Archive for the ‘Ad Tracking’ Category
Ezine Advertising – 10 Steps to Writing Powerful Ezine Ads to Grow Your List
Donna Gunter asked:
Classified ads have been around as long as I can remember. Whether you’re reading a newspaper or perusing the back of a magazine, you see classified ads. Before the advent of online marketing, placing classified ads in print publications was the method many people used to sell their products or services.
What has worked for years in traditional marketing is also quite effective in online marketing. Advertising in email newsletters with ads is one of the greatest adverting bargains available today. Moreover, it can be a very effective strategy to help you grow your mailing list and drive traffic to your website.
There are thousands of ezine publishers eagerly standing by to take your money for a classified ad in their publication. And, writing an ezine ad isn’t quite as easy as it looks. How do you know the ad will be effective, and how do you create an ad that will result in a desired action?
Here are 10 steps to help you write a profitable classified ad for an ezine:
1. Choose your publication. Finding the right publication that goes out to the right target market is the key first step in this process. Optimally, you want an active list of at least 10,000 double opt-in subscribers who are accustomed to receiving regular ezines from the publisher (publishes weekly). Unfortunately, not everyone opens every email that they receive, so ask the publisher about her “open rate,” which is the number of subscribers who actually open and read the ezine. A respectable and reasonable open rate is 30-40%. A great place to look for ezine publishers who sell ads in their email newsletters is Charlie Page’s Directory of Ezines, http://www.directoryofezines.com.
2. Be one of few, not one of many. Check out the publisher’s sample email newsletter, as well as back issues, before you decided to advertise. How many ads does the publisher run in one issue? For maximum effectiveness, choose one that runs 5 or less ads per issue. This gives you a much better chance of being seen when your ad is competing against a smaller number of ads.
3. Craft an attention-getting headline. Your headline is the part of your ad that must grab your reader’s attention immediately. Otherwise, the reader scans right past your ad to the next one. Use action words that emphasize a solution to a problem that your target market has. Or, ask a question that attracts the reader’s interest. In order for your ad to be read, your headline must effectively answer the reader’s most basic question, “What’s in it for me?”
4. Outline your benefits in the body. Don’t use the body of the ad to promote your products or service. You’ll get the best results when you offer readers something that they can get immediately at no cost, like an ebook, audio, special report, ecourse, etc. Readers never want to learn more for the sake of learning. They want to get to the benefits you promised, or what it will do for them, instead.
5. Create a call to action. Tell the reader what to do next — what action to take. Typically this means directing them via your URL to a web page to take this action. This step is even more effective if you create a sense of urgency — give them a reason to act immediately.
6. Keep it short. Most ezine ads vary between 25 and 50 words, including your URL. This means that you have limited space to create maximum impact.
7. Design your landing page. Make sure your landing page listed in your call to action speaks specifically to the readers of that ezine. Don’t send them to a generic page of your site and expect them to be able to figure out where to go on that page and what to do. Greet them by name, i.e. Welcome subscribers to ABC Marketing Ezine, and reiterate who you are, what you’re offering, and how they can receive your offer.
8. Track your results. Truly effective advertising is only effective if it creates your desired result. Be sure that you have a tracking mechanism in place, like ad tracker software, so that you can see exactly how many people took action on your ad and exactly where they came from. If your ad tracking system is integrated with your shopping cart, you’ll also be able to track how many sales resulted from your ad.
9. Test and change. You may actually come up with 10 or 20 variations as you design your. Don’t discard any of them, as you may find them useful in the future, especially as you test which versions of your ad are effective. Test different headlines or different calls to action over a period of time in the same publication and see which versions get the best results.
10. Run multiple times. A one-shot ad never works. Plan to advertise at least 4 consecutive times in an ezine to see how you do. The more the ad appears, the greater the likelihood that the ezine reader will notice it. Over time, you will begin to see which versions of your ad are more effective with what kinds of target markets.
Ezine advertising is a proven, low-cost strategy to help you market your online business, grow your lists, and increase your profits. Start writing your classified ad today!
