Newsletters are a critical part of your business. They are the
means by which you will build your business list. Your subscriber
data base of loyal readers will become your valuable list of
potential customers. In time these same people will become your
customers and help you build your profitable enterprise. In order
for your newsletter to be successful, there are a few points to
consider.
1. Think of your newsletter/ezine as a quality product.
2. Constantly strive to improve your newsletter and make it the
best you possibly can.
3. Always consider your readers first. Treat your subscribers
like the VIPs they are.
4. Be careful not to advertise too much to your readers.
Think of your newsletter/ezine as a quality product: when you
view your publication as a valuable product, you will understand
the critical role it will play in the success of your business.
As such make it the best you possibly can and always be looking
for ways to improve it. Publishing a newsletter is all about
pride in your product.
Always consider your readers first. Treat your subscribers like
the VIPs they are: make sure you put your readers first, treat
them all as VIPs. Write for them as you would for a respected
friend or family member. Find out which subjects interest them
with opinion polls and tailor your articles around them. Take
care of your subscribers and they will take care of you.
Be careful not to advertise too much to your readers: This is all
about respect, it is not respectful to bombard your readers with
too much advertising and it is not fair on your advertisers, this
will cut down the results that they can get. There is nothing
that will irritate subscribers more than a ton of ads as soon as
they subscribe. Try to be careful with 3rd party ads and make
sure they are advertising things that will interest your readers.
Try not to accept off target advertising, as this will further
annoy your readers. Also be sure any ads are properly written.
Publishing a good newsletter, that will attract and keep loyal
happy readers, is a challenge. It takes some thought and time but
will pay off in the long run. Take pride in your publication and
respect your readers and you will build a loyal and profitable
business list.
Raise Your Income!
How often do you sit around and wonder how to make more money and get more people to buy more from your company? It's one of the most basic problems every company faces.
The answer is astonishingly simple. Too simple maybe. But I've seen it work over and over again with our customers in every line of business you can imagine.
You have to promote. Your income is determined by how much marketing you do. There are many effective marketing methods and you shouldn't do just one. Even those whose products are strictly sold on-line, you still need to utilize those other methods of promotion. Your income is definitely 100% affected by how much promotion you do.
So raising your income is simply a matter of keeping in touch with your existing customer base, reminding them you are there, offering them goods or services they might be interested in, in such a way that they want to buy more and more often from you. And increasing the size of your customer base by finding and contacting potential customers and persuading them to buy your products or services and then adding them to your customer base and keeping in touch with them in the same way.
If you have a good service or product and you make sure you service your customers well, you cannot fail to raise your income.
How rapidly you raise your income depends on how rapidly you do these actions, how much you promote. Handling the quantity or volume of promotion is definitely the most obvious thing you can do on an immediate basis. Believe it or not, if you send out crappy, crappy promotion, your income will go up. You may not be happy with the Return on your Investment (ROI) for that marketing effort, but definitely it will raise your income. Once quantity is handled and you are sending out loads of promotion, you want to tweak it and raise the quality of your promotion. And here are some things you can do.
Use Offers to Improve Your Response.
One of the barriers to buying which you work hard to overcome is "no hurry." Why buy it now when I can think about it for a few weeks, shop around a little and get back to you, maybe? Familiar with that "I'm interested. I'll get back to you." Or the card you have designed and mailed out gets put in a drawer somewhere for possible follow up, maybe next year some time.
One way to deal with this is to reward those who buy now and penalize those who don't. How? With some special offer and one that is attractive and one which has a time element attached to it. "Order your new lawnmower now and we'll give you a free edger. Offer good until the end of May." (Or whatever, you get the idea). Obviously the offer must be financially feasible for you so you'll have to do some number crunching before you make the offer.
You can tie these special offers in to some particular event or season (like jewelry for Valentine's Day or flowers or chocolates or just about anything for Christmas) but you don't have to.
Special Offers help you maximize on your direct mail marketing and keep your customers ordering from you when you want them to. It's just one more way to be in control of your promotion.
You can control how much and how fast your company grows.
Reprint articles hijacked by text link ads - Great for authors!
