Marketing Your Articles and Newsletters!

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Marketing Your Articles and Newsletters!

By "Wild Bill" Montgomery

In the last year I have learned more about marketing, than I did in 2 years
of classes. I'm not sure if they have started yet, but our higher learning
institutions should have specialized courses just for marketing on the
internet, if not ezine publishing alone. Ezines 101, 102, 103..... There is
so much to learn and once started, so little time to learn it. I know from
my own experiences, that it is a constant struggle to keep up with the
daily chores of maintaining my website and business, let alone finding new
ways to market it. What I wanted to do here is make a small list of tips,
tricks and url's to help you along the way.

Your Articles:

One of the simplest, but most successful marketing procedures I use to get
my articles out to more ezine publishers, (which I use to advertise my own
newsletters) may be considered slow. But it's a methodical and personal
approach and has more than once opened doors to professional friendships
and alliances. The real question here is who wants to publish your article,
how do you find them and contact them. The answer of course is ezine
publishers!

To avoid being accused of spam, it is safer that you contact publishers who
are asking to be contacted in one way or another. Although, as long as it
is a legitimate request such as sending your articles, and not a cesspool
of advertising, very few will object to the contact. To play it safe though
I use 5 major groups of sources that have asked for contact or have
contacted me first.

You have these 5 major groups:

1) Article Announcements
2) Ezine Announcements
3) Ad Swap Announcements
4) Newsletter Joining Contact
5) Archives & Databases

The Article Announcement Ezines are a great source of exposure for your
articles, as well as article databases and archives, such as our "InfoZone
Archives" at http://www.MakingProfit.com/articles which often publish
links to your deposits of wisdom in their newsletters.

Keep all of your article submission information together. This way when you
are sending it out to your publisher's list, you can submit it to the
databases and online Announcement forms in one shot. Do it all at one time
so there is no second guessing who got what, when..

The Ad Swaps, Article Announcements and Ezine Announcements all have one
thing in common. These are people requesting contact in one form or
another. As I get these newsletters, I look through them for publishers who
have the same subject matter as my articles and I write them a nice letter
explaining that I read their post in "List-Universe" or whatever newsletter
I found them in. I ask them if they would be interested in receiving my
articles for publication in their newsletter. I send along my latest
article for viewing. I have to this date, never received a negative reply,
as I am not sending them a bunch of ads or trying to sell them something,
other than on the idea that my articles could help their newsletter. But,
as luck would have it, every article has what? That's right a resource box.
The publisher knows this and does not consider this ad spamming, as it's
just a part of your article. So you are also getting that ad of yours out
there in front of them, and in such a casual way, that it is not really
considered advertising to the publisher. I have had many publishers write
back that they were not at this time interested in outside articles, but
their email address shows up on my subscriber list. Who knows maybe down
the road they'll change their mind, but for now it's nice to have them
reading my newsletter right? For me, that is my sole reason for writing the
article in the first place.

Joining Contacts:

There are so many fine newsletters out there that I could never even come
close to reading all the ones I really like. But I sign up for new ones on
a regular basis. The first thing I do after signing up is send off my
article submission request letter. If it's a good newsletter, I stay with
it. If not I unsubscribe. But the key is, I made that contact. Very few
publishers operate on the ideals that "you must belong to my newsletter to
send me your articles". If they do and I don't find their newsletter
worthy of my attention and time, I unsubscribe and continue to send them my
articles until requested to stop. Tip: As with a newsletter, offer an
unsubscribe procedure. If you are requested to stop, do yourself a favor
and Stop!

Cold Contact:

If you feel that you can contact them safely, you can search the ezine
databases (such as egroups.com or topica.com) for ezines similar to your
articles and contact them. Leave the advertising at home, besides the
resource box at the end of the sample article. Ezine Archives are a
never-ending source of publishers. Please be careful how you step and who
you step on.

Below, at the end of this article is a list of places to help you get
started.

