Shape Up The Content For Your Ezine

We're down to the home stretch. You've got your Ezine laid out, you've
gotten some good content for it and now you want to put the whole
thing together in a nice neat little package with a pretty bow so that
your readers will have an experience that they can honestly say was
worth the zero cents they paid to subscribe. So just what does shaping
up the content for your Ezine involve and how do you go about doing
it?

Most of what you're going to have to do involves fitting pieces
together and modifying things so that they look just right. You'll be
spending a lot of time doing this with the various articles that you
get, either from the freelance writers you hired or the sites you
downloaded the content from. Why?

Ever hear the phrase "Beggars can't be choosers?" Well, when you're
downloading free content off of websites, you're not going to have a
lot of control over the format of this content. It may be in simple
Ariel 10 pt. font or heaven knows what. If you have an Ezine where you
are going for a certain look, this can be a bit of a problem. For
example, let's say you're putting together an Ezine on "Chinese Food"
and you want to have an oriental look to the Ezine itself. It's
doubtful the articles you download are going to be in fonts that
support this look. You're going to have to reformat them with your own
fonts. You may even have to download fonts from the Internet if you're
going for a certain look that isn't part of the default font set in
your word processing program.

Another part of the formatting, aside from the font itself, is how the
article is laid out. When you download it or have it sent to you, it
may not be 90 characters per line, or whatever line spacing you're
looking for. For that matter, it may not be formatted at all. You may
need to get a hold of a text formatter, which you can get for free
just about anywhere on the Internet. This will reformat your text to
however many characters per line you want. This is critical for
sending out emails as some email programs will just display your
paragraphs as one long string, making it very hard for your
subscribers to read. If they can't read your Ezine easily they will
most likely unsubscribe. You certainly won't make the sales you're
counting on.

Another thing you're going to have to do, especially if you're putting
together an Ezine with photos or graphics, is format the graphics
around the word content so that it flows. You don't want your layout
to be willy-nilly. If you need ideas for how an Ezine with photos
should look, go take a peak at a few. Again, there is nothing wrong
with getting inspiration from others. If you have doubts in your own
ability, get a graphic artist to do it for you or at least look at
your work.

If you're putting together a fancy Ezine with multiple sections, like
a real magazine, make sure you have a table of contents inside the
front cover. After a while, when you've developed a real following,
you're going to have subscribers who will consistently look for
certain features. By having a table of contents, you make it easy for
them to find what they're looking for. They'll love you for it.

Finally, you want to be consistent. Once you've got a format, stick to
it. Develop a routine for putting your Ezine together. Make a
checklist of all the things you have to do each time you send out your
Ezine, whether it be weekly, monthly or whatever.

After a while, when you've done this enough times, it will become
second nature to you and the time you spend each day will become less
and less and you'll have more time for actually running your business.
 

Learn more…

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Copyright 2006 – Ken Mathie. Editor PMCezine...
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