By Dejan Bizinger, SKYLIST, Inc.

If you want to have an online business, without doubt, you
should have your own newsletter. Why is that important? Most
people won't buy your product on their first visit to your
web site. They need your advice to buy exactly your
product because "it is the best, the cheapest" etc.
You can tell them when you will make an update, to visit your
site again, and so you get repeat visits. You should provide
some useful content in your newsletter to make them stay as
your subscribers.

When you decide to have a newsletter, you should promote it, so
that you will have more people on your list. It is easy to build
a big list very fast, if you pay for that. However, many people
don't have much money to spend for their list promotion so they
mostly must use free services. This brings up a good question?
Which services are useful for e-publishing and are also free?
Here, I will write 7 services that I use and which have showed
good results.

1. Swap ads

Swapping ads can be very useful. You have to find newsletters
that have quality content and a contact to the owner. When you
make a contact you have to write why you are interested in
swapping ads with that newsletter. You have to tell about the
benefits of swapping with you.

Swap Resources mailto:swap-subscribe@topica.com

2. Article submit

It is very useful for list promotion to submit your articles to
other publishers that are looking for some content. You should
put a resource box at the end of your article where you will
write who are you; you can also put your web site and list
address... It is more likely that they will subscribe to your
newsletter if they liked your article rather than reading your
ad. You have to find those publishers who will be interested in
your articles.

Idea Marketers http://www.ideamarketers.com
Write Business http://www.writebusiness.com

3. List submit

There are services where you can submit a description of your
list or announce when you are going to publish it. These
services can be useful because, they provide quality lists.
Therefore, people can decide to subscribe to your list.

List A Day mailto:join-listaday@sparklist.com
New-List http://listserv.classroom.com/archives/new-list.html

4. Participate in discussion lists

You can subscribe to discussion lists of your interest. When you
post your answer you can include your resource box. If people
find your answers useful it is more likely that they will
subscribe to your newsletter.

Html-Haven mailto:html-haven-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Adventive - http://www.adventive.com

5. Pick a domain name

If you want to have a professional newsletter you should
consider registering a domain name. Today it is not very easy to
find a good domain name, especially a dot com name. However,
there is a free service where you can get a list of domain names
that are free because of non-payment. Also, you have to check if
a certain name is available.

Better Whois - http://www.betterwhois.com

6. Scripts

Scripts can be useful for promotion. For example you can use a
script for recommendating, for form mail...

Useful services

CGI-Resources http://www.cgi-resources.com
Let 'Em Know http://www.letemknow.com
Java Scripts http://www.javascripts.com

7. Search engines

There are many different opinions as to how useful are search
engines. Having a good placement in a search engine for relevant
words can be very useful for your list promotion. I must say
that it is not worth submitting to every search engine. There
are a few that are the most popular.

Google http://www.google.com
Altavista http://www.altavista.com
Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com

These 7 services can get you subscribers for your newsletter.
Don't expect that you will immediately have several thousand
subscribers using free services because it doesn't work that
way. Don't believe in everything that you read on the Net,
because you can be disappointed. E-publishing can be very useful
for you and for your business if you use it in the right way,
because, it establishes you as an expert in your field of
expertise.

========
Dejan Bizinger works for SKYLIST, Inc. SKYLIST is a
permission-based email delivery and list management services
company. SKYLIST solutions assist businesses to
seamlessly deliver, track, and report the results of email
communications. For more information visit:
http://www.skylist.net

