a deliberate attempt to create a �classic� or �serious� image. Page elements, like a newsletter�s table of contents or sidebars � �mini-articles� treating a point raised in an adjacent article � are likewise often boxed out of habit rather than purpose.

Reverses. Reversed text occurs when white type is placed against a black background. Reverses often make it hard for readers to pay attention to adjacent text.

Shaded backgrounds. Black type placed against a light gray background, or light gray text against a dark gray background, is often used to emphasize important text elements. Unfortunately, the lack of foreground/background accent often makes this text harder to read instead of easier to read.

Graphic accents should be used only when necessary to provide a barrier between adjacent elements � such as the end of one article and the beginning of the next � rather than decoratively or out of habit.

Downrules, or vertical lines between columns, for example, are only necessary if the gap between columns is so narrow that readers might inadvertently read from column to column, across the gap.

4.) Underlining. Headlines, subheads and important ideas are often underlined for emphasis. Unfortunately, underlining makes words harder to read, reducing their impact!

Underlining makes it harder to read by interfering with the descenders of letters like g, y and p. This makes it harder for readers to recognize word shapes.

Not only does underlining project an immediately obvious �amateur� image, it confuses meaning because today�s readers associate underlined words with hyperlinks.

5.) Excessive color. Color succeeds best when it is used with restraint. When overused, color interferes with readability, weakens messages, and fails to project a strong image.

Headlines, subheads and body copy set in color or against a colored background are often harder to read than the same words set in black against a white background. Be especially careful using light colored text. Restrict colored text to nameplates or large, bold sans serif headlines and subheads.

A single �signature� color, concentrated in a single large element and consistently employed � like in your nameplate � can brighten your newsletter and set it apart from the competition. The same color, used in smaller amounts, scattered throughout your newsletter, fails to differentiate your newsletter or project a desired image.

Consistently using black, plus a second highlight color, creates a quiet background against which an occasional color photograph or graphic can emerge with far greater impact.

The architect Mis van der Rohe once commented, �God is in the details.� Newsletter success, too, lies in the details. Your readers are always in a hurry. The smallest detail can sabotage their interest in your newsletter, interrupting the reader until �later.�

And as we all know, �later� usually means �never!�

About The Author

Roger C. Parker is the $32 million dollar author with over 1.6 million copies in print. Download the rest of the 12 Most Common Newsletter Design Mistakes here www.onepagenewsletters.com

7 Ways To Monetize Your Newsletter

2007-05-07T06:50:00.001-07:00

By James Woolley

If you have your own in-house list of subscribers who subscribe to your newsletter, then this newsletter should fulfill two main objectives. Firstly, it should provide valuable content to your subscribers, so that they actually look forward to receiving your newsletter (and stay subscribed), and secondly, unless you're writing for fun, it should produce an income for you as the writer of the newsletter.

This is the area I want to focus on in this article and listed below are seven methods that you can use to successfully monetize your newsletter or ezine.

1. Promote Products

This is the most obvious way - promoting your own products, and providing endorsements and recommendations of other products that you can earn affiliate commissions from. Try to promote a few products where you can earn either recurring commissions, for example monthly membership sites, web hosting etc, or products or programs that can earn you commissions on two or more levels through subaffiliates or downline members, to create long-term residual income streams. The one thing I will say about this though is that you should not overwhelm your subscribers with product endorsements and sales pitches, you should offer them good quality content as well, otherwise you will lose a lot of subscribers.

You can also promote products discreetly, even when providing content only, by including an affiliate link or two at the bottom of each newsletter, below your name.

2. Direct Your Subscribers To Monetized Content Pages Of Your Website

This is a great way of providing valuable content and earning money at the same time. I do this a lot with the articles I write. When I write articles and add them to my site, I simply let my subscribers know that I have written a new article and direct them to the website address. By running a few ads around these articles, such as those from Google or Yahoo, you should see a lot of people reading the article and inevitably clicking on a few ads. This is a great way of earning money even when you're not promoting anything.

3. Offer Rebrandable Reports To Your Subscribers

This is another indirect money earner where you can generate revenues from good quality free content. By seeking out quality reports or ebooks that can be rebranded to include your own affiliate links, you can then simply offer this report to your subscribers, providing valuable content, whilst at the same time earning money from your affiliate links within this report.

4. Promote Free Membership Sites That Have Backend Sales Or One-Time Offers

These are extremely common in the internet marketing field at the moment, although I think it's only a matter of time before internet marketers start to use them in other niches. Examples of these include free giveaway sites, where in exchange for leaving your name and email address, you receive numerous free products. A lot of these sites have one-time offers where you can receive an upgraded package, for example. Therefore you can earn money as an affiliate every time you send someone to this site who purchases this offer. The one drawback is that although you may be earning the occasional affiliate commission, you are sending your own subscribers to other sites and having them join up to other people's lists, increasing your competition.

5. Offer Paid Advertising In Your Newsletter

I would say you need at least a few thousand subscribers to go down this route otherwise you may struggle to attract any advertisers or attract any significant advertising revenue. It's not something I do myself (at the time of writing this article), as I believe I can make more money myself from my own ads than selling the ad space to other people, but it's still another option to consider.

6. Train Your Subscribers To Be Successful Affiliates And Promote Your Product(s)

This only really applies if you have your own product, but if you do it can be an extremely powerful way of generating a lot of additional sales. By constantly providing useful tips in your newsletter offering advice on how to generate significant affiliate commissions, both you and your subscribers will benefit enormously.

7. Offer One-On-One Coaching To Your Subscribers

This depends on the subject of your newsletter, and your authority as the newsletter publisher, but if you are considered an expert in your field then it's something worth considering. You could also offer this service free to people who purchase high-ticket items from you to boost your affiliate commissions.

James Woolley is a successful marketer who has several money-making sites in various niches. His latest site demonstrates how you can successfully make money online, and also includes a newsletter filled with free tips and bonuses. For more information click here:

http://www.jimsmarketing.com

Why is that?

2007-05-05T14:20:00.001-07:00

By Theresa Cahill

Last night the news reported the third day in a row of slipping stock prices - no surprise there. Ever since we bought stock, the price has fallen and fallen and fallen. We have the same luck with buying houses!

However, the reporter also told us that AOL (Time Warner) had a 15% slip in their stock price, based on AOL's prediction that their advertising revenue will fall 50% next year.

Why is that?

Well I'm sure the folks at AOL might disagree with me, but my first thought was perhaps they had priced themselves out of the market?

The other day an advertiser called and his first question to me was, "Why so cheap?" He was asking about our Oh So Easy Solo (OSE, formally Sweepstakes Solo) group prices.

My reply to him was simple. You just cannot afford to price yourself out of the ballgame - pure and simple fact.

Sure there may be "big guns" out there with tons of money to burn, but let's face it the majority of those doing the advertising are just like you and me - with limited cash flow for advertising online.

We can't afford not to advertise, that's also fact, but no one is going to pay ridiculously high prices, they just don't need to... competition is everywhere, especially on the internet.

Whatever you are selling online, just be sure to review your own pricing from time to time. Too high? Too low? Adjust when needed, just be very careful not to price yourself out of the game :)

ฉ Theresa Cahill - All Rights Reserved. Feel free to distribute this article. Please keep it intact and with the resource box included below.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Theresa Cahill, a two decade veteran of marketing, is the owner of http://www.mywizardads.com/sitemap.html

What Blogging Can Do for Your Business

2007-05-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

By Tim Whiston

There is certainly nothing new about the concept of blogging, and yet many business owners and Internet entrepreneurs don�t seem to grasp the power of this simple strategy. This is evidenced by the fact that many business websites do not include a blog.

If you run a business site, but do not currently have a blog, there is a great chance that you are leaving money on the table. Regardless of what kind of business you are in, a dynamic and interactive web log will improve customer response and add profits to your bottom line.

Consider this:

When you use a web log as the platform for your newsletter or ezine, you can post each of your promotions to the web, and then invite your subscribers to your blog to view your most recent update. When readers follow the link from your email to your latest blog post, they will not only have the opportunity to respond to the current promotion, they will be able to browse your blog and take action on offers you made last week, last month, even last year.

Quite often when I mail my list about my latest blog post, I end up making new sales on a promotion I did some time ago. And since my blog is linked to all of my other web sites, it�s easy for me to generate traffic for multiple products and services with just one mailing.

And blogging is a great way to generate new web traffic for your domain. By setting your blog software to �ping� search and directory portals each time you make a post, you can alert a large number of people about your new content with the single click of a button.

Also, search engines are more likely to spider your site on a regular basis if you update your content frequently. With blog software, making changes to the text on your web pages is as simple as sending an email; you just fill in a subject line and post body, and then click �submit�.

You can even configure your blog so readers are able to leave comments and questions about your articles. They don�t have to take the time to send you an email, they can just click on the comments link and post their feedback right there on the spot. This is one of the easiest ways possible to encourage productive interaction among your prospects and customers.

Blogging requires no special technical knowledge. Sure there is an advanced side to this marketing strategy, but just adding a web log to your domain and making posts on a regular basis can improve your traffic flow and customer response tremendously.

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Tim Whiston is a full-time entrepreneur and internet marketer. For more quality content, be sure to check out his Internet Marketing Blog.

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The Mighty Marketing Newsletter

2007-05-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

By Neil Sagebiel

For many companies and organizations, it�s a powerful marketing tool that attracts and retains customers. I�m referring to the dependable, hard-working newsletter.

On the subject of newsletters, guerilla marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson says, �It's a way of staying in touch, proving your expertise, giving beneficial information and gaining confidence.�

Newsletters can be used for marketing, public relations, sales support, associations, or many other purposes.

But how do you publish a successful newsletter?

Following are some simple strategies that have worked well for my clients and me.

Content and Style

Consistently providing editorial value is the key to a successful newsletter. Measuring content against a set of objectives is one way to accomplish this.

What is the purpose of your newsletter? What are you trying to deliver to your readers?

Another way is simply to remember what you're publishing -- a �news� letter. After all, �newsletter� is the marriage of two common words: �news� and �letter.� If you make your newsletter newsy, providing readers the latest information on subjects they care about, you can't go wrong.

Does all content have to be cutting-edge news? No. Editorial content can be a new slant on an old subject. It can be time-tested tips that are good reminders to an interested audience. Or sometimes it's information that isn't new but useful to people in a new stage of life -- parenting, for instance.

Whatever the content, it should be relevant to readers. If unsure, just ask yourself: How can readers use this information? Is there take-away value?

The second word, �letter,� helps to establish a writing style and tone. I like to write articles and newsletters as if I'm writing to one person in a friendly, conversational tone.

Newsletters are often a dialogue with customers -- the lifeblood of your business -- so the tone, while friendly, needs to be respectful. Just avoid writing newsletters that are stiff, formal and self-important.

Story Ideas

In the abstract, thinking �news� is great. However, a few concrete ideas can help kick start a newsletter. Here is a partial list:

* News
* Product and service stories
* Product and service tips
* Special offers, promotions and sales
* Explanatory articles (how it works)
* Case histories
* Industry updates
* Do's and don'ts
* Appropriate humor
* Quotes and testimonials
* Checklists
* Interviews
* Profiles
* Letters
* Community involvement

Want some more good ideas? Collect and read newsletters. What do you like? What can you apply?

Create a newsletter file and fill it with company and industry news items. Keep a list of ideas, talk to customers, attend trade shows and seminars, and read as much as you can.

By keeping yourself well informed, your newsletter will stay current and interesting to your readers. Finally, publish your newsletter on a regular basis and your sales are sure to increase.

(c) 2005 Neil Sagebiel

Neil Sagebiel is a former senior copywriter for a Seattle B2B ad agency and publisher of a monthly ezine, Headlines from Floyd.

