Building a second income stream: 8/27/06

Friday, September 01, 2006

Starting A Successful Newsletter

Starting A Successful Newsletter
Copyright © 2006 Cheryl Miller

A free newsletter is a powerful way to develop your business. By this means you will be able to build your own in house opt-in list many of your readers, over time, will become your loyal lifetime customers. Your subscribers are truly VIPs and should be treated as such.

Your newsletter should fulfill these functions

1. Build your business opt-in list

2. Develop business relationships with your subscribers

3. Selling your services, products and affiliate programs

4. Income from 3rd party ads

How will your newsletter build your business opt-in list? When visitors subscribe to your newsletter they will automatically join your business list. You can do direct advertising and ad swaps for new subscribers to your publication. Ad Coops are useful for building marketing and home business newsletter lists. Cross promotion with related businesses will also build your list.

Developing business relationships with your subscribers: This is a very important part of newsletter publishing. Respond to questions from subscribers promptly. Always offer free advice and help to subscribers. Always make sure you give quality content in your publication. This will establish you as the expert in your field and inspire confidence and trust in your readers.

Selling your services, products and affiliate programs: Quality, targeted, in house ads for the products and services you sell can be offered in your newsletter. Your recommendation as a publisher will help to sell to your subscribers. Do not put too many just your best offers.

Income from 3rd party ads: These ads can bring in a little income and help fund your list building advertising. Make sure they are good quality and highly targeted to your readers. In this way you will have responsive readers and happy advertisers.

Your quality newsletter should contain

1. Good informative articles

2. Interesting tips

3. A survey

4. Disclaimer and means for unsubscribing

Content will sell your newsletter and keep unsubscribing to a minimum. People love original information. Either write the articles yourself or hire a ghostwriter. It will be worth your investment.

Tips and tricks of the trade are also popular. Readers enjoy snippets of information that they can jot down and use.

A survey is useful. It is very important for you to know what your reader wants and the more you the publisher interact with your readers the better.

Disclaimer and means for unsubscribing: In order to safeguard yourself and comply with the CanSpam Act always include your disclaimer at the top, and a way to unsubscribe at the bottom. See our newsletter for an example of this.

Important tips for good publishing and newsletter management

1. Layout

2. List management

3. Responsible advertising

4. Send out your newsletter on a regular basis

Your layout should be clear and well presented. If your newsletter looks impressive and professional people will be more inclined to read and not unsubscribe.

Use an autoresponder to take care of list management and sending your publication. There are many good ones out there. Words of caution do not use a free autoresponder as they will include their ads in your newsletter and this will make you look less professional. It is critical for your newsletter to look and be as professional as possible.

Advertise responsibly: Treat your subscribers well. Do not look at them as dollar bills, and flood their mailboxes with a ton of ads. Try to keep ads to 2-3 a week and only 4 as a maximum number in your publication.

Try to send out your newsletter on a regular basis. In this way you keep in constant contact with your subscribers and can build business relationships with them more easily.

Newsletters are the heart of your business and can be a lot of fun to publish. With this powerful free marketing tool you can build your business at a steady pace and enjoy doing it.

About The Author:

Cheryl Miller is an entrepreneur specializing in niche markets. For more information about magnetic badges and how they can help you promote your business, please visit http://www.badgemags.com. Cheryl is also the publisher of the Magnetic Marketer Newsletter: http://www.badgemags.com/magnetic_marketer_subscribe.htm

Article Source: thePhantomWriters Article Submission Service

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Why You Should Strive to Create More Than Just Back Links

Why You Should Strive to Create More Than Just Back Links
Copyright © 2006 Trey Pennewell

I read a message on a forum the a while back where a new webmaster was asking for suggestions regarding article submissions to create back links. The person asked how long the articles should be, how many hyperlinks to include, and other questions about article submissions. I was quite surprised by some of the responses that this poster received.

What Sort of Advice Was Given...

