Simple strategies for Your Ezine Lay out.

Radhika Venkata(c) 2001-2003.

Publishing ezine and maintaining your own opt-in
list is the best and well known internet marketing
strategy. Ezine publishing gives you credibility
that you are a knowledgeable person.

Things you have to think before you start publishing
ezine:
*Target Audience
*Topic of interest
*Resources you have
*Publication frequency
*Lay out of your ezine
*Format (Html or Plain text)
*Archiving old issues on your web site
*Selling advertising space or not
*Size of ezine etc.,

You need a little plan to keep every thing in order.
Here are few tips in consideration of your ezine lay out.

**Keep your Ezine lay out consistent:
-------------------------------------

If you read two pages in any book, you will get accustomed
to the lay out.If you turn the page your eyes automatically
takes you to the appropriate location on the page.

Same way is with your ezine.Whether it is Html or text format,
you have to maintain a consistent lay out.

For this, you need to create a template for your ezine.

If you want same header file and footer file in every ezine,
you have to format the ezine every time you publish.So instead
of doing that we will create a file that acts as a base
for other issues which contain standard information that
doesn't change.

After you created the 'template' save it as a text file on
your hard drive in a seperate folder. Any time you want to
send ezine to your subscribers, open your template and
include the content in alloted places and you are finished.

**Keep the content to the left of the page:
-------------------------------------------

You can center or keep to left of your content. Left
alignment is always appealing than center one.

What ever you choose, use uniform indentation.This gives
very clean lay out.

Some ezines I have seen, they will mix both.Headings
in the center of the page and content to left. Assuming
your subscribers reading field is average of 70 characters
per line, this won't give good appearence.

**Seperators:
-------------

Seperate each column with a uniform seperator through out
the ezine.If you seperate articles from classifieds with
'------' and classifieds from sponsors with '******' or
something else, it creates confusion and the reader
have to search where the beginning and the
ending.

Some of the seperators like:
------------------
******************
++++++++++++++++++
==================
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
##################
__________________

///////////////////

Use your fancy thinking and use them.But remember the
'uniformity'.

**Advertisements,sponsor colums,classifieds:
--------------------------------------------

If you want to sell your advertising space in your
ezine, most crucial points are how many ads per issue, space
alloted to these ads etc,.

Think about this.If you are reading an ezine, how many ads
you think will be excess? So will be to your subscribers too.

Try not to keep the ads in between the articles. This will
give a break to the readers thoughts and thinking flow.
When somebody going through the article, it is annoying
to see the ad in between the article.

**Highlighting certain content:
-------------------------------

This issue is very difficult to deal with in plain text
formats. In Html ezines you can use colors, different size
letters, links etc, to highlight the content. But this
is different with ezines in text formats.

Use the following methods to highlight certain points:

==Special characters (like *, ==>, $, @ etc,)
==Capital letters
==Creating boxes with ----- lines

**Fixed Length Font:
--------------------

Use 'Fixed-width Font'.Is is called so because every
character occupies the same amount of space in the line.

Most popular fixed-width font is 'Courier New'.Use
10 point size. This fixed-width font is very helpful in
formatting fixed length lines and tables.


**Paragraphs and Space in between the paragraphs:
-------------------------------------------------

This feature, if you follow in every issue, takes out
lot of confusion to the reader and keep your content
clean.

Any articles, columns like articles, classifieds, interviews-
anything, you can keep some space in between them.

**URL problems:
---------------

Long Urls will breakdown in to two lines and when your
subscriber clicks on it, it gives '404 file not found'
errors.So try to keep short URLs using redirect services
that are provided to you by your web host or installing
a cgi script on your server.

Use 'http://' infront of URLs.This make easy to click on
them by the reader, instead of copying and pasting
in the browser.

Don't put ' . ' after URLs.Sometimes this will be
included in the URL highlighting, and gives '404'
error.

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Radhika Venkata
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