Should You Publish a PAID E-zine?

Many of my clients ask me whether they should publish a paid e-zine instead of a free one. My answer is the classic consultant's answer: "It depends."

First of all, what do you want your e-zine to DO for you? Once you know the goal of your e-zine, the answer will be clear.

If you want to promote your current business and sell more of your products and services, a free e-zine is your ticket to success. If you plan to build a new business around making money from subscription fees, of course you'll want to charge. However, publishing a paid e-zine is no small task! Here are some important points to consider...

  • You should only charge for your e-zine if you feature information that is hard to find elsewhere. If you try to pass off paid information as exclusive, but your readers can find it anywhere on the Web for free, you're not only going to fail, but you're going to tick people off.


  • A fee-based e-zine takes many, many hours of work to keep afloat -- much more so than for a free e-zine. The publisher of one very successful paid online publication admits he spends over 100 HOURS each month to develop the leading-edge content his readers paid for and expect.


  • You will never grow as large a list with a paid-subscription e-zine as with a free one. This is obviously because less people will sign up if they have to pay versus if it's free.

    Now, if you had visions of making big money with a paid publication, don't give up just yet. There ARE many successful paid pubs on the Web that are making their owners very rich. However, you should note that most of these e-zines continue to publish a free e-zine to gather prospects and then convert them into paid subscribers.

    So, YOU decide. Can you create content that's so valuable and special that we can't find it anywhere else? Are you ready to invest a huge amount of time and effort to publish an extremely high-quality publication?

    If not, you're better off publishing a free e-zine that provides great value. The key to building a large and valuable list of prospects (who are likely to buy from you in the future) is to offer useful, quality content for free. It's the proven model that works over and over.
  • (c) 2003 Alexandria K. Brown

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," is author of the award-winning manual, "Boost Business With Your Own E-zine." To learn more about her book and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her site at http://EzineQueenTutorial.com/


    AddThis Social Bookmark Button

    ____________________

    Advertisement: Honest Riches - Click Here!

    Advertisement: Lost AdWords - Click Here!

    Advertisement: Get $1 Million A Month In Google Pay-Per-Click Ads Free! - Click Here!

    Advertisement: Who Loves Money? - Click Here!

    Advertisement: SEO Elite, the GrandDaddy of SEO Software - Click Here!

    In The News:


    Best Syndication

    Email Marketing Solution – the best method to promote products
    Best Syndication, CA - Nov 21, 2008
    Email marketing solution has become really necessary in the present times for any business to survive. If you really want to make a difference, ...
    Mobile Marketing Versus Online Marketing In Reaching Customers Faster Best Syndication
    Website Designing Companies – help you have a unique website Best Syndication
    all 4 news articles

    Options Media Group Appoints Ronald Levine to Board of Directors
    MarketWatch - Nov 21, 2008
    Options Media Group Holdings, Inc. is an email services provider for on-demand e-mail marketing to create, send, and track professional and permission-based ...

    BlueHornet Networks Wins New Email Marketing Clients
    istockAnalyst.com (press release), OR - Nov 21, 2008
    BlueHornet Networks, a wholly owned subsidiary of Digital River, Inc., is a leading provider of permission-based email marketing solutions. ...

    New Edition of Email Newsletter Software Delivers Improved Email ...
    MarketWatch - Nov 20, 2008
    ArialSoftware.com, offers improved email list handling features that make sending email marketing campaigns easier and more time efficient. ...

    ExactTarget Arms Email Marketers With "Ten Things Your C-Suite ...
    MarketWatch - Nov 20, 2008
    No Executive Left Behind helps C-level executives better understand email marketing's strengths and the intricacies of developing a successful campaign. ...

    Growing businesses urged to take advantage of email marketing
    Business Strata - Business News, UK - Nov 21, 2008
    A leading web hosting provider has urged growing businesses to embrace communication channels such as email marketing. In an article outlining five tips for ...
    Study: Marketers still send emails after consumers unsubscribe Digital Response Media
    all 2 news articles

    Expert highlights benefits of integrating web analytics in email ...
    Business Strata - Business News, UK - Nov 21, 2008
    Growing businesses can benefit from using web analytics in their email marketing practices, an expert has claimed. According to Loren McDonald, ...

    ExactTarget Announces Email Marketing Automation Capabilities and ...
    MarketWatch - Nov 17, 2008
    "The new email marketing automation functionality allows sales and marketing teams to perform at higher levels with minimal effort and costs. ...

    WhatCounts Announces a New Vice President of Services
    MarketWatch - Nov 20, 2008
    "In the email marketing industry, customer service makes all the difference. I plan to build on WhatCounts' strong foundation by continuing to improve our ...

