First, you need to decide on subject of your E-zine. The subject, ideally, should complement subject of your Web site. Next, you need to establish a schedule for sending out your publication (e.g., weekly, monthly, quarterly), and then, more importantly, you need to meet your deadlines.

To ensure your E-zine gets read, it is crucial that you provide information that is original, informative and beneficial to your readers. You need to make your readers hungry for your content. Your content, however, is not your only consideration. You also have to consider format you send your content in.

When I decided to publish my first E-zine in 1999, I copied ideas from E-zines I liked and respected. There are thousands of E-zines on Web, but really good ones are rare gems, because they are formatted nicely, contain no spelling or grammar mistakes, are professionally written, provide original content that you won't find in ten other E-zines, and they are fun to read.

One of first mistakes I made when I began contemplating design of my E-zine's template was to use my word processor. Although formatting stayed true in Outlook Express, when I viewed newsletter in AOL, it was a mass of unformatted text that ran on forever with funky characters and was completely unreadable. I was aghast. With my "tail between my legs," I sent an apology to my subscribers and immediately scrapped my word processor for E-zine publishing.

So now you have a terrific looking ezine and interesting content but where do you find subscribers? I was hoping you'd ask. In order to grow your subscriber base you'll need to promote your ezine every chance you get.

The first thing you need to do is include a sign up box on each and every page of your website and if you can, offer a free sample copy by autoresponder. To set up a free autoresponder check out http://www.GetResponse.com

Some publishers swear by pop up boxes to increase their subscriber sign ups. If you go this route I encourage you to opt for kind that pop up upon exit not upon entering, less annoying. You'll find some software to help you with this here....http://www.codelifter.com/pop5index.html or look at http://www.DynamicDrive.com for some free scripts.

The next step is to get your ezine listed in as many online newsletter directories as possible. You'll have to do your homework by searching engines for directories where you can add your listing for free.This is an important step as many people look to these directories when looking for newsletters to subscribe to. Some of them are:

http://www.Lifestylespub.com/mcp/ http://www.E-zinedirectory.com/ http://www.Webscoutlists.com/signup.epl http://www.Ezineadsource.com/ http://www.Zineconnection.com/ http://www.Ezine-Universe.com http://www.EzineLocater.com/ http://www.EzinesPlus.com/

Remember many of these online directories will allow you to post your ad rates as well. A double bonus which allows you to pick up new subscribers as well as advertisers.

Announcement lists are also good for promoting your ezine. Search at http://groups.yahoo.com for lists that exist for sole purpose of announcing new lists. You'll also want to participate in online discussion boards with a good signature line that mentions your ezine. You'll find some great boards to post to at http://www.DiscussMarketing.com

Other great ways to grow your subscriber base include swapping ads with other publishers and writing articles to submit to other publishers for possible publication in their ezines. Again, a strong signature line is imperative. Try some of these sites for swaps.

http://www.BizPromo.com/EzineTrades.htm http://www.Ezine-Swap.com

Free Software to keep track of your swaps http://www.nowsell.com/pages/ad-tracker.html

Other Ezine Publishers you can swap ads with http://www.alacarim.com/adex/

Free Directory of Ezines and other helpful resources for today's ezine publisher http://www.FreeZineWeb.com/

The Handbook of Ezine Publishing http://www.e-zinez.com/