Ezine Advertising

Today’s article contains three tips for advertisers who purchase advertising space from ad co-ops at lower prices but under the condition of subscribing to the ezines that will publish their ads.

There is nothing wrong to buy such ezine advertising but you always have to take care to avoid 3 sure ways of losing your money.

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Mistake # 1
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Buying advertising space from ad co-ops that promise you to publish your ad in ezines that are no longer published or from ad co-ops that show fake figures for the subscribers count.

Usually this is the worst situation and it’s more difficult to avoid because you need more information.

Bookmark this blog, read it from time to time and you’ll get the information you need.

At this very moment there are 2 posts related to this topic: Ezines United and Solo Ads Only.

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Mistake # 2
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Since you are required to subscribe to the ezines, another mistake is not to read your correspondence. When you buy this type of advertising, after submitting your classified ad and paying, your work is not finished. You still have a task to complete. Some of the publishers will ask you to confirm your subscription to their ezines. If you don’t confirm, then your ad is not published.

Warning no.1: It’s not enough to read the correspondence that arrives in your Inbox. Some of the publishers messages may arrive in your Bulk/Spam filter.

Warning no.2: It’s not enough to read the correspondence that is sent to you within one or 2 days after placing the order. Some publishers may send you their confirmation request later. Ezine publishers are human beings as you are. They may have offline jobs and their schedule may allow them to deal with the new subscribers only on weekends. This is just an example, not necesarry the reality. What you have to understand is that a publisher is not a machine waiting for your ad and sending instant confirmation requests to you.

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Mistake # 3
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The third big mistake is to use as subscription email address an address provided by a service provider that censors your correspondence. Don’t stare at the sentence you’ve just read. This is fact. Some providers wrongly believe that they are helping their customers by installing powerful spam filters on their servers. If the publishers’ messages are blocked by the spam filters, you don’t get the confirmation requests and your ad is not published.

What is maybe even worst is when you read carefully all your correspondence, and then start complaining that certain publisher never contacted you. Not being aware of the fact that some of your correspondence is blocked and never arrives to you, you may continue your complaining actions causing trouble to honest publishers. When you cause trouble and you’re not right, then you may expect to be called a “trouble maker” and then blacklisted by the publishers.

If you want to make online business, never ever use an email address from the following domain names:

AOL.com, myway.com, juno.com, netzero.net, charter.net, hostdude.us, cox.net, optusnet.com.au, optushome.com.au, cs.com, techemail.com, wmconnect.com, hughes.net, excite.com, aemail4u.com, iwon.com

A serious email addresses provider that I recommend you is Google which provides Gmail.com email addresses. A spam filter is installed for your safety, however your correspondence is not blocked but certain messages are sent to the Spam folder and you may check them to see whether they are really spam or not.

Today’s post is not about ezine advertising but I thought that a lesson learnt from somebody else’s experience resulted from the usage of a complementary form of advertising is always welcomed. Today I will write about an experience my wife had almost half a year ago while she was … wasting her time trying to get some traffic using free advertising.

There are various ways to get clean and free traffic and one of these ways is to post on forums.

A few months ago, Anne joined Russell Brunson’s forum “Conquer Your Niche“. Russell is a known marketer and his forum was a nice place to “live” and meet interesting people. So he started to read and post every day while getting in the same time free traffic to her website. It was a time well spent while she had also enjoyable discussons with other members of that forum. Quite an investment in the future.

One day, one of the moderators (they are a lot) posted something about ezine advertising being a big fat zero. His reason was that he spent a few dollars and he didn’t get any return on his investment. Seeing this post and seeing also moderator’s signature that looked very spammer-like (i.e. containing lot of words mainly used in spam messages), Anne advised him that his bad result may be determined by the use of not appropriate ads that were blocked by spam filters. In addition, she also posted her opinion that someone cannot blame a whole industry just because of a bad result that may be caused even by the advertiser himself.

The next day, Anne’s post was deleted. Wondering what happened she posted a question asking the moderators why her post was deleted. The new post was deleted again.