New Realities for E-Mail Marketing

2007-05-04T03:10:00.000-07:00

By Lee Traupel

Spam e-mail is no longer the mild irritant it once was - it's clogging corporate networks and ISP mail servers and has become a real productivity drain, forcing corporate and consumer e-mail users to spend 20-30 minutes a day dealing with this deluge of junk! According to recent figures, unsolicited bulk e-mail now makes up to 36% of all e-mail, up from under 8% just over a year ago. And, what's worse, more and more legitimate e-mail is not getting through to recipients due to Spam filtering taking place via ISPs and/or corporate networks.

Opt-in E-Mail Marketing 30K foot Picture

Opt-in e-mail marketing is clearly losing some of its effectiveness as a viable marketing tool much to the consternation of those of us who have been advocating its effectiveness for years! This is not to say opt-in e-mail isn't a viable way to market goods and services - but ROI (read response rates) is heading south quickly and needs to be considered when assessing the viability of this marketing process, as response rates have dropped on average from 10-20% to 3-10%.

However, opt-in e-mail is not disappearing off the marketing horizons - Forrester forecasts spending on e-mail marketing will grow from $1.3B (USD) in 2001 to $6.8B in 2006 and Jupiter Media Metrix is even more optimistic, forecasting growth rates from $1B in 2001 to $9.4B in 2006. But, there is a dark undercurrent to these numbers that is fueling the market growth and driving down response rates - some opt-in agencies, brokers and media representatives are "flogging" lists by overselling them

- so caveat emptor.

Five Offsetting Marketing Strategies

1) Deploy opt-in e-mail campaigns very selectively (!) - buy opt-in e-mail lists from legitimate top-tier broker/list managers who are well established, are not "over-sending" messages to list subscribers and who are constantly refreshing their list quality by adding new subscribers. Critical questions to ask brokers include: how many messages ("frequency" in ad speak) are sent to each list recipient per month, how are new subscribers added and what is the percentage of new members added per month, are they using "third party" (someone else's list) lists to augment their own, are their lists "double opt in" (meaning, you sign up and then must reply to a signup confirmation to be added to a list) and last but not least, what is their privacy policy and how strictly do they adhere to published industry standards.

2) Utilize plain vanilla text link advertising - find web sites or portals that have traffic that is comprised of customers who are in your market segment. Then, add a text link (banner ad or graphic button if you will) to a page or pages and negotiate a media buy that is based upon a "cost per click" basis; i.e. paying only for traffic that clicks through to your web site.

3) Creating and deploying a "link strategy" campaign (i.e. getting a site listed via other web sites) is one of the best self-sustaining interactive marketing processes available to any company seeking to drive qualified traffic to a web site. This process is not based upon the more traditional "reciprocal links" procedure but incorporates some web-based competitive analysis. You start by analyzing the links that are pointing back to your top 3-5 competitors' web sites and then establish relationships with these sites and also submit your site to top and second tier directories to augment the number of links.

4) Newsletter insert advertising used to be considered rather mundane and not very effective. But, if you contrast the effectiveness of this process versus the new opt-in e-mail response rates the heretofore-lowly newsletter advertising has new and vastly improved luster! Also, in the past it was difficult to track when and if people clicked on a text link ad in a newsletter - but new technology enables virtually any publisher to provide you with this information, enabling you to track your ROI for the media buy. Finally, the real beauty of newsletter text advertising is that it is very targeted and people want to receive the information so you can be confident your ad will at least be viewed by some finite number of prospects.

5) Search Engine Ranking has come of age in the last 12-24 months - you can now easily create and deploy a traditional (title, description, keywords inserts in content, submissions and optimization) search engine ranking process that is augmented with a pay per click ("PPC") process. Deploying both ensures you derive long term (traditional rankings) and short term (pay per click) results, with the latter being driven by the amount of funds you have in your marketing budget.

About The Author

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of marketing experience - he is the founder of Intelective Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com a marketing services company which provides strategic and tactical marketing services exclusively to small to medium sized companies. Lee@intelective.com Reprinted with permission from Intelective Communications - this article may be reprinted freely, provided this attribution box remains intact. (c) 2001-2002 by Intelective Communications, Inc.

Lee@intelective.com

Cheap To Keep

2007-05-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

By Harry Hoover

You've heard it all before when it comes to stats about customer retention. Acquiring a customer costs five to 10 times more than retaining one. Repeat customers spend, on average, 67 percent more. After 10 purchases a customer has referred as many as seven other people.

So, if your focus is on acquiring new customers instead of keeping the ones you have, you are off the mark. Here is a brief overview on how to retain customers.

- Ask. New York Mayor Ed Koch was famous for asking "How am I doing? He always knew where he stood, even if he wasn't always happy about the answer. So, survey your customers about their likes and dislikes. Then, follow through with the information you receive.

- Profile. Learn as much as you can about your customers and then do something with that information to show them that you value them. Find out what makes a "best" customer and then put programs in place to move more of your customers into this category.

- Reward. Humans like to be treated as if they are special, and they will return to businesses where they have had these positive experiences. Reward them with special deals, or just pay a little more attention to them. In this era of digital communication, just sending a hand-written note gets you major points.

New business is exciting, I'll admit. But it is the clients you have that will bring you the most success over the long run. Don't spend five to 10 times more to bring in that new customer. Instead, invest a fraction of that to keep your customers coming back and referring similar "best" customers.

Harry Hoover is a partner in My Creative Team. He has 30 years of experience in crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses like Bank of Commerce, The Bray Law Firm, Brent Dees Financial Planning, CruisingTheICW.com, Duke Energy, Focus Four, Levolor, North Carolina Tourism, TeamHeidi, Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX, and Verbatim.

Sucking in Readers: Proven Ways to Increase Reader Interaction

2007-05-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

By Meryl K. Evans

You've probably heard this educational philosophy:

Tell me, and I'll forget.

Show me, and I may not remember.

Involve me, and I'll understand.

Almost the same could apply to newsletters, except interaction in a newsletter is more than just about teaching and learning. For newsletter publishers, it's a great way to take a pulse on readers' concerns and interests.

Often, the more successful college professors are those who interact with students rather than do all the talking. Students know the professor cares about their input and they help control the direction of the class.

Newsletters involving readers give them the chance to share problems and get answers, share expertise and get their name in lights and help give the newsletter direction based on the interests.

Three newsletter experts agree interaction is key

In explaining why Jonathan Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management includes interaction in his newsletters, he says, "I enjoy it and it helps develop relationships with people who are potential clients and / or referral sources and / or purchasers of my for-sale materials."

Ken Farrish, president and bottle washer of BCBuilding.info, says, "As my hair gets grayer and thinner, I more fully realize that my readers know a lot better than I do on what they do and don't want. It is a very effective and low cost way for me to learn what items and issues I can cover in future newsletters, and also what improvements I can make to my offering and processes."

Christopher Knight, an email list marketing expert with Email Universe, says, "Reader interaction builds more reader interaction, just like the law of motion that states what is in motion stays in motion. What is not in motion is not in motion. If readers are interacting�more readers will interact with the hopes of having their interaction published. All readers (even if they don't admit it) have an emotional need to be 'heard' or recognized and acknowledged."

It is clear from these experts that interaction is valuable for keeping readers' attention and helping define newsletter content. Here are five ways to persuade reader involvement:

Open the door for readers to share a problem related to their every day work life through a Q&A column.

Allow readers to respond to a reader's problem.

Take a short poll, since some readers may not want to do more than click.

Offer contests related to the newsletter topic and award prizes.

Invite readers to submit articles in exchange for a byline, which is free publicity for their business.

Experiences with reader interaction

For this article, readers were invited to share their experiences with reader interaction in newsletters. Gotta walk the talk! Bernstein gives readers three ways to interact with his newsletter:

Invite comments on articles.

Conduct contests in which input becomes the basis for future stories.

Encourage submission of articles.

Bernstein says, "All three have worked well, although the responses to some contests have been better than others. The greatest compliment I get from readers is how accessible I am when they write to ask me questions or offer a comment."

He gives another great benefit of interaction: accessibility. When readers feel they can reach the company behind the newsletter, they believe people are behind the company; this helps build relationships.

Ken Farrish asks for content tips and improvement suggestions, publishes subscriber testimonials and invites readers to submit a personal story.

"Acknowledging people by name, publishing survey results, publishing their testimonials and personal stories that link to the issue's topic have worked well. The 'recommend it' form and business-related surveys have not worked well," says Ken.

Christopher Knight says, "What has worked well is selecting only the best of the submitted comments and giving a comment or analysis on each. This adds value to all readers. What has not worked well is posting every single reader comment. Readers are busy and don't have time to read every comment made."

Maintaining interaction action

Professional Services Journal and The Remediator Security Digest provide several ways for readers to get involved. Readers can submit and respond to the question of the month in the "Best Advice" column. Also included is a reader survey requesting feedback about the newsletter. The survey has a few questions where the reader quickly chooses a multiple-choice answer. A couple of them are open-ended questions to give readers a chance to share their thoughts. All questions are optional.

Most of the time, readers complete the quick-to-answer questions. However, many readers take the time to share their thoughts. To help encourage readers to respond to the survey and the "Best Advice" questions, the publisher entices them with a prize. When people complete the survey, their names are entered in a drawing for the prize. Two people win every month: one for the survey and one for the "Best Advice response."

Joan Stewart's The Publicity Hound, which covers getting publicity, also uses the "Best Advice" approach called "Help This Hound." Readers write in with publicity challenges and others respond. The questions have covered how to get media attention for: a honeymoon registry, a new free weekly Hispanic newspaper and a new high-rise condo targeting a specific market.

With a name like "Hound" in the newsletter name, it opens the door for a lot of creativity. Stewart adds a reader-submitted "Hound Joke of the Week" at the end of every issue. Who says a newsletter has to be dry? Not us! Woof!

When seeing a big fat zero

Publishers are happy to open the door for readers to speak their minds and get involved. Unfortunately, some have to shut the door after a few zilches. It's embarrassing for the publisher to find an empty box, no or low responses. What to do?

We've had to deal with this. It isn't an easy situation. After it happens the first time, take a look at the interaction and see if it can be improved. Try again. Maybe it is too specific. Too broad. Takes too much work.

Gauge the results from the second test and make a decision from there. A few issues ago, we had a column called "Copy Court" and people loved the creativity. We invited readers to find examples of poor copy on the Internet and submit them. Then, we presented it in the next issue for readers to comment on it.

After a few attempts, I nixed the column. What was the problem? It required too much work on the reader's part. I should've known this when I started writing the first article and went searching for an example of lousy copy. It took a lot of my time.

Make sure the interaction isn't a time zapper

Good interaction should take little of the reader's time. The "Best Advice" style columns work well because they're based on readers' experiences, something they can write right up. No research. No looking for anything.

This is not to say all contests and questions fail when readers have to expend more energy to get the answers. I've played in a few contests that have taken a few hours of my time simply for the challenge and the fun of it.

If there are few responses for a "Best Advice" column, I work them in, plus I contact experts on the topic and ask them a few questions, which I add to the column to give it more meat. On occasions when the experts aren't forthcoming, I quote articles on a similar topic giving full credit to the authors.

When it comes to low response rates on polls and feedback, share the results in percentages. That's what Ken Farrish does. This method is noticeable in many newsletters.

It's easy to let your ego deflate when the response rate is poor. Look at the data in a different light like Ken does. He says, "If I get very low response rates to specific items or requests, I now look at this as valuable data, rather than ego deflation. It shows that the issue / item is not really that important to my readers. I keep track of all response numbers to various surveys and questions to help me plan future ezine topics and / or content."

Reap the rewards of engaging your readers

Interacting with readers is rewarding. I've gotten to know a few and regularly communicate with them. I've also gotten to know the editors behind the newsletters. Occasionally, I get a note from a reader who expresses genuine surprise that I responded to her submission along with a thanks.

