Starting An Ezine

by Iain Doherty

Article Rating: 0

This article takes you through everything you need to know to start and market an Ezine.
EzinesI first published electronically about seven years ago to promote a hard copy magazine that I’d started. I now publish in electronic format only. One of the ways in which I do this is through an Ezine. Webopedia defines an Ezine as an ‘electronic magazine, the name for a web site that is modeled after a print magazine.’ (1)You can take a look at Ezines of this sort at http://slate.msn.com/ and http://www.salon.com/. However, not all Ezines are of this sort. Webopedia fails to mention that many Ezines are delivered solely as either text based or html based email newsletters.(2) Ezines of this sort tend to be published either with the aim of disseminating information and/or as part of a business marketing strategy.(3)
Hard Copy PublishingSo, what are the advantages of publishing an Ezine over a hard copy magazine? Well, each issue of my hard copy magazine cost me approximately £1,300 for a minimum print run of 1000 copies. I covered the print cost through generating advertising which took a lot of time and effort. Given that I had no additional capital publication was, to say the least, precarious. I distributed the magazine through about 40 retail outlets. This involved the initial effort of persuading retailers to stock the magazine together with having to deliver the magazines to the outlets. I sold 400-500 copies per issue. This meant that due to the minimum print run I had 500 odd copies left after each issue. Eventually I made a very small profit on each issue.
The Ezine OptionThe cost of publishing an Ezine is minimal. I own several dot coms. Each one costs me about £200.00 every two years for both the name and the web space. I publish an Ezine on one of my websites and the total cost to me is the £200.00 every two years. This means that my costs over a two-year period of Ezine publishing are one sixth of the price of publishing a single hard copy magazine.
There is, potentially, a major communication advantage with Ezine publishing. My potential audience from electronic publishing is far bigger than anything I might have achieved with a hard copy magazine. With the right promotion my reading audience is worldwide.
Electronic publishing is considerably less stressful than hard copy publishing because the workload is a lot less and because I don’t have to chase advertising, worry about print agencies, deal with distribution or chase money from sales.
Whilst publishing an Ezine does seem to be less expensive, more straightforward and less stressful than hard copy publishing there is still a lot to know and a lot of work has to go into publishing a successful Ezine.
PlanningYou need to consider the topic, purpose, and target audience of your Ezine. What is your Ezine going to be about? What is its purpose? Who are you aiming it at? Unless you’ve already got a target audience such as a community group it’s not enough to have an Ezine on an interesting subject because in nearly all cases there will be thousands of Ezines and websites on exactly the same subject as the one that you have chosen. Given this fact you really need to think about why someone would choose to read your Ezine and why having read it they would want to read another issue.
Getting Started with your EzineIf you decide to model your Ezine on a hard copy magazine and publish it on a website then you’re going to need to have a website! You can pay someone to build you one or you can build the site yourself. If you’ve never built a website before then this might sound daunting but building a website has become much easier. At a very basic level most word processors provide the option of converting text documents to HTML pages. HTML editors such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver are now relatively simple to use and there are plenty of books and electronic tutorials such as the ones at http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/ if you want to learn.
I taught computing and multimedia for two years to students with no prior web experience and found that virtually all my students could come to grips with the HTML software and with building at least basic websites.
A lot of them found it more difficult to come to terms with site design and layout. There are excellent on-line tutorials covering the basics of good web page and good website design. They’ll tell you about use of colour (http://www.netwrite-publish.com/color_psychology.htm), use of fonts, site navigation, optimizing your images, browser versions and current HTML standards (http://www.w3.org/), design perception (http://www.echoecho.com/dzine007.htm) and site testing.
Whilst website design issues apply to whatever type of site your building there are some specific issues connected with publishing an Ezine. If you’re publishing on-line you need to keep your paragraphs short and you need to break the page up with a lot of headings. No one wants to sit and read lengthy paragraphs of text on their computer. Have you ever visited a site consisting of huge paragraphs of Times New Roman text? You will almost certainly not have read the material.
One way to overcome the problem of your audience having to read the text on your site is to provide print friendly pages for each article. If you do this the site then functions to allow people to read a part of the article in order to determine whether they are interested. They can then print a version of the article if they wish to do that.
Ezine NewslettersOnce you’ve got your website Ezine it can be sent out as an email newsletter.(4) If you want to do this you’re going to need email software. There are a lot of options here including Microsoft Outlook (probably the most popular), Eudora or one of the web based email systems such as Yahoo or Hotmail. I’m going to run through creating the Ezine using Microsoft Outlook.
You could make your email newsletter wholly text based and avoid using any HTML formatting. This will ensure that your entire audience can read the email. To create a wholly text based Ezine you simply take the text from your Ezine and paste it into an email. You can break the text up using appropriate spacing and asterisks rather than changing font face, weight or style. I subscribe to an excellent free writing Ezine that is wholly text based. The publisher has followed the basic rules of breaking the newsletter up with headings and keeping the paragraphs short. I can scan for the information that I want and ignore the rest.
Your email newsletter does not have to be wholly text based. You can use Outlook as a basic HTML editor and format the text, change the background colour of the page, insert a background image, insert other images and create hyperlinks. This means that you can produce something approximating your website Ezine. You can then send it out as an email. The disadvantage of an HTML based Ezine newsletter is that not all potential readers will be able to read it.
One of the key things with an email newsletter is to test it on different mail systems. In addition to Outlook you can get a free copy of Eudora from http://www.qualcomm.com/eudora and you can set up Yahoo and Hotmail accounts at http://www.yahoo.com and http://www.hotmail.com respectively. You can then send your newsletter to each of the accounts to ensure that it appears as you expect it to on all the different systems.
