How To Start Newsletter or Ezine?

Starting Your Own Newsletter or Ezine

There are some good reasons for running a newsletter or mailing list:

1. You want to disseminate information to your readers.
2. You want to make product announcements or announcements about updates to your site.

Such newsletters are useful both to you (as a web designer) and to your readers: you get a chance to reach your audience with your information, and your audience gets the information they wanted (which was why they subscribed in the first place). There's also a side benefit: some of your readers will return to your site to check out the new stuff mentioned in your newsletter.

Running an Electronic Newsletter or Ezine

There are basically two indispensable things in running a newsletter:

1. a way for visitors to your site to sign up or leave the mailing list;
2. a way for you to post to the entire mailing list.

Using a Third Party Service

The easiest way to run a newsletter is to let a third party mailing list service handle the dirty work, freeing you to concentrate on your content. There are both commercial and free mailing list hosting services available. You can find a list of free mailing list hosts from Affiliated-Business.com's Free Mailing List Hosts page. I have also reviewed a few of these services in the past, including the following reviews:

• Review of Topica

• Review of Yahoo! Groups

The advantages of using a third party service (whether commercial or free) are:

1. Hands-free - you don't have to bother about managing the list itself. Things like bounced mail, subscriptions and unsubscribes are handled by them. Some of the services also archive the old issues of your newsletters automatically.
2. Confirmation of subscription - all the mailing list hosting services that I know of actually send your subscribers an email requiring them to confirm before they are added to the list. Although you may think this is a hassle that may cost you some subscribers (such as those that can't be bothered to reply to the confirmation request), it is actually useful because it will help prevent cases where a person's email is used to subscribe to a list without his permission. At least, you won't be accused of spamming anyone.
3. Publicity - A not-so-obvious advantage comes from the publicity the third party service may give to your list. Some mailing list hosts, most notably the free ones, display a list of ezines or newsletters people can subscribe to on their website. I have actually got new visitors to my site (and new subscribers) coming from people browsing such sites. They saw my newsletter listed there, checked out my site and subscribed to the ezine.
4. No additional software needed - you do not need Smartlist, Majordomo, Listserv, or CGI access. All you need is to sign up.

If you use a third party mailing list service, you may encounter the following disadvantages:

1. Cost. The commercial mailing list hosts are somewhat like web hosts, charging either a monthly/yearly fee or charging according to the number of messages you send, bandwidth you use, number of subscribers, etc.
2. Advertising. If you use a free mailing list hosting provider, your subscribers may be subject to third party advertising. They often automatically inject an advertisement into your newsletter or ezine each time an issue is sent out. This advertisement is understandable of course, since the service has to recover its costs some how.
3. Control. You do not have total control of your list when you rely on a third party mailing list host. This is especially the case with the free mailing list hosting providers. There was one time when I wanted to concatenate two mailing lists using a free mailing list host (now no longer operating) but found that there was no real way of doing it without forcing all the subscribers of one of the lists to reconfirm their subscription again, even though they had already confirmed their subscription when they first subscribed to the original newsletter.
4. Reliability. You are dependent on the reliability of your mailing list host.

Using Your Web Host's Mailing List Software

Another way to run your mailing list is to use the services provided by your web host. Most web hosts provide you with the facility to run your own mailing list. Some provide fairly sophisticated automated systems that can archive past issues of your ezines, send requests for confirmations, handle subscriptions and unsubscribes without your intervention, etc.

Using your host's mailing list software has the advantage that it is free (or rather, you have already paid for it as part of your web hosting package) and is (usually) ad-free (ie, no advertisements are inserted). Depending on the software your host uses, you also have quite good control over the list: you can add subscribers, remove them, block certain subscribers, change the confirmation messages, etc. In addition, the automated system also frees you from the chore of manually adding and removing subscribers.

The disadvantage is that many web hosts impose a limit to the number of subscribers you can have in your list. This is to prevent their mailing servers from becoming overloaded from messages emanating from your list.

Running Your Own Mailing List Script (CGI / PHP / ASP /etc)

There are also numerous free mailing list CGI scripts as well as PHP scripts that allow you to run a mailing list from your website even if your host does not provide mailing list facility for your account.