Even if you never gain business or referrals from a newsletter, the opportunity to meet persons is priceless. Who knows? Maybe one person will eventually introduce you to a future client. You can never meet too many people. Letting your readers know there is a real person behind the newsletter is a big step in cultivating the relationship.

. She is also a PC Today columnist and a tour guide at InformIT. She is geared to tackle your editing, writing, content, and process needs. The native Texan resides in Plano, Texas, a heartbeat north of Dallas, and doesn't wear a 10-gallon hat or cowboy boots.

Writing Newsletters Online: How to Get it Right

2007-05-01T01:35:00.000-07:00

By Nick Usborne

A strange thing has been happening to newsletters online.

They have been turning into either a) promotional emails or b) web pages delivered by email.

I�m sure you know what I mean. Go back a couple of years and you could look forward to receiving your favorite newsletter in the knowledge that the newsletter itself would contain some great content...something you could read and enjoy, or learn from.

You could open the newsletter in your email and read it, from beginning to end. There were articles, reviews or just personal rant...well written and interesting.

In short, there was real value, right there in the newsletter.

These newsletters, where significant value lies in the body of the newsletter itself, are becoming harder and harder to find.

Instead, more and more companies and organizations are using their �newsletters� as a promotional ploy to drive you to pages on their sites.

In one way, it�s understandable. As anyone with a newsletter knows, if you have one or two links to your site in the newsletter, your site traffic really spikes on the days you send out the newsletter.

When you see that, it�s tempting to optimize the entire newsletter � its format and content � as a means to drive additional traffic and generate more sales.

As a result, you now see numerous newsletters where an article is not included in its entirety. You simply get a teaser and a link to a page on their site. Or else you get a �newsletter� that looks just like the site interface, with all the various navigation links and promotional messages included.

This may be great if you want to maximize the traffic to your site each time you send out a newsletter. But there is a catch.

The catch is, if there is less value in your newsletter itself, your subscribers will quickly begin to become bored with it. After all, with a zillion other promotional emails cluttering our inboxes � why pay special attention to a �newsletter� that is simply another sales pitch?

The real value of a newsletter that contains valuable content is long-term. You�ll get more word-of-mouth, you�ll get higher open-rates, and you�ll get long-term readers who look forward to your newsletter, for years ahead.

Is there a compromise? Sure there is. A valuable newsletter doesn�t need to be text-only without a single link, or devoid of any promotional elements.

Just make sure that every newsletter contains some valuable content, in its entirety. Give people a real reason to look forward to receiving it, opening it and reading it.

Nick Usborne is a copywriter, author, speaker and advocat of good writing. You can access all his archived newsletter articles on copywriting and writing for the web at his Freelance Writing Success site.

Open Source Email Marketing Tools

2007-04-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

By TC Watts

If you're anything like me, you're probably constantly looking for the best deal out there. Whether its shopping for a new car, home or just groceries, I'm always drawn to the freebies! I guess its the same with Email Marketing. Especially when you've first started and "getting your feet wet", you might not be prepared to spend too much on your tools yet.

Although there's some really great tools out there, like Aweber and Send Studio, I'm going to be talking about a few Open Source (read free) alternatives that you can start with. Now, these software are not for the faint-hearted or technologically challenged. Although most of them are quite simple to install, you still need to have some grasp of the technical jargon involved. You'll find that popular hosting panels like cPanel and Fantastico might have them pre-installed.

1. DadaMail - http://mojo.skazat.com/
Dada Mail has been around for awhile. Its written in Perl and can be set to use a flat file or a database like MySQL or PostgreSQL. The installation can be a bit daunting, but worth the effort. Once installed you can use it to generate your subscription form and cut and paste that into your website easily. Read our Dada Mail review here.

2. PhpList - http://www.tincan.co.uk/phplist
The description on their website reads: "PHPlist is a double opt-in newsletter manager. It is written in PHP and uses an SQL database for storing the information. PHPlist is software that runs on a server." The install is also quite simple but I found the interface less friendly than Dada Mail's. However it has some nice prebuilt features like Open and Click Tracking, plus a nice ability to pickup from the last email in case the sending fails midway.

3. Infinite Responder - http://infinite.ibasics.biz/
Unlike the 2 above, this is an Sequential Autoresponder developed with PHP that allows you to time your messages. It has an opt-in feature plus allows for Unlimited Autoresponders. A nice piece of software with an active forum to ask for help when you need it.

That's an intro to some of the more popular Open Source Email Marketing tools you can use. I've left out Mailman and Majordomo as its far too complicated for this purpose. If there's more that you'd like to see added, please contact me. But tools aside, its how you use them creatively that matters, but use them you must! A website without a mailing list is leaving a lot of money on the table as you would not have any means of contacting your prospects!

What I also like about using tools like these is that the information is in MySQL and that's easy to integrate into other membership registration forms and systems. You can even program your order form to automatically capture buyer's email addresses into the same database but use these email marketing tools to contact them.

If you don't know where to start or find installing scripts like this daunting, then head on over to Scriptlance or Elance and you get someone to do it for you affordably. Or perhaps if you ask nicely, some tech support at your hosting company might do it for you.

That rounds up my quick tour of Open Source Email Marketing tools. Remember that free is not always bad as these tools are often developed with collaboration from many brilliant programmers, ensuring you stable and reliable software.

T.C. Watts operates http://www.topemailmarketingsoftware.com/software/autoresponders/comparison

Find Out How To Come One Step Closer To Achieving Your Goals By Publishing A Newsletter

2007-04-30T02:40:00.000-07:00

By Joe Rispoli

What can a newsletter do for you? It may encourage visitors to return to your site thus allowing you to stay in touch with them. This can help you build trust as well as start a business relationship with your website visitors.

Here are a few newsletter tips which may help you attract new business to your website.

1. Offer useful and interesting information. Your subscribers will not stay around if you do not.

2. Keep your newsletter short. People get alot of email, so send them something they can read quickly and actually use!

3. Take the time to put together a format for your newsletter. This will save time when you write a new issue of your newsletter, and it will also help your subscribers recognize your newsletter each time it appears in their inboxes.

4. Set up a hotmail or yahoo email account and subscribe to newsletters that are related to your topic. Check out the newsletters for ideas and formats that you can use in your newsletter.

5. There are many free services that are offered on the Internet that can help you publish a newsletter. I would like to suggest that you get one of the paid services such as GetResponse. They make it very easy to collect subscribers and to send out your newsletter, but best of all they do not place any ads in your mailings.

6. Specialize in a topic that is not covered very well in any other newsletter. Make sure that it is a subject that you can provide enough information on to allow you to send out your newsletters regularly.

7. It will take time to develop your own unique writing style in your newsletters, so be patient and remember that practice makes perfect. With practice you gain experience and before you know it, your subscribers are looking forward to each and every one of your newsletters.

Are you having trouble finding content? For example, my newsletter is about free online advertising resources and each week I try to provide information on a specific online marketing topic that is free.

One suggestion is to visit one of the many article websites and browse for ideas. Use other articles to establish ideas and then put your own unique spin on it. You can also reprint many of these articles in your newsletter as long as you include the authors bio.

Do you already have a website? If you do then you must know something about what is covered on your website, so share it with your visitors. The simpler the information is, the better. You can also use the material in your newsletters on your website, which will help to attract traffic.

By taking advantage of the resources that are online and dedicating some time and effort nearly anyone can develop a good, informative newsletter that will help them build a solid and profitable relationship with their subscribers.

How can you collect subscribers?

- Include a form on your website which allows people to subscribe to your newsletter. The sign up form should be on the top right and on as many of your web pages as possible. Offer something for free if they do subscribe.

- Add a pop up to your website to help increase your subscriber list. Even though pop ups are controversial they will increase your sign up rates.

- Make sure you announce your newsletter by using the many newsletter announcement mailing lists and directories.

- Most important of all, make your newsletter an interesting and informative read.

How can you make sure people will want to read your newsletter?

1. Publish on time.

2. Keep the same format.

3. Proof read your newsletter.

4. Make it your own.

5. Keep it short.

6. Ask for feedback, and respond promptly.

7. Have fun.

Remember that a great newsletter is passed around, while a bad one just loses subscribers.

Publishing an online newsletter does not have to be difficult. It is a great way to help brand your website while having fun.

Can you think of a better way to allow your visitors to get to know you and your business?

Copyright 2007 by Joe Rispoli

Joe Rispoli has been gathering free online marketing resources for over 10 years. You can find many of these resources at his website http://UcanTo.com where you can also subscribe to his Free Advertising Resources Ezine which includes free Email Marketing Software with your subscription.

Tell Me A Story

2007-04-29T23:00:00.000-07:00

By Harry Hoover

Since the dawn of time mankind has been a sucker for a story. We may be wearing synthetics now instead of skins, but that one truth has not changed. Whether you are communicating with employees, customers or the media, a story has the most power.

Recently I read a piece in Bull Dog Reporter quoting Wall Street Journal Reporter Don Clark on the power of narrative to break through the media wall. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Know what constitutes a front-page piece�tell a story. �We�re not just looking for announcements,� says Clark. �We�re looking for great story elements. That�s how we work. For example, your story should include a level of drama�like a guy so upset with his company stock that he flew a plane into a mountain. But drama is just one element.� Some others:

Narrative: �What people want to read now is some narrative and a story line. For example, we tell stories through characters and people�not products,� Clark shares. �A good illustration would be somebody saying their plan worked just like they thought it would. Well, that�s not a story. We want things that are unexpected. We want to hear the stumbles, the roadblocks and the bad luck�then the good news at the end. But PR people always start with the good news.�

Conflict: �Similarly, journalists are interested in conflict,� Clark says. �For example, companies suing each other has plenty of tension. A lot of people want to say they have no competition. But that�s a great way not to get written about.�

Now, how can you incorporate storytelling into your organization�s publicity efforts? Just like Stephen King does. Start with the hero in his everyday, believable world. Then, take him on a journey into an unbelievable world. The hero completes his journey, returning to the old world inextricably changed. You also need a universal theme or a unique point of view that propels the story forward, like �good triumphs over evil,� or �the small outfoxes the large opponent.�

Next, remember the idea is not to sell the audience something, it is to engage them.

So, what�s your story? Weave one of your own to break through the clutter.

Harry Hoover is a partner in My Creative Team. He has 30 years of experience in crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses like Bank of Commerce, The Bray Law Firm, Brent Dees Financial Planning, CruisingTheICW.com, Duke Energy, Focus Four, Levolor, North Carolina Tourism, TeamHeidi, Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX, and Verbatim.

Write a Newsletter That Will Make Money as Well as Inform

2007-04-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

By Ken Bishop

Creating a free Newsletter can bring sales as well as give your readers information they find interesting. Newsletters can be a very important way to bring traffic to your website and build your online business.

When writing content of any kind, do not saturate the content with product links. Mention them once, possibly twice but no more. It is important to try to bring your product links in at the right time and not to put them in very often.

In a lot of cases, people get online to get information. If you are publishing quality information in your newsletter, more and more people will opt in to read your newsletter. If you offer your newsletter on your site and mail your list when your newsletter is ready, you may be able to up your chances to make sales through links on your site. You can also offer your newsletter through your blog. Blogs are becoming a very popular way to get traffic to a website these days. More about that in an upcoming article.

Creating a newsletter keeps your opt in members in contact with you and helps build credibility for you. If they trust you, and you do what you can to maintain that trust, there is a good chance they will buy something from you rather than from stranger. Usually people don�t buy when they see something for the first time. When they see the link for this product a few times, they get their curiosity up and click the link. They still may not buy right away but if they are interested, there is a good chance they will eventually buy from you and not someone else. It is very important that you keep your newsletter frequent and on time so you will not lose your sale when the time is right for them to buy.

