Day 14 (Sunday) - Ezine Marketing

Lesson Objective:

To start researching ezines targeting your niche market, identify 50 you can submit
articles to and 5 ezines where you can run an advertisement.

Skills Needed:
· Basic Surfing
· Basic Word Processing



NOTE: To save as much time as possible you should buy an email merge product
such as Group Mail.

Today’s Lesson:

Today, we’re going to start researching ezines for free publicity (you’ll be submitting
articles to them in a few days) and for buying advertising.


Ezines are those email newsletters you get in your inbox. At last count, I heard there were
something like 100,000 of them on all different topics.

As you are beginning your research, I suggest starting a simple spreadsheet with fields
like this:


Ezine name, editor’s name, editor’s email, circulations, advertising cost, accept articles
(Yes or No), comments

Now, here are some places you start your search for ezines – you’ll find most of these
directories are grouped by categories. (Though the paid ones are more extensive and
would be my recommendation if you can afford it):

Ezine Directory List:

John Labovitz's Ezine List (this one is good but it has not been updated past March 2000)

Top Ezine Ads (this one is really good but it costs a few bucks)
Top Ezine Ads

Directory of Ezines (this one is also really good but it costs a few bucks)
Directory of Ezines

Ezine-Universe

eZINESearch

Best Ezines




Today’s Assignment:


1. Find 20 – 50 Ezines that accept articles. You may need to email some of the ezine
editors asking if they accept articles. The paid directories will give you this
invaluable information.

2. Find 5 potential ezines you’d like to advertise in. Contact the editors for their
requirements. (Once again the paid ezine directories usually give you this
information.)



Today’s Resources:

Ezine Directories

Top Ezine Ads

Directory of Ezines

These are 2 important ezine directories that I use whenever I am looking for editors that
accept ezine articles or places to advertise in.

Email Merge Programs:
You’ll need to get some kind of email merge software so you can submit articles to ezine
editors or you can do it all yourself manually (if you have more time than money).

Group Mail - Group-mail is a mail merge software that works very well. I use it
personally and I’ve heard good things about it. It has both a free and paid version.


“Budget Cruncher”!

Email merge programs

Go to www.Downloads.com and look for free versions or free trials
of email merge software. Try searching for “email merge” first.
One that I found (which may or may not still be there as you check
this) is called G-Lock Easy Mail 4.0 – it is free to try and lets you do email merge. Plus
other nice features.


Submitting to Ezines
Your option here is simply to submit to each ezine by hand – there’s no way around it.



Almost “Halfway Point”
Summary

Lesson Objective:

As we head into what is approximately the second “half” of the “33 Days” program, lets
catch up on any assignments that have been overlooked or not quite finished.

Skills Needed:
· Basic Surfing
· Basic Email
· Basic HTML
· Basic FTP
· Basic Word Processing




Part 1 – Review

Before we move into the area of “surfing for ideas” and catching up on any unfinished
tasks, let’s review what we’ve done so far and put it all into perspective.


I think you’ll agree that we’ve covered a lot of ground quickly and you should feel proud
of yourself for making it this far! Give yourself a pat on the back!


Days 1 - 3

· You came up with your initial list of keywords, picked our Yahoo and Dmoz
categories and chose a domain name.

· You physically “set up shop” and obtained the tools for conducting business
online.

· You started the process of building our site by deciding on the “look and feel”
and designing a template page.

Day 4 - 6

· You began to write your sales letter and brainstormed headlines.

· You wrote out sales copy.
· You pulled the whole sales letter together into a powerful sales tool.

Day 7

· You added “meta-tags” and posted our site to our web hosting account.

· You created a folder in your web browser called “Possible JV Partners”.

· You found a number of sites to potentially partner with later.


Day 8-9

· You created your autoresponder sequence and installed it on our website.


Day 10

· You started laying the groundwork for getting traffic to your site with pay-
per-click search engines.

· You also focused and refined your list of keywords.


Day 11

· You finalized your sales letter and wrote better titles and descriptions for your
pay-per-click search engine links.


Day 12

· You submitted your site to Yahoo, Dmoz and the major search engines.


Day 13

· You identified 50 ezines to submit articles and 5 ezines to buy advertising.
You also obtained an email merge product such as Mail King.


And here we are on Day 14… see how much you have accomplished!


You should feel really good right now that you have come so far so fast.


Let’s keep the momentum going!


