Writing a newsletter or article can be very time consuming.
First, you have to create your content. Then you have to
organize it. Fortunately, there are plenty of great tools
online you can use and don't require you to clog your
computer with more software.
Best of all, each of these tools is absolutely free to use.
Here are five tools you can use to help you with your
newsletters and articles:
1. Newsletter Template
Formatting your newsletter will probably give you more
headaches than anything else.
You want to make it easy for your readers to read, and you
want it to look professional when you send it out.
This site solves the problem. All you have to do is select
the parts you want to include in your newsletter, cut and
paste the elements, and hit submit. It will completely
format your newsletter for you, and you can even get some
great tips and resources to help you with your newsletter.
http://www.ossweb.com/ez-ezine-template.html
2. Email Formatting Utility
Ever gotten a really great forward in your email you wanted
to use, but it was too time consuming to take all of the
>> out of it?
You don't have to do that anymore. This email formatting
utility will strip any unecessary tags for you. You can
also use it to format your newsletters and emails to the
right character count.
http://www.formatit.com
3. Article Formatter
Ok, I admit it. Before I found this utility I used to cut
and paste my articles into my word processing program
just so I could get a word count.
Now you don't have to do that. Not only will this online
tool give you a word count, it will also format your
articles in an attractive format for submission.
This site is offered by the Freelance Writing Organization
Int'l a large database of information for freelance writers.
http://www.fwointl.com/FWOFormatter.html
4. PDF Creator
This may seem like an odd tool to recommend to a
publisher or writer, but wait a minute.
Have you ever wanted to give away copies of your articles
and newsletters to site visitors? What about the $249 price
tag for Adobe Acrobat?
Then you have to consider your readers computers. What if
they have a MAC?
Unless you have a format that can be read by both MACs and
PCs you'll exclude certain readers from downloading your
documents.
Besides, giving away copies of your articles and
newsletters is a form of viral marketing for your business.
This site allows you to convert documents to both HTML and
PDF. http://www.gohtm.com/
This site converts text to PDF.
http://www.sanface.com/createpdf.html
5. Good Research Tools
There are tons of places you can do research on
the Web. That's the beauty of the Web.
That's also what's horrible about the Web. There's just too
much great material online to find it quickly and easy.
Ref Desk - http://www.refdesk.com - is like having your own
book shelf at your fingertips.
You can do searches in the major search engines, find
dictionaries, word of the day, quote of the day, and more.
There are so many resources located here, you may even want
to make this your start page.
Find Articles - http://www.findarticles.com - is a large
collection of print articles archived on the Web. It boasts
over 300 print publications in its database.
Writing and publishing can become a time consuming task.
Not only will these tools save you time, they'll save you
money too.
Jinger Jarrett is the author of "20 Websites Every Writer Needs".
Get your free copy of her ebook by subscribing to her
newsletter. Visit her web site: http://www.marketingforwriters.com