Ezine Advertising

Yeah, you read it well. An ezine publisher can destroy your ad campaign if you don’t take care who you are placing your order with.

Don’t assume the publishers and the ezine ad co-ops are all professional. There are a lot of amateurs in absolutely any field.

I didn’t initially plan to write this article because I thought that this mistake is not made by publishers anymore, even if they are new in ezine publishing. I was wrong! I’ve just received an email from a publisher that has the following subject line: Solo Ad.

You got the point? Instead of advertiser’s subject line, the subject line of that email contains the type of ad the advertiser purchased (a solo ad).

Advertiser’s subject line was no longer a subject line but a line from the body of that email.

Remember from my previous articles how important is the subject line? If instead of your subject line it is published only “Solo Ad“, “Dynamic solo“, “Publisher’s Exclusive solo“, etc. … who do you think will open your solo ad?

What to do to avoid such unpleasant situation when an amateur seller is forcing you to throw away your money?

There are 2 solutions.

Solution # 1 – Before placing your order, subscribe to the ezine and see how other advertisers’ solo ads look like.

Solution # 2 – Before placing your order, contact the seller and ask her/him how exactly your solo ad will look like. Ask her/him to send you a template or provide her/him your solo ad and ask her/him to send you back an email that it is exactly like the solo ad that will be sent to the subscribers.

Of course you can combine both solutions by subscribing to the ezines and also contacting the publisher.

To Your Ezine Advertising Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S. For more interesting ezine advertising tips, you can subscribe free to Ezine Advertising Info newsletter.

P.P.S. Recommended reading: Ultimate Guide to Solo Ads

Today another customer asked me how many clicks he should expect from his solo ad after I publish it in my ezines. I can’t guarantee clicks and that’s written also in the FAQ section of my site. The question isn’t why that customer didn’t read the FAQ – that is not very uncommon, the question is … why people ask such question?

Do you know the answer? Here it is …

There are tons of scammers out there and they can guarantee you anything you want (yeah, sure!) The problem is that some people are not able to see the stamp located on the seller’s nose. It reads, “I’m a scammer, run away!”. For no matter what reasons, some people won’t buy the guaranteed thing; but … hey, at least they “learned” something, for example: the publishers can guarantee hits for anyone who buys some ad space from them (!) and then when the right time will come, that customer comes to me and asks, “Hey, how many clicks do I have to expect?” This is what they learned, isn’t it? Choose
carefully your teacher!

There are also some marketers who are not really scammers but use all sort of tricks in order to be able to offer you what you want, even if that is useless for you and is not what you were expecting. Such sellers can guarantee you hits without being scammers. Their ezine is actually a “get paid to read emails” program and the readers get credits every time when they click on links. The customer will get what it was promised: the guaranteed clicks. The sole problem is that most of these clicks are useless. Most of the “readers” won’t actually read anything, they were looking only for getting their credits. That’s not what the customer expected, right?

And there is a third case, a special one: all expert marketers who guarantee hits posting their offers on professional places like Warrior Forum and other similar places. They are not scammers, they don’t use tricks, but in the same time, believe me, human beings cannot offer what they offer… So … what are they? Maybe aliens. Or maybe gods. I don’t know exactly. For all of them I have myself a question …

I would like to offer to their readers a free ebook titled “Arimaa for Experts”. How will they be able to fulfil their promise and deliver the hundreds or even thousands of hits, without scamming me and without using tricks?

What I can guarantee myself is that 99% of their readers don’t even know what arimaa is. As a consequence I can also 100% guarantee that those 99% of their readers won’t be interested in my “Arimaa for Experts” (they are not even arimaa beginners, so how they can be interested in a book for experts?). Now do the math!

Got my point? Those guru, experts, gods, aliens or whatever they are won’t be able to fulfil their promise. So … why do the advertisers expect a poor human being like me to be able to guarantee hits? … I’m not a scammer, I don’t use tricks and I’m not a god. Sorry to disappoint them!

To Your Ezine Advertising Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S. For more interesting ezine advertising tips, you can subscribe free to Ezine Advertising Info newsletter.

P.P.S. Recommended reading for every marketer who wants to master the solo ads topic: Ultimate Guide to Solo Ads

This morning I was discussing with another ezine publisher about a solo ad submitted by one of our customers. The P.S. of that solo ad was “The squeeze page may look a bit dull, don’t worry, X [= un unknown marketer] does that very often. Hehe!” and the squeeze page was indeed quite awful.

My fellow publisher thought that adding that P.S. to the solo ad is a big mistake but I completely disagreed. I definitely think that using an awful web page cannot get you too much, but let’s discuss the situation as it is. Let me tell you the reasons for my disagreement and then let’s see what we can learn from this situation …

Fact: Some people will never ever buy anything or signup for a mailing list if the web page is awful. For those people, whether the PS is there or not … it doesn’t matter, they won’t signup anyway because of the awful web page. That’s why in the cases analyzed below we won’t talk about these people. Regardless the PS, they are a lost case for our advertiser.

Case #1 – The ad with the PS – When someone reads that PS, she or he knows what to expect when clicking on the link from that ad. The reader is warned: there will be an awful page. If the reader clicks on the link, there will be NO SURPRISE: the page is exactly as promised – awful. The reader won’t feel like being cheated. She or he may or may not read that text from that web page and she or he may or may not signup.

Case #2 – The ad without the PS – The reader who clicks on the link and lands on that web page will have an UNPLEASANT SURPRISE: an awful page. That would be the worst case for the advertiser. An unpleasant surprise for the visitor almost guarantees a disaster.

What does the above short analysis tell us? The poor design reduces dramatically advertiser’s chances to succeed. But if the advertiser tells the truth upfront like in that PS, then the advertiser has some chances to get a bad result instead of a very bad result. That’s an improvement, even if you don’t see a big difference between a bad result and a very bad result

What is the conclusion? Telling the truth in advertising is not only a legal requirement but sometimes it also helps you improve your results!

To Your Ezine Advertising Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S. For more interesting ezine advertising tips, you can subscribe free to Ezine Advertising Info newsletter.

P.P.S. Recommended reading: Ultimate Guide to Solo Ads