In my opinion, Electronic Magazine
(Ezine) advertising is the greatest, untapped
source of online advertising available today.
The reason: Ezine Advertising
(EA) matches your product or idea to people with
similar interests.
Example: who better to sell your
health product to than a large group of people
subscribed to a health newsletter? Or, you could
pitch a business opportunity to a group already
subscribed to another ezine about MLM and Biz
Ops!
The idea of EA is fairly simple
- but to make yours a success, you have to first
determine which ezines or newsletters produce
results, and which ones to avoid.
After a year and a half of EA,
I've created a formula that produces increasing
profit because I’ve learned how to avoid
poor performing ezines and rip offs, while revealing
the gems.
Strategy for Profit
I used to get ripped off about
once for every 2 or 3 ezines I advertised in.
They either took my money without running my ad
(and ignored my subsequent emails), or my proven
ads did too poorly for the money I paid.
The reasons ranged from abandoned
ezines with working payment links, unethical newsletter
owners, to a lot of ignorance and impatience on
my part.
If you follow my proven strategy,
you'll discover the best sources of ezines to
advertise in - no matter who your target group
is. And, you should see positive results every
time.
This article outlines the steps
to making your EA a successful return on investment
(ROI).
Writing Your Ad
I won't go into details about
ad writing, but if your ad is poorly written or
untested, you should start with the cheapest ezines
first. If you’re really unsure of your writing
abilities, I further suggest hiring a professional
to write your ad for you. Because you can run
your ad as many times as you want, your investment
in a professional will more than pay for itself
in the end.
Target your advertising
If you leap into EA without first
researching your target group, you'll end up wasting
a lot of time and money. Plus, you probably miss
some of the best ezines available.
To determine who your prospect
is, take the time to list the possible keywords
that directly relate to your product and do keyword
searches for ezines, newsletters, and ezine directories.
For example, if you sell herbs,
a good keyword search would include: herbs, health,
nutrition, supplements, etc.
Avoid Co-ops
While doing your ezine research,
you will probably stumble upon the offer to use
Co-op (bulk) advertising as the means for your
EA.
To be blunt, you should never
pay to use Co-ops for your EA because they are
too difficult to track and usually contain untargeted
ezines. Worse still, you’d find that most
never run your ad.
Subscribe
Now that you’ve found your
ezine target group, you’ll want to know
whether the ezines you found are a good option
(i.e. profitable) for your EA.
I’ve found the best strategy
for making this determination is to subscribe
to the targeted ezines.
To keep the subscriptions readily
available for further research, I recommend creating
a separate folder to store your subscription data.
And because you’ll need
to subscribe to quite a few ezines, I also suggest
creating separate email accounts dedicated to
your ezine subscriptions.
Double Opt-In Subscriptions
In the process of subscribing,
you’ll quickly determine possible ezines
to avoid. When you subscribe and get a notice
that you must confirm your subscription, the ezine
is referred to as “double opt-in”.
Double opt-in ezines indicates
a better quality of subscribers with a lower risk
of bulk email addresses. For you and me, this
means better ad responses (yeah!).
Solo Ads
Within the first week of your
new ezine subscription, you should see solo ads
from other advertisers. If not, the ezine may
be too new, or worse, no one is advertising because
of poor results. Worse yet, the ezine took the
advertiser’s money and failed to run the
ad.
On the other hand, if you see
two or more solo ads a day, their list is probably
burned out due to over advertising. You're looking
for no more than one ad a day, or a minimum of
one ad a week. Keep watching!
Subject Line
Does the ezine put the advertiser’s
subject line in the subject of the email or do
they just say something like "Solo ad from
xyz ezine"?
Your subject line is the most
important part of your ad and definitely should
be in the subject of the email. No subject line
equals no response.
Advertiser Response
Repeat (or regular) advertisers
in an ezine is a very good sign that the subscribers
are responsive. To further test responsiveness,
I recommend looking through the ezine’s
online archives (if available).
Archives are previous email publications
that the publisher has posted to their website
for visitors to view. The archive search is not
only quick and easy, but archives can also provide
an extra trickle of visitors when your ad gets
archived.
Testimonial Page
After passing the above steps,
see if your prospective ezine has a testimonial
page. If the ezine has gotten this far, chances
are it will.
Waiting Period
The best indicator of responsive
subscribers is the waiting period to run an ad
in the chosen ezine. If the waiting period is
a month or more, this indicates a very popular
ezine with responsive readers. You've uncovered
a real gem!
Web Forms
I've found that the better ezines
have web forms that get your ad to the publisher’s
inbox and usually send auto confirmation of receipt.
If there is no web form, try emailing the publisher
a question first, like when the next ad run date
is.
No response may indicate a poor
choice in the ezine, or your email was filtered
or blocked as spam. Wait at least 2 days and try
emailing again using a different email account.
If your emails still don't get
through, neither will your ad. (Ironically, your
payment always go through). Trust me, if they
fail to communicate, save your money and time
and move on.
Free Classifieds
If the ezine offers free classifieds,
this is another good place to run your ad. Since
classifieds usually don’t produce responses,
any activity from your ad here would further indicate
an active readership.
Ad Tracking
Never advertise without using
an ad tracker. You can purchase one or better,
use one of the many available online for free.
Ad trackers give you a url that you use in place
of your website address.
The new url gives you important
information like how many visitors you had, where
they came from, and some list the number of sales
per visitor.
This tracking information is crucial
to the direction of your ad campaign because you’ll
learn of the need to change your ad and/or the
sales page. More importantly, you’ll know
for certain whether the ezine produced enough
visitors for the advertising price you paid.
Run Your Ad Twice
If your ad produced a great response,
wait a week or two and run the ad again in the
same ezine. I’ve found you'll probably get
as good if not better results the second time
around.
I would advise against running
the ad a third time in a row because most of your
prospects will be found in the first two runs.
Rotating Ads
Once your ad has been tested and
you have a base of 5-10 solid, performing ezines,
start rotating your ad between your ezines.
For optimal results, make sure
2-3 months have passed before running your ad
in the same publication. Keep building your base
and watch your profits grow!
