Articles and Newsletters
Articles and newsletters can be a very effective way to advertise and to position yourself as a knowledgeable person in your field. Please note I do not say expert, or worse yet, guru, as I feel that there are too many people claiming such titles with too little experience.
Creating a newsletter and getting a good subscriber base is a lot of work. This will take time, but the result will be that you will have a base of people who have permitted you to send email to them, freeing you from worrying about spamming. Keep your content relevant, current and interesting. If you can't write, there are many websites, such as IdeaMarketers, that offer free articles. See the list of resources at the end of this section for more article databases.
There are several tools to help you build your subscriber list. First, I will recommend two free ones - Optin Storm and List Inferno. Each of these places advertisements for other ezines on your site, and in exchange advertise yours on others. Optin Storm gives you one additional benefit - if you have a ClickBank affiliate ID, you can choose a product, and they will promote it to those who subscribe through your window. So you just might make some sales too.
Second, invest in a copy of EzineAnnouncer. This is a tool that will not only help you submit your ezine to many ezine databases, but also helps you to submit your advertising, and if you write articles, helps you to submit articles to other ezines and to article databases. All in all, it's a great deal for only $69. You get well over 1000 resources in these various categories and total control over submission of your ezine, articles and advertising.
But what is the benefit for me, you may be wondering. There are many. First, it builds your reputation as someone who knows what they are doing. This helps when you make a product recommendation or when people are considering who to use for a service. The idea is to get them to choose you because you know what you're doing. This means you need to provide great information. Newsletters generate leads for you, allowing you an easy way to promote your special offers. You can also sell advertising if your ezine is both big and targeted enough. You can offer timely information. If a deal expires tomorrow, your subscribers can hear about it today!
This brings me to writing articles. It's not as hard as you might think. Just imagine how you would tell a good friend about the topic. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT make your articles purely into sales letters. They won't get published by other ezines, and your newsletter subscribers won't appreciate it. Use the resource box at the end of your article to tell people about your business. To get ideas about what to write an article about, consider different aspects of your business that people would enjoy reading about. If you sell shoes, tell people about the history of shoes, alternative uses for shoes (well, maybe not), or current events in the world of shoes.
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