THE CONS

Time consuming: It takes me an average of five hours to put together each issue of my own ezine, WriteSuccess. That does *not* include writing my own articles for it, surfing 'Net in search of markets and writers' sites for each issue, promoting my ezine on various announcement lists, trading ezine ads with other publications that complement mine, reading and responding to emails received, and subscribing or unsubscribing readers who can't do so themselves. Ezines, at least good ones, are labor-intensive ventures.

Challenging: This "con" could also be a "pro," depending on how you look at it. Maintaining a consistent, high quality ezine over months and years takes a great deal of dedication and motivation. You need to truly love topic of your ezine in order to stick with it for any period of time.

And you can't take your readership for granted, either. In recent weeks, a few of my favorite ezines have disappeared off face of Web, with or without a warning from publisher/editor. Not only was I disappointed that I would no longer receive their ezines, but--even if ezines were revived--I would greatly hesitate to swap ads or pursue joint ventures with them in future, due to unreliability of publishers.

Not all fun and games: Ezine publishers get *a lot* of spam! We also sometimes get nasty-grams from people who forgot they'd ever subscribed to our 'zine in first place. And of course there are unexplained unsubscribes that occur after each issue, which hurt a little, seeing amount of time and effort you invested putting it together.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Is ezine publishing hard work? Absolutely. But, at least from my perspective, tangible and intangible rewards more than compensate for drawbacks. If anything, I enjoy publishing WriteSuccess today more than I ever did.

In a world made even smaller by Internet, you can reach potential clients and readers around globe. Publishing your own ezine is an outstanding way to accomplish that.

If your e-mail software cannot personalize hundreds of outgoing emails automatically, get one that can. Nothing spells "mass-mailing" more than starting an email with, "Dear Internet Friend".

Alternatively, you can utilize a good autoresponder to do trick.

Here's an autoresponder service that I've been very pleased with. Oddly enough, they're also least expensive:

http://www.demandmail.com/cgi-bin/assoc/c.cgi/ezineann AOL Click Here

6. Don't sell products to your readers

Are you planning to make money with your ezine? If not, you're going to lose motivation real fast. No one likes working for free -- unless you're doing volunteer work where there are greater rewards than making money.

The answer? Affiliate programs. The best part is, you can begin selling products right now at no cost to you. Did you notice affiliate products mentioned within this article? ;-)

There are probably a dozen products that would be of benefit to your readers. Gardeners, car enthusiasts, computer programmers .. you can find all products you need by visiting a few popular Affiliate program directories.

7. Don't promote your ezine

If your ezine marketing strategy is -- "go crazy" for 3 days and then kick back and relax, you're destined for failure. Ezine publishing requires constant nurturing to grow. You're not going to build an ezine with 15,000 subscribers by playing bingo three nights a week.

Here's a handy tool that helps automate time consuming process of promoting your ezine:

http://www.ezineannouncer.com

So there you have it. 7 ways to avoid *failure* as an ezine publisher. Put these proven ideas into motion and you're sure to improve success of your ezine.