Archive for December, 2006

Publishing your own eZine is one of the most powerful tactics you can employ for your strategic online positioning. Gold is in your mailing list, they say, and one of the best ways to build up your mailing list is by offering your prospects something they’ll find difficult to refuse: the information they need. And this information is best conveyed through a digital magazine format that is an eZine.

But publishing your own eZine is not as easy as writing and formatting an electronic newsletter. That is the easy part, quite actually. The process of placing the right gears in the right places to ensure an automated system that will allow you to milk your mailing list for a long, long time with minimal labor on your part is the first goal you should aim for.

And the heart of a highly efficient mailing list is an excellent autoresponder service.

What Is An Autoresponder Service?

If you’re going to send an email to 5 or even 10 people, then manually doing the same won’t be a problem. But if you’re going to send an email to hundreds, if not thousands, of recipients, then such will be a laborious task that will take a day or two to accomplish.

Since you’re expected to build up your mailing list to as many subscribers as possible, you don’t have the luxury of manually sending out issues of your eZine.

The solution? You have to enroll with an autoresponder service.

Not just any kind of autoresponder service, mind you, but the best one you can ever find. The reason for this is simple. An autoresponder service is your business partner. Since your mailing list will play an integral role in determining the degree of success you can gain in this industry, and since an autoresponder service will make your mailing list possible, you need to join the best one available.

An autoresponder service automates the entire process. It picks up the contact details of your prospects, stores them in a database, and allows you to pre-load and pre-schedule the delivery of your messages. This way, it is possible to have a year’s worth of messages ready for delivery even before you start accepting subscribers.

Things To Look For In An Autoresponder Service

An excellent autoresponder service should have the following characteristics:

• Allows you to create as many mailing groups as you want. You’d need to transfer subscribers from one to group to another depending on how well they respond and how much they have purchased from your enterprise.
• Allows you to personalize your messages automatically by using the details submitted by your subscribers. People respond more when they are referred to by their given names.
• Has excellent customer care service. You wouldn’t want to be bogged down by technical difficulties in the middle of a very important campaign.
• Will protect you against spam complaints. Spam complaints are sometimes unavoidable despite your best efforts to avoid the same. Your autoresponder service should be able to protect you at times like this so as not to jeopardize your email marketing strategies.

Price Or Features, Which Is Which?

Often, I’ve been asked which is more important in choosing an autoresponder service: its applicable fees or its abundance of features. The ideal answer is: both.

But it can’t be helped that the more powerful and reliable services come at a steeper price. We get what we pay for, after all.

In choosing an autoresponder service, the features should take precedence. An autoresponder service is one of the primary investments you can make for your online business, and it should never be compromised least your success in this field will be jeopardized.

My autoresponder of choice is GetResponse. I can create as many mailing lists as I want, can copy subscribers to and from those lists, and can set up as many autoresponders as I want for the list. I have one client who has over 400 autoresponders attached to one subscription list.

Contact me if you have any questions about autoresponders. They are a great tool for automating your subscription process.

If you have been dabbling with internet marketing for some time now, you’re most probably aware of the fact that information products are one of the easiest and most profitable things that your could sell online. Information products may be eBooks, special reports or articles which you could offer for a price.

Preparing information products is quite easy, at least in theory. All you need are two things:

1. Information; and
2. Writing skills

Information is the hottest commodity in the World Wide Web. This is why the Internet is called the information superhighway. If you’d be able to provide the right kind of information, you will never run out of potential customers. This is especially true if you manage to find a hungry market where the demand for such information would be immense.

Writing an eBook is very similar to writing a special report. An eBook is work composed of approximately 30 or more pages. Anything shorter would be considered as a special report. Here are some simple steps you could take to come up with an information product of this type:

1. Select a topic from the niche you have previously chosen. This topic must correspond to a particular aspect of the niche, something that people would want to know about. For example, in our running example of dog grooming, supposing you choose the niche of shih tzu dog grooming, a good topic to write about is “how to select perfect grooming kits for your shih tzu.”
2. Prepare an outline for your work. It should be as organized as possible. Start with the most basic concepts, and gradually proceed to the more advanced ones.
3. Do your research! This is very important. If you’re offering something in exchange for your prospective customers’ hard-earned money, you should give them something valuable. A well-researched work is what they deserve.
4. Fill up your outline with the necessary information. If you have a great outline, this shouldn’t be a problem. All you have to do is to write about what you have researched and include them in the specific portions allotted by the said outline.
5. This is very important: avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism could ruin you. You need to learn how to respect intellectual property rights when you’re doing business online. There are no ifs and buts about it. You need to come up with an original work to sell.
6. Once you have finished the draft of your eBook or special report, have it proofread for errors. Make corresponding corrections.
7. Once you have your error-free manuscript, you would need to come up with an attractive and attention-grabbing eCover for your work. People always say that no one should judge a book by its cover. This is rarely practiced however. Many books, and many eBooks, are sold on the basis of their covers alone. Invest on a good eCover to boost your sales.
8. Then you would have to convert your work into .pdf format. Being in .pdf format would allow more people to read your eBook, as a variety of computer platforms recognize this file type.

Once you have completed these steps, you’ll own an information product that is ready to be sold!

But what if you are not possessed of writing skills, or you simply don’t have the time to write? Does this mean that you can’t come up with your own information product? Most definitely not, of course, as there are many ways to skin the cat, in a manner of speaking. For starters, you could always try outsourcing, or contracting the services of an outside party to help you prepare the information products you have in mind. Another option is to make good use of private label rights, better known as PLR in the industry today. Products sold with PLR would allow the purchaser to alter their contents and even name themselves as the author of the works.

There is no excuse why you couldn’t come up with your own information product. If the internet promises to be your ride to a good life, then an information product, quite surely, is your ticket to hop aboard that freight train.

You may have encountered the saying “gold is in your list” in this industry. This passage simply means that a great majority of your sales will come from your mailing list. Statistics show that, at the average, your prospects will only decide to buy from you after the 12th contact.

Yes, that’s a whole lot of messages.

And the only way you can contact them over and over again is by capturing their email addresses and including them in your mailing list. This is where it gets tricky. The “what’s in it for me” mentality is still prevalent, and you have to offer your prospects something valuable so that they can be motivated enough to fill up your capture page and submit the personal details to your mailing list.

Fortunately, there are many valuable things you can use as bait, and electronic magazines, or eZines, are on top of the list.

What Is An Ezine?

An eZine is basically a newsletter in digital format, deliverable via email. And every media of this kind is efficient for one thing: conveying information. The internet is fueled by the constant need for information. People log online to find information on the things they need to know about as well as the things that interest them. They use search engines to find the particular information they’re looking for.

And if you have the information they need, they will naturally come to you. If you can offer such information, or better yet, constantly updated information on the matter as time goes by, then you can rally them into joining your mailing list in exchange for what you can provide.

They’re In, Now What?

Building the size of your mailing list is a magnificent strategy to catapult your online business to the highest levels of success. Name a guru – any guru – and study his tactics. You’re sure to discover that a great part of his success can be attribute to his mailing list, particularly these two characteristics that determine its efficiency as a moneymaking pool:

1. The sheer size of the mailing list. It’s still a numbers game. The more prospects you have, the more leads you can contact for your future offers.
2. Response rate of the mailing list. Your subscribers should be able to read your eZine issues so that they can be exposed to your business message. This is something within your control.

The tactic is simple in theory. Gain as many subscribers as you can, send them an offer they can’t refuse, and see what happens next. Repeat the process throughout the duration of your online career. Many online empires are founded on this simple principle.

The Many Applications Of Your Ezine

Not only will an eZine help the sales rate for your online business, it can also be used to help you succeed in other online business models you may choose to pursue:

• Do you have PPC-enrolled websites? Guarantee repeat visitors by capturing the contact details of your guests and informing them of updates to your pages.
• Are you an affiliate promoting a high paying program? Advertise your affiliate links to the members of your mailing list.
• Are you running a membership site? Use your mailing list for your announcements and updates.
• Or are you looking for a way to earn money online? Your eZine can serve as an electronic course, or eCourse, and you can charge for subscriptions.

There are many things you can do with eZines. But one thing is certain: its value is very much indispensable for the success of your online enterprise.