Ezine Advertising

Ezine Advertising Results: Why the Number of Sales is Not Relevant?

February 8th, 2010

Ezine advertising seems to be a simple way of promoting online your products or services. However, the truth is that reality has shown that most of the advertisers actually don’t know what they are doing. Frequently advertisers can be seen spending only a few minutes for complex activities like writing an ad, finding an ezine for placing the order with and then assessing the result. Today’s article deals with an aspect regarding the assessment of the results of an ezine advertising campaign.

The biggest mistake usually made in assessing the results is that many advertisers don’t even think to perform such activity. Their judgment is simple: if they get enough sales (or signups), great. However, if the number of sales is not satisfactory, the conclusion comes within seconds: the ezine is not good, the publisher is a scammer or simply ezine advertising doesn’t work. Usually there is no other alternative in their minds. The failure is always due to other people or other things. Really?

It’s true that some ezines are not good and it’s also true that some publishers are scammers (or only amateurs - it’s a difference though). Discover them before placing an order with them, otherwise your failure will be due to you too.

It’s true that advertising in ezines doesn’t always work (that’s a complex topic and I won’t develop it here).

However, it is very much true that the outcome depends a lot on … the advertiser. Yes, many things depend on the advertiser and this means that the result itself depends very much on advertiser’s actions or inactions. That’s why looking only for the number of sales won’t help advertiser understand what was wrong, who is at fault and what to do next in order to avoid another failure.

First thing you have to know is that the number of sales depends also on the landing page, on the price (affordable or not), on the product itself (good or not, or simply not competitive), and on other factors, all of them having absolutely no connection with the ezine, its publisher or the ezine advertising itself. That’s why when you asses the result of an advertising campaign in a certain ezine (or groups of ezines), never ever look again for the number of sales. It’s not relevant even if selling is your final target.

Then … what to look at? The clicks! That’s the magic answer: the number of unique clicks on the link from your ad. For example if there will be a lot of clicks on your link and no sale, then you know for sure who is not at fault. The ezine, the publisher and your ad copy are OK. Check what’s wrong with the other factors (landing page, price, etc).

To Your Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S. For more ezine advertising tips, subscribe free to Ezine Advertising Info newsletter. Then discover the free resource that will soon become the No. 1 exclusive collection of ezine advertising articles in the world.

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Posted by Adrian Jock

Ezine Solo Ads vs. Safelist Solo Ads

November 9th, 2009

You can have your solo ads published in ezines other people publish or you can send the same ads to safelists members. Every time when there are more options, people are asking, “What’s the best?” Let’s try together to find out the answer to the question “What to focus on when advertising with solo adverts?” Ezines or safelists?

Ready?

First of all, we have to split the safelists in two categories: regular safelists and credit based safelists. In case of the first type of safelists, the members are not required to do anything in order to get the right of sending their free ads. Everyone sends his ads to the others, but the main problem is this: who’s reading them? Since very few people read a lot of email ads just for fun or for killing their time, without looking for something or without being required to do it, a comparison between ezines and regular safelists is pointless. The regular safelists will never ever win such a “match”. Therefore, we will compare credit based safelists and ezines.

Now let’s make it easier by using a Q & A (questions & answers) method …

• Q: Are ezines and safelists legal?

A: When it comes to Internet, a global network, usually it is quite hard to know whether something is legal or not. Why? Because the laws are different. What is legal in your country may be illegal in my country. However, in this particular case we can say without making a mistake that ezines and safelists are legal. Both of them are opt-in and people can opt-out at any time. So … the match is still 0-0.

• Q: What are the potential readers interested in?

A: People subscribe to ezines in order to find out resources and get news on a certain topic. For example, people subscribe to a health ezine because they are interested in receiving health related info. If the product you plan to promote is in the same niche like the ezine, then we can say that the readers of that ezine are a perfect target for you.

The goal of anyone who joins a safelist isn’t to read something (your ads) but to send her or his own ads to the other members. Since such people are very far from being a perfect target for an advertiser, the score becomes 1-0 for the ezines team.

• Q: Supposing that my solo ad is very good, what are the chances for my ad to be read?