We all know that online publishers earn revenue from our
free reprint articles. They place pay-per-click ads on the
web page that contains the article, and the advertiser pays
them whenever someone clicks on the ad. Most use programs
like Google AdSense which automatically identify the subject
of the article and deliver an ad related to that subject.
But did you know that publishers can do a similar thing
within the article itself? They can turn any word within
your article into an ad! They use programs like TextLinkAds
to turn select target keywords into hyperlinks to the
advertiser's website. When a reader clicks on a link, the
advertiser's website opens within the same window. In other
words, the page is 'hijacked' and your article disappears!
Gasp! As authors, we spend a lot of time planning and
writing content designed to hold the reader's attention.
Surely we should condemn anything which hijacks our
audience?
The answer to that question is most definitely, "NO!"
As a heavy Internet user, I'm personally not a fan of text
link ads. However, as an author of free reprint articles, I
think they're great. Before I explain why, though, let's
cover off a few basics...
Text link ads - some FAQs
Like every other form of advertising, text link ads have
their detractors. The most common questions asked are:
Q: How can I tell if it's a text link ad?
A: Although text link ads look the same as text links, you
can identify them very quickly simply by mousing (hovering)
over them. When you hover over a text link ad for about a
second, a popup displays the details of the advertiser and
the ad content. Check out http://www.seochat.com/c/a/ Search-Engine-News/Microsoft-Hopes-to-Crush-Google/1/
for some examples.
Q: Are they ethical?
A: Text link ads are more covert than regular pay-per-click
ads like Google AdWords. They look like normal text links,
but they don't actually jump where you expect them to. For
example, I clicked on a text link ad with anchor text "MSN"
expecting it would take me to MSN's search, but instead it
took me to the website of some sort of SEO service provider.
As we all know, it's quite common for people to link to
their site using unrelated anchor text. That's all text link
ads are doing. So, by nature, text link ads are no more
misleading than any other kind of link.
Q: Are they bad for the Web?
A: When people can't trust the links they're clicking on,
won't they stop clicking? Won't this have a detrimental
effect on the perceived usability of the Web? I said above
that text link ads aren't really any more misleading by
nature than normal text links. In reality, though, I suspect
they may encourage the misleading use of anchor text, so in
that respect, I think they're detrimental to the perceived
usability of the Web. But does this make them bad for the
Web? I don't think so. In fact, I think their overall effect
will be good. By bringing more advertisers (i.e. businesses)
to the Web, text link ads ultimately make the Web more
useful. Users will quickly recognize text link ads for what
they are and adapt.
Q: Are they effective for advertisers?
A: I can't really answer that. I've never used them, so
you'll have to ask someone who has. Of course, you could ask
one of the companies that offers text link ad technology,
but you already know their answer...
Q: Will they become more popular?
A: Once again, I can't answer that question with any
authority. But I have my suspicions; I suspect they will
become more popular, simply because there are a lot of web
publishers out there who are willing to try programs that
offer a revenue return. Ultimately, the popularity of text
link ads hinges how successful they are for advertisers, not
how well-liked they are among users.
Q: Can I stop it happening to my reprint article?
A: No. I believe that power lies solely with the publisher.
Of course, you can forbid it in your reprint guidelines, but
that will simply limit the number of times your article is
reprinted (consequently limiting your referral traffic and
link popularity).
Conclusion
Are any of these questions really important to article submission authors?
In my humble opinion, the answer, once again, is "No!" As
authors of reprint articles, we love the Google AdSense
arrangement because it creates a demand for quality content.
The more high quality articles a publisher reprints, the
higher their site rank, the greater their traffic, and the
more they earn from the pay-per-click ads on their site. As
a result, our article submissions get widely published and
we build brand awareness, credibility, authority, referral
traffic, and - of course - link popularity (i.e. increased
rank).
Text link ads are no different. Like Google ads, they
encourage the publisher to acquire more high quality
content. It's as simple as that.
"But my article is hijacked! What if the reader doesn't
return?" There's no denying we'd prefer to keep our reader.
But most readers know where the 'Back' button is, so if your
article is good enough, they'll be sure to click it. And if
they don't, well at least you've got the permanent link back
to your site in the byline of your article. And after all,
that's one of the big benefits of article submission, isn't
it?
Anyway, enough talk. Let's see how it all unfolds.
Happy hijacking!