Copyright (c) 2008 OnlineBizU.com
Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress
Classified ads have been around as long as I can remember. Whether you’re reading a newspaper or perusing the back of a magazine, you see classified ads. Before the advent of online marketing, placing classified ads in print publications was the method many people used to sell their products or services.
What has worked for years in traditional marketing is also quite effective in online marketing. Advertising in email newsletters with ads is one of the greatest adverting bargains available today. Moreover, it can be a very effective strategy to help you grow your mailing list and drive traffic to your website.
There are thousands of ezine publishers eagerly standing by to take your money for a classified ad in their publication. And, writing an ezine ad isn’t quite as easy as it looks. How do you know the ad will be effective, and how do you create an ad that will result in a desired action?
Here are 10 steps to help you write a profitable classified ad for an ezine:
1. Choose your publication. Finding the right publication that goes out to the right target market is the key first step in this process. Optimally, you want an active list of at least 10,000 double opt-in subscribers who are accustomed to receiving regular ezines from the publisher (publishes weekly). Unfortunately, not everyone opens every email that they receive, so ask the publisher about her “open rate,” which is the number of subscribers who actually open and read the ezine. A respectable and reasonable open rate is 30-40%. A great place to look for ezine publishers who sell ads in their email newsletters is Charlie Page’s Directory of Ezines, http://www.directoryofezines.com.
2. Be one of few, not one of many. Check out the publisher’s sample email newsletter, as well as back issues, before you decided to advertise. How many ads does the publisher run in one issue? For maximum effectiveness, choose one that runs 5 or less ads per issue. This gives you a much better chance of being seen when your ad is competing against a smaller number of ads.
3. Craft an attention-getting headline. Your headline is the part of your ad that must grab your reader’s attention immediately. Otherwise, the reader scans right past your ad to the next one. Use action words that emphasize a solution to a problem that your target market has. Or, ask a question that attracts the reader’s interest. In order for your ad to be read, your headline must effectively answer the reader’s most basic question, “What’s in it for me?”
4. Outline your benefits in the body. Don’t use the body of the ad to promote your products or service. You’ll get the best results when you offer readers something that they can get immediately at no cost, like an ebook, audio, special report, ecourse, etc. Readers never want to learn more for the sake of learning. They want to get to the benefits you promised, or what it will do for them, instead.
5. Create a call to action. Tell the reader what to do next — what action to take. Typically this means directing them via your URL to a web page to take this action. This step is even more effective if you create a sense of urgency — give them a reason to act immediately.
6. Keep it short. Most ezine ads vary between 25 and 50 words, including your URL. This means that you have limited space to create maximum impact.
7. Design your landing page. Make sure your landing page listed in your call to action speaks specifically to the readers of that ezine. Don’t send them to a generic page of your site and expect them to be able to figure out where to go on that page and what to do. Greet them by name, i.e. Welcome subscribers to ABC Marketing Ezine, and reiterate who you are, what you’re offering, and how they can receive your offer.
8. Track your results. Truly effective advertising is only effective if it creates your desired result. Be sure that you have a tracking mechanism in place, like ad tracker software, so that you can see exactly how many people took action on your ad and exactly where they came from. If your ad tracking system is integrated with your shopping cart, you’ll also be able to track how many sales resulted from your ad.
9. Test and change. You may actually come up with 10 or 20 variations as you design your. Don’t discard any of them, as you may find them useful in the future, especially as you test which versions of your ad are effective. Test different headlines or different calls to action over a period of time in the same publication and see which versions get the best results.
10. Run multiple times. A one-shot ad never works. Plan to advertise at least 4 consecutive times in an ezine to see how you do. The more the ad appears, the greater the likelihood that the ezine reader will notice it. Over time, you will begin to see which versions of your ad are more effective with what kinds of target markets.
Ezine advertising is a proven, low-cost strategy to help you market your online business, grow your lists, and increase your profits. Start writing your classified ad today!
Copyright (c) 2008 OnlineBizU.com
Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress
Did You Know That Coupons Help Track Your Advertising Dollars?
