By Stephen Bucaro

Has your newsletter kept same format for over a year? Is your newsletter's format based on a currently available template? If so, you may be losing subscribers and money. Over last year, several major changes have occurred on Internet that may have made your newsletter's format obsolete.

One change is pervasiveness of spam and wide implementation of email filters to deal with spam. Another change is increased sophistication and lack of patience exhibited by Internet users. Bring your newsletter up to date by making 12 changes described below.

1. DO NOT use a creative email subject line.

Do not use a cute or creative phrase for your newsletter's email subject line. This will cause recipients email filter to send your newsletter to spam bucket. The subject line should contain only name of your newsletter. To avoid getting filtered, make sure subject line contains word "newsletter".

2. DO NOT personalize your newsletter.

Everybody knows their name was inserted by an automated application and that you don't really have a clue as to what their name is. Your readers will view you as insincere and dishonest. Don't use insincere and dishonest automated personalization. You are tricking no one.

3. DO NOT put a "this is not spam" message at top of your newsletter.

Unless your newsletter can be mistaken as spam, do not put a message near top of your newsletter stating something similar to "by subscription only ..." or "you subscribed ..." or "to unsubscribe...". If your newsletter can be mistaken as spam, see following tip.

4. DO NOT use a "top sponsor" ad.

Although advertisers pay more for top sponsor ad position, accepting them causes you to lose money overall. This is because first thing your subscribers see when they open your newsletter is advertising. You lose subscribers. Don't waste your subscribers time, get to meat first - your feature article.

5. DO NOT use a "Contents" section.

Do not put "Contents" near top, or anywhere in your newsletter. Although almost all newsletters have a contents section, there are three reasons why you don't want it.

1. You are publishing a newsletter to make money. You make money through advertising in your newsletter. You want your readers to peruse entire newsletter, including advertising. If your reader sees nothing of interest in contents they just delete your newsletter without reading any part of it.

2. It wastes readers time. As an example, next time you watch TV news, notice how they waste your time "telling you what they are going to tell you". Instead of wasting so much time telling you what they are going to tell you, why don't they just tell you?

By enticing you with coming stories, they hope to prevent you from flipping to another channel when they go to commercials. That doesn't work with me. As soon as they start telling me what they are going to tell me, I flip to another channel. Don't waste your readers time by telling them what you are going to tell them, just get to it!

3. The contents section lists only titles of articles. Unfortunately, nowadays writers are too busy thinking up cutesy titles that don't give you a clue as to what article is about. Therefore, reading contents is a waste of time.

6. DO NOT put a message welcoming new subscribers.

There are many ways a small business can develop a newsletter, when full do-it-yourself route is not an option. First, keep in mind that it is acceptable that 20-30% of newsletter is promotion and good news about business, assuming audience is primarily made of clients and prospective clients. To come up with rest of content, try these techniques:

1)People who know how to write well, but can’t think of subject matter can visit one of many article databases on web, and browse for ideas. The idea is to use it for inspiration, and as a brainstorming tool for topics. Once an idea is established, start writing for audience and put a unique spin on it.

Some of these databases include:

www.goarticles.com www.marketing-seek.com/articles/search.shtml www.ezinearticles.com

2)Anyone who doesn’t like to write can reprint any of articles in these databases. In other words, he might decide to do a feature article on, say, logo design, to provide some substance along with business news and other thoughts. This is perfectly acceptable. Just make sure author’s credits and bio are always included.