I Want to Do an Ezine! Part 2

by Terri Seymour

When starting your ezine, the first thing you want to do is name it. I would suggest keeping the name as close to your website/business name as possible. If you do not have a website or business yet, use a name you could name your business as well.

For example: If you sell gifts/products for you & your home and your business name is Gifts Galore, you could then name your ezine "Gifts Galore News" or "Gifts Galore Ezine".

For content, you would include home decorating links, beauty tips and ideas, articles on frugal decorating home remedy recipes, camping tips and resources, whatever pertains to the gifts you are selling. This type of ezine would be great fun to publish!

Now to get started with the design and layout of your ezine...the first thing you want to do is to find a good text editor such as Textpad.

A lot of people format their ezine to 60 or 65 characters per line, but I prefer 55. That means that after every 55 letters/numbers/spaces typed, you would press enter and start a new line. You can set the Textpad to do this automatically, but I find it works better to do it manually. Just watch the number at the bottom right of the TextPad screen and hit enter when you get to 55 or 60/65.

Create a template for your ezine so each week you can just open up this template and fill in the necessary sections. This will save you lots of time.

At the top of the ezine, you want a centered heading with your title, and contact info.

It should look like this:

You should have all your contact info in your closing at the bottom of your ezine as well.

Try a few different ideas, change things around a bit until you find the layout you like and are comfortable with. You can make improvements/changes after you start publishing as well.

One thing I suggest is not to have too many squiggles and decorations. Some are ok, but keep it clean and sharp looking. Too many decorations can make it hard for some people to read.

Some things that should always be included in your ezine are:

• Your contact info - top and bottom of ezine
• Subscribe and unsubscribe info
• Privacy Policy - at or near the top
• Disclaimer - towards the bottom
• Table of Contents - at the top of the ezine
• Editorial - chat a bit with your readers and discuss any current events or happenings at your site/business.
• Start forming that all important bond with them!
• Thank you to your subscribers - include this in the editorial section.

Once you find the layout you are satisfied with, fill in your standards like disclaimer, contact info and anything else that will remain the same from week to week and save it in a folder on your desktop. Each week or however often you publish, just open this template and you are ready to get going.

In Part 3, I will be going over content. What to have for content and where to get it.

Ezine publishing is very important and you can do it! DO NOT let your doubts stop you form this rewarding and enjoyable experience!