Rhonda White asked:
It’s not just the cost of a product that is on the customer’s mind. Customers like to save money. They know that if they save a dollar, that’s another dollar still tucked away in their pocket or bank account. All though there is still a big percentage of shoppers who do not utilize coupons, it certainly brings attention to the customers eyes when they see the possibility of saving a buck or two. Many will even take time to clip out that coupon even if they never end up using it. Coupons help visualize this savings to the customer and it’s another way to brand your product or service.
Not only do coupons help bring attention to your business, but it helps track the productivity of your advertising dollars. Many businesses use “promotional codes” to help track their advertising dollars. If you are paying for advertising with various companies or websites, you should use a different promotional code with each advertiser so that you know which companies or websites are helping you produce the best results. This technique can also be used for web-based businesses by creating separate url’s for each ad or you can use ad tracking software. Many online shopping carts have the capability of creating unique discount codes, so this is another consideration for tracking your ad campaigns with online coupons. If you have a brick and mortar business, customers will bring in their coupons, and you should be able to identify the source through your promotional code or by creating a distinct difference among the coupons that you create. They can be different colors, different sizes or different coupon specials that you offer. Overall, your goal with coupons should be to get your name out there, brand your products or services, and track your ad campaigns easier.
Create a video blog
It’s not just the cost of a product that is on the customer’s mind. Customers like to save money. They know that if they save a dollar, that’s another dollar still tucked away in their pocket or bank account. All though there is still a big percentage of shoppers who do not utilize coupons, it certainly brings attention to the customers eyes when they see the possibility of saving a buck or two. Many will even take time to clip out that coupon even if they never end up using it. Coupons help visualize this savings to the customer and it’s another way to brand your product or service.
Not only do coupons help bring attention to your business, but it helps track the productivity of your advertising dollars. Many businesses use “promotional codes” to help track their advertising dollars. If you are paying for advertising with various companies or websites, you should use a different promotional code with each advertiser so that you know which companies or websites are helping you produce the best results. This technique can also be used for web-based businesses by creating separate url’s for each ad or you can use ad tracking software. Many online shopping carts have the capability of creating unique discount codes, so this is another consideration for tracking your ad campaigns with online coupons. If you have a brick and mortar business, customers will bring in their coupons, and you should be able to identify the source through your promotional code or by creating a distinct difference among the coupons that you create. They can be different colors, different sizes or different coupon specials that you offer. Overall, your goal with coupons should be to get your name out there, brand your products or services, and track your ad campaigns easier.
Create a video blog
Affiliate Radar – Effective PPC Keyword Tracking Tool?
Michael Ullman asked:
Affiliate Marketers spend a lot of time and money on Google Adwords, most of it for “GoogleCash” type direct-link affiliate marketing. The money is spent “buying” keywords, hoping that when someone searches on that keyword, they will see their ad, click on it, and purchase whatever is at the other end. Their cost is a direct result of how many keywords they have to buy in order to cover all the possible search terms someone might use when looking for whatever they happen to be selling. But as most PPC affiliate marketer learn, all keywords are not created equally. They tend to follow the “80-20 Rule”: 20% of the keywords account for 80% of the sales. If these advertisers could avoid paying for the low-performing 80%, and buy only the 20% that convert into sales, all of their ad campaigns would be successful. Recently I heard of a program called Affiliate Radar which claims to improve the ROI of pay-per-click advertising. Affiliate Radar is a new program designed to track each keyword individually, enabling the advertiser to see which one’s are ‘winners’, and which are ‘losers’.
In my blog, Improve Your Internet Marketing, I spend a lot of time going over the basics Internet marketing, as well as the tools that can help to achieve success. I stress the importance of keyword research, particularly for Affiliate Marketing. But even the best keyword research is blinded if you cannot track individual keywords. And while Google offers tracking within Adwords, it often requires code to be placed on the product sales page, which is a problem if you’re marketing someone else’s product through Clickbank, Commission Junction, ModernClick, or any of the other affiliate networks.
