Avoid These 7 E-zine Publishing Mistakes

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Here's a defintion of E-Zine in the context of this article:

E-zine is short for an "Electronic magaZINE" published online or delivered in the form of an email newsletter. "Ezine" and "e-Zine" are spelling variations.

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Publishing an E-zine can be a very lucrative business. That's why more and more people are jumping on the E-zine publishing band wagon. Anyone can get an autoresponder and compile their own newsletters and e-courses to their subscribers at the cost of pennies. It is no surprise that E-zines are an online marketers choice of medium for list building and selling ad spaces.

However, there are a lot of mistakes made by newbies. Mistakes such as unsolicited emailing and not appropriately focusing on their core business. These must be addressed so that profits are not wasted.

Common Newbie Mistakes and How You Can Overcome Them

Common Newbie Mistake #1: Sending E-zines Through Your Yahoo! or Gmail Account

Part of the temptation for net biz newbies is to collect a group of emails and start mailing out from their own personal e-mails. At first this may seem quite harmless when you have about 10-20 people in your list, but once your subscriber count exceeds 50 people, you are going to have a very big problem on your hand.

First of all, you will have to handle people who newly sign up on your list, manually. People who wish to unsubscribe needs to be manually removed as well – causing you massive administration problems.

The worst thing is most Internet service providers (ISPs) refuse to let you send bulk emails to many people at once. Of course, they set their own limits so that spammers won’t prey on the unsuspecting through their networks.

If you're not careful and you do not back-up your computer, you might even lose your subscriber list because your entire list sits within your computer’s hard drive. You might wind up losing hundreds or thousands of subscribers that you spent so much time gathering.

So, don’t be foolish . . . make sure you get a good and reliable autoresponder to handle all the work for you.

Common Newbie Mistake #2: Signing Subscribers Up on Other Lists Without Their Permission

One of the biggest newbie mistakes when it comes to E-zines is signing your subscribers up on other mailing lists without their permission. You may mistakenly think, "they're already on my list, why not sign them up on some other list I want to promote?" WRONG!

"Unsolicited signups" is a big no-no on the Net, and will get you into deep trouble! A worst case scenario: you will be accused of spamming and you will get your IP blacklisted on the ISPs.

You must do things the proper way. When you want to build your list or invite people to subscribe, make sure you mail them a proper invitation form (or landing page) and when they manually opt in again, then you will have their permission. Bear in mind that you must once again ‘convince’ them why they should opt-in to your new list and never ever take any shortcuts.

Common Newbie Mistake #3: Not Giving Good or Useful Content

Some publishers are so obsessed with getting traffic and selling things that all they ever do in their E-zines is sell products and talk all about themselves.

Another common problem is that the E-zine publishers load their E-zines with so many ads that it disrupts the reading pleasure of their readers.

It is said: Content is king. Never diverge from that. Even more importantly, relevant content for your subscribers should be the main deal.

What you must do for your subscribers is to provide useful content (about 80% of your E-zine) and leave the rest for paid ads. It is a healthy balance.

Common Newbie Mistake #4: Losing Your "Business" Focus

On the other side of the coin, there are many publishers who talk about everything under the sun by serving up powerful and useful content for their readers but they forget about the most important thing – making MONEY.

As an online marketer, publishing an E-zine is about making money. You can’t do it without promoting yourself or your business. In any business, remember that branding is the most important and you have to create that awareness in your E-zine while providing good content at the same time.

Learn to use strategically placed affiliate links so that your prospects don’t feel as though they are being ‘sold to’. Talk about them first, then talk about a solution for them and then finally talk about YOUR solution for them. End everything with a call to action. That way, you will not be wasting traffic from your subscribers.

Common Newbie Mistake #5: Neglecting A Personal "Tone"

One of the problems of bulk mailing to many people at once is that you are apt to forget to be human. You may be tempted to load up your autoresponder with a series of impersonal communications.

If you don’t know don't add a personal touch to your email headlines, you are missing out on a lot.

Consider communicating in a personal tone rather than selling your subscribers products all the time. Otherwise they will feel you are just trying to grab their money.

Common Newbie Mistake #6: Neglecting the ‘Subscriber Only’ Privilege

E-zine subscribers are one of the most important people on your list. They are people who are genuinely interested in your work and spend time reading it. You should pamper them and treat them with care because that is probably where the money is!

Since they usually follow you from the beginning to the end, you should give them a reward every now and again. For example, if you are selling a product (e.g. an ebook, an mp3 download or templates) and you usually sell them for $17, maybe you can consider giving your loyal subscribers a $7 discount.

They will appreciate it and will gladly refer others to subscribe to your list or better yet, start promoting as your affiliate because they've been given the special treatment.

Common Newbie Mistake #7: Publishing Whenever You Feel Like It

Do you know that you should keep in touch with your subscribers as regularly as possible?

There are millions of people on the Internet. If you don’t keep in touch with them, they will most likely forget all about you and your E-zine. Don’t ever let this happen to your business! It is easier to keep an existing customer or subscriber compared to getting a brand new one!

Publishing regularly suggests to your readers that you are an organized and you are able to meet deadlines and commitments.

You must learn to set aside some time for your publishing schedule. A way to accomplish this is to construct something like an E-course in advance. Then publish them everyday or every three days. Use this time to work on another product or come up with content for your E-zine.

Even if you don’t have any special content for your subscribers, try and stay in touch with them as regularly as possible.

Even a simple “Hi” followed by a link to another person’s site (preferably an affiliate program) will also do the job just fine!

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There are many mistakes made by newbies, but the worst mistake that can ever happen is to repeat your mistakes over and over again. Don’t take this for granted. If you keep on committing mistakes, you will lose credibility in the eyes of your subscribers and joint venture partners (even if you are a seasoned E-zine publisher.

Always be vigilant and keep on refining your work and you can be sure that online success will be yours.