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'Pathway To Success' is published every other Sunday.
Next Issue is supposed on 3rd Dec 2006.

Today's Feature Article

Is Your Ezine A Wealth of Information or A Sales Trap?
Karon Thackston

Ask successful ezine publishers what draws subscribers to their ezines, and you'll be told one very important thing. Content, content, content. However, many would-be ezine publishers focus more on selling than they do on valuable information. They turn their attention toward making money instead of building relationships. If you follow suit, that practice will surely be the death of your ezine, my friend.

"What? Ezines are supposed to be this wonderful marketing tool. They are supposed to help me get more sales. What do you mean that selling will be the death of my ezine?"

Exactly what I said. Think of it this way. When you subscribe to a paper magazine, what are you paying your hard-earned money for? You don't want to get a copy of "Forbes" or "Glamour" only to find 90% ads and only one article in the entire issue, do you? Certainly not! Neither do your ezine subscribers. even if your 'zine is free.

They subscribed to your ezine because they believed they would get a wealth of information. Instead, they're likely to feel they've fallen into a sales trap.

Don't get me wrong. Ezines are a wonderful sales tool. They can help to build your business. They do bring in more clients. But they only do this if presented in a professional manner that shows you care about providing a quality publication, and not just promoting products or services that will make you money.

Trust is a big part of ezine success. Your subscribers trust you to provide content that will help them in some way. If you choose not to, they will most likely unsubscribe. If you choose to give them what they want however, you can get set to reap the rewards.

Take the time to find out the concerns, needs, and wants of your subscribers. Then offer them solutions through your content. You can do this through articles you write yourself, or by researching articles written by others. Make the content prevalent. don't make your readers have to dig to find it.

Once you have your content in place then turn your focus to advertising. Many ezines I've seen are simply overloaded with ads. You must read through five or six ads before you ever get to any real information. That's way too much! Yes, for your advertiser's benefit, you'll want to have the ad placed above the articles. That's understandable. But only place one ad in each spot. not three or four. Again. put your subscribers' needs first.

When you take every effort to produce a publication that readers will value, you will increase your chances of getting referral subscriptions, building trust, creating valuable relationships, making more sales, and boosting your own credibility. Then, and only then, will your sales come rolling in.

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Want to learn exactly how to create a quality ezine and how to build your subscriber base? You can! Karon will take you step-by-step through the process and give you over 70 free places to promote your ezine. Get three FREE bonuses with your purchase, too! Get all the details today at: http://www.creatingezines.com

Today's Motivational Reading

Three Kinds of People
Les Brown

I believe there are three kinds of people. There are winners, who know what they want and understand their potential and the possibilities. They take life on. Next are losers, who don't have a clue as to who they are. They allow circumstances to shape their lives and their self-image.

I believe there is a third group as well. This consists of potential winners whose lives are just slightly out of alignment. I call them wayward winners. It may be that they just need to learn how to be real winners. Perhaps they've hit a bump or two that has knocked them off course and they are temporarily befuddled. A failed relationship, a lost job, financial problems, unformed goals, a lack of parental support, illness, many things can send us off course temporarily.

Wayward winners are not lost souls; they just need some tweaking and coaching and nudging to get them back on course. A map might be nice. Many of these wayward winners are easily identifiable because they are always searching.

Right now, there are many wayward winners out there braving rain, sleet and snow because they too still believe that they have untapped talents. They attend motivational seminars and listen to inspirational tapes and they plunge onward, believing that sooner or later they will find their way again. Other wayward winners have temporarily given up. They are damaged and disoriented, their confidence badly eroded. They tend to drift through life numbly. The friends and relatives and loved ones of wayward winners see that they are out of sync and wonder why they can't be satisfied, why they don't settle down. They wonder how people who have such obvious abilities and great potential can be so disoriented and unsure.

It is difficult for others to understand the rawness of a broken heart or the aching emptiness of an unguided spirit. You and I know. We have been there. Wayward winners know that there are possibilities out there, but too often they feel locked out from them. Some are afraid to risk any more because of what they have risked and lost already.

I know now that as difficult as it may be for you wayward winners to do, it is necessary to continue to test yourselves. Even though you have been hurt before, it is the only way to grow. We all have the capacity to change, to lead meaningful and productive lives by awakening our consciousness.

You know there are going to be tough times as you go about changing your life, so brace yourself and you will be able to handle them. When you get into your seat on an airplane, what is the first thing they tell you to do? Fasten your seat belt. Brace yourself for the turbulence.

When you decide to move your life to the next level of accomplishment, you must fasten your mental and spiritual seat belts because it is going to be a while before you reach that comfortable level again. You will reach it, but you must endure the turbulence of change in order to grow.

Try this technique to help you through the difficult times of change and growth. Find four reasons why you cannot succumb to your fears and your troubles. Find those deep sources of motivation that can lift you out of the turbulence and above the clouds. You must change your life because, for example:

• You have not yet tapped the talents given you.

• You want to leave something more for your children.

• You want to live life rather than letting life live you.

• You want to do what makes you happy.

It is in these rocky early moments of bringing change to your life that you discover who you are. In the prosperous times, you build what is in your pocket. In the tough times, you strengthen what is in your heart. And that is when you gain insight into yourself, insight that leads to self-mastery and an expansion of your consciousness as a life force in both your personal and professional lives.

