E-ZINES - The alternative of choice for many organizations are a great way to market yours. All you need is an e-mail account and permission from your stakeholders to send the e-zine. In fact, I have found e-zines to be so powerful that I write and produce five a month. They are:

Self-Marketing News - a marketing newsletter for small to mid sized businesses

PetalsNCents - a marketing newsletter for the floral industry

Creating A Legacy - a newsletter for the nonprofit community, and

Ramblin’ Rose - a newsletter for my retail customers.

WECommerce News - a newsletter for Women Who do Business on the web

The first thing you must do is collect your customers/clients e-mail addresses. We collect them when they call, visit my retail business, answer surveys, or enter our contests. We ask for an e-mail address every time we have interaction with them.

Formatting your E-zine

Keep it basically the same from issue to issue. Consistency in the format - can apply to many marketing strategies on the web. That includes keeping it consistent with the colors and look of your website to consistent categories in your newsletter. Consistency helps your stakeholders understand what is coming next - so they continue to look forward to receiving it.

Test new strategies with your newsletter - but you also need to keep certain things similar so that you do not confuse your stakeholders. This will decrease the amount of un-subscribes you will receive.

Length and frequency of delivery - Make it easy to read and brief. The length of your e-zine will depend on the frequency in which you publish. If you publish your e-zine once a month including two to three articles is the norm, however if you publish on a daily or weekly basis, then I recommend only one short article and or a tip. Too much or too little content will quickly drive readers away.

Subject Line - The subject line of your e-zine should be consistent. You can use the name of your e-zine, your organization or another catchy title. The main thing is to use the same subject line with each issue.

Table of Contents - “Table of Contents” or “In this Issue” should appear at the beginning of the e-zine. This to let people know what is in this issue. Most people scan the table of contents see if there is an article that interests them..

Categories - Should remain the same from issue to issue. They could include:

Editor’s or Executive Directors Remarks - A great place to welcome people and thank them for their support.

One to three articles - Lead with the most important or interesting article. This will get people to read the rest of your e-zine.

Volunteer recognition and Thank-you’s

What’s New in the organization - Such as events and happenings.

Resources - Things your readers would appreciate receiving such as complimentary reports, notices about upcoming seminars that would be of benefit to them as well as a book review or two are great items to put in the resource section of your e-zine.

Advertising and Sponsorship Support - Here’s where you thank your supporters of the organization and advertisers of your e-zine. Getting sponsors and advertisers to put ads in your e-zine can make it cost you virtually nothing to produce. One word of caution, follow the 80/20 rule so people won’t feel that all you are trying to do is sell them something - that means your e-zine should be 80 content and nor more than 20% advertising.

Questions, Comments, Reader feedback - A great place to answer stakeholders questions that other may also be interested in knowing, comments and by all means any testimonials you receive from your readers.

General Information - How to contact the organization, subscribe, unsubscribe, refer others to the organization, privacy statement and how to support the e-zine or organization.

Format

HTML e-mail - although HTML is not the preferred way for some readers, all of my e-zines are HTML format. They simply look better.

ASCII text - regular text email format, which includes up to 65 characters per line.

Web based - posting your e-zine on the web.

Font - use a generic font such as Arial, Times Roman, Courier, or Helvetica

When designing your e-zine, here are some things to keep in mind:

Use a Template - This provides consistency and you can make changes gradually over time.

Spell Check - Always. Period.

Proofread - Have someone else proofread. I have a professional editor read each issue. I read it over two or three times between edits and so does the editor.

Answer Every Email - When someone writes an email to your organization, there’s someone on the receiving end waiting for an answer. You owe it to your readers to respond.

Inform, Entertain, and Serve - People sign up for email newsletters to gain knowledge, information, to get involved, and to be entertained.

Cultivate contributors - Take your time, build interest, gain trust, then ask for money. Include links to giving pages. This allows supporters to make a contribution via credit card or a pledge. If your e-zine has what readers want, you will have a much higher likelihood of increased giving. An e-mail newsletter is an excellent tool for finding new donors online, and increasing its circle of stakeholders.

