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    Losing Money with Free Advertising

    August 31st, 2009

    “If I don’t invest any money in advertising, then I can’t lose money.” Actually you can! Today’s story tells you how, so that next time you won’t lose money again with free advertising. Now let’s get straight to the point and let me give you an example from the real world …

    A few years ago I joined a famous internet marketing forum (Warrior Forum). Since my niche is ezine advertising & ezine publishing, I set up a signature that included links to the places where I sell ad space in ezines.

    A secondary niche I activate in is SEO (search engine optimization) and in that forum there were much more threads on SEO than on ezine advertising. That’s why I started posting frequently on SEO sub-forum, teaching people what to do, starting debates, etc. A time consuming activity.

    What was the return in terms of clicks on the links from my signature? Close to zero. People from the SEO sub-forum were mainly interested in … SEO (not so unexpected, right?) That was UNTARGETED free advertising (The action of promoting your product to an audience whose main interest is not in the same niche as your product is called untargeted advertising.)

    Seeing the poor result, I decided to post only on threads related to ezine advertising and newsletter publishing.

    Guess what? Each time I posted something, at least a few users clicked on my links. Why? They read that thread because they were interested in ezines and my links were exactly what they were looking for.

    Now I spend less time on that forum but my results are much better. Instead of spending the rest of the time on SEO sub-forum and getting in return a big thank you and nothing more, I can focus on other marketing activities that may help ME and MY business.

    Do the same and forget about untargeted advertising, even if it’s free. You may not pay money, but you waste your time, which is actually money… Untargeted advertising is a waste of time and money, whether it’s free or paid, whether it’s forum marketing, article marketing or any other type of marketing.

    To Your Success!
    Adrian Jock

    P.S. For more tips on internet marketing, subscribe to my free newsletter and follow me on Twitter.

    EAI Blog – Terms of Use Excerpt
    Any reproduction, retransmission, or republication of all or part of any document found on EAI Blog is expressly prohibited, unless the Author has expressly granted his prior written consent to so reproduce, retransmit, or republish the material.

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    4 Comments | Free Advertising | Permalink
    Posted by Adrian Jock

    Email Marketing: Spam Filter Triggers & Parrots

    August 24th, 2009

    Many internet marketers know about the spam filters threat. However, it is really surprising to see that besides the less experienced marketers, even many people known as internet marketing experts don’t have a clue on how to deal with spam filter triggers properly. Today’s article tries to wake you up and take you from the amateurs crowd to the next level.

    First of all, what are spam filter triggers? They are common words and expressions that are penalized by spam filters. When the penalty points assigned to a certain email message pass over a certain threshold, that message is usually routed to the intended recipient’s spam folder, rejected or even deleted at server level.

    How to deal with such a problem?

    The first part of the solution is relatively easy to accomplish: identify the problem words and expressions. Most of the third party services used to broadcast your email marketing messages (for example: AWeber) include pieces of software that point the words which trigger the filters. If you don’t use such a service, it’s still not difficult: search on Google for spam filter triggers and you’ll find many helpful articles.

    The real challenge follows: you identified the problem words but what do you do next?

    The worst and the most spread method was “invented” by someone quite many years ago and a lot of internet marketers copied it like parrots without checking whether the idea is right or wrong. What was that “great” idea? If you are subscribed to some newsletters, it’s impossible not to notice it: misspelling the words. Thus, money became m0ney, free became f’ree or f.r.e.e. or fr.ee, money back guarantee became m0ney back g’uarantee, etc.

    Why is this solution the worst one?

    Reason # 1: In marketing, image matters a lot. What do you think your image is in most of your readers’ mind, when they see that your emails are full of typing and grammatical errors? Most of your readers never heard about spam filter triggers. Whether you like it or not, for them “m0ney” is exactly what is it for almost everyone except you: a typing error. In such case, how’s your credibility?

    Reason # 2: Many spam filters were now taught to penalize also weird spellings like “f.r.e.e.”, so you’re not actually solving anything.

    Reason # 3: Gmail (and maybe more web-based email service providers) makes the word “fr.ee” clickable and there is a bigger surprise: that website exists (though it’s still under construction). Result: some of your readers will click on these links and some of your traffic will be diverted.

    Then … what to do? Well, it’s very easy: remove the spam filter triggers and replace them by synonyms (or expressions having a similar meaning) that are not penalized themselves.

    Example: instead of “100% money back guarantee” you can use “every penny back if you’re not 100% thrilled/satisfied”

    To Your Success,
    Adrian Jock

    P.S. If you want to improve the deliverability of your emails, whether they are solo ads or newsletters, I highly recommend you to read the special report How to Avoid the Spam Filters.

    EAI Blog – Terms of Use Excerpt
    Any reproduction, retransmission, or republication of all or part of any document found on EAI Blog is expressly prohibited, unless the Author has expressly granted his prior written consent to so reproduce, retransmit, or republish the material.

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    1 Comment | Spam Filters | Permalink
    Posted by Adrian Jock

    Ezine Advertising – Questions and Answers

    August 17th, 2009

    Ezine advertising works, but only if you know how. A tool is never at fault if you don’t know to use it … Today’s article offers a mini-guide for all ezine advertisers who want to understand some simple but many times overlooked principles of advertising in ezines. For an easier understanding, these principles are presented below using a Q & A format.

    Q: What are the best ezines to advertise with?

    A: In any type of online advertising the best results are achieved when you drive targeted traffic to your landing page. That’s why the best ezines to advertise with are the ezines whose topic matches the topic of the product or service you plan to promote.

    Q: How to find ezines from the same niche like the product I want to promote?

    A: The easier method is to go to Google and search for combinations of keywords that include terms such as ezine, newsletter, gazette or even journal and words specific to your niche.

    Q: There are a lot of scammers out there. How to identify them?

    A: Before placing any order, always subscribe to the ezine and check the quality of the content. The scammers don’t waste their time by providing high quality content (sometimes they don’t actually provide any content at all!). I know that now you may ask, “Is a low quality provider a scammer?” The answer is “Not always. But if the quality of the content is poor, even if the publisher is not a scammer but an amateur, anyway you don’t want to advertise in such ezine.”

    Q: What type of ezine ads to buy?

    A: If you want to test an ad copy, a subject line or a product, then buy classified ads, sponsor ads or very cheap solo ads. If you’re sure that your ad copy is really good, then buy solo ads. For avoidance of any doubt a good ad copy is not one recommended by your upline, affiliate manager or copywriter. A great advert is one that YOU tested in real conditions and got good results. Only the market decides whether an advertisement is good or not.

    To Your Success!

    Adrian Jock

    P.S. Do you have your own questions on ezine advertising and you didn’t find yet the answer? Don’t worry, the solution is right here … subscribe to Ezine Advertising Info free 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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    Any reproduction, retransmission, or republication of all or part of any document found on EAI Blog is expressly prohibited, unless the Author has expressly granted his prior written consent to so reproduce, retransmit, or republish the material.

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    1 Comment | Ezine Advertising Tips | Permalink
    Posted by Adrian Jock

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