How to Drive Traffic With Your Ezine

Having an ezine isn't all that impressive without a Web site to which you drive traffic. The #1 purpose of your ezine should be to drive traffic to your Web site or sites, so that customers see what you have to offer.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. First and foremost, you need to have good content on your Web site. It must be something people want to read.
   
2. Have plenty of links to your Web site in your ezine. If you operate several Web sites, plug them all. Put your link in your header. This can be done a number of ways. The header itself can be a link to your Web site, or you can list your web site's URL below the header as a link. You may also put a banner on either side of your header, each of which serves as a link to your Web site. Your footer should also include links to your Web sites. A typical footer includes company information, contact information, spam policy, and copyright information. List all of your URLs and make them links. Every article or content element should be linked to your Web site. You might run partial articles in the ezine and link from the article to your Web site in order for your readers to complete an article. Another way to do this is to list articles as titles and summaries with the title serving as a link to your article on your Web site. A third way is to add a link to the end of each article in your ezine that takes people to your Web site. However you do it, link to your Web site from every article and graphic.
3. List your ezine in article directories. In each directory put a link to your Web site and your ezine opt-in page.
   
4. Publish articles in your ezine in article directories. Write an author's resource box that links to your Web site.
   
5. Publicize your ezine through press release directories.
   
6. Exchange advertising with other ezine publishers and link to your Web site and opt-in page from your exchange ads.
   
7. Create special offers and announce them in your ezine. Instead of giving all the details in the ezine, put a teaser ad that subscribers have to click on to get the details, which will be on your Web site.
   
8. Sponsor a contest or survey on your Web site and announce it in your ezine.
   
9. Have a featured product or service in your ezine. Give a teaser and link from that featured column to a specific Web page on your site that sells that product or service.
   

Tips & Warnings

• The most important part of driving traffic to your Web site from your ezine is to build a good list. It must be targeted and it must be big. Spend time building a list.
• The next most important thing is publishing valuable, unique content.
• Get creative with your linking strategy. If readers see the same strategy over and over again they'll get desensitized. Try different things and link often.