Your Newsletter:

First the subject and style of your newsletter.

The ideal of course is to find a subject that is under "mined" as far
as newsletters go. My newsletters are in the highly competitive field of
internet marketing, so I cannot say that I followed this bit of advice.
But, if you can find a subject that there are no major newsletters covering
all the better. As that old marketing saying goes, "You don't have to
reinvent the wheel to be successful". It all in the way you market your
newsletter. Don't try to please everybody. Keep your subject matter
focused. If you're in marketing focus on marketing. How many marketers do
you know that want to see granny's cookie recipe in their ebiz newsletter.
Not I. Create a special "Niche Format" that other newsletters in your
field have not yet covered. Research the others and try to do what they
have not done yet. Be creative and stick to your market group. They are
your bread and butter, give them what they want and need.

Quick Tips For Your Newsletter:

1. Discussion Groups

I left this out of the major groups above because I feel that it takes a
certain amount of suave personality to be really successful in Discussion
Groups. I myself picked internet marketing because of the absence of
immediate direct contact with other professionals. I am to easily
tongue-tied and I feel that it behooves me to spend my "marketing time" in
other areas, where I have the time to properly word my replies and/or
communication with others.

2. Offer Easy Sign Up On Your Web Site!

Small sign up box on every page and/or a pop-up on your leading page or
pages. Make it tough to say no!

3. Joint Ventures

Get involved with other publishers. Start a co-op that will mutually
benefit all involved. It could be by way of offering prizes every week or
month, by rotating the prize responsibility from one member to the next.
Each member would be required to do his or her part in advertising the
co-operative effort.

4. Subscriber Incentives

Offer FREE Stuff, contests, giveaways or other reasons to join your
newsletter. Nothing says subscribers like "Getting something for nothing,
(but signing up for your newsletter)....".

5. Archive Your Newsletters

Archive all your previous issues for those possible subscribers that
research everything first and want to know what they are signing up for
ahead of time. They are out there! They will find you!

6. Form or Join A Private E-zine Ring

This seems to be the latest rage. Similar to Joint Ventures, collect a
co-op of other publishers that will agree to enter into a "Private" Ezine
Ring. I say private, because one of the biggest problems with public
webrings today is broken links and broken promises. By keeping it private,
you stand a much better chance of keeping it clean and free of broken links.

7. Send This Issue To A Friend!

Never, ever send an issue out that doesn't request your subscriber to pass
it along. You may even want to suggest some possible recipients they could
send it too. Word of mouth is a very powerful advertising tool!

8. Search Engines & Directories

If you don't have one already, set up a separate page for your ezine, make
sure that your meta-tags are ready (http://216.147.104.180/tools/meta.shtml)
and submit that sucker!

9. FFA Pages

Some say that FFA pages do not work. I'm not here to tell you they do. But
I will say that timing plays a big part in any traffic you may get from
them. If you submit to FFA's on a regular basis, consider this. The three
heaviest traffic times for ffa are lunchtime, late afternoon and early
evening. If you submit to FFA's in the middle of the night, as do so many
people, consider how long it will be there before thousands of others come
in to replace your ad. Who, in what time zone will be reading your ad. As
the bulk of them I submit to are in the US, I base my submittal times on
that. Whatever you do, don't use your normal email address, or you'll be
bombed with more junk mail, than you'll know what to do with. Get a free
email address online somewhere and use that.

10. Link Exchanging

Contact webmasters and ask to exchange links, buttons or banners. Many are
as hungry for new eyes as you are and will be willing to exchange links
with you. Tip: If available, watch your site statistics for traffic from
this site. If there is not enough to justify the link, remove it after a
month.

11. Newsgroups

Of course posting to newsgroups can be helpful to. I feel posting to
newsgroups follows the same basic theories of the FFA Postings. There are
so many, try to get yours in there during peak hours, to maximize your
readership.

