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By Richard Grady
Let's start at the beginning - why do you need a newsletter?
Well of course, you don't NEED a newsletter BUT they can be
very beneficial to your online business. A regular
newsletter will do a couple of things; firstly it will help
to build trust and respect with your subscribers (assuming
you are writing about something that they are interested in
and that you are knowledgeable about your subject matter).
Secondly, it will remind your subscribers of who you are
and what your website is about. If you get it right, this
will mean that your subscribers are more likely to turn
into customers....
Ok, so now you know why you might want a newsletter, how do
you go about starting one?
As with most things online, there are several ways to get
started but most of these methods will fall into one of two
categories:
1. A third-party hosted service
2. Your own service hosted on your web server
The difference between the two is simple. With a
third-party hosted service, you host your newsletter list
with a company that is specifically set up for this
purpose. Whenever you want to send a newsletter, you just
upload your newsletter to this company and they send it for
you from their servers.
With the second option, you would need to install a script
on your own hosting server and then your newsletter emails
are sent via your own hosting account.
Pro's and Con's of each option
With the third-party service you will normally have to pay
a monthly fee to use the service and you probably won't
have as much control over exactly when your newsletter is
sent. However, this is usually much easier to set up and
maintain than the second option and is an ideal way to
start off.
With your own service you probably won't have to pay a
monthly fee (other than for your normal hosting) BUT your
hosting company is very likely to have a restriction on how
many emails you can send at once. The reason for this is
that sending emails uses server resources and a host is not
going to want you 'taking over' one of their servers to
send tens of thousands of emails. The maximum number of
emails you can send will vary from 30 upwards so you should
check with your host before setting up a newsletter in this
way. On the plus side, you will have total control over
when the newsletters are sent, since you are the one in
charge of the 'send' button.
Whichever method you decide to use (and I recommend the
first for new publishers), you will normally be able to
send either a text or HTML message by selecting the
appropriate option in your newsletter control panel (which
you would access via your web browser). You will also be
able to generate the necessary 'form code' to put on your
website so that you have a nice subscription form for new
subscribers to complete.
Finally, both services will deal with unsubscriptions and
bounced emails automatically which means you can
concentrate on writing great content!
If you are new to publishing a newsletter, I strongly
recommend a hosted service called Ezine Director (
http://www.thetraderonline.com/em.html ). Ezine Director
is very easy to use and is completely free of charge until
you have more than 500 subscribers on your list. After
that the prices are very reasonable.
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