    Uniting Traditional & Virtual Marketing
    24-7PressRelease.com (press release) - Nov 20, 2008
    Latin-Pak announces the ability to marry direct postal marketing with email marketing creating a consistent message through different mediums to the same ...
    email marketing - Google News
    Your Ad Here

    Games at Buy.com

    Holiday Home Store at Buy.com

    How to Start A Money Making Newsletter

    Writing and publishing a successful newsletter is perhaps the most competitive of all the different areas of mail order and direct marketing.Five years ago, there were 1500... Read More

    Dirty Secrets Of Co-Registration Email Lists

    Years ago, I listened to Internet marketing "gurus" share that they had lists in the hundreds of thousands, and I was all ears. Up to that point,... Read More

    Personalizing Your Emails? An Amazing Technique That Doubles Your Click Throughs And Profits

    Are you publishing an ezine or offering an email course? Are you talking with your subscriber through your ezine or email course? If so what are you... Read More

    Newsletters that Work

    Offer a newsletter in a time frame that will be easy for you to manage.Although doing a newsletter is a great idea, do not be too quick... Read More

    Why Autoresponders are an Absolute Must

    With autoresponders, you never have to lose money advertising again! That's right, every ad you place from now on can be a winner -- even when you... Read More

    Autoresponders = Automatic Internet Marketing Success

    What if you could send out all the information that your potential customers have requested without checking your email or answering a phone? While this may seem... Read More

    DoubleClicks Q3 2004 Report Shows Bulk Email Marketing Eficiency Increase

    Wednesday, December 15 2004 at 16:00 EET Internet marketing company DoubleClick published its final report over the bulk email marketing evolution this year. The... Read More

    How You Can Automate Your Business Using Autoresponders

    What is an Autoresponder?An Autoresponder is a program or service that allows you to automatically send pre-written emails to anyone at anytime. It is basically a sequential... Read More

    How To Write E-mail Messages For Phenomenal Results

    Would you be interested in getting 10 times better results from your current e-mail marketing campaigns?While the above is a hypothetical figure, it sure got your attention... Read More

    10 Ways to SCREW-UP Your LIST

    Just in case you don't know, your 'LIST' ? is you list of optin subscribers who have taken the time and effort to personally subscribe to your... Read More

    Six Tips for Nonprofit E-mail Success

    An opt-in e-newsletter is one of the most effective marketing tools you can use because it is fast, personal, and inexpensive. Many small businesses are using e-mail... Read More

    What A Newsletter Can Do For Your Business

    Newsletters are often thought of as easy, do-it-yourself communications projects. The reality is different?and that can be discouraging.Developing a good newsletter concept can be difficult and time-consuming.... Read More

    How Autoresonders Can Put Your Business On Autopilot

    Owning your own online business is a lot of work. Don't let anyone tell you that it's not.Daily tasks can include reading emails, handling orders, advertising, promotion... Read More

    Reach Out and Slap Someone

    I got my first email account way too many years ago. I was working for a large Chicago bank in the 1980s, when... Read More

    Email Etiquette: How To Send Emails People Will Read

    You may remember a time before there was email?a time when communications within most organisations were more formal and followed strict lines of protocol. Email has done... Read More

    Use Permission Based E-Mail Marketing to Promote Your Home Based Business

    With all the negative Publicity that S.pam is Getting, Permission Based E-mail Marketing is frequently too often overlooked as the Misunderstood step Child of Internet Marketing. Unfortunately... Read More

    Using Mirror Pages Effectively

    Thought I would share with you a very effective technique for adding new customers to your mailing list. These are individuals who would not otherwise discover your... Read More

    RSS vs Email: Its Not An Either-Or Question

    If you've been getting caught up in all this talk of RSS versus email, its time to stop wondering.Marketing Sherpa just posted a new report that stirred... Read More

    Email Marketing and Web Communication: Ten Key Tips to Get Your Messages Read

    There's an old saying 'Manners maketh the man (or woman)' and this still applies in the 21st Century, even though everything now seems to happen twice as... Read More

    8 Quick, Hot Reasons You Should Offer an E-mail Course Today

    1. E-mail courses are generally quick and easy to create. Contents for your e-mail courses are everywhere -- old articles, interviews, information from doing research. You only... Read More

    Lesson #1: Autoresponders 101

    What the heck is an autoresponder?An autoresponder is much like a fax-on-demand system, where you call a number - or, in this case, email a specific email... Read More

    Personal vs Professional Life Email - Dont Squander Your First Internet Impression

    My first email address was with compuserve.com back when you could only have numbers for an email address. They then allowed us to have letters as well... Read More

    Who Else Wants to Sky Rocket Their CD Sales, Fan base and Indie Music Career?

    If YOU Answered YES, Then Start An Online Newsletter?It's Easy, Here's How!I've always praised the benefits of using a newsletter to promote your music, but this article... Read More

    Success Guaranteed With Your Opt In List

    Some time ago I was thinking about the best and most foolproof way to earn great income on internet. I came to conclusion that success in internet... Read More

    What?s the Value of an E-mail Address?

    Although it may not be practical to put a dollar-sign value on an e-mail address there are many financially-savvy reasons to start collecting e-mail addresses if you... Read More

    EMail Newsletter Marketing Essentials

    If Gutenberg were alive today he would be in publishing heaven! Forget the printing press, the web has fast-forwarded self-publishing in ways that are evolving so rapidly... Read More