“Seven Questions For Your Publishing Success”—Part II: Why Should YOU Publish An Ezine? By Rev. Richard Boeck
I hope by now you’ve been able to come to grips with our first question, Who Are YOU? If you’ve done a little soul searching and decided that you have certain standards which you want to uphold as an internet publisher, you’re well on your way to being a successful publisher.
Certainly you’ll want your publication, whatever format it takes, to accurately reflect your values and principles. And, I suspect, you’ll want your publication to reflect your good name and draw respect and loyalty from those who read it.
And that brings us to the next important question about being a successful internet publisher:
Why Should YOU Publish An Ezine?
I want to…
It’s the best way to make money on the internet…
I have something to say worth saying…
I want to get wealthy…
Can you think of any more reasons? I’ll bet there are as many reasons as there are people on the internet. The big question, however, is, Why Should YOU Publish An Ezine?
You see, next to the answering the question, Who Are YOU?, there is no more essential question to your success.
Ezines are a dime-a-dozen. It’s not too difficult to find ezines by just entering the word “ezine” into Google’s search engine. I did that while preparing this article and on the first page alone I was offered access to over 6,000 ezines. The search showed 369,000 entries related to “ezine,” and glancing over them a huge amount were directories advertising large numbers of ezines.
So, by rough estimate, it seems reasonable to extrapolate that there are at least 369,000+ ezines being published on the web. And while there are hundreds of millions of internet users, that’s still a lot of ezines.
So, again we ask the question: Why Should YOU Publish An Ezine?
I subscribe to a passel full of ezines. I probably see one hundred of them a week. Most of the time I just glance over the titles of the articles to see if anything trips my trigger. In the last month I’ve unsubscribed from at least twenty-five formerly helpful ezines because they had become saturated with advertising and it took forever to find even one of the articles.
I can understand that selling advertising in an ezine can be an important way to recoup some costs for time and expenses in publishing the ezine. I can also understand that advertising, tastefully and effectively used, can provide a great income source for a publisher. Nothing wrong with that at all.
But, here’s an important consideration. If you drive your readers away because all they see is advertising and no information that informs them, encourages them, or provides assistance to them, how valuable is your publication going to be for the advertiser? As the subscribers disappear, the value of your publication to the advertiser diminishes, and “viola,” no more income.
Why Should YOU Publish An Ezine?
Your personality and values are critical to answering this question. Your publication reflects who and what you are. It will either establish your name as one who provides quality and is helpful, or it will become just one of a massive amount of ezines that fall by the wayside because their publishers didn’t know why they were publishing an ezine.
My co-publisher, Dr. David Johnson, is a good example of this. I’ve subscribed to the WealthFunnel newsletter for years. Dr. David loves doing research and when he turned his mind and energies to the internet from the university classroom and laboratory he brought that same curiosity and desire to teach with him.
Besides a desire to help other people, and a desire to teach others how to be successful themselves, Dr. David’s curiosity needed an outlet. For him there was no better outlet than publishing an ezine.
Why Should YOU Publish An Ezine?
An ezine can be a tool for getting information out to others that’s helpful and informative. It can be a way for you to express yourself and share your insights.
If you’re an insatiable researcher, then an ezine can be an effective way for you to publish your discoveries for others to see and receive a benefit.
If you want to make money an ezine can be an effective way to do so, providing you’re wise about the choices you make in the way you run it. You will want to publish an ezine that has value so people read it and advertisers want to advertise in it.
To answer the question means also deciding whether publishing an ezines is going to be a hobby or a business. It’s something that takes honest effort and hard work to do well.
Why Should YOU Publish An Ezine?
Maybe you should.
Maybe you shouldn’t.
Only YOU can determine the answer. If you’re going to publish, then do it right, do it well, be honest, and make it worthwhile and helpful to others.
If you do that you’re publishing for all the right reasons and that can only prove to be beneficial to both you and your readers.
--Rev. Richard
****************************************** Rev. Richard Boeck is co-editor of "Publish & Profit." He is also writer and publisher of “Today’s Devotion,” a brief, daily devotion that brings the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ to bear on the events of the day and people’s lives. It is a free publication, with no advertising. If you wish to subscribe please send an email to: mailto:revrboeck@netscape.net and put “Please send ‘Today’s Devotion’” in the subject box and include your first and last names in the body. You may also address any questions or comments you may have about this article to the same address. Copyright @2003. All rights reserved. *******************************************
