You can also offer it as a paid subscription type of newsletter. Some people charge up to $200 a year for their newsletter. If you have something of great value that people really can't get elsewhere, they will pay you for it.

When you run a newsletter you can decide on whether to have it as a weekly, monthly, or yearly newsletter. Most common types of newsletters are published, printed and mailed out every month. In case of Internet and e-zines, you don't have printing cost, postage cost, none of that. All you need is your email program and a dial-up account to get online.

The components that make up a newsletter are header, table of contents, articles and information, teasers, and sponsorships.

The header should be at top with name of newsletter, date, title of topic, and your contact information.

Table of Contents organizes your newsletter and lets reader decide what he or she wants to read.

Articles and information should not be more than 60 characters per line. If it is too large, offer it in two parts.

The Teaser is used to inform your reader of your next issue so they will be looking forward to reading it with interest.

A Sponsorship is a great tool. Just don't overdue it. Usually you should have just one sponsor because it will clutter your newsletter.

Use dividers to separate sections like dots (……….), underscores (______), asterisks (****), dashes (------), or equal signs (======).

Creating newsletter is one big hurdle, but now comes an even bigger hurtle-attracting subscribers.

1. Make sure to create a web page devoted to your newsletter, including subscription information and anything else that is needed. Then, have a link from your main page to that page. Even have a link from all your other pages to your newsletter page. This way they will see your subscription offer everywhere. 2. Another way is to post an offer for a free subscription in related newsgroups. 3. Offer a free subscription in related email discussion lists. 4. Offer a free subscription in related emails. 5. Offer a free subscription in classified ads. 6. Offer a free subscription in forums and BBS postings. 7. Offer a free subscription in your signature file. 8. Do press releases to get publicity for your newsletter.

As I said before, newsletters are very good and very powerful. Create one and use it to great advantage. You'll be glad you did.

Once you have defined your area of expertise and your target market, then you can get a pretty fair idea of what your content should be, at least to begin with. It helps if you start subscribing to other newsletters that target same subscribers you do. This will give you a more specific idea of kind of content you need to develop. But, let me stress again, this is only starting point.

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A side bar here! If you've followed seven steps of developing a guerrilla marketing plan that I laid out in an earlier article, these three questions should already be pretty much answered in that plan.

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Now that you have decided on area of expertise, target market, and type of content you want to provide, question becomes: How do I provide that content? The most obvious answer is through your own newsletter. But there are other options as well.

for instance, you could publish a series of reports or a book. You could write a column for someone else" s newsletter. You could do a radio or television show. You could do a series of audio or video tapes. Or you could do on line equivalents of any of these. But there is one important factor common to any and all of these possible tactics.

Your content must include original material written and developed by YOU! It certainly will not hurt to have material by acknowledged experts in your field, especially if their advice corroborates yours. But you must include ORIGINAL material. The more original material you can develop, better in long run for you.

Why is original material so important? It goes back to question we raised at beginning about what an opt in list is and why an opt in list is so important, which we never finished answering.

Having your own list of people who requested YOUR information allows you to build credibility for yourself as an expert in your field. But that works only if your content is your own ORIGINAL content. If you provide too much content written by others, you only build THEIR credibility with your subscribers, not yours! It is YOUR reputation as an expert you want to develop, not mine or anybody else's.

Besides, it was YOUR information they were requesting, not mine, not anybody else's. Give them YOUR information - information which is valuable, important and relevant and original. This will build their trust and confidence in you!

That trust will be useful in two ways for you, but that's subject of next article!

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Please send me a courtesy copy of your newsletter if you do use this article. Send it to: mailto:reprints@3r-marketing.com