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100
Ways to Successfully
Build
and Market an
Ezine
Copyright
2001 EzineVille.com. All rights reserved. No duplication.
Some
of these steps will gain you hundreds or even thousands of subscribers.
Some them will only gain you five or ten subscribers. But the synergy created by following all the steps will
skyrocket your subscriber base.
Build
a Great Website
1.
Put up a website
excusively devoted to your ezine.
2.
Post an archive of previous issues and articles on your website.
3. Make a list of every
possible keyword and phrase that your target audience people interested
in your ezine topic would search for on the internet.
(Most of these keywords should come up pretty often in the text
of your newsletter and on the pages of your website--this will result in
"keyword density" on your website and better placement in the
search engines.)
4.
Go to http://www.goto.com's keyword suggestion tool at the
following URL and get an idea of which keywords you might add to your
list: http://inventory.goto.com/inventory/Search_Suggestion.jhtml
5.
Visit http://www.wordspot.com and zero in even further on what
keywords your target market is searching for online.
6. Visit http://www.wordtracker.com
and get even clearer on which keywords are the best ones to target
7. Use these keywords to
find your competition (the people who come up in the first ten search
results) on these search engines, directories, and pay per click search
engines: Infoseek, Excite,
AltaVista, Lycos, WebCrawler, Inktomi Powered
engines (HotBot - Yahoo - Microsoft - NBCi), Northern Light, and
Yahoo, Google, Goto, and Findwhat and scour their pages for keywords you
might have missed.
8. Write a clear
description of your website using the keywords that you listed in the
earlier steps.
9. Have the subscription
form on your website very prominent--preferably on the left hand side of
your home page above the fold. (People
read a website the same way they read a page in a book, starting in the
upper left hand corner).
10. Have a subscription form on every page of your website.
11. Have
links to other high quality websites that relate to your ezine topic.
12. Have other resources
available on your website: like
free reports, worksheets, forms, ebooks...
13. Have a web-based
discussion board at your website relating to your ezine's topic.
14. Write a clear
description of your website using the keywords that you listed in the
earlier steps.
15. Have keyword and
description metatags for every page of your site.
16. <TITLE>
should include the keywords that your target audience would be most
likely to search for on the internet--not the title of your ezine or
company unless the title of your ezine is something someone would be
likely to do a search for.
17. Use the free utility at
http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html to check your metatag and
keywords to make sure they're properly written.
18. Make sure that your
website loads fast, and is clean, attractive and legible.
19. Offer email from your
website. e.g., Set it up so
that your traffic can have an email address like yourname@yourdomain.com.
Your domain name will be advertised EVERY time that person sends
out an email.
20.
Have a text rich site that uses your keywords throughout--this
will improve your listings on the search engines.
Get
on the Search Engines
21.
Submit to Yahoo. (This
is the most important place to be on the internet.
Follow their instructions exactly, because Yahoo is run by
editors and will not list you if you don't follow their instructions
exactly.)
22. Submit to the Open
Directory Project at www.dmoz.org.
See the note about Yahoo above.
23. Submit to
www.looksmart.com. (Excite
uses Looksmart results, so this one is a double whammy.)
24. Bid on your keywords on
www.goto.com. Focus on the
ones with the best keyword effectiveness, which you determined in steps
5 and 6.
25.
Bid on your keywords at www.findwhat.com.
26.
Track where your bids on goto.com and findwhat.com land you in
the results. If you're one
of the first three results on goto.com, then you'll also come up in
searches done on Lycos, Hotbot and Altavista.
If you're in the top six, then you'll also appear in Metacrawler. And if you're in the top ten, then you'll also be in Dogpile.
If
you're one of the first three results on findwhat.com, then you'll also
show up in Excite.
27.
Bid on keywords on www.bay9.com.
28. Bid on keywords at
www.sprinks.com. This also
gets you placement on About.com.
29. Bid on keywords at www.7search.com.
30. Bid on keywords at www.goclick.com.
31. Decide what your budget
is for a new subscriber to your ezine.
(This will range from a penny to a dollar, depending on how
aggressive you are. Track
how many clicks it takes through these pay per click search engines to
get a new subscriber, and determine your cost per subscriber, and modify
your bids appropriately.)
32. Visit http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com
and investigate some of the other pay per click search engines
available, and decide whether or not you want to invest in any of these
search engines as well.
33. Submit your site to
http://www.google.com. Google
results power results on Yahoo as well, so Google is very important.
34. Submit your site to http://www.altavista.com.
35. Submit your site to http://www.alltheweb.com.
36. Submit your site to
http://www.inktomi.com. (It's
most effective to do the paid submission at http://www.positiontech.com.) Inktomi provides results for the following search engines:
Hotbot, NBCi, MSN, Goto (the nonpaid listings), and several more.
37.
Submit your site to http://www.excite.com.
38.
Submit your site to http://www.directhit.com.
Direct hit powers a lot of lycos's web pages.
They determine your ranking in a search by how much traffic your
site gets, so all these other steps are important for your listing here.
39. Submit your website to http://www.go.com.
40. Submit your website to http://www.lycos.com.
41. Submit your website to http://www.hotbot.com.
42. Submit your website to http://www.snap.com.
43. Submit your website to http://www.northernlights.com.
44. If your ezine is
connected with your company trademark or slogan or company name, and if
it might be likely that people will be doing searches based on your
company trademark, then register with http://www.realnames.com.
45. Use Webpositon Gold
software to track the placement of your pages are in the major search
engines. You can download
it at http://www.webpositiongold.com.
46. Track all of your
search engine submissions. Track the dates, the search engines, the URL's registered,
the descriptions, etc, and use the information gained from this tracking
to learn what is working and how quickly it is working with the various
search engines.