Another possibility of making money with a newsletter is from advertisements. If you are able to keep your newsletter frequent and on time and build a substantial reader base, you can sell advertising spots on your well received newsletter. This could mean a few hundred dollars a month for something you are doing already.

You need to become good at writing so that it becomes more fun than a chore. This would not be hard for some people as once they start, the words just keep flowing. If you practice this and force yourself to do it, there is a good chance you will find this to be true. It is important to keep your information as informative as possible and not just babbling on. When you start babbling you will soon lose their interest. If it gets bad enough, they may unsubscribe. You want to keep your information as important to them as possible.

There is a considerable amount of time and work put into writing a newsletter. You will find this, especially when you first start. Your time will be cut considerably as you gain confidence in yourself and become better at it. You would be surprised at how much you know about a subject once you start to write about it.

To help you get started. Pick a subject, look it up on the internet and start writing about it with your own words and opinions. If you think this is cheating, your wrong. You are doing the research for your readers and condensing it into a newsletter for them using your own words and opinions.

Happy writing with prosperous news.

The author allows the use of this article as long as this resource box and the links remain usable

Ken Bishop

For free internet marketing tips and information http://www.AffiliateMarketingGenius.com

Importance of Submitting Your Articles to an Article Directory

2007-04-13T15:30:00.000-07:00

By Darren Dunner

Articles are the most effective way by which you can generate traffic for your website. You must have heard the phrase that �Content is the king of any website�. Writing and submitting articles to article directories is a potent way of promoting your website, newsletter, or ezine. Today more and more people are using this technique to generate massive amounts of back links to their website, boost link popularity, get topmost positions in the search engines and flood their sites with an unstoppable flow of fresh visitors on a daily basis.

Importance of submitting articles to article directories

Article sites on the web provide free content for their website visitors. Webmasters who visit the article directories have permission to grab any article for use on their website, as long as the article is left in the original state and credit is given to the article author. For instance if you have submitted an Article to an Article directory and if a visitor of the article directory finds it useful and interesting he will publish it on his site in the same way as you posted your article in the article directory with a link pointing back at your site. In this way just one Article can result in thousands and thousands of back links to the Author�s website, resulting in tons of free and targeted traffic.

Tips while submitting Articles to Article Directories

Writing and submitting Articles to article directories are an effective way of promoting your website and generating more back links. There are certain points you need to keep in mind while submitting articles to article directories.

ท Make sure to leave a link pointing back at your website in the resource box provided by the Article directory. ท Always submit your article to an appropriate category related to your website. ท Make sure to provide useful information through your article. Do not just promote your website in the article. This might result in declination of your article from the article directory.

Search engines love content and by writing more and more Articles and submitting them to Article directories you can only help your site grow. Every single day, more and more people are discovering how powerful Article writing can be for traffic generation and website promotion. As a result of this boom, article directory submissions are at record levels.

Writing and submitting Articles to article directories can not help you achieve the top most rankings in the search engines but also boost your site traffic in the major search engines.

Copyright 2006 Darren Dunner

Darren Dunner is the writer of this article. For more information about the subject, kindly visit http://www.seositemanager.com

Dare to Be You

2007-04-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

By Mary Kay Buttery

Over five billion people now live on this planet and yet no two people have the same finger prints. We all have some basic similarities with the rest of humanity yet each of us is unique unto ourselves.

Each of us has his own individual expression to offer to the world. That expression can take many forms from artistic interests, the way they think, athletic activities, the particular way we dress, musical talents, different hobbies, etc.

We should never forget that each of us is blessed with our own the innate ability and potential to achieve �success� no matter how insignificant this might look in the eyes of our own/ others critical nature. It is true that not everybody is meant (or want) to be a Bill Gates, Michael Jordon or Oprah Winfrey. But, at the same time it is even truer that nature creates variations, this being our uniqueness, and as we build upon our individuality it allows our sense of self worth to thrive. There is unlimited potential within each of us, all we have to do is realize it!

We are energy, and energy is about change and development, so from the moment of birth (and perhaps before) our passion is to develop on every level. This energy to be who and what we are builds and blossoms as we journey through life.

We all have the ability and opportunity to act in ways that are uniquely ours, Ways that expand our horizons and enhance our lives and the lives of others. It's usually fear that stops us: fear of stepping outside the defined normal conduct of our group, of being thought "weird".

Our built-in desire to retain group identity, security, and safety puts pressure upon us to be normal and can at times can be pressingly and tiredly restraining. We can spend a lot of time, effort and money to buy the right clothes, drive the right car, etc., all so we can get the approval of as many people as possible. In this process we give away our power, the essence of who we are and that which makes us unique and unforgettable. When was the last time you pointed to someone and said, "Wow, that person is so normal � I'd like to be just like that!" Instead, consider the heroes you admire and respect, whether they be political, religious, athletic, or in some other walk of life. Nelson Mandela; Mother Theresa; Gandhi; Tiger Woods � to name a very few � are these people normal!?

Take a small step, even a baby step, outside your comfortable boundaries and explore the possibilities. Then think about how it felt, and how you plan to keep extending yourself. By doing the unfamiliar and the electrifying we surprise ourselves by being more of who we are!

An example of this happened to me. Some years ago, I had taken a huge leap of faith and I became a motivational speaker, trainer, and personal consultant. Part of my �business� plan was that I would do sessions with individuals and groups and someone else would take care of all the logistics and do all the paperwork. Well it ended up that I did it all! Why? Well, it quickly became apparent that it wasn�t cost effective to hire another person, and more importantly, I had the skills to do it. All I needed to do was to put these attributes into action. And, I learned my business inside out! My self confidence sky rocketed. Next thing I knew, I was doing other things I had say �NO WAY� to in the past. End result: I was open and ready to receive other ventures and opportunities that were on their way!

When you are working, work hard, when you are playing play hard, get enthusiastic and give whatever you are doing everything you have got while you are doing it, then when you move onto something else, move on with a clear conscience and give the new thing everything you've got. Not only will you get more into your life, you'll have more fun in the process!

In Japanese flower arranging it is common that one of the branches in the arrangement is bent or broken, to signify that the arranger has attempted to present the flowers in a "natural" state. It is the "imperfection" of the broken branch that leads us to understand that the arrangement is potentially "perfect." So, appreciation of those parts of us we may consider "broken branches" are in truth signs of our uniqueness and perfection.

When we move into accepting ourselves for who we really are, warts and all, we will be able to accept others for who they are; our relationships and ourselves will actually have a chance to grow into emotionally mature adults able to give freely out of choice and flourish in our new found freedom.

There is a world that awaits and always welcomes you � this world is non judgmental, doesn�t criticize, nor does it condemn; it is loving and impartial. Each of us must first find our own way to break free, to break out of what we have been told in the past and venture out on our own path; in our own uniqueness. This world will then open to you, and your life will truly and authentically unfold for you.

You are the treasure, a human miracle, rare and irreplaceable. Don't waste this precious commodity by going about your life in a halfhearted fashion. Frequently review your own list of unique qualities. They represent who you are. Let them guide you. Shakespeare hit the nail on the head when he wrote "This above all, to thine own self be true".

Mary Kay's desire is that people discover how to create (and then live) a life they truly love. She is available for private consultations and speaking engagements. Be sure to visit her website and sign up for her *FREE* Monthly Newsletter, which is filled with inspirational, motivational and helpful information. Dare to be Different. Dare to be YOU! If you want Mary Kay to speak at an event in your area or you want to contact her: call 702-239-5451 or e-mail marykay@sfgtd.com

Creating a Sticky Web Site

2007-04-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

By Sherry Schuller

When used to describe a web site, the term �sticky� refers to a site that is able to get viewers to stay at the site longer and come back frequently. Sticky web sites are more likely to turn viewers into customers.

10 Ways to Make Your Web Site �Sticky�

1. Keep content fresh! Feed daily news or update the site frequently with new information.

2. Use appropriate interactive tools for feedback and user participation such as chat rooms, discussion boards, polls and surveys, or feedback forms.

3. Teach your viewers. Adding tutorials and quick how-to articles to your site is a great way to bring viewers back. Proving you�re an expert in your field will also help turn viewers into customers.

4. Offer an electronic newsletter. Allow viewers to subscribe to your �e-newsletter� and include advertisements or descriptions of your new products and services in the newsletter.

5. Keep your web site pages light in content. In other words, don't fill the screen with a lot of text and expect your viewers to stick around!

6. Make the navigation intuitive. Use familiar navigation tools such as hyperlinks, buttons, or pull-down menus. Ask others to navigate your site and give you feedback. Better still, make it possible for viewers to provide feedback when they're not able to find what they're looking for.

7. Give something away for free and hold a contest that allows viewers to enter daily! What better prize to give away than your products or services?

8. Brand your web site with your corporate identity. Make sure your logo is on the site and visible to the viewer. Displaying the web site's address on the page along with your organization's contact information will help them find their way back to you.

9. Provide value-add information to your viewers. This could include recommended books, tips, top tens, product manuals, tools for download, or other useful information.

10. Make your site visually appealing and easy to read. Dark text on a light background is more apt to keep your viewers reading. Keep the graphics to a minimum, though! Excessive use of graphics will force your pages to load slower and potentially turn your viewers away.

Sherry Schuller is President of ViralCommerce.com and Zabbo Communications. She is the founder of the Conference on Strategic Growth for Businesses and Entrepreneurs, co-author of 222 Ways to Entrepreneurial Success, and has assisted many organizations with strategic planning, branding, marketing, advertising design, training, and application development. She was previously an Internet Specialist for IBM's leading North American distributor, Business Partner Solutions (now Avnet), and an independent consultant for various firms, including PRIMEDIA, Inc., the leading provider of targeted content and integrated marketing solutions in consumer and business-to-business sectors.

How to Create Stirring Headlines

2007-04-12T05:40:00.000-07:00

By Sanjay Johari

Imagine a situation where you are driving to your workplace. You are going by your usual route. The roads are familiar to you, the areas you pass through are familiar to you, even the behavior of the traffic is known to you. You are not concentrating fully on driving � you don�t have to because driving by this route has almost become a habit. Your attention is partially on driving and partially on other thoughts.

Suddenly you notice a big �STOP� sign on the road. You come out of your thoughts and try to figure out what is happening. You are now giving full attention to what lies ahead. The road is closed for repair and you are advised to take the road on your right side. You mentally adjust the route you have to take now. You are forced to re-plan rest of your journey.

The headline of your webpage and subject line of your email should work something like the �STOP� sign. When people are browsing through different web pages they are absorbed in their own thoughts. As soon as they arrive at your web page, the headline should stop them in their tracks. The visitor to your web page should get hard enough jolt by your headline to take notice, just as the drivers are jerked out of their reverie by the �STOP� sign.

The subscriber of your newsletter should be drawn by your subject line as he looks at his in-box containing many emails he receives every day. The subject line of your email should attract the attention of your reader otherwise the email may not even get opened. .

Creating Headlines

Your headline has a fair chance of getting attention if it fulfills two conditions �

1. It presents an unusual situation
2. It appeals to human sentiments

You can create a headline on your web page using tricks of fonts, colors and graphics to satisfy the first condition, but it will probably not have the desired impact unless it also satisfies the second condition. The message the words convey in a headline is by far more stimulating than its appearance. The appearance of headline can be used to enhance the impact of the message.

The human brain is induced into action by what may be called the trigger points. While every person will have his own trigger points based on his experience, there are some features common to most of the people. Try to recall how your mind is conditioned to react to the �STOP� sign.

There are several trigger words that touch the common sentiments. For example the word �free� is a powerful trigger word. The thought that we cannot get anything free of cost is imbedded deeply in our brain. Therefore when we see a �free� offer we recognize it as an unusual situation and have the illusion that we can get something without spending anything. If this word is present in a headline we sit up and take notice � it is almost an instinctive reaction.