Owing to the nature of such software, the CGI scripts often require your users to subscribe and unsubscribe only using the web interface. Some scripts support the double opt-in of the mailing list providers: they automatically send an email to the subscriber with a special URL that they must click on to confirm their subscription; others simply send subscribers a message with information on how to unsubscribe and the like. You will often have to handle the bounced mail yourself by manually deleting the subscriber from your list when you received bounced messages.

Running Your Own Newsletter from your Email Software

Sometimes, if your mailing list is small, it may be possible to use your email software to manage your list. Some email software have sophisticated mailing list management facilities. Others are designed with mailing lists in mind.

The advantage of this method is obvious: you are not dependent on your web host nor do you have to pay a third party mailing list host to handle your list.

The disadvantages of this are:

1. If you are not on a permanent internet connection, you will have to frequently connect to the Internet to receive the subscription requests and unsubscribes, so that your email software can process these in a timely fashion. No longer can you be reticent about collecting your mail on busy days. In fact, you really should process subscription requests within a few hours of their being sent, otherwise some people might forget they have sent those requests and not confirm your confirmation notice (or complain about spam to your ISP).
2. You have to manually delete subscribers for bounced messages.
3. Depending on the size of your list and the type of your connection (eg, whether it is a dial-up line or broadband), you may have to spend hours connected to the Internet each time you send an issue of your ezine or newsletter: your email software has to send your newsletter to every email address in your list. If your list is large, you may wind up spending hours just sending an issue.

What to Write?

What should you put in your mailing list or newsletter? That's really up to you, of course.

Some people hold discussion lists (where even subscribers can contribute to the list). Others use it as a place to make product announcements. For example, my Logtime mailing list was designed for users of the software to receive notification everytime a new version is released. Another use for the newsletter is what I do with the Affiliated-Business.com's newsletter : subscribers receive periodic issues telling them of new free webmaster and programmer resources that I find, prior to my posting them onto Affiliated-Business.com. Or you could send articles to your subscribers, like what I do with Affiliated-Business.com newsletter .

Incidentally, I would suggest that your newsletter contain things useful to your readers rather than just one long string of advertisements. My personal policy is to not to send out an issue if I don't have anything significant to say rather than to send out a useless issue.

Formatting Your Newsletter

You can publish your newsletter using HTML or send it out in plain text.

Sending your newsletter in the HTML format allows you to format your newsletter with fonts, colours and even embed pictures. However not everyone appreciates HTML email, and some even filter out all HTML mail on the grounds that such email are most likely to be spam. HTML messages tend to be larger than plain text messages too, so if you're paying your mailing list provider according to bandwidth used, you may want to factor that into your calculations.

If, however, you choose to send your newsletters in plain text, here are some tips to help you get the maximum effect from your newsletter:

1. Most newsletter publishers advise that you should write your plain-text messages with a maximum of 65 characters to a line. If you write more than 65 characters to a line, some of your subscribers' email software will wrap the line at the 66th character, resulting in your hard work appearing mangled.
2. Put space between each paragraph.
3. You can emphasize a particular word by enclosing it in asterisks: eg, *recommended*.
4. Although you might think that you can underline things using the hyphen or underscore character, remember that some of your users may be using fixed pitched fonts while others may be using variable pitched fonts. This means that the length of your lines will vary according to the type of fonts they use. If you insist on using hyphens, use it to separate one section from another rather than as the underline character. Again, keep those lines within 65 characters.
5. When you put links in your newsletter, just put the unadorned link without any HTML tags, like the following: http://www.thesitewizard.com/
   Most modern email software and web email interfaces will automatically make that into a clickable link. AOL's email client does not however. The latter require that you write an HTML link for it to be clickable.
6. When you give email addresses, prefix it with a "mailto:" tag, like the following: mailto:subscribe@thesitewizard.com
   Again, this will be rendered as a clickable link by most modern email software.

Get Started!

You probably have enough tips to start you off on your own newsletter here. The rest of the stuff pretty much depends on what you want to do with your newsletter.

