An ezine, or newsletter as they are also called, is simply a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly email message sent out to a group of people who have subscribed to it.

They're much shorter than paper magazines and are generally can be read in one sitting.

There are thousands of ezines on the internet pertaining to just about any topic you can imagine, and they are an incredible method of promoting your website absolutely free.

The two free ways to utilize ezines to promote your site are to:

1. Post Articles

Post articles containing brief promotional footers with a hot link back to your website. Doing this allows people who enjoyed your article to click on your site. It also creates an incoming link from the ezine to your website. Incoming links enhance your search engine ranking.

Most ezines offer free subscriptions, and are hungry for quality content. That means any well written article will receive a warm welcome if sent to the appropriate ezine (more on that later).

Your topic should be something that would interest your customers, and you should work in as many of your website keywords as you can. One to two pages is a good length for an article.

I mention the keywords because a major ezine website may have much higher rankings with search engines than you do, and your keywords may land people on your article, rather than your new, small website. The reader then may click through to your website.

You, now an expert article author, should develop a signature. Look at mine at the bottom of this article, for example.

So, where do you find the right ezines? The link below contains dozens of ezine directories that will take you weeks to wade through.

http://www.new-online-bookstore.com/ezine_directories.html

2. Start Your Own Ezine

Start your own ezine on a topic that would interest your potential customers. Selecting your topic can be a challenge. For instance, I run an online bookstore. What do readers have in common? They like to read stories. So, my ezine is one short story per month. Short story submissions pour in. I add a brief promotional header, and send the monthly publication out using an autoresponder.

The autoresponder automatically keeps track of who you’ve emailed and gotten confirmations from, plus it will give you forms for your website so visitors can subscribe. Place subscription forms all over your site as a method of building a customer base. There are many to choose from, but I like SendFree best because you can load an unlimited sequence of emails to be sent following a customer subscription. All customers who subscribe to my ezine begin with Issue 1, and I keep building more issues into the future, spaced 30 days apart.

For your email campaign, I should mention that you cannot send unsolicited, bulk, commercial emails, commonly known as spam. However, an offer of a free subscription sent to a few, targeted people, with an opt-in/opt-out link, is perfectly acceptable. If the recipient does anything other than opt-in to your initial offer, your autoresponder will never email them again. However, those who opt-in are granting you permission to email them. Just keep the commercial content of your ezine low and the interesting content high.

You can get content from site visitors (such as my short story ezine) and also by pulling articles from other ezines (most allow this). If you research and write good ezine articles in your field, you are getting the best form of free advertising on the web.

About the Author

Patrick Dent
New Online Bookstore
New Books by 21st Century Authors
http://www.new-online-bookstore.com
info@new-online-bookstore.com