Why Publish an eZine?
On the Internet, it is very possible to make money without selling any product. One way of doing so is through starting your own eZine, also known as an electronic newsletter.
In a nutshell, you send out your eZine issues on a periodical basis to your subscribers. The good part is that you have a flexible choice in automating the process of sending out your eZine issues for you or manually sending them on a periodical basis.
As an eZine publisher, not only can you easily achieve the benefits a conventional newsletter publisher enjoys without having to chop down several trees in the process, you can easily and conveniently spread your marketing influence and expertise to your base of subscribers from the shoes of an ordinary individual.
In other words, you do not have to invest in expensive printing equipment, brick and mortar business, and hiring staff just to run your own newsletter publication, resulting in a lot of time, money and effort saved.
Basically, all you need to start your own eZine are an auto responder and broadcast feature to go with, enabling you to reach out to your massive subscribers whom you can regard as your prospects, too.
All in all, if you do not have the commitments of creating your own product for sale, then publishing your own online newsletter can be one of the wisest decisions you will ever make, given the benefits of impressive marketing power and influence it can offer to you.
Publishing Your eZine — the Pros
There are several advantages publishing your own eZine can offer to you. Thus, if the pros appeal to you, then publishing your own paperless newsletter can be ideal for you.
The most obvious reason publishing an eZine can be the most ideal business to you is that it is so easy to start that any individual can do. There is no need to invest in starting a brick and mortar business or even staff and heavy machines for that matter.
In fact, you can do this from the comfort of your home as the most important thing you will need is an auto responder equipped with broadcast feature. Auto responders such as GetResponse.com and aWeber.com are highly recommended when it comes to publishing your own eZine.
In spite of the low start up cost and monthly fees, you can make money from several profit centers within the spaces of your eZine issues. You can make money from selling advertising space, just to name one.
Most importantly, you get to build your own personal media and spread your marketing influence, making you more valuable to product and service owners thus do not be surprised if you receive Joint Venture proposals every so often.
Given some of the best reasons in the world of Internet Marketing, publishing your own periodical eZine can one of the best money vehicles you will ever acquire or even build.
Publishing Your eZine — the Cons
As with any other types of businesses, publishing your own online newsletter a.k.a. eZine has its share of drawbacks, in spite of the several benefits it offers.
The purpose of this article is not to scare you away with the disadvantages of publishing your own eZine, as the benefits are often more attractive. However, I will also show you how you can easily tackle the cons.
One obvious challenge most beginning eZine publishers face is the creation of eZine content. Creating your own content can be tiresome, especially if you are not a gifted writer and that you run out of ideas every so often that your publishing schedule is threatening you.
A way of taking care of this problem is to create your content in advance. You can compile 30 days worth of content in one day, for example. If you are not blessed with writing skills, you can broker the writing task to capable freelance writers which you can find at places such as http://www.elance.com/ or http://www.rentacoder.com/. While you need to pay for such services, you are at liberty to take the credit for written articles.
Alternatively, you can republish articles from article directories such as http://ezinearticles.com/. This is a free method you can use in making content, provided you include the resource box of the original author and that the article has republishing rights conveyed.
In conclusion, you can easily tackle the content creation challenge using the mentioned methods that do not require writing on your part, free or paid.
Deciding the Nature of Your eZine
When choosing a topic to publish your eZine on, you must consider some important success factors that can determine the flow and goal of your eZine.
You are encouraged to write non-time sensitive contents such as short tips, mini stories and interviews. Doing so enables you to create content in advance so that you can conveniently dispense to your subscribers at a later schedule.
Topic-wise, you will do well to cater to a starving market that will always be on demand for the kind of content you offer. And by this, I mean that you should zero in onto a demand that has been, is and will always be there.
Relationships and dating are niches that have been on Earth long before the World Wide Web came up, for example. The food niche will always be there as long as there are chefs cooking for anyone with a stomach to fill.
Having said that, you also want to have a steady stream of products or services of your own or an affiliate for you can endorse to your mailing list and make even more money.
This is also the reason why the Internet Marketing niche will remain one of the hottest niches there is, as products and services are created almost around the clock. As long as there Internet Businesses cropping out, there will always be needs to be fulfilled.
Churning out eZine Content
Creating your own content can be a challenge if you publish your own online newsletter or eZine.
