E-Zine Publishing Mastery (ePub)

E-zine publishing is an online magazine. Much like in real life, it is simply a magazine that is delivered in a digital form. Most of the E-zines today are targeted towards Internet distribution and is meant to promote a website.

Normally, an E-zine usually caters to a particular niche or topic. It could be anything from 'How to make money online' to 'How to train your pet'. E-zines are distributed to their subscribers normally through e-mail. Normally people send E-zines to be published on a consistent, pre-planned basis. For example, an e-mail will be sent out every day, every 3 days, weekly, biweekly or monthly.

These E-zines are distributed using an autoresponder. An autoresponder is programmed for every subscriber to receive the e-mails in a chronological format in a sequential order. This is the biggest difference between an E-zine and its offline counterpart. An E-zine can send previous issues anytime regardless of when the subscriber has opted in to the E-zine. The autoresponder will do its job of follow-up from the day the subscriber has opted in and will follow through until its 'run' is exhausted.

Today, the majority of E-zines are website driven. It would be a surprising fact to know that the first E-zines were delivered on an electronic format such as CD-ROM and delivered to the subscriber's house by mail.

That was in the 'stone age' when the power of e-mails and autoresponders were not realized yet. But now, the majority of the formats stick with e-mails or they send out notifications (or updates) in conjunction with websites or blogs. The e-mail usually contains the issue itself or a summarized format that ultimately links back to the original website for the main cheese.

There are two kinds of models related to E-zines - the free model and the paid model. Many general interest E-zine publishers offer free access to all aspects of their online content while other publishers have opted to require a subscription fee to access premium articles or audio and video content (depending on the niche).

This does not mean that those free E-zines are not out there to make a profit. You can make a lot of money when you collect enough subscribers and you can sell them other online products. But the most important aspect of all is to collect targeted leads and compile them into your list.

There are other various sources of online profits that can be squeezed from E-zines such as promoting affiliate programs, building a relationship with your customers and gaining their trust.

Because you can't talk face to face with a subscriber and neither can you have a cup of tea or a beer with them to build a relationship, therefore E-zines usually reflect the publisher's offline personality in some way or another through the publication.

With millions and millions of websites and E-zines screaming for the attention of the reader, it is very crucial to structure your E-zine with good content. You don't want your e-mails to wind up in their trash box so you have to be vigilant.