Re: [epub] Circulation expectations....

[Lorenz Plourde <editor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Lorenz Plourde <editor@cyberpathway.com>


It would be interesting and helpful to know exactly what the ezines will be
about.
Speaking from my own experience (everyone's experience will be a little
different) I think 10,000 within your first year is attainable. According to
Jim Wilson of virtualpromote.com the first 10 thousand is the hardest, then
it seems to grow more or less on it's own steam (he's at about 150,000 now
after about 8-10 yrs) Your right that there are many factors, meta tags,
search engine placement, reciprocal links, content, organization,
competition ect...

I don't know very much about the Internet Scout Project, we chose to publish
and distribute in house because of the security and control. In regards to
reciprocal ads, it might be difficult to obtain decent reciprocals with less
than a thousand subscribers although I've seen it offered from newsletters
with as little as 200. Newsletters with a larger subscription base won't pay
much attention until you hit larger numbers, regardless of how many times
you may run their ad.

As to paying for subscribers, if the emails that you are paying for aren't
readers that are genuinely interested in your ezine enough to subscribe on
their own, then they will be the type of subscribers that hit the delete
button or unsubscribe when the see your latest issue. Numbers may work when
trying to obtain reciprocal ads but numbers alone won't be effective with
advertisers.

Prize drawings, will allow you to list your site with other sites that
feature contests,
but in the end I think that your biggest draw will be a well designed site
that offers quality content on a regular basis.

I don't think their is a generic marketing strategy that works, what you
have outlined may work very well for you. Most of it is trial and error. For
us we've found it to be
a large number of strategies developped over time. When you first start out
it takes a lot of patience and perseverence. We began our subscriber base
with friends, the writers would send their friends. The we began the
webring, the awards pages, the reciprocal links, the reciprocal newsletter
ads, the news releases to print newspapers wich gave us two articles in
papers with a circulation of 2 million, signing guestbooks, forum
discussions, the tell a friend cgi on site, writing articles for other
zines, and on and on. For about the first 6 months about 8-10 hours a day
was spent on marketing.

I think that marketing is basically a lot of hard, inovative work that takes
time. Run your present strategies over a period of time and then measure the
results, then modify your strategy. You may want to look into having someone
take over that aspect of it so that you can devote your time to the zines,
doing both could burn you out.

Best of luck to you,

Lorenz Plourde-Editor
Whispers online magazine for women
http://www.whispersmagazine.com


>
>    I'm launching a couple of new ezines in early February.  I believe that
>one is quite original, while the other is kind of an improved rehash of 70
>thousand others.
>
>    The original one will be quite attractive to advertisers because it's
>aimed at a non-traditional market segment.  On the other hand it will be
>more difficult to build because the people it's aimed at are not traditional
>eziners.
>
>    The other is a bit classic in nature, but I hope to win converts to it
>by doing a better job at it.
>
>    I plan to try and build circulation by the following methods:
>
>    First: publish in "NEW LIST" (Internet Scout Project)
>    Second: work VERY hard to do reciprocal trades for publicity.  I'm going
>to offer a 1 for 2 or 3 deal to make it more attractive.  That is you
>publish and ad for my ezine now, and I'll publish 2 or 3 of yours (depending
>on circulation) within 6 months to 1 year.  That way they can feel
>comfortable that while I'm just starting, they'll get the benefit of my
>higher circulation in the future.
>    Third: Use a pay per subscriber system - i.e. I pay you $0.01-0.03 per
>subscriber.
>    Fourth: Hold prize drawings, with each subscriber you sign up being
>worth one "ticket" in the drawing.  ie. have a custom cgi script set up such
>that subscribers can "invite" others to join the list.  For each person who
>signs up, the referrer gets a chance to win a CD or book.  The system would
>be automated, and I'd do this every month (maybe every 2 weeks).  I'm
>thinking up ways to make this as "abuse proof" as possible, as I don't want
>to spam anyone (the idea is for others to invite friends who might be
>interested).
>
>    I'm going to do this in order.
>
>    OK, here are my two questions:
>
>    1. Does this plan sound reasonable?  Any ideas to add to it?
>    2. Realistically, if I work hard with these 3 angles, where can I expect
>to be circulation wise within 6 months?  How about 1 year?
>
>    I know this is going to depend on a zillion factors, but I want a feel
>round about what I could expect.
>
>    At first I was hoping to build a base of 5-8 thousand users for my main
>ezine by years end.  But thinking that through that works out to about 20
>new subscribers per DAY.  That's a lot.
>
>    I guess what I'm hoping for is an idea of how fast you can build
>circulation if you're working at it, in the manner described.  Just your
>experience or a vague idea would be appreciated.
>
>    By the way if anyone needs some custom CGI work done (something like
>what I describe above) let me know.
>
>
>

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Independent contractors: Find your next project gig through JobSwarm!
        You can even make money by referring friends.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/jobswarm2 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Epub is sponsored by http://New-List.com/
Subscribe to New-List: mailto:join-new-list@new-list.com

To subscribe to Epub, mailto:epub-subscribe@onelist.com
To unsubscribe, mailto:epub-unsubscribe@onelist.com
Digest version: mailto:epub-digest@onelist.com
Epub archives: http://EzineSeek.com/archives/