A: Ezines readers usually are subscribed to more ezines not to one single ezine. However, the number of ezines someone is subscribed to is not that significant. Taking into account the fact that not all ezines are published in the same day and most of the publishers don’t send solo ads each and every day, the number of emails that land daily in someone’s Inbox is reasonable.

When it comes to safelists, even if someone subscribes only to one single safelist, that person will receive tens or even hundreds of emails daily.

Since no one reads emails all day long, the more emails someone receives, the less emails are actually read. A fierce competition for recipient’s attention means less chances to succeed. The score already became 2-0 for ezines.

• Q: What are the costs for sending the solo advertisements?

A: Usually ezine solo ads are not free and the publishers charge you based on the number of subscribers an ezine has. As for safelists, “free solo ads” is the main argument used by the owners in order to get their members. However, even if the ads are free, your costs won’t be zero. Why? Because you need to earn credits before being able to send your free ads and this takes some of your time. The more you value your time, the higher the costs. This evaluation depends only on you. You have to decide alone what’s the new score of the match from your point of view.

Conclusion: Because of the decision that has to be taken regarding the answer to the last question, the score of the match may be different from person to person. However, the winner of this match is the same: the ezines.

To Your Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S. If you want to improve the results of your solo ads advertising campaigns, I recommend you to read Ultimate Guide to Solo Ads.

P.P.S. For more ezine advertising tips, subscribe free to Ezine Advertising Info Newsletter.

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The Best Newsletter For Your Ezine Advertising Needs

November 2nd, 2009

The success of an ezine advertising campaign depends very much on you. It depends on the product or service you choose to promote, on your ad copy, on your landing page, etc. However, it depends also on third parties and an important one is the ezine that will publish your ezine ad. Since you are the one who chooses the ezine, if you take care then you can partially remove the inconvenient of depending on someone else’s actions. Today’s article shows you how to choose the best newsletter for your ezine advertising needs.

Step 1 - Make a master list of ezines that publish content from the same niche like the product or service you plan to promote.

Step 2 - Based on your advertising budget, remove from that list the ezines that charge prices you cannot afford to pay.

Step 3 - Search on Google for “ezine’s name scam” and then for “ezine’s name review”. Read the reviews you found and remove from your list the ezines that got more than one negative review.

Step 4 - Subscribe to the rest of ezines that you still have on your list and compare them. I know that you will ask me how to do it. Below you’ll find a list of features that make a newsletter perfect from ezine advertiser’s point of view. Of course you may not find a perfect ezine, but based on this list you will be able to select 3-4 ezines that are the most suitable. Now here is the list:

• The ezine has a web page on publisher’s own domain name (not on Blogger, Wordpress, or other free platforms).

• The advertising offer is public, clear and without major lacks (the prices and the number of subscribers are essential elements).

• There is no incentive to subscribe to the ezine (the subscribers base is not full of freebie hunters that subscribe to get an incentive but have no intention to read the ezine).

• There are restrictions regarding your subscription email address (the publisher cares about the deliverability of the emails and doesn’t accept email addresses from email service providers that installed powerful spam filters)

• There is a double opt-in process for subscribing to the ezine.

• You are not bombarded with solo ads (even one single solo ad daily is already too much competition for your own offer).

• The subject lines of the solo ads published in that ezine are actually advertisers’ subject lines (not only “Solo ad” or similar generic subject lines that belong to the publisher, not to the advertiser).

• The content of the ezine is interesting, there are published also publisher’s own articles and the newsletter itself is not full of ads.

• The newsletters are easy to read (contain headlines, bullets, paragraphs, white space & don’t contain lots of ALL CAPS, long lines, dots inserted in words).

• The publisher responds promptly to questions.

Step 5 - After completing Step 4, only a few ezines remained from your initial master list. Now analyze the prices charged by the publishers of those ezines, do the math and find out what is lowest unit price (calculate the price for 1,000 subscribers). The ezine that has the lowest unit price is the ezine to go on with.

To Your Ezine Advertising Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S. For more ezine advertising tips, subscribe free to Ezine Advertising Info newsletter. Then discover and use for your own benefit the free resource that will soon become the No. 1 exclusive collection of ezine advertising articles in the world.

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Ezine Advertising