What do you want to look for in an ASP List Hosting Provider? You want great customer service, an online interface that enables you to easily manage process, ability to easily to cut and paste your text (newsletter copy), instant distribution of your newsletter and ability to know at a glance how many subscribers you have on an ongoing basis and number of new subscribers and unsubscribers.

There are lots of list hosting companies out there - I'd recommend including two on your short list. One of oldest, most well established companies that has consistently won rave reviews for excellence in customer service is Sling Shot Media, LLC www.listhost.net - they've been hosting since 1998 (ancient in web time) and offer a wide range of consulting services related to all aspects of newsletter marketing. The other company to check out would be Microsoft's bCentral Services www.bcentral.com which offers list hosting as one of its services. I can't give them rave reviews for customer service, as they make you pay extra for anything more than e- mail support which can be a hassle at times. But, their list hosting interface is easy to use, works well most of time and they are price competitive.

Finally, one of biggest marketing challenges facing many small to medium sized companies is generating a newsletter subscriber list. I don't have sufficient space in this column to address this challenge - but, it's a classic go/no go situation; longer you put it off harder it becomes, so get started, upside rewards are too significant to delay!

But really, why have a newsletter? There are ways to promote web sites (search engines) and there are ways to promote newsletters (announcement lists). Each generates a different type of traffic.

Your newsletter can mention your website, your website can mention your newsletter, and you will gain more users in both areas.

Newsletter Promotion

One quick and easy trick for promoting your newsletter or discussion group is to take advantage of free announcement lists. It'll take you about two minutes a week.

What is an announcement list? Put simply, Internet has users who enjoy receiving newsletters, and receiving regular announcements of what newsletters are out there. These are people with some time on their hands, probably same people who will be most receptive to buying your books.

The way I've set things up on my computer is, I've written an ad for my newsletter. I send same ad to announcement lists as often as they'll allow it. In same file with my announcement, I have a "monthly list" and a "weekly list" of email addresses that I send this ad to. Also in file, I record when I last sent my announcement to them.

Once a week, with a two-minute copy-and-paste job, I'm advertising. Every time I do this, more subscribers arrive. Apparently different people are always joining these announcement lists, and some of them are joining my newsletter subscriber list.

You have to join any announcement list before you can announce on it, but you don't have to receive announcements yourself. All major newsletter/discussion group hosts will allow you to set your options to "No Mail/Read On The Website."

Visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/michaellarocca/files/ and pick up a copy of file I use. It's called NewsletterAd.rtf. All typed in and ready to go, except for "signing up" bit. (If you're not receiving my free newsletter, you might want to join while you're there. *grin*)

Once you join each group -- that might take you an hour or two -- you'll be ready to send out those weekly emails.

To join SmartGroups lists, log onto http://www.smartgroups.com. Each group address is http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/{listname}

{listname} refers to part of email address before @

To join Topica lists, log onto http://www.topica.com Each group address is http://www.topica.com/lists/{listname}

To join YahooGroups lists, log onto http://groups.yahoo.com Each group address is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/{listname}

Free Content

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PublishInYours is a good starting place. Also in Yahoo Groups are articles_announce, articles_archives, Free-Content, and publisher_archives.

You can also look in any search engine for "free content" and find some more.

I recommend Media Peak (http://www.mediapeak.com) and Nerdworld (http://www.nerdworld.com).

Newsletter Unveiling

I'm not going to list all these sites in my article. You can find them at http://free_reads.tripod.com/websitenewsletter.html. There are 31 of them. When I visited them all, I watched my subscriber base grow by about 200 in a month. I don't know which sites should get credit.

Most of them allow you to list your newsletter for a month. I may or may not visit them again at some point, because they take a lot longer than two-minute job I mentioned before.

Conclusion

Okay, that should keep you busy for a while! Set up your website, set up your newsletter, and do some announcing. If you have any questions along way, write to michaellarocca@lycos.com and I'll do what I can.

Michael LaRocca is the author of four published novels and an EPPIE 2002 Award finalist. He is an American living in Asia, and he's been a full-time author and editor since December 2000. His website is designed to help you find the best free and low-cost quality reads, and to help you improve/publish/promote your own writing free and avoid scams. http://free_reads.tripod.com