10 Tips for Successful Ezine Advertising

If youre like most people starting out on the Internet,youve been along this well-worn path:

You try free classified ad sites and get bombarded with spam by people trying to sell you stuff.

You try banner exchange programs and get a handful of click-throughs.

You finally get into the top twenty results in the Search Engines, and then a week later your site has dropped back to number 150.

The Internet may the largest market in human history, but how on earth do you reach those millions of people?

Well, the answer is ezine advertising.

Its the surest way on the Web of reaching your target audience.

Ezines (short for electronic magazines) are email newsletters that are sent out regularly to subscribers, like the one youre reading. Theyre sometimes called opt-in lists because everyone who receives an ezine has chosen to do so.

And thats why ezine advertising gets results. People read ezines and theyll read your ad. And if youve matched the ezine to the product youre selling, youve reached your target audience.

Have a look at the ads in your favorite ezine - why are they there? Because they get results.

There are currently around 90,000 ezines being published every month. So whatever youre selling, theres more than likely an ezine that will take your ad straight to the audience you want to reach.

Ezine advertising is not only effective, its cheap as well. A 5-line ad in an ezine that goes to 3000 people will cost you between $5 and $20 per issue.

As a general rule, youll always get back at least the cost of the ad, and usually much more. So theres very little risk.

But there are some tips for successful ezine advertising. Here they are:


1. The first and most important rule in ezine advertising is: "Track your Ads!". You might place your ad in 5 different ezines and get a hundred responses, but if you dont track your ads, you wont know which ezines were pulling responses and which werent.

To advertise effectively in ezines, you must learn from experience - its a process of trial and error. Eventually, youll end up with a handful of ezines that you know are bringing you a high response rate. After that, just keep placing your ads in those ezines and youll have a guaranteed stream of customers.

But how do you track your ads?

The simplest method is to place a key or a code at the end of your email address. If your ad was in this ezine (for example), this is the email address youd place with the ad:

yourname@yourdomain.com?subject=freezine

Then, when you get a reply with freezine in the subject field, youll know which ezine it came from.

For a URL, its the same principle:

http://www.yourdomain.com?freezine

However, if youre going to code your URLs, youll need a sophisticated webstats program to track the coded URLs. Here are a couple of free ones:

http://www.hitbox.com.
http://www.openwebscope.com.

Heres another way to code your URLs : for every ezine ad, create a duplicate of your homepage and name the page after the ezine that your ad will appear in. So,
if the ad is appearing in Ezine A, this is the URL youd place in that ad:

http://www.yourdomain.com/EzineA

Again, youll need to use a good web stats program to track the hits to your coded URLs.


2. The second rule is to target your audience. It may seem obvious but some advertisers overlook this. If youre selling a web-marketing course, dont advertise
in an ezine that deals with stock options; they probably wont be interested.

Use the subject categories in any ezine directory to find ezines that relate to the product youre selling. You can find a list of 60 ezine directories in The Free Directory of Ezines at:

http://www.netmastersolutions.com/more-directories.html


3. Once youve chosen a number of ezines that target your audience, subscribe to them and examine the ads closely. If you see an ad that keeps repeating issue after issue, you can be pretty sure that its getting results. Youve found a good ezine to advertise in.


4. Check to see how many ads are in the ezine. You dont want your ad lost in an ezine farm at the bottom of the newsletter. You probably wont get much response from an ad in an ezine that has 15 or 20 ads per issue. Readers of those ezines have become
hardened to the ads and have learnt to skip them.


5. Check to see if the ezine publisher has a policy of never running ads for two similar products in the same issue - your ad will be much more effective if its the only one of its kind in that particular issue.


6. Small ezines vs. Big ezines: bigger is not always better. The big ezines with 1000s of subscribers tend to have more ads than the small ezines. Also, small ezines with only a few hundred subscribers often have a much more targeted audience than the big ezines.


7. Repeat your ads. Research shows that off the Web, an ad has to be seen about 21 times before someone acts on it; on the Internet its about 9 times. If your budget allows, try and have your ad repeated at least three times in a particular ezine. Most ezines offer discount packages for bulk advertising.


8. Email address vs. URL. Opinions are divided on this; some people prefer to give an email address, others prefer to give a URL. The advantage of giving an email address is that it gives you the opportunity to send a powerful sales letter to the person who responded to your ad. Its also much easier to track your ads with an email address than a URL.


9. Offer something free in your ad copy. Itll often tip the balance between a response and no response.


10. Keep your ads short, even if youre not using the number of words youre allowed. Short ads are more likely to be read. Keep your sentences short too; they pack much more power. Use the word You. Dont describe your product but tell the reader what your product can do for them.

(c) 2000, by Michael Southon

About the author.

Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3 years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this simple technique to get massive free publicity and dramatically increase traffic and sales. To find out more see:
ezine-writer.com

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