Ezine Advertising

After a break of almost 2 months, Ezine Ad Helper Solo Ad Co-op is now re-opened.

Very small team (4 ezines only) and subscribers base (12,435 subscribers).

You are not required to subscribe to the ezines that will publish your ad, however the price of a solo ad is – as usually – very high: $49.99.

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If you want to receive weekly news on the major ezine advertising co-ops, subscribe to Ad Co-ops News

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[this post was initially published in Ad Co-ops News Ezine]

A new ad co-op has been launched this month: Scoop of News.

I know very well Heather, the owner of this co-op, and she is a very serious ezine publisher.

However, this is the second and the last piece of information presented by Ad Co-ops News about Scoop of News.

Why is that?

Simply because 86% of the subscribers come from one source I refuse to trust: My Increase Newsletter, published by the owner of a “famous” ad co-op: Solo Ads Only.

If you want to know the reason for being so “famous”, you can read the post Solo Ads Only – Don’t Waste Your Advertising Budget.

If you still need more arguments, search for “My Increase Newsletter” in Google. Almost no one heard about an ezine having hundreds of thousands of subscribers! In the very moment I write this post, Google gives you 7 results about this newsletter:

• 2 results show the publisher’s website (normal),

• the next result is the very known third party Zinester (an ezines hosting company) which shows an archive of 3 issues published on December 2005 when “My Increase Newsletter” had … 14 subscribers

• the 4th and 5th result is the company that designed the Solo Ads Only website and logo

• the 6th result is the brand new Scoop of News

• and the last result is the page of an affiliate who copied and pasted a page from Solo Ads Only. By the way, speaking about Solo Ads Only affiliate program, this is a service I highly “recommend”. I’ve tested it a few months ago and I have received the welcome message very quickly … 2 (two) months after filling in the online form. Of course, no “I’m sorry” for this delay. In fact, why to say sorry when you need 2 months for a 5 minutes job, right?

That’s all you can find about an ezine read by so many subscribers. Come on … You can find more information even about a brand new ezine having under one hundred subscribers. Want a proof? Search of “Info2know Newsletter” that is an ezine Lonnie, one of our subscribers, has just started to publish last month. By the way, good work, Lonnie!

That’s all for today.

UPDATE, November 13, 2007: Proving that she is the serious person I knew, not even 24 hours passed and Heather removed My Increase Newsletter from Scoop of News Ad Co-op.

Heather, this is for you. I know from my experience that building an ad co-op is not so easy especially when some of the competitors are not playing correctly. Don’t give up, play correctly, be patient and finally you will succeed. In addition, one of the most important achievements is that you will always dare to look into your customers’ eyes without blushing. Good luck!

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 …