How to identify top quality ezines for your ezine advertising needs? (Part 2)
If you missed the first part of our “Quality Ezines Checking Map”, you can still read it here: How to identify top quality ezines for your ezine advertising needs? (Part 1).
Let’s continue drafting our checking map. Right now we are analyzing the subscription process.
Question # 3 – Is there any incentive for subscribing to the ezine?
Case “A”: If there is no incentive, people subscribe to the ezine in order to read it. That’s the ideal case. We like this and we definitely go to the next question from our checking map.
Case “B”: If there is an incentive, some people will subscribe to the ezine only for the sake of getting that free report, ebook, video, or whatever the publisher offers as incentive. Some of them may never ever read at least one issue of that ezine because their sole goal was the incentive and they subscribed using a throw away email address. They are actually fake subscribers. That’s why, as an advertiser that pays for ad space based on the number of subscribers (the more subscribers the higher the ad space cost), you may not like very much ezines that offer incentives.
What decision to take now? If you’re looking for the perfect ezine, then stop testing the ezine that offers incentives and test another one. However, since the human beings (including the ezine publishers) are not perfect, you may not find perfect ezines. I strongly suggest you not to look for the perfect ezine. Then shall we pretend that an inconvenient doesn’t exist? No! When there is an inconvenient that is not major, we continue the test and add a “minus” to that ezine’s ranking.
Let’s see how to rank the ezines that offer incentives …
Sub-Question # 3.1 – Are the topic of the ezine and the topic of the incentive related?
If the answer is yes, then some of the people who subscribe only for the sake of getting the incentive may become readers. That’s good. We add a simple “minus” to that ezine’s ranking.
If the answer is no, then there is indeed a problem. We can add a “double minus” or we can stop testing that ezine.
Sub-Question # 3.2 – What to do if you don’t know to answer to the Sub-Question # 3.1?
If you cannot identify the topic of the ezine, then you should not test the ezine anyway. Why? Note the following important fact and its consequence.
Fact: The best results for your ezine advertising campaign are obtained when you buy ad space in ezines that are related to the topic of the product or service you promote.
Consequence: You need to test only ezines related to the topic of whatever you promote. If the topic of a certain ezine is not clear, don’t waste anymore your time with that ezine. It’s very good to make some tests before placing an order, but it’s not good to waste all your time by doing tests. Struggling to find simple things that should be known upfront by any potential subscriber is a waste of time.
If you cannot identify the topic of the incentive, then assume that the incentive matches the topic of the ezine, add a simple minus to the ezine’s ranking and go to the next step.
Stay tuned! “Quality Ezines Checking Map” continues …
[to be continued]
Update, March 9th, 2009: How to identify top quality ezines for your ezine advertising needs? (Part 3)
[...] Update, March 2nd, 2009: How to identify top quality ezines for your ezine advertising needs? (Part 2) [...]
Good advice Adrian, I have in the past had to reject advertisers because they were promoting unrelated products.
Two reasons for the rejections:
1) Like you said, it’s pointless to advertise to the wrong market. That wastes the advertisers money and destroys the ezine’s ad stats.
2) If subscribers interested in a certain niche are subjected to unrelated ads they will begin to unsubscribe or worse.
In my opinion, an ezine publisher that allows unrelated advertising is either very inexperienced or is letting greed control their decisions. Either is bad for subscribers and advertisers.
Thank you for the comments, Brian. The funny thing is that you agree with my advice but I don’t agree with your comments
Why? Well, the space for comments is not that big so … I think that I’ll write an article revealing my reasons for disagreeing with your comments.
Please note that I don’t claim you’re wrong. In this case, I actually don’t know what is the TRUTH. The topic that we disagree is not a simple math operation so that to be able to say for sure “That is wrong and this is right”.