Mail ManagementIf you’re producing your Ezine newsletters for a local community group or for some other group with which you are involved then you can use your Outlook contacts list to manage your subscriptions. If, however, you are aiming for a wider audience you’re going to need a mailing list system. . This will let you manage your subscriptions whilst keeping subscribers email addresses private. http://www.thewritemarket.com/ezine/mlprogram.htm covers the main mail management systems.
The first option for mail management is to get yourself a script or some software to manage your mailing list. Some scripts are freely available (http://mojo.skazat.com/) but require some cgi knowledge (if you’re asking yourself what cgi means then it’s not for you) and server permissions (again if you’re asking what this means it’s not for you) in order to get them running. If you’re not comfortable with the idea of scripts then you can get mail management software. Generally you need to pay for the software to manage your mailing list (http://www.siteinteractive.com/) although free software is available (http://www.webattack.com).
You can also manage your mailing list using a third party programme such as the one at http://www.coollist.com. This is the option that I’ve chose because my site is non-commercial and appeals to a limited number of users (very limited). Making use of a third party management system is infinitely easier that setting up a script and since it is free it is for me preferable to software that I would have to pay for. You put either an email link or a form with a submit button on your website. Subscribers submit their email address to the system. The system then returns an email asking them to confirm their subscription to your Ezine. The third party that I use requires that subscribers fill in a form with their personal details. They are then subscribed to my newsletter and can log into the mail management system. This system has the distinct advantage that subscribers can unsubscribe themselves.
Third party management is a really good option for someone starting up their own small Ezine. It is not really an option for a business user because it looks unprofessional for a company to be using a third party programme.
Promoting your EzineSome of you will know that publishing to a website means nothing. There are millions of websites out there. This means that the cyberspace equivalent of marketing has to take place. Cyberspace marketing doesn’t have to cost you anything. You can submit your site to all the major search engines. Don’t be put off by claims that it is difficult to become ranked in search engines. I went hard out on submitting one of my sites to the search engines and my hits have increased correspondingly. Sites such as http://www.searchenginewatch.com will help you learn about search engine submission.
Ezine DirectoriesSecondly, there are lots of Ezine directories that will list your publication for free. http://www.ezineuniversity.com/courses/ez601/index.html lists a lot of directories. Finally, there are lots of user groups that will be interested in the content of your magazine. These groups tend to look askance if you join them with the sole purpose of marketing yourself. If, however, you join because you have an interest in their subject and if you tell them about your site because they have an interest in it then they will probably be accepting of you. There are a number of websites that list Ezine directories to which you might submit. However, these directories have specific submission rules. You will find that some will only accept Ezines in the form of email newsletters.
Making MoneyMaking money from your Ezine takes time but it can be done. The first and most obvious way is to join some affiliate programmes. Basically you promote the products and services of other companies on your website and if visitors to your site click through and make a purchase you receive a percentage of the sale.
I have a couple of affiliate links on two my sites. One is an e-book programme which I use. The other is to a site that promotes writing. I also use this site. Be discerning with your affiliate programmes. If you are going to promote a product or service make sure that you use it and value it because your promotion says something about you.
The second way to make money on your site is to ask for donations. You can set up a PayPal account at http://www.paypal.com to take credit card transactions on your site in about twenty minutes. You really can. I’ve done it. Once the account is set up you can place a button on your website which will allow people to make a donation if they enjoy your Ezine. Of course, the vast majority of people will happily read your Ezine without donating any money but you will get the occasional kindly soul who will make a donation.
Additionally you can provide the majority of your Ezine for free and offer certain sections of your magazine for a price. This works. I visited a website and made use of their free writing resources. On the basis of the quality of their information I paid to subscribe to a weekly Ezine list of writing jobs. I was not disappointed. When the time to renew my subscription comes around I will pay again because their information has remained at a consistently high standard.
You could try selling advertising on your site. If your Ezine is about publishing on the web then try to sell advertising to companies and individuals offering writing services or products.
There is a final way to make money from your site. Use your website and your magazine as a vehicle for your talents. If you are an aspiring writer then publish a monthly magazine about publishing on the web. Showcase your writing skills in your magazine. Advertise yourself as a writer in your magazine. Let people know who you are and what you can do. Whatever the subject of your magazine you can use it as a way to promote yourself.
All About QualityWhether you’re publishing for a small community group or for a worldwide audience the keys to the success of your Ezine are the design and the quality of the information. The web is absolutely awash with information and with people trying to cash in on the opportunities presented by electronic publishing. The way to survive and to do well is to offer a quality product. How much time do you spend on a website or reading an Ezine if the quality of the information is poor? You almost certainly spend next to no time. The same will be true of people looking at your Ezine.
References(1) http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/e/e_zine.html [Accessed 12.02.03](2)http://www.e-zinez.com/ [Accessed 12.02.03](3)http://ezinesuccess.com/training/ This site offers information on Ezine publishing as a part of a business strategy [Accessed 12.02.03](4)http://www.pcvoyager.com/dir/ezines.html#Tutorials The PC Voyager website has a list of links to tutorials on starting email Ezines. http://www.e-zinez.com/ covers Ezines as email newsletters [Accessed 12.02.03]
About the Author
Dr. Iain Doherty has a BA Hons in Religious Studies, an M.Litt in The Philosophy of Religion and a PhD in the Philosophy of Religion from the University of Edinburgh. He taught computing and multimedia for two years and now works as a web designer. He continues to research and to write on a variety of subjects.

Article Source: www.businesshighlight.org

report this article