There are some trigger words that give suggestion of a better future. In real life we are trained not to expect any drastic change for the better. Therefore when something gives a mild hope of improved future we notice. �How to� is another powerful trigger word. It is generally used to address a problem or a concern and gives a hope that solution is within reach.

There are several other trigger words which appeal to different human sentiments. Curiosity is another natural trait in humans which is often exploited in creating headlines. There are words that give a feeling of movement and action and have greater appeal than passive words. I had initially kept the title of this article �How to Create Effective Headlines�. Later I changed it to �How to Create Stirring Headlines�. The word �stirring� looks more dynamic than �effective�.

Apart from the choice of words the style of the headline has a strong bearing on its acceptance. A question in the headline is more stimulating than a plain statement. The headline �Autoresponder Explained� can be improved to get better response by changing it to �How Does Autoresponder Work?� The question makes the headline appear more dynamic and challenging.

While creating a headline the focus should be on the reader and not on the content. The headline should indicate what problem is being addressed rather than the solution that is presented in the content.

The importance of headlines cannot be over-emphasized. Unless your headline is able to grab attention your content is of little use. It is always wise to put in sufficient effort in creating good headlines. One approach is to create a large number of headlines and then select the best one out of them. You can take help of your friends and well wishers in identifying the most suitable headline.

Your headline is your showcase � design it well to attract people.

Sanjay Johari regularly contributes articles to several ezines. Discover how network marketing can help you attain financial freedom and success in life. Visit his website on http://www.sanjay-j.com

Add Email To Your Marketing Mix

2007-04-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

By Harry Hoover

If you are serious about adding email to your marketing mix, you should take email seriously enough to develop a plan for it. Too many organizations launch a half-baked email program and then are disappointed when it doesn�t live up to expectations.

The plan does not have to be as long as War And Peace, but it must include a few key elements so that you can develop a focused, targeted, measurable program that gets results. At a minimum, here are the elements that Hoover ink recommends:

* Objectives

* Audience Definition

* Key Messages

* Format

* Tactics

* Timeline

* Budget

* Measurement

First, determine what is it that you want the email program to achieve from marketing and communications perspectives. Is this a newsletter designed for relationship management purposes, or is it a sales-oriented vehicle? Are you trying to build awareness, generate leads, increase web traffic, encourage loyalty, or close sales?

Next, you need to define audiences. Who are you trying to reach? What do you know about them from demographic and psychographic perspectives? Are you addressing multiple audiences? If so, do you need to segment your audiences and develop emails with different messages? How will each audience profit from our communications.

Now, what is it you want to say to each audience? What�s the nature of the content? Will this include just editorial information or will it also contain some sales-oriented material?

Closely tied to messages is your format. Are you producing a newsletter with a lot of editorial material, or does it contain just brief snippets of information? Is it an announcement list, a discussion list, or just commercial messages? Think about your audiences as you develop the most appropriate format.

Your tactics section lays out tasks and who is responsible for them. What technology do you need? Do you have in-house email capabilities or should you use an application such as nTarget? How will you build and manage your list? How will you acquire new subscribers? Who will create content, design and distribute the email?

After you answer those questions, it�s time to turn to your timeline. Develop a schedule for having your technology in place, building your list, creating content, designing and distributing the email. Determine if this will be a one-time mailing, or if it will recur on a weekly or monthly basis.

Your budget may help you answer many of the questions above. Small budgets may mean you complete a lot of the work in-house.

Finally, it�s time to establish criteria for measuring the program. An awareness program may call for some baseline research so you�ll know how you are doing. A relationship management program may measure customer retention. Increased click-through from your email to your website is also a measurable element. Sales-oriented programs might measure total sales from email, or incremental sales increases with individual customers.

No matter what your objective in using email, spend a little time cooking up a plan so your results won�t be half-baked.

Harry Hoover is a partner in My Creative Team. He has 30 years of experience in crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses like Bank of Commerce, The Bray Law Firm, Brent Dees Financial Planning, CruisingTheICW.com, Duke Energy, Focus Four, Levolor, North Carolina Tourism, TeamHeidi, Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX, and Verbatim.

Creating A Newsletter And Making Your Website Magnetic

2007-04-03T18:55:00.000-07:00

By Mike Cheney

Creating a newsletter is an ideal way to drive repeat traffic to your website but its design, format and implementation need to be carefully considered in order to achieve the desired results.

Signing Up

Before you begin creating a newsletter itself attention needs to be paid to the way in which your website will facilitate the capturing of customers' email addresses and other information. Though many sites opt for the quick and simple approach of placing a "Name & Email Address" box on their homepage this is not always the best solution.

Although such an approach makes it extremely simple for users to provide you with their basic details it leaves little scope to sell the newsletter's benefits. Neither does it provide your business with the opportunity to simultaneously capture vital demographic information from its customers. A balance needs to be determined between the ease of signing-up for the user and the quality/quantity of information captured by you.

Format and Frequency

Your website visitors need to be made aware in advance how often they are going to receive a communication from your business. Failure to provide such information may deter people from giving their permission to be contacted in the first place. Stating the newsletter's frequency up front will also benefit your business in the long-term as customers signing up to receive it will all share a common understanding of the expected volume of email they are going to receive - this will lower the number of customers who unsubscribe.

The format of your newsletter is also important - you should either state the format during the sign-up procedure or provide an option for your customers to choose their preferred delivery format. Most newsletters are delivered in standard text format though HTML is being favoured more and more as it enables greater use of images and links but beware - not all Internet users can view HTML newsletters. There are various ways to combat these issues of compliance including delivering a newsletter in both formats based on customers' chosen option at the sign-up stage.

Content is King

This phrase applies equally as well to newsletters as it does to a website's content. Your newsletter may be well-designed, easy on the eye and technically sound but if it doesn't contain information that recipients find of value it is worthless.

Creating a newsletter can achieve many objectives and therefore you must decide on which are most important to you. Do you want to use the newsletter to facilitate increased traffic, enable capture of marketing information, push direct sales, improve public relations, generate product feedback or foster loyalty? Your newsletter needs to be tailored to the needs and objectives of your business in this regard.

Generating repeat traffic is one of the easier objectives to attain via a newsletter - including relevant links to certain areas of your site, or featuring competitions / special offers can all drive traffic to your site.

Summary

Engaging in newsletter activity is the electronic equivalent of knocking on your customer's door - your business has the potential to sell, whether this be selling products, services or the ethos of your company - the potential should not be overlooked.

Mike Cheney
www.magnet4web.com

About The Author

You can get free access to lots more of my articles plus a Free Bonus Special Report "How To Turn Your Website Into A Customer Magnet" worth a value of ฃ47 ($85) here: http://www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=freeguide

Is Your Employee Newsletter Management Propaganda?

2007-04-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

By Robert Abbott

It should not be. If it is an effective newsletter, it will serve the needs of readers (employees) as much as it serves the needs of the publisher (management).

Let me explain how to ensure it serves employees as well as management, by reviewing four key points I make in A Manager�s Guide to Newsletters: Communicating for Results.

Objectives and reader responses:

First, state your objectives in terms of reader responses. This forces you to focus on your readers, and what they're likely or not likely to do. Nothing brings objectives down to earth more quickly than the reality of implementation.

Now you may have self-serving objectives, such as increasing employee productivity, which is fine. But, once you state that objective in terms of reader responses, you are forced to see that objective in new terms.

For example, let's say you want to increase productivity. The desired reader response might be that employees will participate in lunch hour learning sessions. Now, you have to plan and write articles that give readers some good reasons to attend.

Reader goals:

To find those reasons, you'll have to identify readers' goals, and which of them they can achieve through your organization. Chances are your organization can offer a stable income, but probably not the chance to become fabulously wealthy. Nor would you expect most organizations to be part of spiritual or family goals. So the second key point is to focus on the goals that your organization can help readers attain, and leave the rest alone.

Content in which you share an interest:

Third, select content that serves both your objectives and readers' goals, and I emphasize the word 'both.' If there isn't something that interests both management and employees in an article, then it doesn't belong in your newsletter. You both must have something to gain or something to lose in choosing subjects for coverage.

Presentation style:

Fourth, the style of presentation should be appropriate for the characteristics readers bring to the newsletter. They don't pick up a newsletter with their minds in the blank slate position. Instead, they bring to it emotions, degrees of involvement, and ranges of consistency with your attitudes and beliefs.

You need to do at least some basic profiling, to identify these characteristics. For example, if morale is poor, you need to address the reasons and the solutions. It makes absolutely no sense to pretend everyone's happy when the opposite is true.

Of course, not every organization covers these four issues. Take a look at many employee newsletters and you'll see something much different. These newsletters have objectives that serve only management, and not management and employees both.

You'll see what amounts to a brochure, a sales pitch that does nothing to help employees advance toward or achieve their goals. And, if there's nothing there for employees, why would they read it?

And, if they don't read the newsletter, how will it help management achieve its objectives? It won't, of course, and the employee, having found nothing of relevance to her interests in the newsletter, will assume it is management propaganda.

In summary, an effective employee newsletter addresses the needs of both the publisher (management) and readers (employees). And, ironically, a newsletter can only achieve its self-serving objectives by serving the interests of readers, too.

Robert F. Abbott is the author of A Manager�s Guide to Newsletters: Communicating for Results, which explains how to create effective newsletters, newsletters that get the desired responses. Learn how to start a newsletter, with real-life examples, at: http://www.managersguide.com/articles.htm

Trading In Black And White Forex Trading Newsletter - 4/17/06

2007-04-01T23:00:00.001-07:00

By Eddie Yakubovich

Cable continues it�s range trading, as we approach what should be the ceiling, and if the pattern holds, we should start yet another march down towards 1.7230. Keeping in mind that the last trip down stalled and reversed at around 1.7375.

This range has been in place for months, and until we break 1.7650 on the high side or 1.7200 on the low side, cable will continue to bounce in the range.

On Wednesday night our trade was excellent and yet we did not make our entry price, thus we did not make our trade. You might ask why we feel our trade was excellent, well here is why.

We resisted the temptation to make an aggressive trade and increase our risk of being stopped out. There were several reasons we could have used to try to justify a more aggressive trade, but in our system we teach our trader to stay with the safer trades, it�s much more important not to lose profit than it is to gain additional profit.

Our money management and compounding are optimal when utilizing this technique. Tonight we are trading around 1.7570. We have the super resistance level around 1.7600, that has held earlier in the night. Now is the perfect time to interject another important part of our trading strategies.

If you have missed your optimum entry point because you weren�t watching the market DO NOT fall to the temptation of making a bad entry point just because the market has come down off your resistance level.

Set your entry and if the market does not get back to it then so be it, as we have said many many times already, not making a trade is a valid position.

On the support side, we are looking at a range from 1.7480 to 1.7500. To learn more about how we teach traders to successfully trade the forex market it is important to take the time and learn about a forex trading course or other form of forex trading education.

We find these support and resistance levels using a set of technical indicators and other variables that we have found to be most successful for us. We use several other indicators and a variety of technical analysis techniques to enter and exit all of our trades. Every trader will have a different combination of indicators that makes the most sense to them. Learn how to develop your own successful Forex Trading style with an Elite Forex Trading Course or Forex Seminar.

Learn about any of Eddie�s amazing trading tools:
Forex Seminar | Forex Trading Course | Forex Trading Education

Email Donor Newsletters: Improve Your Open Rates for Online Fundraising and Donation Success

2007-04-01T11:25:00.001-07:00

By Alan Sharpe

One of the greatest challenges in email fundraising is poor open rates. The majority of donors who subscribe to email donor newsletters receive them but never open them.

If you track your open rates, you likely already know that roughly 36 percent of your subscribers open your emails. That means a whopping 64 percent of your email appeals and email donor newsletters either languish in inboxes unread, get deleted by overzealous index fingers, or never appear in donor inboxes because spam~ filters catch them first.

