What about charging readers for receiving your ezine? <Gasp>

Believe it or not, but people are starting to make good money charging people to receive their ezines.

Starting or converting to a paid ezine helps you not rely on advertising dollars to help fund your ezine.

Now, you may be wondering why would people pay for content that they may eventually find on the Internet?  People will pay for valuable information because instead of having to search for it, they can receive it directly into their inbox.

People do not have time to be searching for timely information and will gladly pay a premium if you can offer the content that they are looking for and save them time.

For example, fellow Internet Marketer Monique Harris runs a "Digital Publishing & Promotion" ezine and at one point was making $20,000 a month from paid subscribers.

If you offer specialized information or your ezine is based on a particular niche, you could make good money by selling paid subscriptions.  I do not suggest charging for your ezine unless it is tightly focused on a particular topic.

If the Internet market is already filled with free ezines and web sites related to your particular topic, I do not suggest starting a paid ezine in that market either.

In retrospect, your niche should not be too specific that the market is too small for your ezine.  For example, if you run an ezine about under-water basket weaving, you may have a tough time finding targeted people who would be willing to pay for your ezine.

There should be at least 50,000 potential subscribers to your publication in order to have a chance at running a successful paid ezine.   You may not be able to find all 50,000 potential subscribers, but with that many people, it should not be hard to find enough of them to make good money.

Ezines that provide information on topics such as finance, money, recipes usually do well in this market.  Ezines that are more entertainment related such as Hollywood gossip or jokes will be a little bit more challenging to convince people to pay for.

I recently converted one of my entertainment ezines to a paid format and was successful in converting it to a monthly money machine.  I no longer have to chase advertisers because I have enough paid readers putting hundreds of dollars into my pockets every month.
 

1. Write A Powerful Sales Letters

In order to sell subscriptions to your ezine, you will need to write a powerful sales letter that will have people reaching for their credit cards.

It is important that your sales letter sells the benefits of receiving your ezine to the potential customer.  Tell them exactly why they should subscribe to your ezine.

It does not matter how fancy you make your web site or how professional it looks, it is ultimately the words in your sales copy that will convince the potential reader to subscribe or not to subscribe to your ezine.

Writing an effective sales letter is an art that is not hard to learn.  You must truly understand the needs of the reader so that you can write a persuasive sales letter that contains benefits, emotion and passion.

Write your sales letter as though you are sitting across the table from a potential reader.  Think about how much passion you have in your voice when you talk about something that excites you.  You need to take these emotions and convey them in your sales copy.

The most important part of a successful sales letter is the headline.  Your headline must attract the reader's attention and entice them to continue reading the sales letter.  The first thing a reader does is read the headline and if that is not enough to convince them to read on, you will lose that potential subscriber forever.

In your introduction, you should be brief and to the point.  Spell out how they will benefit.  For example, if you publish a newsletter on sleeping disorders, tell the potential reader how your ezine can help them stop snoring.

Break up your sale letter into various sub headings for a smoother flow.  This also lets the reader know the highlights of your paragraphs.

If it is possible, you should include testimonials from current readers in your sales letter.  Using testimonials is a powerful marketing tactic that will reassure the potential subscriber that they are paying for a quality publication.

Make sure you convince your potential subscriber to act quickly.  Try using a "P.S" to reiterate benefits they will receive or any free gifts you might offer when they sign up.

Make your sentences short and easy to read.  Do not use fancy words or jargon that a reader may not understand.  Use plenty of white spaces in your sales copy to make it easier for the reader to follow though your sales letter smoothly.
 
Statistics indicate that long copy usually almost always outpulls short copy.  You should include your entire sales letter on one page because people generally do not like to click from one page to another.

You should also include at various points in your sales copy a link to your order form.  This will satisfy readers who do not want to read the entire sales letter and just want to order right away.

Your words should seamlessly flow together from your headline through to your order page. Keep it simple, to the point, and pack it with all of the benefits your product has to offer. The simple, well-designed web sites with a killer sales copy ate the ones that make the sale.

2. Offer A Free Trial Period

One of the best ways to attract new paid subscribers is to offer them a free trial subscription to your ezine so they can test it out.

This trial period can be for a few weeks or even months depending on the frequency of your publication.

This gives the reader the opportunity to decide whether your ezine is worth paying for.  If the subscriber gets a lot of value from your ezine, he or she will eventually become a paid subscriber.
 

3. Give Away A Free Bonus

Selling subscriptions to a paid ezine can seem like a daunting task, but including a bonus almost always gives the reader more of a reason to subscribe.

One popular method of obtaining new subscribers is by offering a free book on a related subject.  There are literally hundreds of free ebooks on the Internet that you can give away.

Just go to any major search engine and type your ezines topic along with the word "ebook" in the search form field and you may be able to find a free ebook to give away.
 

4. Subscription Price and Billing

One of the most challenging decisions to make when starting or converting to a paid ezine is how much to charge.  Factors to take into consideration are:

How much do you think your ezine is worth?

How much would you pay?

Should you charge monthly, quarterly or yearly?

All these questions can be answered by taking a simple survey. The best people to ask are your current readers (if you do not have an ezine yet, you can ask your former customers who bought your other products or services).

You should also take a look at what competing paid ezines are charging.  This will give you an idea on going prices in the market.

DO NOT charge a one-lifetime price to subscribe to your ezine. This means that you will constantly be looking for new customers in order to increase your revenue.

Charging a lifetime fee also means that you will be responsible for providing valuable content for the rest of your life!

Not only does charging on a monthly, quarterly or yearly schedule provide your with constant renewals, it also lets you walk away from the ezine if you want to stop publishing it or if you decide to sell it to someone else.

There will be no more commitment on your part once the last subscription expires.

If you are going to be charging a large amount for your ezine like $240 per year, than I suggest charging $20 a month instead.  It is ten times easier to sell a monthly subscription for this amount instead of the entire $200+ annual fee.

The reason for this is that people will hesitate to shell out the entire $240 at one time whereas it is much easier to shell out $20 at a time.

The monthly option also allows the reader to cancel anytime without getting charged in the future if they do not like what they are receiving.

Now, if you are charging a small fee like $12 for a yearly subscription, I suggest charging this all at one time.  Most people do not want to pay $1 each month and parting with the entire $12 at one time is actually less time consuming and such a little amount that they don't think twice about it.

5. HTML vs. Email

One of the downfalls of running a paid ezine is that information that you are charging for can easily be passed around.  The only way to prevent this from happening is to publish your ezine on the Internet and assigns passwords to your readers.

This can get expensive to install software that will manage all this for you.

I think most people prefer to receive ezines via email rather than logging onto the Internet.
 

6. Handling Subscriptions

There are various software programs out there that you can purchase that will automatically handle your subscriptions for you.

PayPal.com, which is an online payment service, will automatically handle subscriptions for your ezine. I use PayPal.com to handle my subscriptions for the entertainment publication I charge for to take away the headaches.  I will talk about the benefits of using this service and the pitfalls also.

PayPal.com provides a service that will let you accept reoccurring payments for your ezine subscriptions.  When you set up a subscription, you can offer your subscribers a trial period, special introductory rates and a regular rate.  Your readers will be billed automatically according to the periods that you dictate (i.e. monthly, quarterly...), removing the worry for you on whether you have billed the reader or not.

The good thing about PayPal is that it is easy to set up because all you have to do is fill out a one-page form, which automatically creates the HTML code that you can easily paste on your web page.

Using a service to manage your subscribers is important because it will free up time for you to concentrate on developing content and improving the quality of your ezine.
 

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