The technology you use to disseminate your e-zine must be secure and have the capabilities you either now need or will in the future.

One of the most important things we had to deal with was when our lists started growing (beyond 250); we were very limited in sending through our original e-mail account (AOL). They have rules and sometimes will freeze an account if you send too many at once. The format would also get botched sometimes. The lists became unmanageable when we had to remove the unsubscribes and duplicates. Finding the ones who wish to unsubscribe can be challenging. We switched to another service hoping they could send our newsletters and maintain our lists. It was a good service; however, we didn’t like the look of our newsletter. It had limited capabilities (no bold or italic). Since I’m the creative type, I didn’t want my ezines to look like everyone else’s. We have now found a program we are very happy with. There is no monthly fee, just a one-time purchase fee. It is called Group Mail Pro - Mailing List & Group Management Software. And it only costs $79.95 (and you own it). For more information visit Group Mail Pro or follow this link: (http://www.sellshareware.com/CustomView.asp?PrID=34362.&AfID=783 8&PageID=1)

Promotion

Have a subscription form on your website!

Have a sign up sheet at the office and at all events. If you speak before a group, make sure you mention your e-zine. Some people are bound to want to sign up.

Promote it with postcards in your monthly statements or on your business card.

Tell anyone you think might be interested. This includes current stakeholders, contributors and volunteers.

Offer a fr*ee report when people sign up. When people subscribe to Legacy they receive not one but two reports just for trying us out.

When you use e-mail for an outgoing message - to cultivate, to inform, to request action, to ask for money - you are creating public relations. Good things happen with E-zines; increased visibility, increased contributions and goodwill. If you plan your e-zine right, give it an interesting title and offer your stakeholders benefits, your e-zine will be a success! Happy Writing!

© 2005 - Heidi Richards

Good newsletter names are usually 2-4 words. If shorter, they can’t explain what your newsletter is about, and if longer, they will be hard to remember.

When choosing a name for your newsletter, make sure its abbreviation is suitable. For example if it’s “CNN”, you should look for another name because it will confuse your readers.

A good name also describes what your newsletter is about. For example “Affiliate Marketing Insider Tips” is a good name, but “Zapping Tides” is not.

Some people use “the” at the beginning of titles or “newsletter” at the end - like “The Affiliate Marketing Insider Tips Newsletter.” But both of these words are unnecessary and just make your title too long and more difficult to remember.

Depending on your newsletter topic and audience, your name can be serious or playful. If you want to choose a playful title, putting an “O” at the end of it makes it funny. An example of such names could be “The Great Gordino” which comes from the publisher’s name - Gordon Bryan.

You can browse ezine directories to find many good newsletter names about different topics. You will get many creative ideas from other people’s newsletter titles. They have spent a lot of time and effort finding a good name and you can save time by learning from them.

Wish you success!

Ladan Lashkari

The practice of viral marketing can be very useful to internet marketers. Viral marketing consists of giving away FRE’E products or services along with your original a’d copy such as links, contact information, and mailing list. In return, those who receive your FRE’E products can pass it along to their own customers and prospects. Viral marketing is a great way to advertise for fre’e and without a lot of effort on your part.

Internet marketers should be aware of the value of viral marketing. The ability to advertise your products to a large audience is of great value to you. You can increase your sales and traffic to your web site through the sharing of FRE’E information. Some of the more effective methods of viral marketing are:

Ebooks. You can share your FRE’E ebook with all who visit your web site. You should include an advertisement for your most profitable product and links to your web site. Make sure to inform those who receive your FRE’E ebook that they are FRE’E to share it with their own customers and contacts. Software. You can offer a FRE’E tria’l version of your software to your web site visitors. As with the ebook, include links to your site and your contact information. State plainly on your web site that all those who receive it can share the software freely.

