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E-zines| Article #83: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Okay, you’ve gotten your content. You’ve either written it yourself, paid somebody to write it for you, or shudder the thought, got some free content from an article directory.

Now what?

Now, it’s time to put it all together and actually create your e-zine, whether it be an email or a web page.

What, you thought this was all going to put itself together all on its own? No, I’m afraid there is quite a bit of work to do.

For starters, what do you want your e-zine to look like? Even emails can get pretty fancy without going the HTML route. There are so many fonts and styles to choose from. Do you want your e-zine to be just plain old ordinary Times New Roman?

Maybe you’re doing an e-zine on antiques. So maybe a font like this is something that just might attract your readers.  Or maybe you’re putting together a comic book e-zine and something along these lines might be just what the e-zine ordered. Most people really don’t think about this sort of detail. That’s what separates the good e-zines from the really great ones.

Aside from the look, you also want to decide on the order that things will come in the e-zine. What if you decide that in addition to the article, you also want to put a brief ad in the e-zine. Do you do it at the beginning, the end, where? My gut tells me to give them the content first and then do your sales pitch. Remember, you don’t want to give them a pitch with each e-zine.

What if you decide that your e-zine is going to be a web page. How many pages? Will the content be on the main page? Will you archive all old newsletters? Will you have a page with products? Will you also have an opt-in box for an email series?

Lots of questions, and we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface.
What about graphics for your e-zine? You do want to have a look that people will recognize. Branding is so important with everything we do online. Sometimes people will recognize us more by a certain logo than  by the words on a page.

And what about the actual layout of your web page? You want each page of your e-zine to have the same look. If the pages are thrown together willy-nilly, visitors to your site are going to get the impression that this isn’t a very professional e-zine.

Everything has to look like it goes together, especially if visitors are going from one page to another, otherwise they may not even know that they’re at the same site and end up leaving because they’re lost. So navigation is also very important.

We’re actually going to cover a lot of these things when we get to the articles on web design.

The point is, you just don’t throw your e-zine together. Everything has to be planned out to the letter if you want your e-zine to have a professional look and convey that professionalism to your subscribers.

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