SuperTips Ezine: Issue 11
IN THIS ISSUE
2. "How To Reach Millions Of People
Using E-zines For Pennies !" 3. Readers Forum
4. "Tag, You're It !" 5. More "Super" Tips 6. Next Issue
1. Greetings! "Haven't you finished writing that newsletter yet ?" That's my wife nagging me. "No - I'm just trying to think of the introductory section, that's' the part I always write last and for once I'm stuck on what to say. Also, I've got to do the finishing touches. "What are they ?" "Well, I need to run a spell check, then I make sure the line length is suitable - I use a maximum of 60 characters. Then I send it in an Email to myself just to make sure it formats nicely. Then I move any articles that I use to my 'used article' file and send a note to the author advising that I have published it. Then I set the article up in my archive list" "Well there's a few useful tips there that your readers might like to hear. Why not use those ?"
"Thanks. Good idea"
And without further ado it's on with today's issue,
2. HOW TO REACH MILLIONS OF PEOPLE USING E-ZINES
FOR PENNIES! Daily, advertisers are making literal fortunes on the internet marketing their products or services. Then, there are others who spend thousands putting up web pages and not even making their original investment back. What makes the difference? How can you make sure you are a member of the first group instead of a member of the second? I can tell you the answer to those two questions very simply: The Winners are Aggressive Marketers, while the Losers are Passive. What I mean by that is...the ones who are making money online are the ones who are constantly seeking out new ways of getting their advertising message out to the world. You cannot just put a web page on the internet and expect that the entire world is going to come running to your door. If all you do is put up a web page and then submit to a few search engines, you will get little IF ANY traffic at your site. Did you know that the average web site will get less than 100 visitors this year? That is pitiful... especially once you realize that it is a very simple process & low cost to get your site up to 100 - 1000 visitors daily. I didnt say it was Free, nor did I say it didnt take time. It takes a little money and some time to produce traffic, BUT every single reader of this publication is quite able to produce the traffic that they need at their web sites. One of the most effective marketing methods online currently is that of E-Zines. An E-Zine is a magazine/newsletter which is produced online and emailed to a list of subscribers. It is usually Free and contains articles on many different subjects. For now, most are limited to just text (No Pictures), but those producing online E-Zines are experiencing unprecedented growth. Just like regular magazines, you can find E-Zines which are devoted to just about every subject you can think of. If there is a magazine about a certain subject, you can be pretty confident that their will be an E-Zine which is devoted to that same subject. E-Zines are a virtual goldmine for everyone involved. The writers can create well written and informative articles & email them to 1,000s of subscribers virtually for Free. The readers can receive this high quality information right in their email box with NO subscription Fees whatsoever. Advertisers in these E-Zines can reach a targeted audience for VERY LOW cost. E-Zines are definitely a WIN-WIN situation for everyone involved. I want to take a moment though and make sure that you understand that when we are speaking about these E-Zines, we are speaking of a completely different subject from unsolicitated bulk email (Also called SPAM). A major problem on the internet lately has been that of unsolicitated bulk email. Bulk email is when a person creates a list of email names (usually created from newsgroups, web pages, & chat groups) and mails all of them an advertisement for their product or service. In most cases, it is difficult to be removed from their lists and to many people this type of advertising is considered an extreme nuisance. Because many people hate bulk email, I am not recommending this type of marketing to you by any means (You could lose customers, lose your ISP, face legal problems, etc.). Please note that bulk email is too dangerous to your online business to participate in. On the contrary, E-Zines are sent only to people who have subscribed to them. They do not offend the readers, will not get your server canceled, and they build your business instead of tearing it down in the eyes of the readers. Producing quality E-Zines, receiving E-Zines, and advertising in E-Zines is highly recommended for the success of your online marketing business. I have no problem telling you that E-Zines are more effective for me than any other method of advertising online. Whereas for webpages, people have to go to a search engine, click a link you have somewhere, etc., when you use E-zines your advertising message is received right in the email box of your targeted prospects immediately. Now that you have seen the power and the effectiveness of using E-Zines in your business, I want to cover with you the three major ways YOU CAN PROFIT RIGHT NOW from E-Zines. We are going to cover them from the easiest to the most difficult: 1) Advertising in E-Zines 2) Producing your Own E-Zine 3) Having your articles published by other E-Zines