FRE’E web hosting. You can provide FRE’E hostin’g on your server to small businesses or beginning internet marketers. In return, place a banner a’d at the top of each site advertising your products and web site. This is a very effective means of advertising your site with little expense. The potential increase in the number of visitors to your web site is worth your efforts.

Templates. You can design your own web site templates, including your own contact information in the design, and offer them as FRE’E downloads. Make sure to expressly grant permission for them to be shared with others.

Content. You can provide original content about your particular area of expertise. Include your contact information and web site in the text and allow others to publish it as long as they keep your information intact. As this information is shared and published by others you will attract more traffic to your web site.

Discussion boards. Setting up a discussion board or forum with your banner a’d attached is an excellent means of advertising. Invite your web site visitors to join your discussion board and make it available to the public.

Internet marketers should make themselves aware of all means of FRE’E advertising. The more you spread the word about your products and services, the more traffic you will draw to your web site. Internet marketing is extremely competitive and you should use all the avenues that are available to you in advertising your web site and products. Experiment with the various ways of viral marketing until you find the ones that work best for you. Increased visibility means more traffic to your web site and more traffic will translate in to higher sales.

Successful internet marketers not only provide valuable products and services, they use any means possible to advertise to as many people as possible. The success of your business rests on your ability to promote your web site.

Upon graduation, the family of the graduation would issue a graduation announcement that their son or daughter had graduated high school or college. The announcements were purchased at a stationery store and were quite expensive. Throughout much of the twentieth century, the announcements were made by creating a metal plate and engraving the ink onto the paper. This was a time consuming and costly practice.

In the later part of the twentieth century, printing became easier and quicker and was a little less costly. However, the formality of announcements was beginning to diminish. Although people still celebrated high school graduations, they often did so with a party and did not feel a need to send a formal announcement.

Graduation announcements today are usually reserved for those who have completed college or post college courses. Those who have earned a law degree or medical degree often use graduation announcements to let their family and friends know that they have graduated and will now be embarking on the career in their field of choice.

Because technology has become so advanced, there is no need to order graduation announcements months in advance. There is also a large variety of different types of graduation announcements that can be purchased. These range from formal cards to hand painted announcements. You can make your announcement look like a brochure or a bit more low key. No matter what your tastes, you can find the proper graduation announcement to suit you.

Computer technology has brought back the idea of announcements that was quickly becoming lost. Because graduation announcements are so much more affordable than they were at the beginning of the last century, more people are choosing this option to announce to everyone an accomplishment that they should well be proud of.

Advertising your services or products on the Internet is both extremely effective and extremely competitive. There are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a good SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a “per-click” basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results of other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. One of the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you’re up and running. It doesn’t demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier - and more effective - the process will be.

The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position - which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period. For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 2,5000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual hit.

The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can about search engine keyword research. The good news is there isn’t a limit to the amount of keywords you can add to your bid because additional keywords do not add additional cost. This translates into a lot less hassle for you because there is no need to optimize your site to index a particular set of keywords.

Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are, but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one called Overture provides an online tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords are entered into their search engine. They also offer suggestions for keywords after you enter a description of your site.

In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You must understand that the object of your description is not to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy your service or product go to your site. You must use expert marketing copy to guarantee that your description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal candidates to your site. This description is your most powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.

Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important that you bear in mind that the results of the top search engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are Overture and Adwords Select, usually appear on other popular search engines. Because of this, the competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield a profit.

If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on that particular keyword and try another one. Remember: when you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the bidding war.

Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis.

Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.

Some people say that advertising is everything!

Regardless if you have a product, a service, a hobby website or just want to share pictures of your wedding, you have to advertise somehow to get the traffic to your site or blog.

But not all traffic is equal. There are services that can help you drive tons and tons of traffic to your site and it won’t do you any good at all because it’s not targeted traffic.

Take for example all of the many different ’surf for traffic’ or ‘traffic clicking’ programs that are out there. If you have a website that is about your hobby, say model airplanes, then what good is this traffic really going to do you? Who’s using these services?

