Here are five important steps to making your ezine subscribers anticipate, open, and read it every time, rather than looking for delete button or unsubscribe instructions.

1. Spell it out. Let your readers know exactly what they are going to find in each issue right up front. Include an easy to scan Table of Contents as near top of issue as possible. Try to limit any ads or information that precede your ezine Title and table of Contents to one (or less! LOL)

It's no secret that folks are busy. You MUST inform them of what is included in your issue, in a manner that is easy to scan. Of course, this makes wording of your titles extremely important, if you're going to catch their attention and convince them to scroll down and read what you've spelled out for them.

2. Be consistent. Set a format, and stick to it for every issue. Decide on some basic categories for content, and don't make changes very often. Your subscribers will know what to expect in each issue, and be able to find information they have been anticipating.

2. Keep it short. Don't overload each issue. Two or three segments per issue. (as above, repeating same segments in each issue) Don't overwhelm your subscribers with more than they are able to digest, or browse through.

Consider offering one feature article, and one or two other segments, which will all depend on theme of your ezine. You only have their attention for about 5 - 10 seconds after they open your email. You MUST catch their attention in that time, or they'll be gone. And you'll only get a couple of chances. Sometimes, even less. One or two issues of not catching their attention, and they're looking for unsubscription instructions.

The first step in writing an article is finding a topic or subject, something to write about. This might seem to be a huge task, but it does not need to be. There are many different avenues to finding a topic. The ability to use them will help you overcome your fear and enable you to start developing ideas for writing article.

One avenue to finding a topic is to brainstorm. I used this method when I taught Sophomore creative writing classes in high school. It requires you to think of as many topics as possible, concentrating on compiling a list of ideas as quickly as posssible. Write these ideas down as you think of them. You can judge (quality) of them later.

Now that you have a list of topics, you will want to go over them and choose one you want to write about. Once you have chosen topic, your next step is to outline. This gives you an opportunity to record, organize, and evaluate your topic before actual writing. For example, you may start by choosing general subject "ezines." As you outline your article, you will need to find a part of general subject to write about. For example, from "ezines," you might choose one of following:

What is an ezine? How to publish an ezine Ezine Ads Ezine subscribers

Once you have chosen a specific topic on which to write, you should decide on reason or purpose for writing. A purpose for writing an article usually falls into one of four groups: to describe something, to tell a story about something, to explain something, or to persuade your readers to do something. For example, let us say you chose to write about ezine subscribers. You purpose for writing article may one of following:

How to obtain subscribers for your ezine. How to keep subscribers once you have them.

With your purpose in mind, you should write a sentence that states your main idea. When you are ready to start writing your article, you may use this sentence as topic sentence In addition, sentence will help you to organize your thoughts and ideas In writing about ezine subscribers, you might write one of following topic sentences.

The subscribers are life blood of an ezine. An exine and its subscriber base are two parts of a single whole.