Discover These 7 Ezine List Hosting Choices

Mailing lists in the form of discussion groups have been in existence since the 1960's and were used as a way to share information. They were called (and are still called) "Usenet", "Newsgroups", "News" or sometimes "NetNews". In the mid 80's Eric Thomas developed "ListServ's" for use with IBM computers. They usually offer the most features to their subscribers. Majordomo was developed in 1992 by Brent Chapman and continues to be used by many Ezine publishers.

Know that you have many choices of hosting services and the number companies offering services is growing. Use the information in this article as a guide. Don't be afraid to try the BCC or free elist hosting services to get a feel for what is involved in owning an ezine. Personally, I've learned so much by going this route. Then as your ezine and ezine knowledge grows, change over to a paid service.

__Use the BCC (blind carbon copy) area of your current email program. Never used this feature? If this feature were part of your email program, the directions would be in the "help" feature of the program. By using this feature people won't see who your subscribers are and therefore won't be able to spam your readers. You will know that someone has sent you a message, using BCC, when the "to" reads "unlisted recipients.

__Purchase a software program and maintain the list yourself.
~~Infacta (http://www.infacta.com/gm.asp) ~~List of software companies (http://list-business.com/list-software/)

__Use Majordomo. This is not the easiest alternative. Many times subscriptions are rejected because the subscriber is using an email program with "HTML" text in the message. For more information on this service visit: (www.conveyanced.com/MajorCool/) (www.google.com/search?q=majordomo)

__Download free Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Scripts and use to produce your ezine. These programs usually contain limited capabilities, which is just perfect for many ezine publishers. To find these scripts, go to your favorite search engine, and do a search for free CGI scripts, such as (www.bignosebird.com) and (www.CGI-Resources.com)

__Many advertising and marketing companies provide "in-house" ezine services to their clients.

__Use one of the free services to keep your elist members confidential. "Free" meaning there is an ad either at the top or bottom of each note you send out.

~~(www.topica.com) Topica - With the exception of moderated lists, each list contains an ad. Automatically adds unsubscribe directins to each email. Very basic service. You cannot add new members; instead you must "invite" them. There is a cost involved in adding many members at one time. So before you move your elist to this service check with their customer support.

~~yahoogroups.com Yahoo Groups - When you use this service, you will have, for your readers, the largest number of community building tools for members. These include a chat room, place to upload important files, automatic distribution of files you request, a calendar to send out reminders, and more. Allows you to automatically "subscribe" members who have requested you to subscribe them to your list. Each message usually contains at least one large ad.

~~(www.bravenet.com) Bravenet - Limit 500 subscribers per elist although you can set up additional elists on this service. Double opt-in for subscribers only. Easy system allows you to email yourself a copy of your subscriber list.

~~(www.smartgroups.com) Smart Groups - This is a newer service, very basic, no annoying ads on top. Your elist will contains a calendar that you can use for reminders of classes etc. The only way to delete your elist from this service is to contact smartgroups customer service.

~~(www.coollist.com) Cool List - Newer elist program. Ad is on the bottom. Very basic service.

__Paid Services - - Prices start at approx. $20 per month for smaller ezines and end up in the thousands of dollars for larger lists. Some have subscriber limits at that price, some offer free trials. Each company offers different services.
~~Topica (http://www.topica.com/tep/) ~~Yahoo
(http://e.gotmarketing.com/collateral/yahoo/smallbusiness/campaigner.html) ~~Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com) ~~List Channel (www.listchannel.com) ~~Web Valence (www.WebValence.com) ~~List Universe (www.List-Universe.com) ~~Spark-List (www.Spark-List.com) ~~List Serve (www.listserve.com/) ~~Microsoft's B Central
(www.bcentral.com/services/lb/pricing.asp) ~~Cartville is one of companies that also offers ezine mailing lists along with many of it's shopping cart packages. (www.cartville.com) ~~Comparison chart of ezine hosting companies by Gammadyne (http://www.gammadyne.com/gm-comparison.htm) ~~elist Directory of companies (http://www.list-business.com/)

NOTE: As a precaution against dot.com companies that end up out of business, make sure the company you choose allows YOU to download the email addresses of subscribers. Then download your list at least monthly.