"Are You Doing It on a Regular Basis?"

If you're an ezine publisher I have one word for you: "consistency."
When planning your newsletter, you need to decide how often your
ezine will be sent out to your subscribers. Essentially,
you need to create a schedule and stick with it. But how often
should you publish? How much is too much and how often is not
enough? When it comes to frequency, the usual choices are
daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Let's examine the pro's
and cons of each one.

DAILY: If you plan on publishing a daily ezine be prepared
to do a lot of work. Think about it. That's a total of
365 issues you'll need to create every year. Not only is
this a monumental task, but daily publications can become
annoying fast especially since most of us are dealing with
information overload and bulging email boxes.

WEEEKLY: Once a week is a little better but it still can
be time consuming to produce a quality ezine on a regular
basis. That's 48 issues in a year, still a lot of work.
Some are of the opinion that once a week is still a bit
too often and showing up in someone's mail box four times a
month can appear to be too much for your subscribers.
On the pro side they'll have a hard time forgetting about
you.

BI-WEEKLY: Every two weeks seems to be just the right
mix for many. Whereas weekly can be too much and once
a month not enough, every two weeks seems to work like
a charm. Publishing an ezine twice a month is just often
enough to keep you fresh in your subscribers' minds but
not so often that they become annoyed with you and
start reaching for the unsubscribe link. As an ezine
publisher, twice a month can be easily worked into your
busy schedule without too much strain.

MONTHLY: Even though many ezine publishers go with a
monthly schedule, it does have its drawbacks.
Mailing just once a month can cause a subscriber to forget
who you are or that they even subscribed to your ezine
in the first place. Many a Spam compliant has started
this way. Don't get me wrong, I subscribe to many
monthly ezines myself, but sometimes by the time I
receive an issue I've almost forgotten I was subscribed
to it. It just doesn't seem often enough to keep the
publication fresh in my mind. On the plus side it's not
too much that you're messages become annoying.

So there you have it; the options for choosing an appropriate
publishing schedule. Which one is right for you will
depend on your time constraints and what you're trying
to accomplish with your ezine. So next time someone tells
you it's the size that matters don't believe it -- frequency
can make the difference between a memorable newsletter
and one that just fades into the woodwork.

So how often are you doing it?