It was actually recommended that articles only need to be 250 words long and that the person asking the question should include 4-5 hyperlinks. Another person suggested to write a 500-word article and to include many hyperlinks, because the only purpose of the articles were to create back links.

There is some truth to this... A person could write a short article and get it submitted to many article directories. And, simply generating back links is one way that a webmaster can increase his or her position in the search engine rankings.

But, writing a 250-word article will probably not result in that webmaster being considered an expert on the topic that he or she is writing about.

Experts In Their Fields

Taking the time to create an informative and helpful article will help a person to be considered an expert in his or her field. Imagine for a moment if some of the most famous names on the Internet were to only write brief articles to generate back links. Would Matt Cutts (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/) receive the recognition that he does if he just scribbled a few sentences here and there? Would Joel Comm (http://www.joelcomm.com/) be considered an Adsense expert without writing informative how-to articles and books for those wanting to make money from Adsense? Would you know or care who Robin Nobles (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/) was if she did not create in-depth articles about search engine optimization? Would you even be bothering to read this article?

You can generate a bit of traffic by creating back links by hammering out low-quality articles. But, if you want to be known as an expert, you need to take a different approach and provide the quality information people are seeking. If you have information and expertise that others are unable to find on the Internet, then you will get many more visitors as a result of writing an article.

If you are looking for more than simple back links to your site, then it is worth it to take the time to write a high-quality article. A high quality article, that is written with the reader in mind --- not the search engines --- is more likely to actually get clicks (human visitors) into your site. This is what separates the very successful webmasters from those who are simply getting by.

To be known as an expert or an authority in your area requires articles and information that human beings will actually read. After reading this kind of article, a person will think to himself "This author has the information that I am looking for" and the reader will then visit the writer's website.

How To Succeed With Article Marketing

A well-written article can be submitted to literally thousands of publishers of ezines, newsletters, and free reprint article sites and can result in dozens and sometimes hundreds of back links for a website. Now, not every publisher will pick up your article, but for the ones that do, you get a back link. More important than the back links though is the number of people that will cite your article, forward it to their friends, and reference it in their own articles that they are distributing.

These high-quality articles are how a webmaster becomes known as an "authority" on a topic. When you write for the reader and offer something of real value, you will reap the rewards with a huge influx of traffic to your website.

How To Fail With Article Marketing

Generalized junk articles that are filled with hyperlinks and self promotion will only result in a few back links, and people who actually read those less-than-quality articles are not very likely to ever visit your site.

Poorly written articles are also unlikely to get published in ezines and newsletters where you can reach potentially thousands of readers in a single day.

The worst thing about the low-quality junk articles is that if people do read them, they might always think of you as a "junk peddler", and most people don't buy from people whom they perceive as "junk peddlers".

As a webmaster, you need to decide for yourself what goals you have in mind for your article submission campaign. If you limit yourself to only generating back links, you will not see the full potential of visitors and traffic that you could be getting to your website.

A Final Thought...

An article that is good enough to wind up on sites like http://www.About.com can give you a huge and consistent growth in traffic for some time to come. Articles that are picked up by large newsletters like http://www.SiteProNews.com can deliver thousands of visitors to your website in a day, add to your credentials as an "authority" website, and will create a situation where your website is one of the first places that people turn to for information in your field.

The bottom line is that if you write for the human reader instead of the search engines, you will be rewarded with many more visitors, and you can gain an authority status among your visitors.

The choice is yours. You can spend an extra hour or two creating a high-quality article that will be published on more websites creating more back links to your website, establish you as an authority in your field, and allow you to see thousands of visitors in a day when your article is published in one or a dozen ezines. Or you can save the extra hour or two and pray that your limited efforts will amount to anything of real value.

About The Author:

Trey Pennewell is a writer who creates articles that will be used to develop links for the clients of the Links And Traffic.com inbound link development services. Trey even practices what he preaches - his own articles have appeared on hundreds of great quality websites. Trey writes on several topics that are related to the target markets of Links And Traffic customers. Feel free to use this article on your website, so long as all links remain clickable. http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com