The 60-Minute E-zine

Genesis Davies

   Nowadays, everyone knows that an e-zine or email newsletter is one of the best ways to build your opt-in list. But do you have time to put together your own e-zine? After all, if you are a typical e-business person, you already design and maintain your own website, market and promote your product or service and do all your own research. That doesn't leave a lot of spare time to spend writing valuable content for your e-zine!

   The answer is yes, you just need to know how to go about it. The first thing to decide is the focus of your e-zine. It should closely follow the theme of your website, but if you cover many topics on your site, you can narrow it down to the most popular topic. Check your page hits to find out what your visitors are most interested in.

  Once you have your topic, you are ready to begin. Here are the steps to take to get your ozone done in just one hour!

-         Look up relevant articles on free content sites. Save two or three articles to your computer. If you don't care about having the same exact content as possibly thousands of other people, you can just use the articles as is, keeping the author information and resource box intact.

Time required: 10 minutes

-         Find more information. Do a quick search on Google on the article topics to pick up a few more tidbits to add to the articles.

Time required: 10 minutes

-         Rewrite the articles to make them original. You only need one to three articles per newsletter, so it isn't a big job. Add in the extra facts that you picked up, rework the sentences and put the article back together. If you don't feel confident in your ability to do this, you can hire a professional writer to do so for a small fee. Post an ad on www.freelancewriting.com or www.elance.com.

Time required: 35 minutes (if you do it yourself), 10 minutes (hire a freelancer).

-         Add a personal note. Type a quick note to head your newsletter, letting your readers know what's going on with you. This adds a personal touch and will make your readers feel like they know you.

Time required: 5 minutes

   That's it, you have your e-zine ready to go! The only thing you need to do now is find a good auto-responder. You will want one that offers the option of producing multiple ezines in case you want to expand later on. A service that provides personalization is also great, it's just another detail that you don't have to worry about.