by Karon Thackston © 2003 http://www.creatingezines.com Jill Whalen is well known for her search engine optimization talents. She’s equally well known for her ezine, High Rankings Advisor. From its inception in 2000 until today, she has built an exceptionally loyal subscriber base of over 15,000 that would literally follow her to
ends of ‘Net and back. How did she do it? We’re about to find out!
KARON: Hi Jill… thanks for your time.
JILL: No problem, Karon.
KARON: Let me start with this…. many people decide to create an ezine simply because “everybody else has one.” Why did you choose to launch a newsletter?
JILL: Well, for years, I was a heavy poster to many email discussion lists, and I had lots of people asking me to do a newsletter. Since I was always giving out free advice anyway, it made sense to share it with more people. When I made decision to give it a whirl back in 2000, I had a partner. Together we decided on a name, created a Web site for it, and figured out how to host it, etc.
KARON: Now, you told me that you split from your partner later on. When that happened, how did you handle "conversion”?
JILL: When we decided to part ways, we had over 9,000 subscribers, and there was no way I was gonna start over from zero! We agreed to each get a copy of subscriber list and go from there. We mentioned what was happening to subscribers, and that we would now have two separate newsletters. Anyone who wanted them both didn't have to do anything, and from that point forward, anyone could separately unsubscribe or subscribe to either of them on our respective sites.
KARON: Seems pretty easy. So basically, except for having some subscribers, you really had to start all over again, didn’t you?
JILL: Well, experience was there, too. I had been doing list admin work for other ezine for years, so it was easy for me to simply contact list host and have them convert it over to High Rankings Advisor. The hard part was coming up with new name! When I did finally come up with High Rankings Advisor name, I was happy with it. I think most people don't spend enough time thinking about their newsletter names. We see same names recycled between different newsletter publishers. I really believe it's important to be original and creative. Newsletter names don't come easy. They take a lot of time and effort to really come up with one that's exactly right for your publication. Like everything else you do with your newsletter, you should never just rush it. Once you do think of a name, you should check around to make sure nobody beat you to it. I had one I thought was great, but when I checked, someone else in my "space" was using something very similar.
KARON: I agree. Since launching of Business Essentials, I’ve found three or four other email newsletters that have very similar names. Now, you have way more than 9,000 subscribers today. How have you gone about getting them? Which way(s) work best? Which way(s) stink?
JILL: At first, I contacted everyone who ever emailed me over years (yes, I had saved them all!). I created a list of a good three or four hundred names, and sent out a mass email telling them that I was creating a newsletter and how to subscribe. I would never, ever, ever just sign people up. Nothing irks me more then when people do that. Grrrr!
