Everything You Need To Know About Ezines

What exactly is an ezine and why does your business need one?

Ezines are everywhere – you may even be a subscriber yourself. But for those concerned with internet marketing, the humble ezine offers huge opportunities for business promotion. Over the past few years ezines have become more and more interactive, and are no longer merely web-based versions of print magazines. They offer targeted information in a dynamic, easily digestible format, and hundreds of new ezines are appearing every week.

So how can an ezine benefit your business? Opt-in ezines and e-newsletters are a legitimate way to provide potential clients with sales information. All you have to do is write an article for an ezine – or have someone write it for you if you don’t have the time or the right skills – and include links to your product or service. Submit the article to popular directories for inclusion, and wait for the enquiries to flood in.

Sound too good to be true? Think again. Your market is both large and targeted. It’s not uncommon for a popular and established ezine to have over a million subscribers – these are people who have chosen to receive it. Targeted because ezines cover specific topics, from health to motorsport, from accounting to woodwork – whatever your business there is an ezine out there to match it. Because people have opted to receive information about a topic that interests them, they are more responsive to the recommended products or sponsored adverts that come with the ezine.

Ezine magnates

Certain ezine publications are hugely profitable for their owners. With a mailing list of only 10,000 subscribers an ezine publisher could make as much as $5000 from one mailing. How? Through affiliate marketing; the process where one receives a small percentage of an affiliate’s sale for sending the customers to them.

Producing your own in-house ezine

This would probably start life as a newsletter, emailed to clients and offered free to visitors of your website. By asking potential customers to opt-in to a newsletter you fulfil two objectives:
1 - you capture their name and email address, and 2 – you stay in their consciousness whether they bought from you or not.
In time, as your mailing list grows, your newsletter can also grow into a fully-fledged ezine, with articles sourced from all over the web, and targeted marketing for your opted-in subscribers.

What is the difference between an ezine and an e-newsletter? An ezine is usually web-based, with its own site and associated newsletter for subscribers. Newsletters are shorter and are emailed to subscribers usually weekly.

Getting prospects to opt in

Your newsletter or ezine needs to contain information that will be really useful and interesting. Keep news-style items current and up-to-date and don’t indulge in any blatant advertising or sales-speak. Make your ezine arrival an event your readers look forward to in its own right – when they consider you an authority they will buy from you without having to be coerced. Articles for ezines and newsletters can be sourced free from ezine directories (see below) – but bear in mind the articles will have links to the author’s products or services so make sure they don’t conflict with your interests.

It’s a good idea to let your subscribers know that their information is safe with you by including the following text on the opt-in page:
We will NEVER sell or give away your e-mail address or phone number to anyone. We will always respect your privacy.

This way they will be able to give you their email details with confidence. It is also good practice to give subscribers an easy way to un-subscribe should they choose, usually with a link at the bottom of each newsletter.

Happy zine-ing!

Resources

For professional help writing your ezine or newsletter contact TaskersWebcopy


Ezine directories
www.ezinearticles.com
www.ezine-dir.com
www.bestezines.com


Did you know? The term ezine is a contraction of electronic magazine.