1) ADVERTISING IN E-ZINES This is the simplest way to start profitting from E-Zines right this minute! There are hundreds of E-Zines which you can submit your ads to for an extremely low cost...usually $5 to $45 weekly to reach 100 to 100,000 targeted subscribers. To use this medium for advertising, let’s go through what steps I recommend you take to get started: First, I recommend that you subscribe to some of the E-Zines which are targeting your specific audience. If you are advertising a home business, look for home business E-Zines. If you advertise gardening, look for gardening E-Zines. Once you find a few, send a subscription request to the publishers. I recommend that you subscribe to the E-Zine before you advertise in it so you can get a basic idea of three things: 1) the kind of articles being written, 2) where the classified ads are being placed in it (Somewhere in the middle of the publication seems to work best), and 3) how to write effective killer ads for that specific publication. To find a list of E-Zines to subscribe to (And possibly advertise in) search one of the major search Engines for free newsletter or a major listing of E-Zines is also published on my web site (Updated Regularly) at http://www.bizpromo.com/infomall/free/ezines.htm Step two: Write a Killer Ad for the E-Zine. After you have subscribed to various E-Zines which reach your targetted audience, begin to examine the classified ads which draw YOUR interest. Just because E-Zines are an extremely low cost of reaching targetted markets does not mean you should ignore advertising rules. A poorly written ad can still receive little or no responses even when placed in a high quality publication. For your classified ad, you should also use a two step process. Classified ads online (Just like offline classified ads) are too small to make a sale straight from the ad. Your classified ad should just produce Interest in the prospect so that they request more information. I also recommend using an autoresponder for more information rather than a webpage or manually responding. Many people may question this suggestion, but the logic behind it is pretty simple. Autoresponders provide immediate information to your prospect without them having to do much. All they have to do is click on your autoresponder link and hit send. Then, your sales material is immediately sent right back to their email box (Which you notice is where they are already at - reading the E-Zine). Through an autoresponder, your prospect gets your sales material into their hands the fastest and easiest way possible. To find an autoresponder for your needs, ask your webmaster or search on one of the major search engines for free autoresponders. (NOTE - Make Sure that your autoresponder records the email addresses of those who hit it so that you will be able to send followup information to them later) For those of you who would like to place an advertisement in my weekly E-Zine - Web Gold, please email me at webmaster@bizpromo.com for our current advertising rates.
2) PRODUCING YOUR OWN E-ZINE I hope that as an aggressive internet marketer you should be becoming I don’t have to explain to you just how important it is for you to be collecting the email addresses of those who visit your web site. Dr. Jeffrey Lant has taught for a long time that we need to make at LEAST 7 contacts with a prospect to make a sale. If you don’t collect the email addresses of those who visit your site, you have absolutely no way of sending followup information to them - Or making the sale for that matter. A great way of capturing the email addresses of those who are interested in your products or services is producing your OWN E-Zine. All you have to do is place a small form box on your main site telling people that they can receive your Free Ezine and then describe what training information is provided in your E-Zine. A sample of what I am talking about can be seen on my main page at http://www.bizpromo.com The cheapest way to set this up is just have the form send the email address directly to you and you collect them for your E-Zine, BUT I recommend getting a listserver for longterm use of your newsletter. Here is a short description of what a listserver can do for you: * A listserver is a robot e-mail list program that manages new subscribers to a list as well as members who unsubscribe from the list. Subscribers need only visit a form based web page to join or be removed from the list or they can manually send a specially tagged message directly to the listserver. That's how easy it is. No database tracking and NO manual deletions. People can even subscribe to your list directly from your website! * Sending a message to the list is as easy as it can be. You simply send a message to a special e-mail address with a password as the first line. You see, the listserver allows ONLY you to post to the list. You can post messages as often as you like. Simply put -- if you can send e-mail, you can manage your own