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Growing Your Subscriber List I found two great resources that deal with this topic. One is an older article by Greg Schliesmann entitled, "Building Your Ezine." You can find it at
<http://www.jvmarketer.com/ezine/building.html> The second is an excellent tutorial by Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian available at eBoz.Com
<http://www.newslettercoach.com/tutorial>. What follows is my personal approach to this important task. What Is A Subscriber Worth To You? Probably more than you think. Consider the time you put into preparing your newsletter. Factor in the mailing costs. (They will be modest to zero while getting started, but they increase with the size of your list.) While subscribers to your ezine will not necessarily become a customer, your hope is they will turn to your product or service should they find a need for it. As long as they continue listening to you, they remain great prospects who may step forward at any time and buy. There is another value to be considered: Advertising. The more subscribers you have, the greater the advertising revenue. Each individual will need to work things out for themselves, but many successful webmasters are willing to pay as much as $3 - $5 for a subscriber. If you are new to publishing an ezine, this may sound too high. But you need to be thinking of a number that works for you even if you are just starting out. For the sake of argument, call it one dollar per subscriber. Use this factor as follows. How much time does it take to accomplish a given task designed to bring in new subscribers? Now estimate the number you expect to bring in, times a buck apiece. Factor in an hourly value for your time. Use this approach in each of the following to decide if it's worth doing. Announcing Your New Ezine Internet Scout New-List at <http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/index.html> will publish an announcement of your ezine at no charge. (You can find New-List in the nav bar on the left of the page.) I gave this a shot when I began "STAT News." My count showed it generated 15 new subscribers. Since it takes me a lot of time to prepare a good announcement, this did not work out well for me. Greg reported 350 new subscribers from his release. It may be as simple as the fact that he is a better copywriter than I am. Windsong at <http://marketing-resources.com> suggests if you are starting a newsletter, send a blank email to OneList. <onelist_ announcesubscribe@onelist.com>They send a confirmation message to which you just "reply." This will subscribe you. Next, send an announcement about your ezine to <onelist_announce@onelist.com>It will go out to nearly 400,000 people! This a legitimate operation, but if in doubt, check out their site at <http://onelist.com>. I had less luck in this, than with Internet Scout. I suspect I did not take sufficient care with my announcement. Press Releases Can Work Wonders I have not tried a mass mailing of a press release, for I sense it just won't pay off for me. With so many "big" items to talk about, the announcement of a new ezine about marketing and promotion is not likely to be the talk of the town. On the other hand, if your ezine is unique in some special way, give thought to mass mailing a press release. Anything new or unusual is news. Given a good press release, returns can be very significant. Get Listed In Lists Below is a set of ezine lists. I'm confident it will be worth your time to get listed in each. It took me less than three hours to submit to all of them. And since I used an email address for subscription not used elsewhere, I have an accurate count of new subscribers from these lists. It amounts to about 12/month over the last two months, which suggests 144 for the year. At a buck per subscriber, and more expected next year, I feel this is time well spent. Note this list is a combination of those offered by both Greg and the tutorial at eBoz.Com. The links are up to date as of 11/03/99, the day I submitted. Before beginning to submit, build a great short description and a longer one, much as you would need when submitting to a directory. In the longer description, write so that the last sentence or two can be deleted without great harm. Speak to reader benefits. You also need to prepare a set of keywords. Not all want them but many do. If you accept articles, be prepared to give guidelines. If you accept advertising, have your rates handy. While it took about five minutes to fill out the forms at each site, a couple took much more as noted below. "Directory of Ezines" is big time. They charge $39/year for access and I sense it's worth it, for it seems to be the most up to date directory around. It also took some time, about fifteen minutes. Keep track of your account number and password so you can go back and update such things as the number of subscribers and advertising rates. "InfoJump" has a very complex form. It took me about 25 minutes to complete it. If you're short of time, you might want to pass on this one. Note this is a great source for articles for your ezine. "Liszt" is a biggie, but I gave up on it. They apparently want subscription information specific to a particular mailing service. Mine was not listed and I couldn't figure a way to get it in. Directory of Electronic Journals and Newsletters Zinew0rld Subscribe To Newsletters The next step, and a very important one, is to go back to the above list and find all ezines with a target similar to yours. Subscribe to each, even if the number seems overwhelming. Hang in with each just as long as possible. Prior to beginning "STAT News," I subscribed to over a hundred ezines. Trying to get through them nearly drove me crazy, but I learned a good deal. And one by one, I unsubscribed. Here's what you are looking for. > Ideas you can use in your own newsletter. More important, reading will trigger original ideas of your own. Maybe something new. Or a fresh view of something old. Hard Work That Pays Off Double Collect the URL for all competing ezines. Also collect the mailto subscription address. What you want to find is all links to either, and where they are listed. You can, of course, do this in various ways with the search engines. And Greg offers links to a couple of good online tools you may find helpful. But like Greg, I favor WebFerret for this and many other tasks. It will search many search engine databases all at the same time. And it's fast. On my system, it will produce a list of 1000 links in about ten minutes. But the best news is that it is free. Go to However you approach this task it is hard work and it takes time. When you find a competitor listed where you are not, go there and get listed. When you find a site that is linked to your competitor, go there and attempt to get a link to your site. In this later case, I go a step further. If the site would be of interest to my visitors, I first link to it. Then I send a note pointing out that I have done so, and inviting a link back. I get one about 80% of the time. (For details, please see <mailto:buildlinks@sitetipsandtricks.com>) Leave No Stone Unturned Let me wrap with a recommendation to work through the tutorial at eBoz. It's terrific, and includes whole bunches of good thinking not mentioned here. Also read Greg's article in full. Toward the end of it there are several excellent suggestions for building your subscriber list not included here. BOB MCELWAIN has been marketing on the Web since 1993. He guides newbie webmasters in building great sites with less effort by showing them how to work smarter. For loads of newbie friendly site stuff, visit http://SiteTipsAndTricks.ComFor even more, subscribe to "STAT News!" Just send a blank email to join-stat@lists.dundee.net
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