By now you should have already read Phil Tanny's excellent article on why you should run a newsletter, now I will address the how of the matter. This is a problem that gets a lot of people stuck. There are two main difficulties to overcome when setting up a newsletter. These are very important. They are figuring out how to send out your newsletter, and how to find quality content for your newsletter. You need to put a lot of thought and preparation into each of these. In the article I hope to set you on the right track.
Sending Out Your Newsletter
Okay, sure you can send out your newsletter using Eudora or Pegasus, but admit it. It wouldn't be very fun sending out an email message to 2,000 people every week via your desktop computer. I know there are many people out there who run huge mailing lists that say it works fine, and all that, but really, it isn't the most convenient way to do it. It takes up a lot of your time.
A nice solution is getting someone else to send it out for you. It's easy, fast and usually very cheap, often free. Usually all you do is send one email to their server, and it sends it out to all your subscribers. Very painless. Of course, there is a catch. Most of them will attach a small (or sometimes large) ad to your newsletter. There are a number of companies that offer free newsletter mailing services, including:
- Groups Yahoo: From what I have seen, this is one of the best free servers on the Internet.
http://groups.yahoo.com/ - Listbot: This one has recently been improved... they now support larger messages and also allow your subscribers to sign up via email.
http://www.listbot.com - Server.com: Never tried it, but it looks hard to use. Who knows, though...
http://www.server.com - CoolList: NOT recommended. http://www.coollist.com
I always say with newsletter servers that "you get what you pay for". It is true. Most of the above services offer non-existent tech support, as well as often unreliable servers. If you can't find a free server that you like or don't want the ads that most of them append to the top and bottom of your newsletter or just don't like the poor quality service in general, then I would highly recommend you get one of OakNet Publishing's paid accounts. Sure, I'm a reseller, but I can highly recommend them. I have used their servers for about a year and a half now to run The Informer and found them to be very reliable, fast and the customer support couldn't be any better. They will also sell ads for you if you want them to, and give you a nice big chunk of the profits. Give them a try...
How To Find Quality Content
There are many ways to do this. Back when I first started my newsletter, I used to ask everyone I knew who specialized in website promotion for article contributions, either original or used. At that point I didn't really mind, so long as it was quality content.
Another good place for quality content is the World Wide Information Outlet. They have hundreds of articles that are free to copy to your newsletter or web page providing you include a small ad for their page after the article.
This sort of thing worked reasonably well, until it got to the size where I needed something more original. What do you do to get exclusively original content? Well, first of all you need a large subscriber base. When I started going after exclusive articles, I had a subscriber base of over 5,000.
I ended up making special deals with two or three excellent writers. They have committed to writing an exclusive article for me each week, and so far it has worked out great. We both get a good deal, they get a weekly article in a large newsletter, and I get excellent content for free.
I also started writing my own articles, to add that personal touch to my newsletter. You can expect guest writers to do it all.
Summary
I hope these ideas have given you a few... well, ideas. Newsletters can be an excellent way to build up a loyal base of visitors!
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