Now, let me ask you a second question. "How do you plan to accomplish your goals?"

Regardless of reason for your ezine, one thing is a given. You must have subscribers in order to get end result you're seeking. And how do you gain subscribers? Promote, promote, promote!

There are several things you can do that will increase your ezine's circulation. Some provide immediate results and others take longer but offer more lasting success. In any event, be prepared to spend a great deal of time promoting. Large circulations don't happen overnight unless you choose to "buy" subscribers. Below are several ideas for promoting your ezine with power in order to keep a steady flow of new subscribers coming into ranks.

Ad Recommendations

One promotional method that works wonderfully is to have other publishers recommend your ezine to their subscribers.

Just find publishers that have newsletters which are similar to yours but not identical. For example, a copywriter might team up with a Web designer or a printing shop (both of whose customers will need copy writing services). When a subscriber registers for Web designer's ezine, welcome letter they receive will state something like, "Another ezine you will find beneficial is ABC Ezine from Copywriting Services, Inc. ABC Ezine will help you create great copy for your site in order to get best results from it. You can subscribe by clicking here."

In return, you would include a "plug" for Web designer's ezine in your welcome letter.

You can also exchange ads with other publishers on a regular basis to gain new subscribers.

Submit To Directories

Yes, you've heard this before but most only provide a small sample of ezine directories to submit to. There are literally hundreds that you can use and they are FREE. Here is an extensive list of sites you can visit to list your publication. But don't stop here. To be truly successful, you'll need to take time to research and submit to all that you can find. Just visit your favorite search engine and type in "ezine directory".

The answer is that from a tax point of view, it is advantageous to trade through a limited company as long as income is drawn from company by owners as dividends from their shares and amount of dividends drawn is restricted below 40% band rate (i.e. œ31,063 for tax year 2002/03). That way, owners have no further personal tax ("income tax") to pay. Moreover, dividends are not subject to national insurance contributions. This is excellent news of course. But, if dividend income falls within higher rate bracket of income tax (i.e. above œ34,515), they will be taxed at 22.5% on excess, which of course will increase tax burden. The company profits are subject to corporation tax rates. Those are lower than income tax rates.

The most catastrophic scenario is when director takes his reward from company as salary. Then his/her salary is taxed at income tax rates (like a sole trader's income). That is because, unlike sole traders, tax system treats companies as separate from their owners because a company is a separate legal entity. The problem is that income taxes are higher than corporation tax rates. On top of that, they will be subject to employee and employer national insurance contributions, which of course increase tax burden and render his position worse than even an unincorporated business ("sole trader"), because NIC Class 1 on payroll are higher than NIC Class 2 paid by self employed.

In contrast, a self employed person ("sole trader") is taxed at income tax rates on profits from his business, which are added to his other sources of income. As it has already been mentioned, income tax rates are overall higher than corporation tax rates. On top of income tax, national insurance contributions class 4 are payable on business profits within a specified band (7% on profits between œ4,615and œ30,420). National insurance contributions Class 2 are also paid by self-employed people, although those are lower than those payable by company directors on their salaries.

To illustrate above, let's take a simple example. We have a limited company and a sole trader. They both make œ60,000 profits each in tax year 2002/03. We assume that company director takes a salary equal to amount of his personal allowances (untaxed income) of œ4,615 and balance as dividends. The company will pay corporation tax at 19% equal to œ10,523 and nothing else. The sole trader will pay income tax œ16,542, National insurance Class 2 œ104 and National insurance Class 4 œ1,806. Total œ18,452. The bottom line is that person that has incorporated his business into a limited company will make a tax saving of œ7,929 compared to a sole trader! Isn't that fantastic?

Somebody might be wondering: why is this entire happening? The official explanation is that, this government, to help economy grow, encourages people to leave as much profits within their businesses to be reinvested, instead of being taken out and spent.