Sunday, June 04, 2006

How To Use Ezine Advertising.

How To Properly Use Ezine Advertising - Part Three

by: Joe Bingham

ANALYZING EZINES .
After having selected ezines to advertise your program in based on how the content of the ezines relate to what you wish to advertise, there is still another process to choosing the best ezines for your marketing dollars.

Analyzing the ezines is a rather subjective process, however. There are no hard and fast rules to follow that give you a clear indication of whether or not an ezine is worth the cost. However, there is an information gathering process that can help you to make better decisions.

AD FORMATTING.
One important aspect is how ads are handled in the ezine itself. Where are the ads located in the ezine? Are they made visible by being placed directly between or at the start of the articles, or are they pushed all to the end of the ezine or published separately in an ad sheet?

How many ads are run in each issue? Are the headlines of the ads offset to attract attention, are the ads separated in some way from each other, or does the entire ad section look like one big chunk of text?

Naturally, anything the ezine publisher does to give visibility to the ads is a plus for you as an advertiser.

SUBSCRIBERS: Who Are They and Where Did They Come From?
Don't be afraid to contact the editor, publisher, or advertising agent of an ezine and ask them some questions. Find out not only how many subscribers they have, but get their opinion of what type of markets their subscribers are interested in, AND how they get their subscribers.

Some marketing practices, such as automatically subscribing people that post to an FFA or ad site, may pull a lot of subscribers for an ezine, but result in very little readers. Ads for subs programs also have mixed results. Some stick around and read the ezine, but many don't. The best subscribers are those that are completely volunteer opt in readers.

However, many ezines use multiple means of gaining subscribers and while some use not so great methods, they may also clean their lists of non-responsive subscribers regularly. That's why it is best to ask and make a judgment based on the answer you receive. This may take some practice and trial and error, but at least if you have the information you are giving yourself something to learn from.

So, ask where, how, and what type of subscribers the ezine has. Ask how effectively they retain subscribers as well. That is a good indication of many subscribers are reading the ezine and viewing it as worthwhile.

FREE vs. PAID ADVERTISING.
There are many ezines that do offer free ads to their subscribers. Some of these are worthwhile others are not. It really comes down to reader involvement. If people are still reading the ezine and not just subscribed to put their ad in every week, it may be worth your time. If the ezine has passed all of you're other criteria up to this point, it has to be worth a shot. At least this costs you nothing but your time.

Paid advertising at this point where you have studied, selected, and analyzed many ezines and come up with a short list is definitely going to be worth the cost.
Let's just review what you have gone through in selecting the ezines to advertise in.

1. Targeted Content that matches the product, service, or opportunity you are advertising.

2. Acceptable Potential Market based on the content of the ezine and what the ezine's editor says about his or her subscriber's interests.

3. Acceptable Ad Formatting and Placement in the Ezine.

4. Acceptable Subscriber Base as described by the way the ezine gets it's subscribers and keeps them.

Now comes the kicker, ad cost. What's a good price, and what isn't?

Well, it just depends. That's not what you wanted to hear, I know. You'd rather I provided a simple rule to go by that made all of your decisions for you.

Sorry, but I don't believe that is possible. It is a big subject, however, so we'd best save it for the final installment in this series.

Joe Bingham, Editor of the NetPlay Newsletters Subscribe to 1 of 3 Quality NetPlay Ezines, See which one fits you at: http://www.netplaynewsletters.com Need To Publish Your Own Ezine? I'll Write It For You and Show You How to Make It Successful! http://www.netplaynewsletters.com/publisher.html

How To Turn an Ezine Advertising Strategy Into Thousands of Hits

How To Turn an Ezine Advertising Strategy Into Thousands of Hits.

by: Marc Goldman

OK, so we have all heard the clamors from people who have made money from placing ads in ezines. The process is simple enough. You have a product or service (or an affiliate program of which you are a member) and you also have a small classified ad promoting the benefits of said product or service. You pay to advertise in ezines that have a circulation comprised of the audience you wish to target.