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Make Your Web Site User-Friendly By Dejan Bizinger, SKYLIST, Inc. Making a web site is easy. Making a good web site is not so easy. There are many things you have to consider if you want to make a good and successful web site. Everyone who knows at least something about marketing knows that you have to fit your product so that suit customers need. Don't expect that customers will accommodate to your web site. If, from some reason, they get an impression that your site is confusing and that you didn't tried hard to make their visit as easy as possible. As you know, there are many web sites, so why do you think that anyone will bother to stay at your site if it is not enough good. So, how can you make your web site user-friendly? I will try to explain you now. Loading In order that your visitor see your web site it must be loaded pretty fast. I could never understand someone who's web sites is loading several minutes. Do these people think that people will really wait for their masterpiece? You bet that they won't. Your page shouldn't be bigger than 30K. When you design your web site you should first put one table above you web site content where you will put a sponsorship banners. This is because that your advertisers can get good visibility. Also, your logo and company name should load very fast. One of the main marketing principles is that people have to remember your name, logo and your message. You probably have many competitors. Your brand-name have to be remembered. Otherwise, it is most likely that they will forget you and never come back again. You can test your web site loading page at: http://www.websitegarage.com Colors OK, let's suppose that your page have a decent loading time and that visitor decided to give it a try to your web site and your product. So, you better that they find complementar colors on your web site. I guess that after they have come to your site you don't want that they leave with eye-sight problems. You should know some basic knowledge about how certain color fits to some other. Colors on your site can also depend about the your web site's type. It means that if you want to have some kid site your site can be very colorful with some animated images. Business sites, in most cases don't have to be to colorful. You can find useful info about designing your web site at: http://www.htmlgoodies.com http://www.webreference.com http://www.dynamicdrive.com http://www.useit.com Information If someone would asked you what is the single most important thing on web site, I hope that you would say that is information. You won't have many benefits if you hired someone who is expert in programs like Dreamweaver, who will make fancy animations in Flash, who will make extraordinary images in Photoshop and Corel Draw if people on your site can't find something because they come in the first place. That is information. Unless your site should be some kind of reference for company who wants to hire a web designer and you want to show them what you can, people in most cases are not much interested in design. Take Google, for example. Its design could make anyone with a basic web design design knowledge. Google is the best search engine not because some fancy images. It is the best because of the information he provides. Remember that when you design your web site. Beside information about your product, people should be able to find a contact information on the first page. Also, it is not useful to have many info on your web site if people can't easily to find. You should try that all info on your web site be accessible with 3 or less clicks. Automatization It is very useful that you put some automatization on your web site. Why is that important? Well, if you expect that your visitors do something for you, first you have to do something for them. What I mean is that you have to help them to make some actions. I will tell you several examples where automatization can be used. Let's say your site have a lot of visitors. It won't be very wise solution that everyone who would like to ask you something contact you via email. It is not very convenient because you would get a lot of emails that takes up considerable time to answer. Good solution when you want to offer your visitors a choice to contact you about several topics to contact you via form mail. Then you ask for necessary info they have to provide. This is good because you won't get emails that are too broad nor to narrow. There are other use of form mails. For example for subscribing to newsletters, to order products, to send your listing etc.. Another good choice for using web site automatization are multiple subscription check-boxes. In case you don't know, this enables that your visitors can subscribe to several newsletters at once, which means by entering their email address only once. It is very important to have this script if you have several newsletters. Don't expect that many people will bother to subscribe to several newsletters if you don't make them easier to do it. You can see an example at: http://www.lysts.com People often ask their visitors to recommend their site. Recommending a site can be done very effectively if you use a recommendation script. There people can enter email addresses of their friends and they will receive an invitation from hi or she to visit that web site. There are many scripts for this purpose. You can find useful scripts for your site at: http://www.cgi-resources.com http://www.wsabstract.com http://javaboutique.internet.com There are companies which offer this service: http://www.letemknow.com http://www.recommend-it.com You have just read some tips for making your site user-friendly. Of course, there are many more to do. When you design your web site you have to put yourself in your visitor's shoes and ask yourself how would like that a certain site look like. I want you to make great friendships! ======== Dejan Bizinger works for SKYLIST, Inc. SKYLIST is a permission-based email delivery and list management services company. SKYLIST solutions assist businesses to seamlessly deliver, track, and report the results of email communications. For more information visit: http://www.skylist.net ----------------------------------------------------------------