Just what are the Benefits of Submitting Articles to E-Zines

E-zine advertising is perhaps one of the most underused forms of promotion. It is a good idea to do your homework, before launching your viral marketing campaign. Article writing and publishing has become the latest buzz in the internet website marketing world. The name of the game as far as Internet marketing

Once you start list building, you'll also want to start sending out email to your list members. That's the goal of list building, right?

OK...

So, you don't want to mess things up. You don't want to be accused of spamming.

If you use an autoresponder service, you'll probably be OK because you're completely backed up. They keep the date the subscriber opted-in, their IP address, and the time when they submitted your list building form. You'll still get complaints, because people forget that they signed up, but you will at least be protected.

But you don't want messages trapped by the spam filters, either. That means you don't want to use a bunch of URLs or too much code as compared to text in your messages. Spam Assassin and other spam cops consider how much HTML is in the message, as well as your title, and the URLs in your message, and gives you points (or fractions of points) for such inclusions. Anything under the score of 5 points is usually considered to be OK.

Some autoresponder services, like AWeber, will check this information and score the message for you so that you can see if it will pass spam filters.

Certain words just trigger spam filters:

click to remove
homeowner
discreet
unclaimed
pre-approved
bankruptcy
prescription
unconditionally
pill
refinance
... and the big winner--free.

But those are just a few of the words that services filter. Keep your messages simple, without hype, and you'll probably be okay.

Tell a story. All good copy tells a story, and you can do that easily without filling your messages with hype and spam words.

Another way that you can be labeled a spammer is by ignoring "unsubscribe" requests. Again, if you're using an autoresponder service, the company will handle such requests for you. But if you're handling your own mail, you have to honor these requests right away--within 24 hours. If you keep sending mail to someone who asks to be removed, it could get you into trouble.

With the big online mail services, like AOL, Hotmail, and Gmail, all it takes is for a subscriber or two to label your messages as spam, and Boom! You're dumped right into those people's spam folders each time you send off a message , and if you're labeled as spam by enough people, guess what happens? Nobody else at that mail service sees your mail in their inbox, either. It will go to everyone's spam folders by default. You've spent so much time list building, that would be a real waste of time.

And hopefully, you're list building around a niche. Don't just build lists to build them and send the people on it messages that they aren't interested in. If all of your list building efforts were geared around baseball, don't send your list anything but baseball-oriented messages. Don't try to sneak in a message about camping because it just won't work. Some of your members might have an interest in camping, but by and large, they won't. You'll insult them by sending them a message that's not strictly targeted.

List building is the most important thing that you do in online business. Maintaining that list is the second most important thing. Keep your messages simple. I only use text messages, and I've proven that text messages work well. You really don't need at that fancy HTML stuff. The last thing you want to be known for is spamming. It will seriously hurt your list building efforts, and do major damage to your business. You didn't spend so much time list building for that purpose. You worked at list building for just the opposite reason.

Tellman Knudson is CEO of OvercomeEverything.com, Inc. Learn how to build a powerful and responsive list quickly through his premiere list-building course, MyFirstList.com.