Podcaster Training: Starting Your Own eZine or Newsletter

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Tonight’s discussion is also an exercise in list building. A few weeks ago, the question was asked about the importance of building a list. Depending on your niche, business or marketing tactics, building a list can be very important for you, but also, very hard to do as well!

I’m not trying to scare you off from doing this, but you need to be aware that when you decide to build a list of subscribers, that this will not happen overnight. Building a good list can take months or even years before you have enough loyal subscribers that will enable your list to start making you money.

Now, before I go further, let’s step back and look at what is needed to start building a list. Let’s assume you want to start your own eZine (electronic magazine) or your own monthly newsletter. Of course, the first thing you need, is the eZine or Newsletter. Writing an eZine or newsletter is not the same as writing a blog post. Your eZine should have a format worthy of your niche and your newsletter, likewise, should have topics in it that aren’t normally found on your blog, web site or podcast.

Once you have your eZine or newsletter and are ready to start producing it on a weekly, monthly or whatever basis, then the next thing you need to do is to setup an autoresponder. An autoresponder will be your 24 hour Assistant for signing up subscribers, opting out subscribers, sending subscribers follow up notices and the like. There are many autoresponder services out there like Aweber, GetResponse and others that will charge a monthly fee to use there service. Aweber, for example, offers a 30 day free trial of their service so that you can test drive the service for yourself.

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Ok, once you have your autoresponder setup, you must go out and setup the messages that will go out to your subscribers. The first message should be a welcome message, welcoming the new subscriber to your eZine or newsletter. Also, let your new subscriber know that they can unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the link that is always found at the bottom of each e-mail you send. This will give your new subscriber a little more confidence in subscribing with you.

Once the autoresponder is setup and all the messages are in place, next, you need to grab the HTML code from your service and place this “Subscribe to me” box on your web site or blog so that people can easily subscribe to you. Once this is in place, it is time for a promotion on your blog, site and podcast letting everyone know that they can now subscribe to your eZine or newsletter easily and tell them how to do this!

Once your autoresponder is setup, you will receive an e-mail every time someone subscribe or unsubscribes to your list. Now is the time to start producing good content so that your subscribers will stay on and continually receive your e-mails and enjoy what you are sending out. Here is your chance, once you have some subscribers on your list, to slip in a extra e-mail or two every once in a while, with a special offer or promotion you have going. DON’T start spamming your own list or else you will lose everyone before you even get started. If you are producing a weekly newsletter, send one e-mail every week, usually the same day each week, announcing the newsletter is ready or that the e-mail contains that weeks newsletter (however, you may be sending it out) and likewise, monthly, once a month send out this e-mail. After you get your list started, and your subscribers have began receiving your weekly or monthly e-mails, THEN you can start slipping in the extra one or two every now and again. Haste makes waste, and you don’t want to get hasty when starting your list.

When setting up your eZine or newsletter, you will need to decide on the format, like I mentioned earlier. Are you going to send it out in HTML, like a web page, will it be a blog post or page, will it be in TXT format or PDF? Are you going to include audio or video as part of your publication?

There are lots of things to think about, however, mainly you will want to send it out in a format that will benefit the majority of your audience. PDF for example, can be read on PC’s and Macs, and this is the most popular way of sending out a newsletter, however, TXT or text format is also good, unless you are wanting to include links, audio, video, etc. that will not work in this format. HTML e-mails or good for links, adding audio and video and can be read on most e-mail readers. Of course, having a separate blog post or page is also universal for you as well.

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Sneek Peek: Starting an eZine or Newsletter

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On our next episode of Podcaster Training, we will be discussing ways to start your own eZine or Newsletter and an exercise in list building. As many of you know who follow the show, most of my topics come from you, the listener, and this is one of those questions that came about during a previous discussion.

Building an opt-in list is not important to all niches, however, sometimes, a good list can be a great source of additional revenue to your web site, blog or podcast. Also, having a good list gives you a way to keep in constant contact with loyal readers and listeners, without having to maintain a separate address book with those you think might be interested.

Before you can have a good list, you must have an autoresponder service or script that will be able to get you going in the right direction. Aweber is the most recognized autoresponder service going right now. Yes, there are others, but Aweber is probably the most widely used of these services and they have been around for more than 10 years, so that says something too!

There are a number of scripts that you can run from your web site or blog (as long as you have your own server and domain, that is) and many of these scripts will have the same functionality of Aweber or the other services. The main difference is, you pay for the script once and with Aweber and other services, there is a monthly fee applied to utilize the service.

We’ll talk more on Friday about starting an eZine, an electronic magazine or newsletter and how these relate to list building. Until then, see you on Friday!

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Newsletter to become an e-course

A few months ago, I started a newsletter to allow me to get even more information out to you easily. As with most good things, this is a time consuming process to keep this going each month, so instead, I am changing the newsletter into a weekly e-course instead. For some, you have already seen this change, for others that may have just subscribed, don’t worry, it’s coming!

I have the last newsletter still online and will leave it there for now. The new e-courses will continue on a weekly basis and I will offer a variety of different courses over the next several weeks. The current e-course is on web site promotion.

Running a weekly e-course will also allow me more control over the content that I present as well as allow me to get updates out to the newsletter subscribers quicker.

If you want to subscribe, click on Newsletters at the top of the page and submit your Name and E-Mail Address. Also, be assured that I will not spam you, only send you quality content.

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