If 100 people came to your website and one person ordered something, does that mean that other 99 surfers were not interested in your products or services' Probably not. Every day there are lots of good prospects passing through your website and one of your most important jobs is to engage these people in some way so that you can bring your message to them again and again. One of the best ways to do that is through a monthly newsletter, like this one!

It is not so difficult to publish a monthly newsletter, it does not require skills that are beyond most individuals or businesses, and most importantly, the time and small expenses involved in managing a newsletter will be more than paid for by additional orders for your products and services and in maintaining better relations with your existing customers. If you don't already have a newsletter, follow the steps below and create one.

1. Collect the subscribers Here's where you give people a chance to 'vote' for your site. Put a form on your site allowing people to subscribe. You can use any of the free services that have online mailing list maintenance, and which provide you with a piece of html to paste onto your page creating the form, such as is available from www.bravenet.com or you can use a paid service such as the one provided by www.topica.com. Alternatively you can install a mailing list management program on your own server. You could start with a free script such as 'nomodomo' available from www.bignosebird.com or you can purchase more sophisticated scripts.

2. Write a monthly article about your field If you already have a web site then you must be something of an expert on the area covered by your site. Share your knowledge with your web visitors. You don't have to compose a great literary piece, the simpler it is, the better it is. One of the advantages of this monthly article is that you will produce copy which can be posted on your website, and this copy can help to attract traffic to your website. If you are not used to writing newsletter articles or web copy, read my article http://www.a1-optimization.com/article-writing-tips.htm for some easy-to-follow guidelines.

3. Give updates on your existing products and services: in addition to a main article, a shorter section giving news about your products is very easy to add. Do you have new options, changes in price or special offers. Here is your chance to let your existing clients and new prospects know about them.

4. Introduce a new product line. Your own newsletter, sent to people who are interested in your products, should be one of the first places that your new product is announced. Later you can do other publicity, but first take care of this obvious announcement in your own newsletter

5. Give any additional news relating to your product or service area For example this newsletter is about search engine optimization and web promotion, and each month I try to give news about what is going on in the world of search engines. You can do the same for your field of activity.

6. Include a guest article This is optional. There is no sense in recreating the wheel. If you see that someone else has really done a great job in expressing things that are good for you and your readers, you can include it in your newsletter. There are tons of free articles available on all subjects available at websites such as www.articlecity.com and your only obligation in using them is to provide the author's contact information

7. Develop a standard format to your newsletter, and stick to it. Most newspapers and magazines have a certain format: for example world news on page one, sports on the last page, editorials in the center, etc. By developing a format for your newsletter, you will save time in building it each month, as well as help your readers to become familiar and comfortable with your publication.

8. Encourage your readers to pass on the newsletter to their friends, or post the articles on their web pages (providing that they keep the link to your website).

9. Send it out. If you would like to format the article to wrap at 65 characters or any other custom size, instead of going all across the page, you can find a free online formatting service at http://www.jbmckee.com/formatit/

If you follow the steps above, you will build a tool that will help you to create more interest in your products or services, thus bringing you one step closer to achieving the goals you have set for your Internet activities.

Copyright 2003