When you publish an ezine, you most definitely want to provide useful, and original content as well as promoting your business. Some things you might want to include:

*Original Articles/Guest Articles - If you are not writing your own articles, please try it. Although guest articles can be very effective, it is always a good idea to have some original content as well.

There are lots of places to get articles:

Article Announcement Lists: mailto:aainet-subscribe@yahoogroups.com; mailto:reprintedarticles-subscribe@yahoogroups.com; mailto:aabusiness-subscribe@egroups.com; mailto:aageneral-subscribe@egroups.com; mailto:articles_archives-subscribe@egroups.com; mailto:QC_Reprint_Articles-subscribe@yahoogroups.com; mailto:ap-shorts-subscribe@yahoogroups.com; mailto:article_announce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com; mailto:articles4you2use4promotion-subscribe@yahoogroups.com; mailto:articlesubmission-subscribe@yahoogroups.com; mailto:Free-Content-subscribe@yahoogroups.com; mailto:Free-Reprint-Articles-subscribe@yahoogroups.com;

Article Directories: http://OpportunityUpdate.com/articles/ http://amazines.com/ http://ezinearticles.com/add_url.html http://marketing-of-training.com/motoarticles.htm http://www.womans-net.com/submit.php http://www.MakingProfit.com http://www.articlecentral.com/suggest.asp http://www.articlecity.com/article_submission.shtml http://www.bestparentingresources.com/Article.html http://www.boconline.com/sub-art.htm http://www.businesstoolchest.com/articles/submit.shtml http://www.connectionteam.com/art.html

You could also ask for article submissions in your ezine and on your website. Provide a special email to receive articles such as: mailto:ter02@newnorth.net?subject=articles

*Freebies - downloads, tools, ebooks, and any other useful Freebie you can find. Freebies can be found all over as well. Do a search for Free Downloads, Freebies, Free resources or whatever type of freebie you are looking for. There are also freebie ezines and email lists you can subscribe to.

*A Forum for Your Readers - A place where readers can vent, question, complain, interact, whatever comments or feedback they might want to send in. This also helps in starting that all important connection between reader and publisher.

*Human Interest Items - Inspirational stories or poems, people helping people, survival stories, whatever you think your readers might enjoy reading about.

*A Little Fun/Humor - We all need to laugh, so why not have a little fun with your readers!

Note: I would put last two items together in one section because you do not want to get too far off subject matter.

When starting your ezine, first thing you want to do is name it. I would suggest keeping name as close to your website/business name as possible. If you do not have a website or business yet, use a name you could name your business as well.

For example: If you sell gifts/products for you & your home and your business name is Gifts Galore, you could then name your ezine "Gifts Galore News" or "Gifts Galore Ezine".

For content, you would include home decorating links, beauty tips and ideas, articles on frugal decorating home remedy recipes, camping tips and resources, whatever pertains to gifts you are selling. This type of ezine would be great fun to publish!

Now to get started with design and layout of your ezine...the first thing you want to do is to find a good text editor such as Textpad. You can download free version at http://www.textpad.com. This is what I use and I love it. It is very easy and efficient.

A lot of people format their ezine to 60 or 65 characters per line, but I prefer 55. That means that after every 55 letters/numbers/spaces typed, you would press enter and start a new line. You can set Textpad to do this automatically, but I find it works better to do it manually. Just watch number at bottom right of TextPad screen and hit enter when you get to 55 or 60/65.

Create a template for your ezine so each week you can just open up this template and fill in necessary sections. This will save you lots of time.

At top of ezine, you want a centered heading with your title, and contact info.

It should look like this: