Although raising a child and developing an eZine are both rewarding experiences, your eZine gets to point where it should be making you money. If you are still struggling to make a buck online with your publication, make sure you absorb and use each money-making tip in this series of articles.

Affiliate programs and products

You probably began your eZine to promote your own affiliate programs and products, so this isn't exactly a new idea. But how are you promoting your programs and products?

Here is a quick, 7 point list of ideas that you can use in your eZine to increase your affiliate sign ups and product sales.

1. Classified ads - This one is an obvious idea, but is not as simple as it seems. Writing an effective, lead generating, classified ad is an art and takes practice. Notice I said lead generating.

The sole purpose of a classified ad is to generate leads. It's highly unlikely that you're going to make a sale with 5 lines of text. Instead, use your 5 lines to motivate your prospects into visiting your site, where you can present an entire sales presentation and make your sale.

An excellent resource for learning to write effective classified ads is Tom Hua's, Classified Ad Secrets 2002. http://www.bpcpublishing.com/classifiedsecrets.htm

2. Sponsor ads - These ads are larger than classified ads, strategically placed at top, middle or bottom of your ezine and generally 'framed' with interesting characters. You can make these sponsorship ads any size you want, but a comfortable size is about 12 lines

Because you make these ads larger than normal and place them in strategic places, top, middle and bottom of your eZine, they attract more attention.

3. Articles - Write your own articles. If you use articles in your eZine, why not write your own? You don't have to write every article in every issue of your publication, but make an effort to write at least one a month.

Your articles show your subscribers that you are an 'expert' in your field and gives you added credibility. But this is only spin off benefit.

Write your article about your products and affiliate programs. One word of warning here, don't write an ad, it most likely won't get published. Give readers thick and juicy information to chew on and subtly place your product or affiliate link into article where it is appropriate.

The most common forms of permission-based emails are ezines or email newsletters. Currently there are hundreds of thousands of ezines available on internet.

Ezines are excellent tools for generating new and follow-up sales, driving more pageviews, building customer loyalty, and improving sales credibility and brand awareness.

Even though ezines are vital to success of every online business, there are some marketers who unknowingly kill their ezines with not-so-wise marketing methods. I have highlighted some of killer mistakes below.

Killer #1 .. Who needs permission? Just mail 'em!

A recent study of permission email recipients by IMT Strategies revealed following:

48% were curious to read permission email 13% were eager to read 30% were indifferent 7% open it somewhat annoyed 2% deleted it without reading

When it came to unsolicited email or spam:

77% deleted it without reading 16% said they were annoyed but opened it 3% were indifferent to it 4% were curious to read spam email 1% percent were eager to read it

In above results, we can see that 9 in 10 recipients of permission email were fine with reading messages, with a near half curious to read!

But for spam, 9 in 10 didn't even read email or were seriously unhappy about opening it.

We can clearly see a remarkable difference in response to permission-based emails and unsolicited emails. Always ask for permission!

Only add subscribers who have consciously chosen to receive your ezine. You'll reap rewards of having a highly targeted and loyal audience that are interested in reading what you send them.

There have been many times when I received issues of ezines that I don't ever recalled subscribing to. These ezine owners had taken their own 'initiative' to add me their list. Such spamming antics only seriously piss me off!

Never try to buy a list of email addresses and then send them your ezine issue telling them to remove themselves if they don't wish to get further mailings. That's spamming.

Killer #2 .. Don't let 'em unsubscribe

Since it is so difficult to acquire new subscribers, let's prevent them from un-subscribing at all costs. Heck .. just don't provide them with an unsubscribe option in newsletter. Then they won't unsubscribe!

Nothing pisses me off more than newsletters that I cannot unsubscribe from. There are no unsubscribe instruction nor any email address to send an unsubscribe request to.

Such practices are totally unethical and unprofessional. If your subscribers can't even trust you over something so minor, how would they feel secure doing business with you?