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By Jon Kogan
I can remember my first reaction to word "ezine". What is it?
The word "ezine", (pronounced ee-zeen), is a shortened version
of "electronic zine", which is a word used to describe short
self-published "electronic magazines".
Ezines can be email-based, Web-based, or presented in some other
electronic format. However, for the most part, when publishers
speak of their "ezines", they're usually referring to an email
publication.
Ezine publishing has grown in popularity over the last several
years to the point where there are thousands of "ezines"
covering virtually every topic under the sun.
Some ezine "gurus" have spent years of tedious, zombie Internet
surfing and late night fact finding through manual work to
compile their personal arsenal of ezine marketing tools and
resource list.
Email publishers produce their ezines for a variety of reasons
and the following are among the most common goals:
Generating Revenue - Generating a profit is one of the most
common "ezine" publishing goals. The sources of "ezine"
revenue include advertising, sales of products or services
affiliate revenue, and so on. The ezine serves as a support
mechanism for the product or service and adds value to it, which
encourages more sales.
Generating Leads - Publishing an ezine is a great way to
generate leads with the same pursuits and interests. Important
personal and business contacts are made every day between
ezine publishers and their subscribers.
Supporting a Website - An ezine creates an excellent means of
driving repeat traffic.
Once you've determined your goals, for starters, you should plan
a publishing strategy that will best enable you to reach those
goals. You need to decide on ezine topic, determine the
frequency, issue size and the most importantly, develop the
content.
One of the most popular types of ezine content is the
"article". Articles might be of the news, how-to, entertaining,
or other variety. As an example, since I am in home business, my
article content is focused on marketing ideas, useful business
building resources, time saving tools, website development and
training.
It is highly recommended that you produce at least some of the
content yourself. As a publisher, you are in the unique position
to be able to create your ezine unique "personality". Your
subscribers will learn to identify it over time and may come to
appreciate your ezine for precisely that reason. Other popular
sources of content include staff or freelance writers, syndicated
content, or reprints of articles from other ezine publishers.
On the other hand, if all of your content is un-original and
your ezine offers nothing unique to your subscribers, they will
not have much of incentive to read each issue or stay subscribed.
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