TO: I do write articles occasionally and they are an excellent way to promote your product or service free all over Internet. Also important are few paragraphs that I write at beginning of each ezine allowing me to establish a long-term relationship with my subscribers.

KH: What methods do you use to promote your products or services within your ezine?

TO: I think it's absolutely vital that an ezine not be used primarily to promote your own products or services. With that said, it is also one of fastest and most powerful ways of making money on net.

When I do promote, I use articles that involve services and products that I'm an affiliate of. I cloak link so it doesn't look like an affiliate link.

KH: How do you go about preparing your ezine for publication?

TO: I keep up on latest software, articles and marketing info from marketing pros, search engines, ezines, etc... saving what I consider to be most interesting.

I also have various free weekly subscriptions that email me quotes, jokes, and strange facts. Plus I gather all free & paid ads that have been submitted to HGM during week.

Then on Thursday night I take best of all material I've saved and form a rough draft. Friday morning I polish it up and send it out around noon.

KH: Any advice to future ezine publishers? Things to look out for or things to concentrate on when publishing an ezine?

TO: Don't use your newsletter as just a way of promoting your programs, keep your material fresh and most of all -- it really helps to LOVE WHAT YOU'RE DOING!

KH: How do you go about preparing your ezine for publication?

PG: Well, I host my ezine with Constant Contact, because it is very easy and fast to use and because it will send out my ezine in text to those who need it and HTML to those who can get that, so I don't have to worry about doing 2 versions. I have a basic format that I set up when I started using Constant Contact, so that saves me a lot of time also.

I usually start with what article I'm going to put in my ezine. When I write an article, I'll usually use it in my own ezine and then send it out to other ezines. If I haven't "been inspired" or had time to write, I have many writers who send me their articles, so I'll choose one of their articles to run first.

I try to put as much viable information in my ezine as I can and keep ads to a minimum. That way, advertisers don't have a lot of competition and their ads get to show up well. Plus, I really don't want ezine to become a classifieds section! My main purpose in publishing it is to inform, and I hope it does that.

KH: Any advice to future ezine publishers? Things to look out for or things to concentrate on when publishing an ezine?

PG: Always keep your subscribers in mind in everything you do, whether it's your ezine or your site. Never forget that your main reason for doing your ezine SHOULD be to help them not you. Make it your business to focus on helping others not dollar.

Of course, we all are in this to hopefully make some money, but I think where people get into trouble with their businesses is when they let dollar take precedence over their customers. In other words, greed will be your downfall if you let it become all important.

Things to look out for...first of all, don't ever recommend something unless you truly believe in it, because your business reputation is at stake. Next, don't overload your ezine with ads, whether paid or free. When I first started out, I told my subscribers to send in their ads and I'd publish them once a week, but now that my subscriber base has grown, I had to change it to first 5 who send in their ads would get their ads published.

You can get overloaded with ads and then no one will want to read your ezine; so if you want to give free ads in exchange for subscribers to get you started, that's fine, but don't sign up with a lot of services or you'll be overrun with ads! They are a great way to begin getting subscribers; just don't let it get out of hand!