12. Ad Swaps

When you're sending out that article to all those publishers, be sure to
ask about ad swap opportunities! First contact and every contact after
that! Use common sense, don't be wasting your time and space for swaps with
incompatible newsletters. I mean really, how much business do you think
your marketing ad is going to gain from "Lassie's Letters"!

13. Ezine Announcements

Search'em out and use them. Many publishers rely on these ezine
announcement lists for content in their newsletters.

14. Last but hardly least.

Marketing Marketing Marketing. You gotta get out there in the trenches guys
and gals. Offer help when you can and even when you can't. Stay in contact
as much as possible with people. Marketing is not a place for pedestals,
it's a place for peers. What do your peers think of you and your company?
Try to answer all of those emails! Nothing worse than an unanswered
question...

Here's A Hodgepodge List of Article & Newsletter Promotion Sites:

http://209.53.3.96/newsletters/addnewsletter.asp
http://ezine-dir.hypermart.net
http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/submit.html
http://jlunz.databack.com/netresources/zines.htm
http://kerrisgifts.hypermart.net/adswaps.htm
http://magazines.yotta.com/
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/
http://www.absoluteauthority.com/ezines/
http://www.arl.org/scomm/edir/template.html
http://www.bestezines.com
http://www.bestnewsletters.com
http://www.bizx.com/cgi-bin/miva?newsletter.mv
http://www.catalog.com/vivian/
http://www.coalliance.org/
http://www.cumuli.com/ezine/
http://www.disobey.com/low
http://www.edoc.com/jrl-bin/wilma
http://www.egroups.com
http://www.escribe.com/
http://www.e-target.com
http://www.etext.org/services.shtml
http://www.eyesmail.com/
http://www.ezinearticles.com/
http://www.ezinecenter.com/
http://www.ezinelibrary.com/
http://www.ezine-news.com
http://www.ezinesearch.com
http://www.ezineseek.com
http://www.ezinestoday.com
http://www.ezine-universe.com
http://www.ezineworld.com
http://www.e-zinez.com
http://www.globelists.com
http://www.HomeBasedProfit.com/ezineadswap.shtml
http://www.infobot.net
http://www.infojump.com/
http://www.inkpot.com
http://www.lifestylespub.com/cgi-bin/ezines.cgi?10616
http://www.linkfinder.com/submit.html
http://www.listbot.com
http://www.list-city.com
http://www.list-resources.com/
http://www.listsnet.com/
http://www.listtool.com/
http://www.list-universe.com
http://www.listworld.net
http://www.liszt.com
http://www.marketingwise.com/ezines.htm
http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list
http://www.milomail.com/com/aannounce.html
http://www.needymeds.com/eAdsMart/index.html
http://www.neosoft.com/internet/paml/
http://www.netagency.com/e-zine-builder.htm
http://www.netmastersolutions.com/ezines
http://www.netspace.org/cgi-bin/lwgate/request-add.html
http://www.netterweb.com/lp/ed_ezinedirectory.htm
http://www.new-list.com/
http://www.newsletteraccess.com/
http://www.newsletter-library.com/ven.htm
http://www.newslettersforfree.com
http://www.oblivion.net/zineworld
http://www.onelist.com
http://www.promotefree.com
http://www.sodamail.com/ezine/home.shtml
http://www.TechMailings.com/
http://www.theadvertisingplace.com
http://www.tile.net/lists/addlist.html
http://www.time4profit.com/
http://www.topica.com
http://www.wealth101.com/ezineadswap.htm
http://www.webcom.com/impulse/list.html
http://www.webheadcentral.com/ezine.html
http://www.web-source.net/
http://www.writebusiness.com
http://www.zinecity.com/
http://www.zinerack.com/

Well, that's it! I think you have enough here to choke a bull, so have fun
and good luck!

Be Sure n' Visit Me Partner!

"Wild Bill"
http://www.MakingProfit.com

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