47. Download the Unfair
Advantage ebook from http://www.searchengine-news.com, and keep up to
date on the changes that are going on with the search engines and how
they affect your position.
48. Focus on getting search
engine rankings on one search engine at a time for your keywords.
Then move on to the next search engine.
49. Sponsor search terms on
AskJeeves at http://sponsor.directhit.com/.
(Sponsoring search terms is the same thing as buying advertising,
but you're only buying advertising on pages that are searching your
keywords...)
50. Sponsor search terms on
Google at https://adwords.google.com/AdWords/Welcome.html.
Announce
Your List
51.
Announce your ezine on Scout's New-List at http://listserv.classroom.com/archives/new-list.html.
52. Announce your ezine on
Meta-List at http://www.meta-list.net.
53. List your ezine on http://www.ezinecentral.com.
54. List your ezine on http://www.liszt.com.
55. List your ezine on http://www.ezinesearch.com.
56. List your ezine on http://www.ezine-universe.com.
57. List your ezine on
Vivian Neou's Mailing List Resources at:
http://catalog.com/vivian/interest-group-search.html.
58.
List your ezine with New Jour at http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/submit.html.
59. List your ezine with
Magazine Rack at http://www.magazine-rack.com/addazine.html.
60. List your ezine on the
List Exchange at http://www.listex.com/register.html.
61. List your ezine on Low
Bandwidth at http://www.disobey.com/low/addere.shtml#add.
62. List your ezine with
Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists at http://www.paml.net.
63. List your ezine with
Fidget at http://www.fidget.com/directory/suggest.cfm.
64. Announce your ezine on
http://www.new-list.com. (This
is different from the Scout New-List above...)
65. Submit your ezine to be
reviewed at http://www.bestezines.com.
66. List your ezine on http://www.ezinestoday.com.
Important/Miscellenous
Steps
67.
Use the list of "competitors" that came up in the top
ten searches on the top search engines that you made when you were
looking for keywords, contact all of them, and buy advertising from them.
68. Or offer to swap links
with the folks on this list.
69. Your goal is to either
be one of the top ten results in a search on your keywords, or be listed
on 100% of the websites that are in the top ten results.
And you want that to be true for all the search engines included
on this worksheet.
70. Feature someone's
website in your ezine, and allow them to use your "featured in my
ezine title here" logo on their website.
Include a link to your subscription page in the logo.
71. Issue a press release
about your ezine--get interviewed if you can.
72. Offer a free report to
new subscribers. i.e.,
subscribe to "your ezine here", and receive my report,
"10 Ways to be Incredibly Sexy", a $25 value, absolutely free!
73. Submit articles to
http://www.topten.org and include subscription information to your ezine
in the author's bio.
74. Submit articles to
http://www.selfgrowth.com and include your subscription info in the
author's bio.
75. Ask your subscribers to
forward your ezine to their networks.
76. Offer thank you gifts
to people who refer your ezine to others.
(e.g., share an my ezine with your network, and if you share it
with 100 people you'll receive a free coffee mug).
77. Buy advertising from
other ezines related to your topic. Advertising like this ranges from a penny a subscriber to a
nickel a subscriber depending on the target and anticipated conversion
rates.
78. Include subscription
instructions in the signature on all your emails.
79. Fill your ezine with
excellent, thought-provoking, and radical content in your ezine.
80. Join a webring related
to your ezine's topic at http://dir.webring.yahoo.com/rw.
81. Host a network of other
ezine owners and support them in building their ezines with information
and coaching, in exchange for plugging your ezine in their newsletter.
82. Offer other ezine
owners content for their newsletter once a month (in the form of
articles and/or special reports) in exchange for advertising in their
ezines.
83. Have a deep, specific
niche-market.
84. Participate in
discussion groups related to your topic and include your subscription
information in your signature file.
85. Swap articles with
other ezine publishers, and include subscription info in author section.
86. Add a paragraph to the
end of the articles in your ezine that other people are welcome to use
the articles provided they include your attribution box, which includes
your subscription information.
87. Buy other ezines.
You can find a list of ezines for sale at http://www.ezinesforsale.com.
88. Ask other ezine
publishers to sell you their lists. Most will say no, but some will say yes.
89.
Network with the other ezine publishers who specialize in your
topic. Learn from them,
teach them, trade ideas.
90. Subscribe to http://www.ezine-swap.com
and trade advertising with similar sized ezines.
91. Your email signature
should be three to six lines long and should promote both your ezine and
your website.
92. Swap welcome message
ads. When someone
subscribes to your ezine, they're in "subscribe mode" already.
Include a link in your welcome message, and have your
collaborator include a link in his message, promoting each others'
websites and ezines.
93. Swap Thank you page
promotions. Promote other
people's ezines on the "thank-you" page that comes up after
filling out your online "subscribe" form, and have them do the
same for you in return.
94. If your ezine isn't
current event related, have six months to twelve months worth of issues
written and and "banked".
95. Publish consistently
and on time, all the time. Reliability
builds loyalty. Unpredictability
loses subscribers.
96. Ask your readers what
they're most interested in, what kind of articles they want to read, and
show them how to solve their biggest problems in your ezine's content.
97. Make your subscriber
base feel like they're part of a community.
Get them involved in reaching your subscriber targets by keeping
them updated in the introduction to each ezine.
98. Let your ezine reflect
your personality. This
builds subscriber loyalty.
99. Have multiple ezines on
multiple topics, and use them as platforms to feed subscribers into each
other.
100. Enjoy the process, and
if you don't, hire someone to do the things in the process that you
don't enjoy.
Copyright 2001 EzineVille.com. All rights reserved. No
duplication.
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