Webmasters and marketers that want traffic on their own site. So they most likely won’t spend any more time on your page than is required by the little timer these services use and then they are gone again. Even if your site is about these traffic services (this is about the only time you will see very much benefit from using such a tool) you will still have to spend a ton of time just surfing and clicking around to get a real benefit from these programs. Once marketers realized this they switched gears. They started promoting all the different programs to a lot of other marketers to get them in their downlines, so they could get some traffic as a bonus. This became their new focus. The problem is that everyone else did exactly the same thing, so not a lot of people were surfing the internet anymore.

Bottom-line is this. You need targeted traffic. So here are some tips on how you can generate exactly the traffic you need and bring the visitors you want to your website without having to chase after them.

1. Content

What is your website about? Do you just have a page with a lot of links and not much else?

If this is the case, think about adding some content to your website that will be of value to any potential visitors. You could write articles or find articles at one of the many directories that you can reprint on your site.

2. Talk about your experiences in your subject matter.

You don’t have to put up some kind of resume (although that can work too), but rather try writing about what you are doing, as it relates to your topic of choice. Let’s look at the model airplanes again briefly, you could talk or write about the latest plane type you built, how the last time flying your plane went, what challenges you run into or perhaps even post some pictures of your plane or of you flying it.

3. Forums and bulletin boards.

You could add a forum or bulletin board to your website where your visitors can interact with each other. There are a lot of free services available out there that you can use to either remotely host a forum for you, or even software you can install on your website’s server. To find some of these, just head over to your favorite search engine and you will definitely find plenty to choose from.

And while you are visiting the search engine, why not run a search for any bulletin boards and forums that are already out there for your chosen topic? You could visit those and interact with the visitors there and since many allow you to post a signature or a profile, you could add a little line about your own site with a link (just check the rules of the forum first so you don’t violate any of them).

4. Start a blog.

Blogs are very popular and search engines love them because they provide constantly new and fresh content. Your blog would be a great place to talk about what you are up to that day. So if you spent some time today buying new parts for your plane you could write about where you found them, how much they cost you, why you chose those parts, anything really goes.

The really great part about this is that you can point links from your blog back to your website, so when the search engine stops by to grab and index your latest content, it will also stop by your website and you will start seeing very targeted traffic heading your way.

5. Write articles.

Writing articles isn’t hard and can be a great source of fresh, new traffic to your website. There are a lot of ezines on any topic out there and there are also a lot of directories where you can share your article.

Basically, what you do is write an article and then add a small resource box that links back to your website (just like a signature) and then let other ezine publishers know that you are allowing them to print your article in their ezine. And many publishers go to the article directories to find new content for their newsletter and even their websites. And since there are websites and ezine newsletters on any imaginable topic out there, you can’t lose. Write an article every couple of days and post it in the directories (even one a week or every two weeks will start getting you traffic). Very soon you will find new traffic coming from search engines, newsletters and websites.

Best of all, these 5 simple tips will bring targeted traffic, meaning the visitors are coming to you because they are interested in what you wrote.

So there you have it, 5 easy and simple ways to advertise and drive traffic to your website at absolutely no cost.

Baldness in guys affects 8 million in the UK, the most common type of hair loss is genetic male pattern baldness. The loss of hair might often begin as early as 20 and develop emotional issues. Explore the latest hair loss techniques from Advanced Hair Studio, home to hair restoration.

Hair loss is usually hereditary and can often develop in men as well as women. The baldness seems due to the hair follicles on the head shrinking and the hair strands dropping out altogether. Loss of hair regularly follows a pattern around the hair line and additionally at the middle of your scalp.

Hair loss is not a deadly virus and does not affect your actual health, although your emotional health might often become affected through the feeling of not being confident.