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As a renowned professional speaker, author and television personality, Les Brown has risen to national prominence by delivering a high energy message which tells people how to shake off mediocrity and live up to their greatness. For information on Les's speaking schedule, books and tapes visit:
http://www.LesBrown.com

To get his book: It's Not Over Until You Win: How To Become the Person You Always Wanted to be No Matter What the Obstacle, please visit:
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/itsnotover.html

Today's Subscriber Article

10 Ways to Manage E-mail Overload
Peggy Duncan

Believe it or not, you can prevent the E-mail avalanche. The key is to develop more efficient ways of handling it.

1. Choose your service provider wisely. Before you sign up for E- mail service, you should check the provider's privacy policy. Most of the free services (and some of the paid ones) sell your E-mail address to third parties. Read between the lines, and understand every word of their policy. Having free E-mail is not worth it if you can't stop the junk! Using Microsoft Outlook, you check E-mail from your computer desktop instead of being forced to go to a provider's Web site and deal with the pop-up ads and other distractions on their site (press Ctrl+W to close the pop-ups). Also, some providers are better at providing built- in filters to block junk E-mail that comes through the system.

2. Do the Inbox on a regular basis. You'll have to establish a routine for checking your E-mail once or twice every day so it won't pile up. Set aside a special time of day to check it, and deal with each message as you open it: delete it, forward it, schedule it, respond to it, file it, or pend it. Get organized so you can find answers to requests quickly!

If you have a tendency to keep too many messages in your Inbox, set up special folders to move them to. If you put a number in front of the folder name, you can have them appear in a particular order. For instance, if you keep messages coming from your clients, create a main Inbox folder called "1Clients." Then, create subfolders for each client (or put all messages in the Clients folder if you won't have many).

If you have messages you need to follow up on later, either create a "2FollowUp" folder in your Inbox (or desk), flag the message for follow up, or drag the message to your computer calendar icon or folder to set a reminder (Outlook has all these features. Close the message before you attempt to drag it).

Putting the number "1" in front of Clients will make that folder appear first in your Inbox folder list. Putting the "2" in front of FollowUp will make it appear second in your folder list, and so on.

If you’re keeping E-mail messages to “CYA,” instead of leaving them in your Inbox, create a folder to drag all of them into. If you ever need one (which is doubtful), you can use your software’s Find feature to locate it. Purge this folder often.

3. Have replies to your messages sent to someone else. In Outlook, if you’re sending an E-mail message and you want the replies to go to someone other than yourself (e.g., your virtual assistant), from within the New Message dialog box, click View, Options. Click inside the textbox to the right of "Have replies sent to." Either type the E-mail address you want replies sent to, or click Select Names, find the address in your Address book, and double-click the name. Click OK. (This will only apply to the current message.)

4. Let people know upfront that you do not want to receive certain types of messages. A lot of people absolutely do not enjoy receiving jokes, thoughts for the day, chain letters, and all those other E-mail messages so many of you feel compelled to send. They want you to stop, but they're too embarrassed to say so.

Create an automatic signature that will go out with every E-mail you send that says something like: "Please do not add my name to your distribution list for jokes, prayers, thoughts for the day, chain letters, etc. Thanks!" (Also include your full name, address, Website, and a blurb about your business in your signature.)

5. Ask people you know to stop sending you junk. Develop a spiel to send to people you know who are sending you junk that goes something like this: "I appreciate your thinking about me, but in an effort to streamline my E-mail messages and manage my time, I have to ask you to remove my name from the distribution list that you're using. Thanks!" If this doesn't work, call them and be firm.

6. Use a junk E-mail filter. Use feature-rich E-mail software such as Microsoft Outlook. Its junk E-mail feature searches for commonly used phrases in your incoming messages, and will automatically move the message from your Inbox to any other folder you specify, including the trash folder. It can also change the color of a message it suspects of being junk so it's easy to recognize.

7. Don't respond to spammers. When you get unsolicited E-mail that is clearly junk, don't respond. Responding only verifies to the sender that you're a valid E-mail address. Instead, add them to your Junk Senders list if your software has one, and delete the message without opening it. The Junk Senders list will block any future E-mail coming from that sender.

8. Change how you view your Inbox. Changing the view of your Inbox will help you see your messages without opening them. In Outlook, try the AutoPreview option (click View, AutoPreview or Preview Pane), if you would like to see a few lines of an unopened message. (Viewing messages using the Preview Pane could activate a virus if it’s in an E-mail message so keep your antivirus software up to date.)

9. Set up a separate E-mail address. Don't leave your main E- mail address on sites for Newsgroups, free services like greeting card companies, online membership directories, etc. Instead, set up a separate E-mail account (maybe one of the free ones), and leave this address on the site instead of your main one.

10. Use Autoresponders. Use autoresponders to distribute common E-mails you send (e.g., information on how to order your products)by setting up special E-mail mailboxes to handle certain requests. This is how it would work: if someone sends an E-mail to your company at info@acompany.com, they will get an automatic response with whatever information you wanted to make available. You could set up different mailboxes for each type of request (check with your service provider to set this up).

You have important work to do. Creating systems for everything you do, including managing E-mail, will help you get a lot more work done than you think you have time to do.

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Peggy Duncan is an enthusiastic productivity trainer and author of Put Time Management to Work. Her workshops for busy professionals cover organization, time management, and tips and tricks in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. For more timesaving tips, visit her award-winning Website at:
http://www.peggyduncan.com

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