This sounds easy enough but these days ezine advertising has become so competitive that a smart marketer needs to rethink his/her ezine advertising strategy. This is necessary in order to stand apart from the competition, reach an audience of targeted customers and continue to reap the overwhelming benefits resulting from this highly effective medium.

One of the biggest problems with traditional ezine advertising is the fact that your ad gets sandwiched in between 5-15 other ads of similar content. This naturally dramatically decreases the effectiveness of your ad.

Not to mention the fact that with so many affiliate programs in existence, competition between affiliates has escalated to new heights leading to many affiliates of the same program saturating a once responsive market through their ezine advertising campaigns.

This has lead to decreased revenues for the affiliates and public apathy for the product/service. The situation has gotten so competitive that not only once but on several occasions I have witnessed ezines publish the exact same ad for an affiliate program (with different affiliate I.D.'s) all in the very same issue. How can this possibly benefit those advertisers?
However, this is not the fault of the ezine publisher either. The main purpose of an ezine (for many but not all publishers) is to sell advertising. When someone approaches a publisher with advertising dollars, you cannot fault him/her for taking the money and running the ad. That publisher is simply making an honest buck.

But there are some ingenious methods you can employ to get your ad in front of a responsive target market by utilizing ezine advertising. For starters, if you run an affiliate program provide your affiliates with several different, tested classified ads which they can use to place in different ezines.

Remember, your affiliates are your salespeople - you want them to make as much money as possible so that you too make as much money as possible. Therefore, it is in your best interest to help them as much as you can.

If you are an affiliate, try your hand at writing some killer classified ads of your own so as to stand out from the competition. If you are not a great writer, I highly recommend picking up Robert Boduch's Great Headlines Instantly and putting the ideas within to use immediately.

Next, I strongly recommend that you shell out a little more money for a sponsor ad or a solo mailing in a newsletter that offers these services. A sponsor ad is the ad at the very top or very bottom of an ezine. Since they are closer to the top or bottom they stand apart from the other ads and so they illicit a much greater, more favorable response from subscribers.

A solo mailing is a 3-7 paragraph ad which an ezine sends to its list separate from its regular newsletter mailing. The size of these ads vary from one newsletter to another but they have proven, by far, to be the most effective, most profitable ezine ad in which an advertiser could ever invest his/her money.

These two advertising methods are the most powerful tools in an ezine advertisers arsenal. There is only one problem, how do you find out which ezines offer these advertising opportunities? Well, first you will need to find a comprehensive list of ezines and then spend some time combing through the thousands of zines to find those that meet your demographic requirements.

When that is done you are ready to further narrow the list by sifting through to find the ones that accept ads (free and paid). Finally, you need to find those that specifically offer solo and sponsorship ad opportunities and do some price shopping. Naturally, you need quite a bit of free time to complete this process. But do not despair, you do have an intelligent alternative if time is an issue for you.

The Ultimate Media Magnet has compiled all of the newsletters that offer sponsor ads and solo mailings into one efficient directory. All the ezines are sorted by category so as to make it even easier for you to immediately pull out those targeted to your market.
The Ultimate Media Magnet is by far the best solution for any marketer selling any product or service. You will instantly find targeted ezines that offer the most effective methods of reaching a hungry, paying audience.

The Ultimate Media Magnet is only one tool available to members of The Ultimate Marketers Resource (http://success.goldbar.net).

Ezine advertising has been and will continue to be one of the most cost effective and profit generating tools at the internet marketers disposal. But, like everything else on the internet, for advertising methods to remain effective they must evolve.

Think of it this way, many marketing gurus and internet millionaires of today made their fortune from unsolicited email (SPAM). However, currently this method is considered unethical and these very same marketers now utilize opt-in email, ezine marketing and autoresponders instead.

To succeed using ezine advertising, you must change with the times and use the methods that work today!

Marc Goldman - Since 1999, The Ultimate Marketers Resource has been the only system enabling you to manage EVERY aspect of your business from Autoresponder services, Mailing List services and management, Lead Generation, and Ad Tracking, to Viral Marketing and much, much more remotely from anywhere in the world, anytime, from any computer for a low monthly fee. Click here to learn more before your competitors do: http://success.goldbar.net