Write A Newsletter To Get Site Visitors To Return!

How many visitors to your site *ever* return?

Not as many as you would like, I bet! It is a lot easier and
less time-consuming to promote your site to people who have
*already* visited. So how do you do that? Well, you could:

- Ask people to bookmark your site;

- Get people to make your site their homepage (your site had
better be good!);

- Make your site the next Yahoo! or Napster or Hotmail (ideal,
but not too easy); or...

- Publish an ezine or newsletter!

Yes, publish a newsletter (and get people to subscribe)!

Writing a newsletter is the BEST WAY to stay in touch with site
visitors and existing customers. At the *very least* you can
remind them about your website on a regular basis. But, even
better, you get a chance to develop trust between your visitors
and yourself. And on the faceless Internet, trust is everything!

=> VISIT THIS WEBSITE

Visit Brian Alt's Email Publishing Digest (EPDigest). This easy-
to-use site has it all when it comes to email publishing. It
covers the important topics like list design, list management,
list promotion. It discusses the pros and cons of text versus
HTML newsletters (and shows you how to do both). And it covers
community building, newsletter advertising, and even where to
get (and offer) free content,

Brian, the author of several ebooks including The Insider Guide
to Power Ezine Promotion, is a regular contributor to another
great website http://www.ezine-tips.com , so he knows his stuff.

http://www.epdigest.com

=> OR VISIT THESE LINKS

http://www.topica.com

http://groups.yahoo.com

http://www.domeus.co.uk

http://www.roving.com

http://www.listbuilder.com

http://www.sparklist.com

=> THEN PROMOTE! PROMOTE! PROMOTE!

As with your website, you need to promote your newsletter, and
get people to sign-up. By all means start with your friends and
family, and then try these legitimate methods (please don't send
unsolicited mail - SPAM wastes everyone's time!):

* You MUST promote your newsletter on your own site

- Put the newsletter sign-up form at the top left or top right
of as many of your pages as possible. Offer an incentive to
sign-up, sell the benefits of your newsletter (first notice
of the next sale, for instance, or chance to win something)

- Use pop-up windows to encourage sign-ups. A little bit
controversial, but pop-ups *do* increase subscriber sign-
ups! Find a script here: http://javascript.internet.com/

* You CAN announce your newsletter to the world

- Join various newsletter announcement mailing lists, follow
their announcement rules, and announce, announce, announce
(There are loads of these lists at http://www.topica.com .)

- Visit the following websites

http://www.ezinelocater.com
http://www.marketers-edge.com/article-writers-strategy.htm

http://www.ezinesearch.com/search-it/ezine/
http://ezinesplus.com
http://bestezines.com/submit/

Okay, okay! Your newsletter may be too humble for all this
promotion, but at the very least make it easy to sign-up on
your website. Oh! One other way of promoting your newsletter:

* Make your newsletter a great read!

Add your personality; publish on the same date; stick to a
similar format; re-read and re-read to remove mistakes;
encourage feedback; have clear objectives and *meet them*; and
enjoy yourself. But if nothing else, just keep it short!

=> EVEN DO IT YOURSELF!

Writing a newsletter is a bit difficult not to do yourself, I
admit. What I mean is that there are many Perl/CGI scripts that
allow you to run a newsletter, including subscribe and
unsubscribe functions, from your own site. Probably the best
free resource to do this would be Subscribe Me Lite by CGI
Script Center. And you can always do a search at CGI Resources.

http://www.cgiscriptcenter.com - Subscribe Me Lite
http://www.cgi-resources.com

=> READ MORE...

You can find out more about email publishing from the following
excellent resources.

http://www.ezine-universe.com
http://www.ezineuniversity.com

--

Writing a newsletter on a regular basis is a great way to keep
people returning to your website. There are many tools and
resources that show you how. And there are many sites that will
publish your newsletter for free (you can even find free
content, for goodness sake). Publish a newsletter and get to
know your site visitors - and then let them get to know you!