However, regardless of any topic you are publishing on, types of contents can be generally divided into four categories, namely factual content, short tips, mini stories and case studies.
Other than writing your own content, you can get your own unique content the quick and easy way by organizing an interview with an expert or leader in the topic.
Very often, this can be done for free and since the interviewee is writing out most of the content, there is nothing else for you to do other than giving the interviewee something valuable in exchange (maybe a meal!).
Now if you have money to spare, you can hire a ghostwriter to write your content for you without taking any credit. Recommended professional marketplaces where you can seek ghostwriters include http://www.elance.com/ and http://www.rentacoder.com/.
Another little known and underused method in getting your own content is via public domains. If you are not familiar with the term "public domain", "public domain" simply means anything that is NOT protected under US copyright law.
This includes ALL works published before 1923 and, under certain conditions, works published up to 1978. And in this case, we are referring “works” to written materials such as reports, articles and books.
Republishing and repackaging public domain information can help you save time and effort from creating new ideas and content as they are readily available. On top of that, you do not have to pay royalties or copyright fees on that work.
If you fancy the idea of publishing content without any writing on your part, this method is for you.
Building Your List with Paid eZine Advertising
Some Internet Marketers can get clueless when it comes to unleashing the full potential of paid eZine advertising. One of the most common dilemmas is that whether should the Internet Marketer advertise the product or service he is selling directly to the subscribers of the eZine he is paying advertising for?
This can be a wise method, but with ifs and buts. For one, the advertisement must be compelling and attention grabbing. Secondly, there is no telling if the eZine’s subscribers constantly practice a buying habit until you put some money to find out.
Investing even a small sum of money can be risky to a number of Internet Marketers who are on tight budgets. But in spite of the risk factors, eZine advertising can still be rewarding, if done right.
Thus, the solution: the marketer would be wiser if he or she uses eZine advertising to build his or her mailing list. It makes sense, anyway. Since some eZine's display more than one sponsored advertisement, you can grab the subscriber’s attention by giving a free or risk-free product or offer through your ad.
When the subscriber clicks on your ad, he or she can opt into your mailing list in exchange for the free offer, which can be a free report or even a trial service.
While you are not making a hard sell through your advertisement just yet, building your list by getting other eZine’s subscribers subscribed to your eZine allows you to follow up with them in the future, as and when you have new offers.
Making Money from Selling Advertising Space
If you would observe the company that delivers the daily paper to your doorstep for a business case study, you will come to learn that the newspaper publisher hires reporters, writers and other important staff to create the contents and deliver the papers to their readers.
In addition to the above mention, the publisher has to invest regularly in heavy-duty machinery and tons of papers in printing tons of newspapers on a daily basis.
And in order to ensure that the newspapers are delivered on time, the publisher appoints agents at every part of the covered territory.
So, how does the newspaper company make money? It is obvious that selling a copy of the papers at less than a dollar would not even be able to even fund the operations.
The answer? Selling advertising spaces! You have definitely seen lots of advertisements in the newspaper. The publisher simply sells advertising space in the papers to advertisers who want to leverage their advertising efforts on the paper’s high readership.
On the same analogy, you can make money the exact way from your newsletter: simply by selling advertising space to prospective advertisers!
If your mailing list size exceeds 1,000 (5,000 is recommended) subscribers and beyond, you can start selling advertising space for say, $10.00 per sponsor ad.
In this manner, you turn every issue you send out to your subscribers into a profit-pulling device. And since there is virtually no end to the stream of advertisers as products, services and businesses are cropping every single day in every industry imaginable, so are your money making opportunities.
The 3 Best eZine Formats
EZine publishers today use any one or more of the 3 most commonly used eZine formats which I am about to describe to you in this article.
Ultimately, you can decide which format is the best choice for you, though each winning format has its pros and cons.
The text eZine is the most commonly published. The advantage of this format is that other than writing, you do not require any special skill to use a Word or Notepad program.
While the HTML eZine format requires a certain degree of HTML skills on your part, you can add more sophisticated features to your eZine issues, making them more appealing to your subscriber thus increases your readership value, something that text eZine's do not have.
You can decorate your eZine format, change your fonts, include pictures, and more. However, the drawback often faced by HTML eZine's is that they often get trapped into spam filters before they reach their subscribers’ inboxes.