Improve your open rates today using these proven methods.

1. Put yourself in the From line.
Put the name of your organization in the From line. Readers will see immediately that your email is from someone they trust. Some examples:

From: Amnesty International USA [alerts@takeaction.amnestyusa.org]

From: Coalition to Stop Gun Violence [action@action.csgv.org]

From: MADD Online [enews@madd.org]

If you use an email service provider, such as Constant Contact or GetActive, do not use them in the From line. Greenpeace Canada's newsletters, for example, arrive from ems@thindataworks.com. Your donors and members�and their spam~ filters�will not recognize a sender like that, and may inadvertently delete the valuable email fundraising newsletters they want to receive from you.

2. Put your reader in the To line.
Show your reader who the email newsletter is for by putting your donor�s name and email address in the To line. Don�t leave this line blank. That�s what spammers do, and you don�t want to be mistaken for a spammer. I have in my inbox, for example, an email that looks like this at the top:

From: Ontario March Of Dimes [info@dimes.on.ca]
Subject: Ontario March of Dimes Summer Online Auction

As you can imagine, I thought this email was spam~, not a message from a charity that I respect. It wasn�t addressed to me. And it contained an email attachment. Any email message from your organization that looks like it is for nobody in particular or everyone in general will quickly end up in the trash box.

Another mistake to avoid is putting the sender in the To line, like this:

From: ABC Charity [info@abc.org]
Subject: Summer Online Auction
To: info@abc.org

This infuriates many of your donors, and me, too. Your donors and members, especially if they share a family computer, need to know who your email is for. And they also need to know which email address they are subscribed to your newsletter under. They likely have more than one email address. Few tasks are as infuriating for donors as asking a non-profit organization to be removed from their mailing list but not being able to tell them which email address of yours they are using.

If you�d like to see an example of a donor newsletter that gets all of these things right, review this excellent example from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, at
www.RaiserSharpe.com/z/madd.htm

About the author
Alan Sharpe is president of Raiser Sharpe, a full-service direct mail fundraising agency that helps non-profit organizations raise funds, build relationships and retain loyal donors. Sign up for free weekly tips like this, and discover other helpful resources, at http://www.RaiserSharpe.com.

Email Fundraising Serves Four Strategic Functions in Direct Mail Program

2007-03-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

By Alan Sharpe

Email is cheaper than direct mail but that�s not why you should embrace it.

Your non-profit organization should be communicating with donors and members by email for four strategic reasons.

1. Involve

Email, by its very nature, is interactive. Your readers expect to see links in your email messages, links that they can click. Your readers expect to be able to hit Reply and answer a question you�ve posed, or share their opinion. Email is attractive to donors and members, and your organization, because it helps them get involved.

By using �Forward-this-to-a-Friend� buttons in your emails, and message boards and forums on your website, your email messages help your constituents share information with friends and colleagues, and discuss relevant topics. If your donor file has plenty of donors who are not engaged in any meaningful way with your organization, email is a cost-effective way to make them more active, with their happy cooperation.

2. Advocate

Email is powerful because of its immediacy. The letter you draft and send at 10:09 am arrives in your donor�s email inbox within minutes, a feat impossible using a letter, envelope and postage stamp.

Because email is immediate and because it encourages interaction, it�s the perfect medium for mobilizing your members. With email, you help your members simply and easily advocate for your cause. The more sophisticated email systems on the market let you customize each email message so that it contains the name and contact details for each member�s local, provincial/state and federal elected officials. The easier you make it for your members to act as advocates, the higher your response rates will be to petitions and other �take action� messages you mail to further your cause.

3. Fundraise

The key to raising money online is not your website but your email. Email is how you build relationships with your members and donors. Email is how you invite them (and inspire them) to donate. Your website is simply where your donor makes the donation. Some donors, of course, will chance upon your website and give a gift while they are there, but these kinds of donors are in the minority.

One exception is emergency appeals, where organizations like The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and Habitat for Humanity raise a great deal of money online from strangers. But the secret to securing second and subsequent gifts from online donors is your emails, not your website. Your website informs and educates, certainly, but your emails are the vehicle that must transport your donors there.

4. Inform

A leading cause of donor attrition is lack of communication by the non-profit. Donors who send gifts but do not hear from their charity often enough soon take their gifts elsewhere. Just as important as frequent communication is relevant communication. And that�s where email newsletters are so attractive. Because a good email system integrates with your donor database, you can customize email newsletters for the unique interests and preferences of each of your constituents.

Kathy, for example, wants to receive alerts about AIDS orphans but not refugees. Bill wants to receive bulletins about Sudan but not Senegal. Samantha welcomes updates on her sponsored child but has no interest in attending special events. Email lets you satisfy everyone by sending personalized messages to your donors and members, messages that speak directly to their known interests.

Email fundraising has its challenges, of course. Spam filters, for one thing. And crowded inboxes. But as a tool for involving donors, mobilizing members, raising emergency funds and delivering late-breaking news, email stands alone.

----
About the author
Alan Sharpe is a professional fundraising letter writer, instructor and mentor who helps non-profit organizations raise funds, build relationships and retain loyal donors using creative fundraising letters. Learn more about his services, view free sample fundraising letters, and sign up for free weekly tips like this at http://www.RaiserSharpe.com

Internet Newsletter - Use of Graphics

2007-03-30T16:20:00.000-07:00

By Balwant Gohil

Internet newsletters are designed to catch the reader's attention and direct them towards your website. One of the biggest dangers of today's online newsletters isn't the lack of good content - it's the way it's content is presented, often in the most boring and unattractive graphical layout. Graphics and photos will make any boring looking text much more attractive. On the other hand, the more graphics you have the longer it will take for the newsletter to load on the subscriber's computer. Valuable subscribers will be lost if your newsletter takes long to load. Remember that your readers want quick and accurate information, and while it's your task to present that in a visually attractive way, it's also your responsibility not to keep them waiting excessively.

Using Graphic Elements in Your Newsletter

One common and effective way of presenting an Internet newsletter is by creating a design that resembles your website's visual aspect. In other words, you can use the same kinds of graphics, separators, column borders, buttons or even headers to make your newsletter look and feel like your website. Of course, all these graphical elements take their share of download time, and things get worse when you add large photos to the newsletter. If you want to approach your newsletter layout like this, try to minimize the number of graphical elements borrowed from your website. Reduce the fancy banner to a thin graphic that houses the name of the newsletter and get rid of some of the column borders and page separators. You can also drop the menu graphics and simply choose a similar background color and text links instead of buttons.

Using Photographs in your Online Newsletter

A newsletter that has no photographs is dull and has less chances of impressing your subscribers. But as we have shown before, photos lead to longer download times. However, you can always process the photos to make them express the same thing but eat up a lot less space. Here are a few tips on hot to do that:

* Try to make the photos smaller - they don't have to stretch on the entire page. In most cases, a 200 by 200 pixel wide photo will have the ability to tell a story without excessive download time

* Use a photo editing software to reduce the quality of the graphics. In many cases, the visual aspect of the photo is almost identical between a high resolution and a lower resolution and smaller image

* If you are using photos taken with your own camera, or scanned from publications, be aware that most are at 300 dpi (dots per inch). Web graphics should be saved to be around 72 dpi - try this with a photo and see the huge difference in size between the two, while the quality stays the same

Using Text Elements to Make your Newsletter More Dynamic

You can also use different text elements to bring some color in your newsletter. You can use larger drop caps, or assign them a different color, for a nice professional look. Bold or italic text can also be used to bring variation in the newsletter design. While playing with font size and color is fine, make sure not to use fonts that browsers won't be able to read.

The newsletter graphics and the visual aspect of your publication play a vital part in the success of your promotion campaign. A newsletter with excellent content and a graphic layout to support it will become a very effective traffic building tool.

Check Out The Internet Newsletter Package...

At StartingAnInternetNewsletter.com

Copyright 2006 � Balwant Gohil. You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made, the author's name is retained and the link to our site URL remains active.

Seo Content Wanting To Be King

2007-03-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

By Alan Bagley

My findings after spending many hours on the PC looking at all the options is still the same as it was 6 months ago, CONTENT is KING, simple.

## On the Internet content is king and always will be.

This is because the Internet is still known as the information superhighway and always will be.

People use it for information of some sort, and you know when the internet or parts of the superhighway are getting �main stream� when you hear terms like �Just Google it� in chat shows and prime time sit coms!

## Broken down in to smaller pieces, all information on a website is its content.

Generally the more useful and interesting content a website has the more successful it will be, so having a core subject and many sub categories, more and more people will want to visit it again and again. This is especially true if a website is constantly adding more and more content on a regular basis be it articles, tutorials, news and opinions.

## Where do you go to buy online?

There are millions and millions of products available to buy on the web, just look at the growth of e-Bay and to some extent you-tube.

Viral marketing is massive and used correctly you start to see the real benefit of good quality new content, added / updated every day. If you have a membership site this is done by the good people that use your website.

## Do you just surf?

Chances are that the odd surfer goes online to specifically look for a product, which you sell, say �blue widgets�, so if you gear your site to simply sell �blue widgets�, and nothing else you won't be very successful, and that�s hard but simple fact.

This is because nobody will even visit your site unless they're looking specifically for your blue widget and they just so happen to find it via a search engine and that can really be hit and miss.

## Right, you now know that content is king but do you know what good content is?

Again, simple, that way to create good content for your website is to be sure that your content will have specific appeal to your target audience; do you know who your target audience is?

There are so many people out there that put as website together and have not even given consideration as to what their audience wants, or even who their target audience is.

## Original content, the King of Kings

If someone asked me what I considered good content I'd say that it has different and unique and not the same as the content on the other website I just came from.

## Good content will show your own personality and flavour in it.

It will be informative and interesting and you must put some effort in to all this writing.

You may as well do a good job other wise what's the point of putting it online in the first place?

Use regular English as far as possible and your content should be easy to understand, be carful to not to use to much topic specific words that, you understand as you have been making blue widgets for the past 20 years, you could cause trouble for some visitors. Always explain topic specific words to the reader.

## Write news and articles

The best way to create content is to simply write news and articles about the industry your product is in. This ensures that visitors who read your content are also the visitors that are likely to be interested in buying your product, or using your service.

If you feel you're great at creating products but don't feel the same way about your writing skills and think you can't write your own content there is a web site that can stop all your Stressful Days and Nights Spent Writing Content at a Speed That Just Never Seems Fast enough...

## Writing can be the most grueling task online.

I've written many articles, books, and publications so I can very much empathize with you.

You try everything you can to aide your writing to hopefully make it easier...

1) Searching for ideas on Google

2) Creating content outlines

3) Writing interview questions

If you where to hire someone form 'eLance' or any of the other outsourcing websites online you'd get a quote of $20-$75 per article depending on what you wanted them to write.

** Remember before you publish new content always always check spelling and grammar

** Remember people don't generally buy from companies they think are unprofessional.

Always try to update your content as much as possible as more people will become regular visitors and will be exposed to the products and services you offer.

I have been working within the computer industry for over 10 years using both open source and Microsoft products.

I firmlly believe that content for your web site is essential, check out http://www.articlesformywebsite.com for more info.

Ro get this report as a PFD please go here: http://www.articlesformywebsite.com/content%20is%20still%20king.pdf

9 Top Ways To Get Ideas For Your Next High Quality Article

2007-03-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

By Steve Dimeck

Thanks to recent information that leaked by Google within their US Patent Application 20050071741, we now know that quality content and incoming links are essential to the survival of your website within the search engines.

Bottom line, you need to start to develop quality content. But, not to only display it on your website, rather than have other webmasters display it on their websites with your URL included in a resource box attached to the article. That will bring you the incoming links for free.

