The primary purpose of an electronic magazine (ezine) is to market a product or service.

OK, there, I’ve said it.

If you are an Internet ‘publisher’ you want people to come to your site to see what you have or to fund the process by visiting advertisers.

If you are an online ‘business’ you want to develop a comprehensive opt-in ezine that presents compelling information that in turn results in sales from an ‘informed’ customer base.

When an ezine publisher pushes too hard or adopts practices that are less than reputable the result is a reputation of being a spammer.

One of the first questions any online business should ask themselves is “Why should I develop a company ezine?”

If the answer is simply because it’s a marketing tool and you want to give it a whirl you may want to rethink your answer.

Developing an ezine can be labor-intensive correlate with a distinct objective. You need to know what the intent of the ezine will be before you can really get things rolling.

If you can develop a meaningful plan for your ezine you will likely find it better received among your opt-in list.

Business owners can often wrongly assume that they should develop an ezine for marketing purposes and just send whatever information strikes them at any given moment. If that is your approach you will likely find customers that opt-in will opt-out rather quickly.

Because you understand the value of time it is equally important to respect the value of the time your client-base may spend with your ezine. The more planning and point to the ezine the better it will be received.

Look at it this way, if you have 1,000 motivated customers on a list that has 5,000 and each person spends five minutes reading the material you send, the accumulated time your customers spend with your ezine is just over 83 hours or about 3 ½ (24 hour) days. If you send a weekly ezine you will likely find your customers spending nearly half of the year reading your material. To put that in perspective your children will not be in school as long as it takes motivated customers to collectively read your material.

If your customers are going to spend that much time reading your ezine you can do no less than make sure it is worth reading. Develop your own material, but don’t be afraid to use material from other experts. This information can be obtained through your vendors and can also be obtained through the use of free-to-use articles available on multiple websites.