The third and least used among the 3 formats is the PDF eZine. Publishing your eZine in PDF format can consume a lot of time and effort on your part but often make up in quality readership
Due to the commitment, PDF eZine's are usually published on a monthly basis. The great part, though, is that you can put in your affiliate links in your PDF eZine issue and allow your subscribers to pass the eZine issue around.
Given the choices, however, you do not have to necessarily choose strictly one eZine format, as some eZine publishers today do publish in more than one format.
What You Need to Start an eZine Publication
Starting your own eZine can be a lot easier than you think. This is because in the most basic necessity, all you really need to get started publishing your own paperless newsletter are wealth of content, auto responder with broadcast feature, and a website (which is optional).
Content. You can compile weeks of content ahead in advance and slowly dispense them to your subscribers. For example, you can compile 100 short tips in one day and dispense 10 tips once a week. In other words, you can compile 10 weeks worth of content in just one day!
Auto responder. Your auto responder is your asset. You need an auto responder to send your mails and eZine issues to your subscribers and store your data base of people subscribed to your newsletter. Some recommended auto responders include GetResponse.com and aWeber.com.
Website. You may be surprised that this is actually an optional component. In short, there are eZine publishers publishing their newsletters without a website! But of course, having your own website can offer you tremendous advantages, such as the ability to bring in more subscribers and having your newsletter indexed in the top Search Engines.
These are the things you need to get started on publishing your own eZine at its bare minimum. Do not underestimate the little you need, though, because several eZine publishers today succeed well with only an auto responder and contents, with or without a website. And you can, too!
Do the Two-Step!
Top sales pros confirm that it often takes seven or more communications or sales messages before prospective customers make a purchase. They also confirm that it’s generally easier to sell to a referral, because someone they know has given testimonial about their products or services.
What would happen if you combined both of these powerful ideas?
A nifty and thrifty two-step. Try this two-step tip:
1. Collect leads with your auto responder. Ask for mailing addresses and telephone numbers, too, for additional ways to follow up with each person. When you download the e-mail digest of everyone's e-mail addresses and other information from those who requested additional information from your auto responder, follow up multiple ways. Send postcards. Call. Mail sales letters and other promotional pieces.
2. Publish a price list of all the products and services that you offer in an insert, direct marketing package and / or pdf to be made available via auto responder. You could also include order forms, product descriptions, and other sales material. Then send to the people in #1 above with monthly updates, announcements of new sales and products / services, and a request for referrals.
So why not improve your closing ratio and reach out even farther at the same time? Do the two-step!
Using Free Reports To Build Your List
Aside from pre-selling your products and affiliated offers, the other purpose of your free viral report should be to build your mailing list.
This is because if you are unable to pre-sell, let alone sell, the products and services featured in your free report, the last ditch effort should be to collect leads. In short, if you cannot convert the reader into a ready buyer, you should then attempt to convert him or her into your subscriber.
In that manner, you can still follow up with your reader on future offers and have a chance at converting him or her into your customer, preferably lifetime.
You can do so by offering a lifetime update to your report or a unique notification list your reader will be interested in subscribing to, which leads to having him or her subscribed to your mailing list.
One of the few success factors in viral marketing of your free report is quality. If your readers find your information worth sharing, and you encourage them to do so by giving them the right to give your report away for free, you will be able to have your name, status and links within the report passed around without any effort on your part — simply because others are willing to do so for you!
Ad Swap Magic
Here is a little used technique you can implement to build your mailing list for no additional cost. I call it “using subscribers to make subscribers” like much in the context of “using money to make money”.
This simple list building formula can be summed up in two words: ad swap.
Generally, you trade advertisements with other eZine publishers, preferably of the same mailing list size or bigger. You broadcast the eZine publisher’s advertisement to your mailing list while the eZine publisher endorses your ad to his list. Yes, you are actually cross endorsing or cross promoting each others offer to each of your mailing list.
Your advertisement’s goal should be to get as many subscribers possible from the other eZine publisher’s mailing list to sign up for yours.
The result: you grow your mailing list. This method does not require money, which means it can be done for free. And the return of subscribers? Infinite!
You only have to do this with one eZine publisher at least once, because his subscribers who are also your subscribers can now be followed up within the boundaries of your mailing list.
Perform ad swaps with as many eZine publishers as possible and soon, you will have a huge mailing list of your own — built free.