Buying ezine ads is relatively cheap and it allows you to get visitors to your site almost instantaneously. To be successful, you have to advertise in quality ezines with an audience that is a close match to your own target market.
What are the big advantages of ezine advertising?
* Low cost: Buying ezine ads is much cheaper than for example banner advertising and the yield is much higher.
* Targeted Visitors: Advertise in ezines with an audience that is interested in the theme of your site and you will get a fairly good conversion rate -- more of these visitors will buy from you, click on your affiliate links...
* Negotiable: Most ezine publisher will allow you to negotiate price and ad placement, especially when you are buying ezine ads on a regular basis.
* Life-Span: Old ezines are archived and remain accessible -- you keep on generating traffic from ezine ads you bought weeks or even months ago.
Great sources that will help you to find the right ezines
* The Ezine Directory
* Ezine Search
* New-List
* Use the Search Engines - For example, search for: +newsletter +yourProduct
If you want to get good results with e-zine advertising, you have to do it properly. Don’t just jump in without really knowing what you are doing. Plan your campaign and do the necessary legwork.
Tips for buying ezine ads
* Get your ads in front of a highly targeted audience -- that’s probably the most important point. Do your research and subscribe to ezines that seem to match your target market. Make sure that the content is of interest to your audience.
* Advertise only in high quality ezines: Verify if the ezine is providing valuable content. Check the ad / content ratio. Some ezines are stuffed with 80% of ads and a tiny little bit of content. Don’t waste your money on them.
* Who else is advertising? Are they selling similar products or services as you? If yes, then you probably found a "winning" e-zine.
* Where do they put the ads? The best place is just before the "feature article"
* Do they offer classified- or sponsored ads? Sponsored ads are a bit more expensive, but they are also more effective and well worth a few extra bucks.
* Check the price tag. Your investment has to make sense from a financial point of view. Start with cheaper ads. They probably won’t give you lots of traffic, but they are absolutely ok to get started and for testing.
Ok, you found some great ezines for your advertising campaign? Great, now it's time to write your ads and to start contacting ezine publishers.
Some tips on writing great ezine ads
You only have a few seconds to convince the reader. So your ad has to stand out of the rest -- be original and different.
Pay attention to the following points:
* Write an attractive headline. Hit the reader with your biggest gun - your most compelling benefit. But don't cross the border. If you hype too much, you will loose your believability.
* The reader has to act immediately on your ad -- i.e. clicking on the link to your website. In order to make the reader click, create some kind of urgency -- mention that your offer is valid only for the next 3 days, offer a free eBook for the first 100 subscribers...
* The layout has to be appealing and simple to read.
* For easy reading, the text lines should not be longer than 65 characters.
Measure the response of your ads. Make slight changes (only one change at a time -- e.g. modify the headline) to your ad and repeat your campaign. Did you get more visitors or less? Did your conversion rate go up or down?
Internet marketing is all about testing, changing, tweaking, testing, changing... -- always try different things and measure the response.
Buying ezine ads is a cheap way to generate targeted traffic. Carefully choose the "right" ezines -- this will make all the difference between success and failure.