In fact, it's easier to write and get published today than ever before - especially thanks to Internet "revolution." Publishing a newsletter is a great way to increase your visibility and credibility. If you write informative and accurate articles you will be viewed as an authority on subjects you write about, and that will improve your credibility with your potential customers. You can also include in your newsletters relevant links to products or services you sell. There are many genuine opportunities to tempt your readers to explore your web site and products or services further.

So how do you set about writing your own newsletter? The first thing you need to do is decide on a topic that you are interested in and your potential customers would also like to know more about. Then all you need to do is decide if you have enough knowledge on that subject to write confidently about it, and if you don’t, there are ways around that too. Then decide what format you want to use to present information and bingo; you have a winning formula for your newsletter.

Deciding on a topic. You should pick a subject that interests you, and if possible, one that you already know something about. It should also be a topic that is relevant and interesting to your potential customers. It should also be linked to products and services you sell so that throughout your publications, you can refer readers to your web site for further information or relevant products or services.

For example, if you sell second hand cars, you may want to write a newsletter about “What to look for when buying a second hand car” or “Basic car maintenance”, if you sell houses, you may want to write about” Tips for preparing your house for sale”, or “How to profit from buy-to-let market”, etc.

Do you have knowledge? If you don’t feel you have enough knowledge to write on specific, relevant topics, another strategy for producing a newsletter is to ask others to write it for you. Why would an author give you an article for your newsletter? Because they can include their contact information and links to their web pages, that’s why. The more copies of your newsletter that you give away, more traffic they get to their web sites. More traffic equals more sales.

Joe has been studying internet for months, surveying battlefield, as he calls it. One day, he declared to Stan, his longtime buddy. "The dotcom bubble has bottomed out, I see that we are at beginning of a new uptrend. Let’s build an online store".

Setting up a website is like setting up a business in a foreign land. Joe had to learn foreign language (HTML, XML, PHP, Perl, CGI, Java, CSS, RSS).

The first stage was easy enough. They quickly decided on JoeNoGood.com, it has a counterculture aura around it and a matching slogan as well - We’re Good at JoeNoGood.com.

Registering JoeNoGood.com (domain name), finding a web-hosting company to host his site and finding a credit card processor to handle credit card transactions were simple tasks. There are also some excellent open-source software that, with some basic knowledge, Joe and Stan built their website within two weeks.

The second stage is by far toughest and will need stamina – website marketing and promotion. Having a website is like having a billboard pasted with your messages on an island. Now Joe needs visitors (hits) and bridges (links) to his little island.

When a consumer wants to find a product, 80% of time, this person will use a search engine. Joe’s website has to search-engine friendly - when a search is made for a product or service at JoeNoGood.com, Joe want his website’s page to be in top 20 rankings (top 10 would be ideal). This is Joe’s first-year marketing plan.

Sending 48 Free-Reprint Articles a year

Joe’s marketing plan needs him to write 48 articles a year. He understood that his articles have to be original, informative, entertaining and in plain language. With his buddy during an all-night brainstorming session they agreed on a few ideas.

A Brief History of Gift-Giving would be a good start. Gifts for Positive Response might be another – not corruption, you blockhead, think about a prelude to a marriage proposal or motivating a teenage student to excel in his studies. Romantics may like to read Gifts for Your Love; list goes on and on.

Perhaps, a possible topic may be Gift-Receiving Habits of Bushmen Americans, ones concentrated in D.C. area. Bushmen use strange language like "I wish to caveat my response" which is hardly understandable by public. A follow-up article like Bushmen Gifts – Impact on Iraq’s Economy may provide scholarly reputation for Joe, a must-read for think tanks around world.

Publishing 4 Free E-books a year

Since Joe wrote an article a week, within three months, he will have enough material for an e-book. Knowing hassles, he decides on a commercial website that can convert his articles into an EXE and PDF format and submit this free-for-download e-book to various depositories on his behalf.

Naturally, since this e-book is free, Joe inserted some messages on his products and services in a non-intrusive manner. Joe thought – an e-book-cum-catalog, what a clever idea. He wants to persuade without using ways used by in-your-face marketers. Joe wants his readers to know and believe he is true to his chosen slogan.