Are You Doing It on a Regular Basis?

By Merle
Posted Friday, July 16, 2004

How often you should publish an ezine, examines the different time frames

If you're an ezine publisher I have one word for you: "consistency." When planning your newsletter, you need to decide how often your ezine will be sent out to your subscribers. Essentially, you need to create a schedule and stick with it. But how often should you publish? How much is too much and how often is not enough? When it comes to frequency, the usual choices are daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Let's examine the pro's and cons of each one.

DAILY: If you plan on publishing a daily ezine be prepared to do a lot of work. Think about it. That's a total of 365 issues you'll need to create every year. Not only is this a monumental task, but daily publications can become annoying fast especially since most of us are dealing with information overload and bulging email boxes.

WEEKLY: Once a week is a little better but it still can be time consuming to produce a quality ezine on a regular basis. That's 48 issues in a year, still a lot of work. Some are of the opinion that once a week is still a bit too often and showing up in someone's mail box four times a month can appear to be too much for your subscribers. On the pro side they'll have a hard time forgetting about you.

BI-WEEKLY: Every two weeks seems to be just the right mix for many. Whereas weekly can be too much and once a month not enough, every two weeks seems to work like a charm. Publishing an ezine twice a month is just often enough to keep you fresh in your subscribers' minds but not so often that they become annoyed with you and start reaching for the unsubscribe link. As an ezine publisher, twice a month can be easily worked into your busy schedule without too much strain.

MONTHLY: Even though many ezine publishers go with a monthly schedule, it does have its drawbacks. Mailing just once a month can cause a subscriber to forget who you are or that they even subscribed to your ezine in the first place. Many a Spam complaint has started this way. Don't get me wrong, I subscribe to many monthly ezines myself, but sometimes by the time I receive an issue I've almost forgotten I was subscribed to it. It just doesn't seem often enough to keep the publication fresh in my mind. On the plus side it's not too much that you're messages become annoying.

So there you have it; the options for choosing an appropriate publishing schedule. Which one is right for you will depend on your time constraints and what you're trying to accomplish with your ezine. So next time someone tells you it's the size that matters don't believe it -- frequency can make the difference between a memorable newsletter and one that just fades into the woodwork.

So how often are you doing it?

About the Author
Merle is an internet marketer, promotion consultant and ezine publisher. Visit her sites at (http://www.mcpromotions.com/),(http://www.merlesworld.com/) and (http://www.ezineadauction.com/).