Then she posted again asking them why are they having such a not professional behavior.

What do you think that happened? All Anne’s posts were deleted, even the articles, all her work was simply deleted by that “professional” moderator. Just because she had another opinion than that person who probably was thinking that he is a kind of god just because he is a moderator and therefore he can do whatever he wants.

What’s the moral of this story? You can spend time and energy using free advertising and suddenly a stupid person can ruin everything. Your time and your energy are your money, so be careful …

Take care!

P.S. If someone is a member of this forum, be careful when Mr. “Cashflow” is posting his opinions again. Let him believe he’s very smart and don’t reply. He may play the “god” role again. Too bad Russell is very busy and don’t check how some of his employees (or partners) are trying to ruin his reputation …

P.P.S. If you visit “Cashflow”‘s website that can be found in his profile, then you’ll know why the ezine advertising is dead for him. Probably any form of advertising is dead for him

Today’s post is again about a not recommended ad co-op.

I hate when I have to talk not so nice about my competition, but I hate more when I see how some advertisers are wasting their money and why not mention it, I hate when I lose orders because of some unfair competitors.

A few weeks ago I visited Solo Ads Only to see how one of my competitors is doing … [side tip: always check what your competitors are doing!]

While visiting the page Standard Email Ads, I was very surprised to learn that their top publisher & the most requested publisher of the month is in their own words … AdvertMania Gazette. That’s an ezine, not a publisher, but it doesn’t matter. I was very surprised to see that the Group No. 1 comprises only one ezine, AdvertMania Gazette, which has 21,829 subscribers and is sold for $40 per solo ad.

Why was I so surprised? Being in this ezine advertising business since 2001 I know what ezines are participating in different ad co-ops and I also know, roughly of course, how many subscribers these ezines have. Well, according to my memory, AdvertMania has TEN TIMES LESS subscribers …

I said to myself … “maybe the publisher has purchased some leads … Let’s check another ad co-op.” I visited 2Bucks an Ad and there AdvertMania has roughly the same number of subscribers as I knew: 2,034. Check for yourself here.

I said … “something is wrong here …” and I visited the publisher’s website. No indication of the number of subscribers.

I’ve subscribed to the ezine but reading it, again no indication of the number of subscribers. By the way, a lot of Solo Ads Only solo ads were published by AdvertMania … indeed, a lot of advertisers buy the Group No. 1 …

Finally I’ve asked the publisher: “How many subscribers do you have?” … “2400″. “Great, thank you!”

A new ad co-op is about to be launched these days: Scoop of News. Checking the publishers who have just joined it, I noticed there again AdvertMania. How many subscribers? 2,561. Roughly the same number as everywhere except Solo Ads Only.

Oops!

Let’s check the Internet Archive and see how Solo Ads Only was doing months ago…

4th January 2007: the 2nd ezine from Group No. 3 is AdvertMania Gazette and has exactly … [check also the above figures] … 21,829. Nice …

21st August 2006: the first ezine from the Group No. 1 is … AdvertMania Gazette and has … yes, 21,829 subscribers.

It doesn’t have any sense to continue the search, right?

Do you think that an ezine can have EXACTLY the same numer of subscribers today, 10 months ago, one year ago, and so on?

Do you think that the owner of Solo Ads Only believes this?

Then … no more comments …

Take care!

UPDATE, November 12, 2007: I don’t know whether is by chance of not but now AdvertMania Gazette is removed from Solo Ads Only. Unfortunately the Internet Archive is still in place to prove the above misbehavior. If you want to find out more about Solo Ads Only practices, read our newest post Scoop of News.

UPDATE, February 4, 2008: Finally, the owner of Solo Ads Only solved all the problems: she removed all the ezines’ names and their subscribers count!!! Now the buyer doesn’t have any clue on anything. Will the ad be published by one ezine, 2, 3? No one knows anything (maybe the owner knows, but I’m not sure ) … The visitor sees only the total number of subscribers who will read his solo ad (yeah, right!) and the price. Great job! I wonder why she doesn’t remove all the website from the Internet. It would be safer for her customers …