You can always display other people's articles (content) on your website. That will add to the quality content on your site. But, that will not bring you the incoming links needed for high search engine positioning � and free traffic.

Therefore, you need to start creating and submitting quality articles that will be widely accepted by other webmasters around the globe.

In fact, Google is practically telling you to do so! That means there's no way out if you want to stay atop of the Internet marketing game.

Search Engines are constantly on the "look out" for freshly written content that has been submitted online.

So, how do you come up with ideas for your next highly read article that will get the attention of many, many webmasters who will want to publish it in their ezines, newsletters, blogs, websites, and so on?

Here are 9 ways to get ideas for your next high quality article.

1. Follow the trend. Subscribe to other newsletters that are related to your niche and see what they're writing about at this very moment. If several newsletters are writing on a same topic, it means that it's a topic in demand at this time. Your best bet would be to do your research on that same topic, and write an article about it.

2. Participate in online forums related to your niche. Take a look at what people are talking about. Look at the questions they are asking. Then look at the number of participants on a specific question or topic. The topics that are bringing the greatest number of visitors would make for an excellent article.

3. Visit blogs related to your niche. Read what the blog owners are posting. Are there several posts form several blog owners on a similar or even the same topic? Then look at what kind of comments the readers are leaving. Are there any questions? Blogs are the hot Internet marketing medium right now and you can literally find them everywhere on any topic. This is an excellent source for your next article idea.

4. Every now and then a webmaster would send an e-mail to his or her list (which I subscribe to), and announce that quite a few of his or her subscribers e-mailed them with the same or similar question. The webmaster will then answer that question to the entire list in case more subscribers were wondering about the same thing. There's your idea of what people are looking for at that very moment.

5. Keep your eyes and ears open at all times. Take a look at what information is being broadcasted on TV, radio, newspapers, and online. That information is usually a hot topic at that time.

6. Go to amazon.com or any other bookstore, whether online or offline and check what are the top sellers. Also, look at the magazines related to your niche. See what's being published. This can be a good way to come up with an article that catches the attention of what people are reading.

7. Be seasonal and be responsive to the most current hot events. Write about what is going on that time of the year. Holidays, festivals, sports, graduations, etc. Also, write about the most current hot event happening right now. All this makes for an article that people will want to read during that season and while the current hot event is taking place.

8. The absolute best idea. Survey your current customers, subscribers or even your website visitors. Ask them what kind of article they would like to see in your next newsletter or published on your website. Also keep track of what your customers and prospects are asking you. They're literally giving you the ideas for a good article.

9. Start a swipe file on what others are writing about. (Swipe file is a collection of other people's work). Collect other people's articles that catch your attention and refer to them when you're out of ideas. If the article is of interest to you it will probably be of interest to others. Never plagiarize the work of others though, but you can certainly get good ideas this way. The biggest benefit of a swipe file is having it handy to refer back to over and over whenever you are ready to write your article and you're not sure what you want to write about.

The internet marketer who can write high quality and interesting articles has a huge leg up on their competition. If you can master this strategy there is no limit to how much money you can make online.

Steve Dimeck. Author and Publisher. For more quality articles such as the one you've just read, visit http://www.ogdteam.com - Internet Marketing information and resources.

Extra, Extra, Read All About It! Newsletters Help Small Businesses Grow!

2007-03-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

By Nola Redd

Small businesses may discount the idea of a newsletter as too expensive or too time intensive. However, a newsletter can help strengthen existing relationships with your customers, and even bring in new clients! How can a newsletter help your business to expand? Here are five ways, in order from least to most important.

5. A newsletter can keep your customers aware of industry changes in a way that is helpful to you. For instance, a properly worded story can detail how legislation complicates business for the smaller telecommunication companies and favors the larger, while detailing your plan to fight back. They can tell how national disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, impact a local business or an overall industry (think of the effect on insurance companies and agents, among others). This can help your customers view your company within the big picture.

4. More important than focusing on you, however, the customer wants you to focus on them. Articles about how they are impacted and what changes they need to make will appeal more to our egocentric consumers. Stories based around them will keep them riveted. Highlights of local businesses or specific people within your company will humanize your business and earn their gratitude.

3. You can also use a newsletter format to help you with your follow-up. Ideally, each customer should receive a letter, note, or phone call after each transaction. You can gain further feedback by including surveys or requesting call-ins on customer service issues with your company. You can offer a small gift or discount if they tell you the first three things that come to mind when they think of your company. You can solicit advice on how to improve. All of these will let your customers know that their opinion really does matter.

2. A newsletter helps you maintain constant contact with your clients. Constant contact builds relationships, and relationships build sales. By keeping in touch with them, by putting out the extra effort, your clients know that you are monitoring their needs, albeit on a less personal scale. Every little bit helps.

1. A newsletter can double as free advertising. Let me say that again: FREE ADVERTISING. All by itself, of course, a newsletter is an ad for your company, though granted, not free. However, as the deciding vote, you can put in a tasteful ad (not a two page spread in a four page newsletter) that will stand out because it will be the ONLY ONE. Talk about gaining attention! You can use the space to insert a coupon or discount pass to the reader, a note about a special customer-only sale (imagine if a store had invited you to their Black Friday sale on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving; only a select group could shop those major discounts), or some other form of advertising that will entice them to return to your for their business. Perhaps you could include a limited time referral bonus slip - bring a friend and each of you make a purchase, and receive a small gift/discount/etc. These ads can also be test runs that you can tweak before running them in the more expensive paper s; they give you the opportunity to test effectiveness.

A newsletter will help maintain and even improve your customer relationships. These relationships are vital to the success of your business. Anything that you can do to set you apart from your competitors and keep you fresh in their mind will give you an advantage - and a smart business owner will take every advantage possible.

Nola Redd posts fiction and nonfiction at http://Writing.Com/authors/scottiegaz. She is a freelance writer who would love to help you with your company newsletter. This article has been submitted in affiliation with http://www.Facsimile.Com/ which is a site for Fax Machines.

Email Optin Lists- So Do Your Customers Buy On Their First Visit?

2007-03-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

By Faith Smart

Once you have had your web site designed and gone to the trouble of painstakingly search engine optimizing it, visitors, hopefully, will finally arrive at your web site. They will surf around a little and decide that they want to buy and head straight to your �buy� page right? Or maybe not.

What happens if your customers do not buy from you on their first visit to your site. What if they don�t spend some time looking around your site and what if they don�t book mark it to revisit at a later date? You generally have about 5 seconds to capture their interest or you loose your visitor to your competitor.

Well perhaps you could improve on your site design or navigation channels, but if you had on your front page an item that captured their interest enough for them to want to give you their name and email address. Perhaps it�s a free newsletter offering valuable tips, now you have a connection to a possible customer who may not be ready to buy from you right this minute but does have an interest in your sites good and services. By automatically keeping contact with this possible customer, there is a significantly increased chance that they will convert at a later stage.

Now with your very own opt in email list you have a cost-effective and profitable way to promote your online business to visitors who have already expressed an interest in your website and its services.

It takes an average of seven email contacts before the average person will purchase your product.

With each new visitor to your site that signs up for more information about your products or newsletters, you can now �welcome� them to your subscriber list, deliver a product or answer questions automatically.

Studies have shown that people respond better to emails that actually address them via their first name. Capture your subscribers first name, last name, age, salary or any other criteria when they signup to your mailing list. You can then use these fields in your email to deliver personalized content.

Use newsletters, special offers, site updates, follow-up emails, member notices, customer service announcements, affiliate emails and invitations to keep in touch with your customers.

Selling a product or service from your website? Sends a series of follow-up auto responders to your potential customers after they signup for your newsletter. You could send them a free white paper, more information on your products, or even a "subscriber-only" discount.

Building a relationship and establish trust with your visitors is important for the buying process. With your own weekly or monthly newsletter, you're establishing your website as a credible source of information, which helps your visitors build up their trust in you.

Create hundreds or even thousands of mailing lists and either import your existing subscribers or automatically create a subscription form for your web site.

Include powerful permission features, such as double opt-in confirmation and one-click unsubscribe which puts you in control of your email marketing campaign.

Automatically track and report how many subscribers open your emails, which links they click on, etc. Then, from the control panel you have complete access to this tracking data in easy-to-view reports.

Built-in targeting to send emails only to subscribers who match certain criteria -- for example, only send an email to females over the age of 30 from London.

Let your visitors subscribe and unsubscribe from your lists automatically. Everything is processed in real-time, so you will never have to waste time manually adding or deleting subscribers from your mailing lists ever again.

By Faith Smart of Bizzlebox Media. Faith�s unique approach to Web Design with Search Engine Optimization and Profits in mind.

How To Create and Send HTML Newsletters

2007-03-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

By John Jantsch

Every now and then a subscriber will ask how I create my newsletter. Fortunately, this request is done in conjunction with a complement I humbly accept. So, I decided to dedicate an entire issue to the creation of an HTML (web page looking) ezine. This won�t serve as the only technical guide you will ever need to read to create stunning HTML newsletters but, I hope it will serve as a mid-level introduction to the ins and outs of this powerful tool.

It is my hope that past issues extolling the virtues of an online newsletter or ezine as one of the crucial marketing tools has already convinced you to pursue this vehicle � today�s lesson, then, will show you how to get the most from your ezine.

What is an HTML Newsletter?

An HTML Newsletter is a newsletter delivered via email that looks very much like a web page. The reason for this is very simple � it�s created using the same code language, HTML, as a web page.

The obvious advantage of this format over text is a stylish presentation. Of course, you know I�m not one to get too hung up on style alone. This presentation has proven over and over again to deliver much greater results in terms of readership, comprehension, interest and, ultimately, sales and clients.

How Do Your Create Them?

There really are two components to an HTML email newsletter. One is the designed page and the other is distribution of the page as email. You can create the pages yourself and use a distribution service (that is what I do) or you can use one of the many all-in-one email newsletter services that use templates and distribute your email for you.

The pros of doing it yourself are that you get the most custom look possible and it is generally much less expensive. The benefit of using a service is that you don�t need to know how to create an HTML page. You simply fill in templates. For this reason the services are more expensive.

Creating an HTML newsletter is not really that difficult. (Obviously you�ve got to have something to say but for this lesson I�m concentrating on form alone.) If you already know how to create a web page and can use web page creation programs such as Microsoft FrontPage or Dreamweaver or HomeSite you are 90% home.

To create an HTML newsletter you simply create a web page and then upload the code from that page to your distribution service.

Some crucial tips:

If you already know how to create HTML pages you should be aware of some unique aspects of creating HTML to deliver via email. (If you use a service, most of these tips will be built in.)

Width � Keep the width of your newsletter, contained in a table and no more than 600 pixels wide � You want to make sure that your email shows up in the email window of the recipient

Image links � If you use images, and you probably should, make sure that you use absolute links to the images as opposed to relative links. In traditional web page design and image link may be something like �/images/bob.jpg. This is fine when you are getting the image on your server. When you send out an email the recipient needs the entire path, more like http://www.yoursite/images/bob.jpg.

How Do You Distribute Them?

I use a service called AWeber - http://www.aweber.com/?204167 and it�s the only one I can recommend. I have tried others but nobody comes close to what AWeber provides. AWeber also hates spammers so they do everything they can to make sure that their clients get their email through.

AWeber hosts my mailing list and sends my email newsletter out. Each week I upload the HTML code to my list and AWeber sends the mail out. You can buy software that can do this but once your list grows over 100 people it is far better to use a hosted solution to distribute your email.

AWeber also checks my newsletter to make sure that I haven�t inadvertently used phrases that get my email kicked to the spam filter.

Text and HTML formats

Unfortunately, HTML email is used very heavily by spammers so HTML only newsletters come with a pretty hefty spam score no matter what the content is. I find that if I load a text message along with my HTML message my email scores much lower. The text email also then is received by people who choose to disable HTML email.