Part 2 – Surf for Ideas

“Surfing for ideas” is a technique I got from Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the Guerrilla
Marketing series of books.

A simple yet powerful technique, surfing for ideas means you start out in the search
engines, ezines, links pages, classified ads or anywhere else searching for your most
popular keyword phrases and click on other people’s sites.

Your purpose is to stay on top of what other people are doing online so you don’t miss
any trends on generating traffic, converting site visitors to leads, sales and more.


When you surf for ideas you should:

· Look for new and exciting ways other site owners are using technology –
especially readily available technology such as auto-responders, popup
windows and simple java scripts.

· Look for offers that get you excited and could get your customers excited too
– then sign up for their affiliate program. These items usually make for
excellent endorsed mailings to your list.

· Watch for offers you could use to “up-sell” to your customers right at the
point of purchase.

· See who your competitors link to – and who links to them! This can open a
whole new world for you in terms of finding potential joint venture partners
and uncovering new sources of targeted traffic to your site.

· Anywhere you see a competitor with a productive link, you should try to get a
link too – especially if you can get the link for free or on a per-sale basis.

· Open your mind to how other people are doing things and ask yourself how
what you see could help you improve your site and business.


Immediately implement any worthwhile ideas you pick up.


DO NOT WAIT! ACT on what you see immediately!

Part 3 – Catch Up

The last assignment for today is to look back over the last couple of weeks and fill in any
gaps in your activities.


Do you need to write something?


Do you need to tweak something?

Do you need to totally re-do something?


Today is the day to catch up so you can start fresh tomorrow.

Summary of “Halfway Point” Assignments:


1. “Surf for ideas”


2. Implement what you learn from your idea surfing session.


3. Catch up on any tasks or items you may not have finished yet.


Today’s Resources:

See the Resource Article “3 Secrets to ‘Striking it Rich’ in Cyberspace” on
the next page.

3 Secrets to “Striking it Rich” in Cyberspace


In the few seconds it takes you to read this sentence, another domain name gets registered at
www.NetworkSolutions.com, the Internet’s oldest and largest domain name registrar.

Everyone from industrial giants to corner flower shops currently wants to stake a profitable
claim in cyberspace.

The lure of low startup costs compared to brick-and-mortar operations and the promise of
high rewards draws an ever-swelling crowd of merchants to the online marketplace.

People from all over the country ask me what it takes to succeed in the e-commerce world
once they’ve completed the basic steps for getting online.

The following three keys virtually guarantee success for any online enterprise.

The First Key:

A Quality product or service with highly evident and readily understood benefits for
consumers.

If your product or service does not represent the highest quality and value possible, and if
consumers don’t understand exactly why they should buy from you, the speed of the Internet
will just expose your shortcomings to the marketplace that much quicker.

In the offline world a product's benefits, not the features, cause consumers to make buying
decisions.

A man doesn't buy a car with a 5-liter engine because of the horsepower, he buys it for the
feeling of supremacy and control he thinks it will give him.

Kids don't want a fast computer for the computing power in doing homework, they want to
play the latest games.

The Internet magnifies this "what's in it for me" benefits-driven evaluation by consumers.
Products or services presented with readily understood, self-serving benefits for consumers
sell best online (and off).

The Second Key:
An excellent website that loads fast, provides pertinent information to targeted consumers,
and allows them to make online purchases quickly and securely.

Your website should:

· Load fast by making conservative use of graphics. (Go to yahoo.com for an excellent
example of a site that uses very few graphics.)

· Provide exactly the information your potential customers want and need.

· Make it extremely easy for surfers to navigate your site and find exactly what they
want.

· Look good on both the Netscape and Internet Explorer web browsers at various
screen resolutions (640x480, 800x600, etc.).

The Third Key:

Consistent, targeted website traffic by consumers capable of buying your product or
service.

Imagine buying a 50-foot billboard and, instead of putting it out by the highway, you hid it in
your basement. Nobody would see it!

The same thing happens if you don’t actively and continuously promote your website to
attract visitors.

With its incredible speed and communications power, the Internet acts as a magnifying glass
for any organization’s strengths and weaknesses.

E-commerce, e-mail, and a website by themselves -- without intelligent input from
you -- won't do the job of marketing, selling, and customer service for any company.

When used properly, however, they will help every organization perform all of those
business functions better, faster, and less expensively with the real and tangible result of
“striking it rich” in cyberspace!

Source: www.thenetreporter.com