Interestingly, newsletters are nothing new. They have been around for centuries in different forms. But it is only after the emergence of the Net and the e-mail that newsletters have become such a rage at no cost. Let us have a brief look at the origin of newsletters. In 1631 The Continuation of Our Weekly News from Forraine Parts was distributed regularly in England. The first American newsletter, the Boston News-Letter, started in 1704, and evolved into America’s first newspaper. Newsletters flourished throughout the 1700s, but faded in the 1800s as newspapers prospered. By the early 1900s, business and industry needed specialised information, so newsletters again became popular. In 1904, Babson’s Report, the first investment advisory newsletter, appeared. In 1923 the Kiplinger Letter began publication, and continues even today.

Corporate newsletters developed rapidly in the 1930s, beginning in 1934 with the telephone industry’s telecommunications reports. Other business newsletters followed, specialising in everything from farming to fashion. In 1964 the first newsletter about newsletters, Newsletter on Newsletters, appeared. In the mid ‘80s the workplace began to change rapidly. Personal computers revolutionised work as telecommuting, job sharing, flex hours, and e-mail became part of our vocabulary. The arrival of desktop publishing created a boom in newsletters. Over one million newsletters were published in the U.S. in 1999, and they’ll continue to inform and influence readers just as they have for the past 400 years.

Now the question arises who sends these newsletters and why? Newsletters on the Net originated when business websites began distributing information about their products to those who were interested. Soon Webmasters found that offering information free to visitors to the site through e-mail was a very effective way of attracting more surfers to the site. This led to an explosion in world of newsletters and as e-mail caught on, newsletters gathered momentum too. Now there are sites that exclusively offer you information about newsletters available on the Net on the subject of your interest to help you make your choice. Many sites specialise in newsletters on multiple subjects from love to inspiration and computing to chemistry. Then there are persons who send out daily newsletters of the areas of their interest and this has become a thriving business for them. Such netizens have Websites offering you archives of their past newsletters on their sites. You may even search the site for keywords. There are others who are passionate about a topic. They use third party facilities for managing lists of subscribers to their newsletters.

But be warned. There are so many newsletters on offer that unless you are careful in choosing them, you may find your mailbox virtually flooded by newsletters you may never be able to read. Here are a few tips on how to choose the newsletter that interests you. Suppose you are interested in learning more about gardening and you want a newsletter on the subject, then the first step is to search first for some sites on gardening. Once you have found a site that interests you check if it offers a newsletter. If past issues are available, make it a point to browse some of them so you know that you will get exactly what you want. Only after doing so should you fill in your e-mail address and click on the subscribe tab. Even this kind of caution is no guarantee that you will not subscribe to more newsletters than you require.

But that is no big deal as you can always unsubscribe anytime you want without any obligation. Rather most sites will say that they are sorry to see you go. It’s a buyers market, you know. The unsubscribe information is appended to the bottom of all newsletters except those who send out spam. Another important way of locating good newsletters is to check for yahoo groups on the subject of your choice. If you find a Yahoo! group on the area of your interest you will certainly find you can subscribe to several newsletters worth their weight in gold. The same is true of geocities. You should take care to check the periodicity of the newsletter. If you have enough time daily to read your mail then a daily newsletter is probably for you. But even then limit the number of newsletters to the bare minimum. If you do not find time daily for your newsletter, then probably a weekly newsletter might be good for you. These are delivered generally on weekends so you can read them in your spare time. However, that’s not to say that weekly newsletters arrive on weekends only. They may come any other weekday depending upon who is sending these newsletters. Most websites have fixed days but non-professionals running newsletters just as a hobby send these any day of the week. The format in which you wish to receive your newsletter is another important consideration. You can receive it in text or HTML format. The HTML format is generally easier to read but it takes longer to download. Besides, the advertisers’ scripts on the page will bother you. But again it is a matter of choice.

That was about choosing your newsletters. But why not start your own newsletter instead? If you can write well and feel you would love to share your views with others, then the easiest way to do so is to start your own newsletter. The first thing you have to do is to create a Website where visitors can come and see what you have to offer. This is no big deal. The site can be hosted on any of the Websites that offer free Web hosting. Be sure that you let your visitors know who you are and what you have to offer. You could then guide a visitor to the subscription box. Be sure that you also offer the facility of unsubscribing on your Website in addition to appending unsubscribe information in your newsletter. Remember this is part of good manners on the Net. Distributing a newsletter electronically is easy. Almost anyone can set up a mailing list to distribute newsletters via email. There are many free or advertising supported distribution services available on the Net. To begin with it is better to use one of the free distribution services. You can check out for these services on the Net. This kind of distribution is known as third party service. The advantages of using a third party service are many. Firstly, you don’t have to bother about managing the list itself. Things like bounced mail, maintaining an archive of past issues, etc, are handled by them.

Secondly they handle confirmation of subscription. The mailing list hosting services send your subscribers an email requiring them to confirm before they’ll be added to the list. Although you may think this is a hassle but at least, you won’t be accused of spamming anyone. Then, it is the publicity the third party service may give to your list. You will need no additional software like Smartlist, Majordomo, Listserv, or CGI access. All you need is to sign up.

Before you embark upon your own newsletter, it is better to learn all about writing newsletters on the Net itself. Even if you are an accomplished writer in the print media, you will need to take care of many finer points when you write something for the electronic medium. Basically, a newsletter requires much shorter write-ups than we see in the print media. You can even subscribe to newsletters that give tutorials on starting, running and writing newsletters. Best of all you can even add third party articles in your newsletter. These are available on the Net in the form of free content. You should contact the author of those articles and get a licence for you to reprint the articles (or contract him to write original articles for you) before publishing them. Some persons do this for free, in exchange for free publicity about their site or business. In addition to giving it a new flavour, third party content can help you deliver your newsletter on time. Now with so much help available on the Net itself what are you waiting for? Happy newslettering!