To help YOU get off on right foot, I'm listing five most common mistakes I see new publishers make. Watch your step!

MISTAKE 1: Sending out their e-zines from their own everyday e-mail programs.

Sure, it seems easy at first, you just create a "group" in your e-mail program and start from there. But once you get over 50 subscribers, you're going to have nothing but problems. Not only will you have to manually handle all sign-ups and removals, but you may get into trouble. Most Internet service providers (ISPs) won't let you send an e-mail to more than 30 people at once. They set limits like this to help prevent spammers from using their networks.

Also, your entire list resides on your computer, so you'll have to be extra meticulous about making backups of your list - imagine instantly losing a list of hundreds or thousands of subscribers that took months to build!

Save yourself some time and headaches NOW, and sign up for a reliable online list service or purchase list management software.

MISTAKE 2. Signing up people without their permission.

Even if you're my best friend, I'll honestly be perturbed if you launch your e-zine and automatically sign me up for it. That's a big no-no on Net, and it can get you in hot water.

If you're wondering how to get your list started, send out a one-time *invitation* to everyone you know, along with a *sample issue* of your e-zine and clear instructions on how to subscribe. That way they can *see* how great your e-zine is, and they'll realize they should definitely sign up.

The most important thing for every advertiser is to find targeted market for his product. That's exactly what ezines has to offer. A targeted market. There are so many ezines out there covering so many different topics. It's easy to find highly targeted ones to advertise in. With ezine advertising you can reach thousands of targeted potential customers very inexpensively.

Lie: Ezine advertising ALWAYS works . . .

I know you've been told that all you have to do is purchase a solo ad in an ezine, ... and that's it! You'll be several thousands of dollars richer.

No! It doesn't work that way. These days ezine advertising has become so competitive that it's necessary to stand apart from competition. You'll need to do a lot work to make your ezine advertising strategy works:

Rule # 1: Be Highly Target.

I know this seems to be a quite obvious rule, but some advertisers overlook this. You need to be very careful when choosing an ezines to advertise in. Make sure that you choose an ezines whose readers are your tightly targeted prospects.

Rule # 2: Subscribe to Ezine Before You Purchase an Ad.

After you've chosen a number of ezines that target your audience, subscribe to them and check a few things before you buy an ad...

=> Quality of Ezine. It's not number of subscribers that matters, it's number of people who actually READ ezine.

=> How many ads are in Ezine. Don't expect much response from an ad in an ezine that has 15 or 20 ads per issue. Be sure that your ad will be skiped with rest.