listserver. * Your list can contain 10, 100, or even 10,000+ e-mail addresses. Want to know who is on your list? Easy, just send a message to your listserver and request a copy of the list. You will receive a neat and ordered list within moments in your e-mail box. It just doesn't get any easier to manage a massive in-house e-mail distribution list. More information on Worldprofit listservers can be obtained at my web site at http://www.bizpromo.com/Web/list.htm If you use a listserver for your E-Zine, all you need to do is place it’s email address and subscription information in your ads or on your web page and it will take care of all the technical aspects of mailing to your list. That leads us to the next excuse people have for not producing a Quality E-Zine. You might say to me as why you don’t produce an E-Zine for your business, BUT I can’t write an E-Zine. I am not a very good writer. Well, you know what, that is NOT a good excuse to not produce an E-Zine. There are numerous other E-Zine publishers who are quite willing to let you reproduce our articles (Leaving our contact information of course)into your newsletter. If you read an exciting article that you would like to include in your E-Zine which you have read in someone else’s E-Zine, just email them and ask for permission to use that article. More often than not, you will find writers are all too eager to let you use any of our articles. It is part of the sharing concept which is helping all businesses to grow online. If you would like to use any of my articles or have information on past articles, email me at webmaster@bizpromo.com and I will be glad to let you use any article which has been in my E-Zine as long as contact information is also provided. Plus, in many cases, I am willing to edit my article to help you place exactly what you need in your publication. Then, you can produce the publisher information you need for yourself along with taking care of advertising and even selling classified ads to others through your publication. What could be simpler?
3) Having Your Articles Published By Other E-Zines... The reason I have placed this method of E-Zine advertising last is because it is the only one that actually requires you to be able to write the articles so it takes the most time. Just about anyone can write articles which relate to their business, but it will require that you research your subject in depth, prepare appropriately, and spend time writing a quality article which people will be willing to place in their publications. When you write an article which you think will appeal to a certain publication’s audience, submit your article to the publisher along with your contact information asking if it is appropriate for their audience and their E-Zine. You may find that it may take a few tries before one of the publisher’s accepts your article, BUT this is still a wonderful way of producing FREE advertising for your business. Again, in this arrangement...everyone WINS! You receive Free promotion, the publisher receives a Free high quality article, and the readers get the benefits which you have taught them for Free. To produce and publish articles this way... Make sure that you are creating information that will be useful and effective for the readers of the selected publications. What are they interested in doing? What have you been extremely effective at doing? How is it done? Does this article help people produce their desired responses...more money, more sales, etc.? These are all questions you should be asking yourself before, during, and after your article is being written. In other words, make sure your article is EFFECTIVE and COMPLETE. Don’t look down on this method of advertising. E-Zine advertising (In All Three Forms) is quickly becoming the primary vehicle for building an online business...FAST! Placing classified ads can produce many low cost prospects (And Sales). Producing your own E-Zine will help you develop a customer list and stay continually on their minds. Writing articles for other publications can help you expand your business by reaching into new markets. So, what’s stopping you. Get busy... And Build Your Business Online Now by email... with No Spam Included!
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3. Readers Forum Last week I asked for your recommendations on software tools which can simplify cut and paste type operations - these are probably the most common (and time-consuming) tasks that newsletter publishers have to carry out. James MacDonald (http://www.2inspireyou.com) suggested Textpad at http://www.textpad.com which "will allow you to set the length of lines (wordwrap or return) and has many macros you can use or create for editing, like removing all HTML tags for example. It is shareware with a nag screen but fully functional. Tucows gave it a 5 cow rating" Bill Prackup <http://www.123cook.com> and Paul Myers <http://www.talkbiz.com/news> suggested Notepad at http://www.notetab.com/snt.htm Paul mentioned the very useful "Use As PasteBoard" feature whereby anything you copy to the clipboard is automatically pasted into the current document, allowing you to accumulate a clippings type file.