I then also make it a habit of uploading my newsletter to a newsletter archive on my web site. This way those who only get the text version can visit the web site and my web site benefits from a new page of content.

Here are some turn-key solutions that might may sense for you. Constant Contact - http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp Cooler Email - http://www.cooleremail.com/index.ice Double Click- http://www.doubleclick.com/us/ Exact Target - http://email.exacttarget.com/ Email Labs - http://www.emaillabs.com/

Copyright 2005 John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing coach and author of http://www.ReferralFlood.com and http://www.BlogLightning.com

Newsletter Advice - Multiply Your Subscriber Base by 10 Each Month

2007-03-27T04:10:00.000-07:00

By Carl Coddington

As you know; the bigger your subscriber list, the bigger your paycheck. Imagine now, that your list of 10 in January turned into 100 in February, and 1,000 in March. What would this do to your paycheck? How nice would June be?

The great thing about the techniques you are going to learn is that once the system starts it automatically continues until you hit a million. How is this possible? The concept is simple and it is all based on a mathematical equation.

The Pyramid Concept:

I know, you all shirk at the thought of a �pyramid scheme�. Well, everybody that is except for the hundreds of thousands of people who became rich from them.

Anyway, pyramid schemes are illegal and for good reason. The concept you are about to learn is not a �scheme� just a mathematical formula. And it in no way involves getting or asking money from anyone.

Here�s the Concept:

1st month: you find 10 people to sign up for your newsletter. (That�s Easy)

2nd month: get the 10 people who signed up for your newsletter to get 10 people to sign up (Not as easy, but, you could also replace some of the people by getting 10 more people in your 2nd month)

3rd month: Ask the 100 � 200 to find 10 people to sign up for your newsletter

etc�.

Why This Concept Won�t Work:

This concept in the way I described above, although it sounds nice, is not practical. You will never be able to have your subscribers sign up 10 people for you.

So, then, how is this concept going to be enacted?

Create a contest or free promotion:

Unfortunately, I can only make this article so long before you get bored, so, I�ll give you the short version.

Here are the steps: (only 1 of the million ideas)

1. Start a �lottery� site or contest site where you give away a cash prize to the monthly winner

2. Tell the contestants that they will get one entry per every 5 people they get to sign up for the lottery.

3. All entrants will have a pre-checked opt-in for the newsletter. The only way they can win the prize is if they are signed up for the newsletter.

You can see how your subscribers will continually want to get more subscribers so they can get more tickets. It�s a win/win situation.

Summing it all Up

To some, this idea might seem crazy, trite, unoriginal, or even brilliant. I didn�t write this article for you to follow it step by step, but to get the creative juices in your brain flowing. Sometimes ideas like this will get you thinking along the right creative path.

Carl Coddington has been an Internet business entrepreneur since 1994. He has been helping thousands of people and businesses succeed on the Internet through his highly successful newsletter at http://www.promoinnovations.com Be sure to get the free E-Book "101 Killer Tips To Make $1,000's of Dollars a Week"

4 Steps To 1,000.. 2,000..3,000 Subscribers In Days!

2007-03-27T03:20:00.000-07:00

By Melvin Perry

Everyone who has been marketing online for sometime already know the value of an email list. An email list, filled with targeted subscribers who opt in, is the most valuable asset for anyone with an online business. If you are not building an email list, then you need to start building one right now.

But the problem with many people is that they do not know how to start a list building campaign. And not only do they not know how to start one, but most individuals do not even know how to accelerate the growth of their lists into the thousands within a few weeks. If everyone knew the right things to do in order to rapidly build a decent sized email list within a few weeks, we would have a lot less complainers who constantly nag about the negative results of internet marketing.

Now I decided to handle this problem by giving you 4 critical steps for explosively growing your email list in a matter of days. If you just take the time and apply the steps outlined in this article, you will most definitely build a profitable and responsive email list within a few days.

Step 1: Decide to offer an incredible product for free that is brandible

This is an important step, and probably is the most time consuming step if you are not familiar with creating products. But the whole concept is to create an ebook or software that others can freely giveaway and earn profits from at the same time. If you are able to create a valuable product that others can giveaway and earn profits from, you will be able to generate a viral monster that will cause so many people overtime to give away your product and build your list for you. This tactic has been proven over and over again and can actually build a list into the 100,000�s very quickly!

A perfect example of this viral phenomenon can be seen in the release of the Traffic Hurricane software.

http://www.workingonyourown.com/traffictool.html

The creators of the Traffic Hurricane software created something of incredible value that is needed in a majority of websites online, which was traffic. The creators literally gave away a software that was truly worth over $100 and can actually send many visitors to anyone�s website. Not only was the software free, but it was able to be brandible if you decided to become a JV partner. This brandible mechanism literally gave the creators thousands of subscribers very quickly, and a means to generate great passive income.

So we see the power of creating brandible products that individuals can give away. This one step, in my opinion, is the major key to sustaining continual rapid list growth.

Step 2: Contact Potential JV Partners To Giveaway Your Product

The second step is also crucial. You need to find individuals who are willing to distribute your brandible product to a lot of people within a short amount of time. The perfect way of doing this is by establishing joint ventures.

When looking for joint venture partners, you need to be mindful of certain things. For one, how large is their email list and is it filled with quality subscribers? What is the alexa rating of the joint venture partner�s website? Do they have a good reputation online?

The questions above will help steer you away from individuals who jump at your JV offer, yet never provide the results.. The reason why you establish joint ventures is because you want good, quick results. Therefore, do all that you can to find out about the individual before you actually partner with him.

But a good place to start contacting some well known joint venture partners is by visiting the website below:

http://www.workingonyourown.com/jvnet.html

The website above will give you a very good head start in locating partners. Try to shoot for as many joint venture partners as you can. The more partners you have, the more larger your list can potentially become.

Step 3: Plan and Set Up Everything For Your Partners

The next thing you want to do is make sure that your JV partners find it easy to giveaway your product, and check their stats to see how much income they generated.

You want to provide the JV partner with a web page that will collect the email addresses of everyone who is interested in downloading the JV partner�s brandible product. Make sure the web page has good sales copy! Remember, the better the sales copy, the more products you giveaway. The more products that are given away, the more income your partner can potentially make and the larger your list will be.

Next, you want to provide them with all the advertising resources that are needed to giveaway your free brandible product. Give them an ad that can be sent out to their newsletter. Give them a banner ad that they can use to advertise your product on their website.

Finally, you want to provide them with a means to check their sales stats. You can use a number of affiliate marketing software to do this.

Step 4: Launch Your Brandible Product

This is the easy part. Just plan for a launch date and have all of your partners advertise to their newsletters and ezines on that very same date. This can literally give you over a thousand subscribers in one night!

Just make sure you have enough bandwidth space for your hosting account in order to accommodate the huge surge of traffic hitting your website.

Now if you do exactly what I tell you to do in the steps above, you will have an email list that will:

1. Include thousands of subscribers.

2. Exponentially grow over time.

3. Passively give you thousands of dollars a month just from sending endorsements to your list.

If you are still unfamiliar about the steps above, just receive my free report that shows you step by step how to do everything I mentioned here. I even give you over 100 minutes of free online videos that will help you to build a profit pulling list building website. You can visit:

http://www.workingonyourown.com/50kreport/

Melvin Perry is an internet entrepreneur whose been marketing online since mid 2002. During his marketing journey online, he has created various ways of sending tons of targeted traffic to websites. To learn some of his methods and get over 100 minutes of free online marketing videos, visit http://www.workingonyourown.com/50kreport/

Affiliate Tip - Create a Newsletter

2007-03-26T06:00:00.001-07:00

By Nell Taliercio

The average person has to be exposed to a product seven times before he makes a decision to buy. What does that mean to you as an affiliate marketer? You need to be able to get the product you are offering in front of your visitors repeatedly. One of the best ways to do this is by getting the visitors of your website to sign up for a newsletter.

By capturing their email address and getting them on your newsletter list, you can keep bringing them back to your site. You will also be able to repeat your offer several times in your newsletter, and if you can�t get them to buy the first product, you move on to something else. Sooner or later they will start buying and you will get your commission from the sale.

A newsletter is also a great relationship-building tool. Think about it, who are you more likely to buy from? A complete stranger or someone that has already provided you with great content on the subject you are interested in. You�d probably buy from someone that has given you great information already. The same goes for your visitors. To turn them into customers, allow them to get to know you, show them that you know what you are doing and provide them with good content in your newsletter. Then offer them your affiliate product.

The biggest mistake I see new affiliate marketers make when it comes to newsletters, is to try to use their personal email client (like Microsoft Outlook) to run a newsletter. It is very time consuming to manually add and remove subscribers from your list. You also run the risk of being shut down by your webhost if you send to many emails at once.

I recommend you use an autoreponder service like aweber right from the start. You will be able to create signup forms for your website. Adding and removing of subscribers is done automatically, and you can schedule messages to go out at a certain date and time.

You can use the actual autoresponder feature to your advantage by creating a series of newsletters that are not time sensitive. Each new subscriber will receive the newsletter editions you have written in sequence starting with message 1. All you have to do is add a new message each week, or month. Of course you can also send time sensitive messages � like a holiday promotion � to your entire list right away.

To encourage visitors to your site to subscribe to the newsletter, add a signup form on each page of your site. It also helps to offer them something free for subscribing. Create a report, or even an ebook related to the topic of your newsletter and use the autoreponder feature to automatically send it to them when they sign up.

Try to stay in touch with your subscriber list at least once per month; preferably twice per month or even weekly. You could see the first sales coming in within a few weeks. I encourage you to give it a try. Newsletters are one of the most powerful affiliate tools and they are easy to implement.

For more information about newsletters go to http://www.mommysplace.net and for more information about affiliate marketing go to http://www.nellnews.com.

The Best Low-Cost Marketing Tool on the Planet

2007-03-24T23:55:00.000-07:00

By Allen Taylor

If you want to keep your name in front of your customers on a regular basis without appearing as if you are shoving sales pitches down their throats, an electronic newsletter is the perfect tool for you. You can write and design an electronic newsletter at no cost and send it out once a week with minimal commitment. Nothing but your time. In most cases, you can have a newsletter that sells your business effectively in less than one hour a week. The benefits are enormous:

� Low-cost, high-value
� Customers benefit from your knowledge
� A free newsletter sent once a week is great marketing
� Delivered electronically so no stamps to lick
� It shows your customers that you really care about their needs

Let's face it. The 21st century is here to stay � at least for another 94 years. If you haven't caught the digital wave yet, then you are about 10 years behind the curve. Where will you be 10 years from now?

No matter what business you are in, you � and your highly valued clients � can benefit from a newsletter. While print copy can get costly, an electronic newsletter is a no-cost way to keep your name on everyone's lips. Whether you are a published author, a financial services consultant, a non-profit agency executive, an insurance agent, a mechanic or a member of a million other occupations out there struggling to maintain contact with an ever shifting customer base, you need all the low-cost advertising you can get.

You can write and design a newsletter in any word processing program on the market. You don't need to know any html or computer code and you can have it written, designed and mailed in a couple of hours. It doesn't need to be elaborate. Some electronic newsletters are just a couple of paragraphs and a link. Anyone can do it.

If you're not sending out a free newsletter then you are missing out on a great opportunity. I highly recommend this low-cost, high-value commitment to meeting the needs of your clients. And if you're looking to expand your business it's a tool you can't do without. Why wait for the next century to begin before you get with the times? Today is the day to communicate for tomorrow's customers.

Allen Taylor is an award-winning journalist, freelance writer and copywriter. He specializes in world-class marketing for small businesses. For more information about how to make your business shine visit http://www.taylor-and-associates.com Be sure to check out Allen's ghostwriting services and sign up for the free e-mail newsletter.