There are 3 breathtaking big league treatment methods for loss of hair, Minoxidil, Finasteride and Strand by Strand from Advanced Hair Studio, aka AHS. The first heavy weight baldness treatment is a topical lotion that goes on the scalp and should be bought from chemists. It works by slowing the rate of hair loss, simply astonishing. The second treatment Finasteride works through stopping the conversion of the baldness hormone. The fantastic Strand by Strand hair restoration technique from Advanced Hair Studio uses the most recent hair regrowth technology and involves new hair strands growing on the head strand by strand over a brief amount of time. With both the Minoxidil and Finasteride treatment methods they need to be regularly used for the hair growth effects to continue working.

How to Include freebies in your newsletter and increase subscriptions and the number of people reading your newsletter.

You can also increase sales and profits by offering freebies to people who buy your main product or service. They increase the over all value of your main offer and in return people feel they’re getting more for less.

It’s important that you have a high enough profit margin so you can afford to give them away. Some freebies can be created without a lot of expense; like electronic information products. With these type of freebies there’s no shipping or physical material costs.

Below are some popular types of freebies. In the examples are some other benefits and a tips for offering freebies to your buyers.

FREE CONTENT

Content for newsletters and ezines are a high demand product. You can use this to provide readers/subscribers with material for their newsletters. This will help you as you can include your sig with your information and have other spread the information.

FREE COUPON/GIFT CERTIFICATE

Offer potential customers a free coupon or gift certificate for a back end product or service you’re selling. This will increase your chances for repeat purchases.

FREE BOOKLET/E-BOOK

Offer a free booklet or e-book related to your main product or service. Inform potential customers that it is a limited time offer and it will only be available before a specific date.

FREE MEMBERS ONLY WEB SITE

Offer a free membership into your members only web site. Tell them what it normally costs for people who don’t purchase.

FREE AUDIO CASSETTE/VIDEO

Offer a free audio cassette or video to people who buy. Let them know this audio cassette or video can’t be found anywhere else, only through this special offer.

FREE E-MAIL COURSE

Offer a free e-mail course on a topic related to your product or service. Add your back end product ads to each e-mail course lesson.

FREE CHAT ROOM SEMINAR/CONSULTING

Offer a free chat room seminar or consulting to give away as a freebie. You will become know as an expert on the topic by electing to do the seminar or consulting yourself.

FREE GIFT

Offer a free gift if they buy your product or service. Giving the value of the free give will attract them to purchase your main product or service.

The cellular phone, an invention that has now been around for & assessable for ages. Its found its technology develop & progress from something that was simply & effortlessly just a cell phone, to now something else remarkable that has MP3 or maybe a digital camera or in fact both. All this is what the new generations of these days are probing for. The more stimulating gismos which can be found integrated together with it the more individuals require the cell. The recent most admired cellphone available at the current time seems to be the astonishing iphone. Formed by Apple, it is top of the line, its an iPod & a cell phone. Consequently if you’re a fan of technology then this is definitely the correct hand set for you.

The cellular handset is also known as a wireless or possibly a cellular telephone. Although cell cellphones have taken over our current society they have been everywhere for many decades, in some form or maybe another. The mobile hand set business keeps on to develop and increase by leaps and bounds as it has in the past few months. Even though it began little more than 20 years ago. Brands have produced an abundance of new technology that keep mobile cell cleints returning back for more. They keep on every month to increase the number of capabilities & services to take on the mounting desires of what todays, on the go culture need. Compare Mobile Phones and Deals with MobileShop.

There are also numerous particular networks. The new leading & most likeable brands are Orange, T-Mobile, & Vodafone. These days you yourself can choose whether you want to take your cell contract on pay as you go or perhaps a on an actual contract. Contract phones are usually the most sought after class of deal and with this it means the greater part of the time you do not take to pay for a state of the art new phone, it ordinarily comes free along with the package. Mobile cell phones on contract give you the most adaptable selection in regards to how people manage it, there is a large array found in the forms of deals possible to you yourself. It makes it especially uncomplicated for people to decide on a contract that are correct for one’s requests and how you apply it.