Paul also provided ideas on how to store Email efficiently taken from
a series he featured recently in his newsletter TalkBiz News. It's Paul I
have to thank for cutting hours out of my working week by introducing me
to Pegasus Email software. If you ask him nicely I'm sure he'll send you
some of his great articles on how you can use Pegasus to automate your work.
4. "Tag, You're It !" Some call them "tag lines"; others refer to them as "catch lines" or "tie-in-slogans." Whatever the words used to refer to them, they are perhaps the most important part of your promotional writing. Do you recognize any of these ? :
"Like a rock..." Most of those tag lines are recognizable by us without even including the name of the company or product. They summarize in a very few words the essence of the thing they are promoting. They communicate a good, positive feeling or relationship to the product. They do it with a simple, rememberable phrase that is easily repeated. The shorter the description is, the more challenging it is to write. Anyone can write a 500-word description of a product or service. Now try doing it with 5 to 10 words ! Each word you choose is very important to the message. HERE ARE SOME TIPS for writing good taglines for your business offer. 1) Start by noticing ads on billboards as you drive down the road. Billboard advertisers have but a couple of seconds to grab your attention and sell their product or service. Usually their copy is going to be a very good tagline with a picture of the product or service. These are great examples of how to write effective taglines. 2) Notice other media forms like magazine and newspaper display ads, business cards, brief radio and TV commercials. Observe the thing that caught your attention and makes the message easily remembered. It's usually a concise and well-written tagline. 3) Write down everything you can think of that relates to your business. You may even start with a narrative description in paragraph form. 4) Now, make a list of the top 25 or 30 things that are important and worth mentioning. Whittle that list down to 8 or 10 of the most important things you wish to say. Now eliminate repetition or things that are not really that necessary to your product or service. Get your list of words or phrases down to 3 or 4 central elements. 5) Based on your final core selection, make up some phrases that will serve as your taglines for consideration. Keep them short and use simple, everyday language. Which of these taglines would you remember best ? : *******************
"Joe's auto repair shop,the lowest-prices and the best service" *******************
"The Best Tax Service Anywhere Around The Town !" ******************
"Emergency ambulance service available 24-hours a day" ****************** Well, you get the idea! Do some test marketing with your final two or three best taglines. Discover the one that works best for you and incorporate it into all of your promotional messages. Remember, like any of life's endeavors, experience and practice help to improve your skills level. If you want to be a good writer, write a lot ! Best of luck in your promotional efforts !
Larry Johnson, Author (C) 1999, All Rights Reserved.
Article may be reprinted with permission by including the following resource
box: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 5. More "Super" Tips When you've made your umpteenth revision to your web site it's hard to take a dispassionate critical view - so that's why it is so useful to have someone else provide feedback about your site.
I recently had my web site reviewed in the newsletter "Rate My Site".
The review is carried out by volunteer subscribers. The format of the review
is an initial section of ratings given to
followed by comments on You can subscribe to the newsletter with an Email to ratemysite-subscribe@listbot.com On my first submission there were no reviews made. I tried again and there were 3 reviews published - so don't give up if you fail to get a response the first time.
In my case the reviews were quite mixed, one person for example said
navigation was excellent, while another had 'room for improvement' and advised
me Another way to get your site reviewed is to ask your visitors to offer their comments. I have written an article explaining a very effective way to do this and how to turn those visitors into customers. Visit here 6. Next Issue How do you know where visitors to your site are coming from ? Next week Bob Cortez will tell us in his article "Tracking Online Referrals". If you have any suggestions to improve this newsletter so that we can make it a great resource for all our readers please drop me a line.
Thanks,
To SUBSCRIBE to the SuperTips Ezine:Click here ARCHIVES: Click here Copyright (C) 1999 by Harvey Segal, SuperTips
http://www.supertips.com/ezine/e11.htm
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