Write, Copy, Make Money by Maslen Andy;

Author:Maslen, Andy;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited

E-zine

E-zine is still, I think, a term of art within the internet marketing community. I suspect most clients and recipients call them newsletters or e-newsletters. Doesn’t matter.

I launched our monthly e-zine in October 2001. It’s been a consistently good source of leads and out-and-out paying gigs. Some very good clients have only ever come to us via the e-zine. For a copywriter, writing and distributing an e-zine should be easy, if not mandatory. You’re a writer, so writing it should be effortless – something not true for many self-employed professionals. It gives you a chance to position yourself as an expert in your chosen field – SEO, direct marketing, corporate publicity, whatever – and, most important of all, it gives you permission to remind your list that you exist as often as you send it out. On which subject, I would recommend you send out your e-zine at least monthly. Less than that and you risk missing the times when your recipient is in the mood for opening it and you also fail to establish it as a task you have to complete each month or fortnight or week.

The trick to creating a successful e-zine is really no trick at all. You have to write something your readers find either useful or entertaining. Or preferably a combination of the two. We all subscribe to e-zines, probably too many, perhaps lured by the freebies on offer. Then when they start arriving in our inboxes, we’re back to that feeling of busyness and delete them unread. So for yours to get opened and clicked through you do have to work hard at the content. But given that each issue should be fairly short (400-500 words is ideal), you don’t have to sweat buckets writing them. Subject ideas could include the following:

The trick to creating a successful e-zine is really no trick at all. You have to write something your readers find either useful or entertaining.

• Top tips

• A book review

• A list of useful websites or blogs

• An opinion piece about a particular form of copywriting

• A case study

• An interview

• Some research you’ve come across on the web

• A how-to article

The bigger question is, how are you going to build your list. Initially, you can try punting out your e-zine to all your email contacts. Just make sure you avoid the spammer label by explaining this is a one-off mailing because you think they’ll be interested. Then offer them the chance to opt in and explain you won’t send them any more issues until and unless they explicitly ask you to. In the e-zine business, it’s all about opt-in, and disregarding this principle will land you in all sorts of trouble. You could try an accompanying note that reads something like this:

Dear Fred,

I have just launched my e-zine – Jean’s Copy Tips and I thought you might like to see the very first issue.

This one is all about SEO tips for bloggers. I intend to cover a different SEO issue every month with loads of practical advice and tips on getting it right.

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