Starting your own Ezine or Newsletter

By Joseph Helberg
Posted Thursday, January 13, 2005

Starting your own ezine or newsletter will be the very backbone of your business! Getting it started on the "right foot" is very important! Take it from me I struggled to understand this and use it when I first started out! You want to present yourself and publication as professional as possible. So there are a few steps that I will lay out for you.

Step 1: Get it right from the start

The first thing you should do is get a template laid out as to how your ezine will look. Mine for example is pretty easy, title, publication, a couple fills, then a couple of sponsor ads here and there in the mix with the main article. Then a disclaimer at the end along with unsubscribe instructions.

Always make it easy for your subscribers to unsubscribe! It will happen even if you have the best ezine in the world (people will want to opt out that is) Don't let it bother you, if you provide people with good material and information, the new subscribers will out weigh the people that opt out by far!

Back to the template, this is maybe the most important! Not all email clients are set up the same, so when you send out emails to your list, they may appear different in their emails then the way they looked in yours when you sent it. Therefore you need to make sure that you have equal spacing. Make your lines no more than 65 characters. Notice my "guide line" at the top with the stars (*). That is my guide line, they are 65 characters long so I know when to hit return and keep my lines in tact. Also use a hard return (return/enter key) that will keep equal spacing between lines.

Step #2 Save your Template

When you have decided then how your ezine will look, save a template in note pad, then you always have it and all you have to do is plug in the information, article, ads whatever. This will save you lots of time for when you need to put out your next newsletter.

Step #3 How to get Subscribers

When trying to build your subscriber list, one of the best methods is giving something away for free in return for their email address. For my opt-in list I offer one of my eBooks for free when people sign up. But this could be a free report on your product, or a free email course, whatever the case may be, it's the best and most affective approach.

Make sure once you get your ezine going to also include in every issue a opt-in address. That way you can also tell people to pass along your ezine to friends and you have opt-in address included. You can get a few subscriptions this way as well.

About the Author
Joseph Helberg
JnJ Marketing
(http://www.jnjmarketing.com)