Which Of These Mistakes Are You Making With Ezine Advertising?

Which Of These Mistakes Are You Making With Ezine Advertising?
by Jason Mann-2003

Ezine advertising has been glorified by experts the world over 
as the last refuge for the little guy/gal to make a buck online.
Well, I hate to deliver bad news, and please don't shoot the 
messenger, but there are some draw backs to ezine advertising 
and many of the Inner Sanctum E-Letter subscribers are making 
them daily. Let's look at the most common mistakes and their 
solutions.

Mistake #1: Not Tracking Your Ads

Many business owners have no idea how they can track every ad 
they place. Whether for an affiliate program or their own 
product, they just don't know. Not knowing what ad is working 
and producing the sale will cost you and your business thousands 
of dollars. When you know what ad produces and what ad doesn't 
you can cut the worst of the ads and only keep the ad/s which 
is producing for your business.

>>Solution:<< If you own your own website and domain name, you 
can track every ad by creating a special redirect link that is 
only used in that ad. Or you can add a question mark to the end 
of the URL and check that on your stats page.

A simple, http://www.yourdomainname.com/pagename.html?trackingcodehere
will suffice in most cases. Check with your web host to see if 
you have access to your web site stats log. Or sign up for one 
of the free/fee tracking services online.

Mistake #2: Writing Me-Too Ads

When writing your ad you must take your ego, your desire to 
boast about you and your company, out of the equation. An 
example of a me-too ad:

"Acme Law Offices have been in business for 20 years. Our staff 
of lawyers all graduated from Harvard Law School with honors. 
Call us at 1-800-acme-law today!"

Solution: Write benefit and results oriented ads.
Example: "Guaranteed Settlements! Win your settlement guaranteed and save
43% on attorney fees by calling ACME Law Offices at: (blah, blah, 
blah)" This ad focuses completely on the end result, the main 
benefit. Guaranteed Settlements. Which ad do you think would 
pull more responses?

Mistake #3: Running Classifieds

Since they don't cost much, business owners tend to use 
classifieds to save costs. Classifieds are cheap, $5-$20 per ad, 
and in most cases run faster than solo or top sponsor ads 
because the ezine publisher runs 10-20 per issue.

What's not so commonly known is the fact classified sections are 
often times scanned by the reader (I scan past them every time)
and get very little eye time.

Solution: Run Solo or Top sponsor ads. These ads get more 
exposure. They are exclusive (solo mailings) or only have 2-3 
(sponsor ads) per issue spaced out between the content.

Mistake #4: Going for Large Subscriber Bases

Large subscriber stats are impressive. 30,000 subscribers is a
ton of eye balls and the potential to return a profit is greatly
increased. Well, this is completely untrue.

A recent test we ran took our breath away. We spent $180 on a 
solo ad to a subscriber base in a general marketing publication 
of 30,000 subscribers. We ran that same solo ad for $65 in an 
ezine about pop-up marketing strategies with a subscriber base 
of 1200.

Ad #1 to 30,000+ brought back $0!

Ad #2 to 1200 specifically targeted subscribers brought back
$900 in pure profit!

Soltuion: While tons of subscribers may seem like the right 
way to go, before you invest money, check out smaller, highly 
targeted ezines and test your ads in those. You'll save money 
and odds are your returns will be greater.

Mistake #5: Running your Ad Once

When I first started advertising in ezines, I would run one ad 
one time. If it didn't produce results, I would switch ezines 
and run the ad again. This was how I tested the ad. Many business 
owners are doing the same thing today. By running the ad only 
once, you're cutting your chances to profit in half.

Running it 2-3-4 times, even if the first run didn't make a
profit, gives your ad more exposure. Readers will "think" it's
producing because you ran it more than one time, therefore other
subscribers must have thought it was worth looking at, helping
your ad produce.

Solution: Run every ad at least twice. Then instead of 
switching ezines, switch ads. Run that ad twice. Do this with 
all your ads. You'll be suprised to find the ezine actually 
produces profits for one ad but not another. So now you can run 
that ad 4-5-6 times and squeeze more profits from the ezine.

Ezine advertising is profitable. It takes testing, tracking, solo
or top sponsor placments and more testing to pin point ezines with
high sales ratio's. Don't give up on the ezine just because a
successful ad from another test didn't work. Place another ad,
test it, test another and so on.

All you need is 5-10 profitable ezines and you'll increase sales
and profits for your business.


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Jason Mann is a profitability consultant who works with small 
and medium-size web businesses to increase their overall profit 
using easy to deploy, cost effective marketing strategies. Visit 
his web site at: http://www.innersanctumeletter.com for more 
helpful information about web marketing.
ŠCopyright 2002-2003 Jason Mann All Rights Reserved.
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