Affiliate Radar attempts to solve that problem by generating unique tracking codes for each keyword that are then passed to the affiliate network, and then returned to Affiliate Radar through their sales reports. This enables the application to “know” which keywords are responsible for each sale. The idea is, by seeing which keywords result in a sale and which do not, an Affiliate Marketer can trim their keyword list to avoid paying for keywords that lose money
There are a few other products on the market that can do some of the keyword tracking, such as Google Cash Automator, however Affiliate Radar appears to be the only one that provides transportability between the search engines. This lets a PPC advertiser duplicate a Google campaign on MSN Adcenter and Yahoo, and vice-versa. Most Affiliate Marketers make the costly mistake of limiting their ads to Google because it can be very time-consuming and tedious to manually copy campaigns. By providing an easy way to move campaigns between Google, Yahoo, and MSN’s Adcenter, they are more likely to move their successful campaigns onto each platform. This means that in theory, someone can take their ‘profitable’ campaign from Google, and duplicate it on the other search engines without having to manually set up each one, a task so tedious and time consuming that most Internet marketers willingly leave money on the table rather than go through the effort.
Affiliate Radar has another feature that I found very interesting, the Offer Vault. This is a searchable database of product offers from the major affiliate networks. This allows me to search across different affiliate networks by keyword, showing me all offers that match my search. This addresses another common Affiliate Marketers problem of finding affiliate offers for specific niches they are attempting to target.
Keyword tracking is essential for PPC success, and by itself can improve ROI tremendously. By further combining the keyword tracking capability of Affiliate Radar with a campaign-generating program such as SpeedPPC and an ad spying program such as ZamDoo, an enterprising marketer can piece now together an end-to-end affiliate marketing “system” that has the potential to increase their reach and effectiveness.
Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress
Affiliate Marketers spend a lot of time and money on Google Adwords, most of it for “GoogleCash” type direct-link affiliate marketing. The money is spent “buying” keywords, hoping that when someone searches on that keyword, they will see their ad, click on it, and purchase whatever is at the other end. Their cost is a direct result of how many keywords they have to buy in order to cover all the possible search terms someone might use when looking for whatever they happen to be selling. But as most PPC affiliate marketer learn, all keywords are not created equally. They tend to follow the “80-20 Rule”: 20% of the keywords account for 80% of the sales. If these advertisers could avoid paying for the low-performing 80%, and buy only the 20% that convert into sales, all of their ad campaigns would be successful. Recently I heard of a program called Affiliate Radar which claims to improve the ROI of pay-per-click advertising. Affiliate Radar is a new program designed to track each keyword individually, enabling the advertiser to see which one’s are ‘winners’, and which are ‘losers’.
In my blog, Improve Your Internet Marketing, I spend a lot of time going over the basics Internet marketing, as well as the tools that can help to achieve success. I stress the importance of keyword research, particularly for Affiliate Marketing. But even the best keyword research is blinded if you cannot track individual keywords. And while Google offers tracking within Adwords, it often requires code to be placed on the product sales page, which is a problem if you’re marketing someone else’s product through Clickbank, Commission Junction, ModernClick, or any of the other affiliate networks.
Affiliate Radar attempts to solve that problem by generating unique tracking codes for each keyword that are then passed to the affiliate network, and then returned to Affiliate Radar through their sales reports. This enables the application to “know” which keywords are responsible for each sale. The idea is, by seeing which keywords result in a sale and which do not, an Affiliate Marketer can trim their keyword list to avoid paying for keywords that lose money
There are a few other products on the market that can do some of the keyword tracking, such as Google Cash Automator, however Affiliate Radar appears to be the only one that provides transportability between the search engines. This lets a PPC advertiser duplicate a Google campaign on MSN Adcenter and Yahoo, and vice-versa. Most Affiliate Marketers make the costly mistake of limiting their ads to Google because it can be very time-consuming and tedious to manually copy campaigns. By providing an easy way to move campaigns between Google, Yahoo, and MSN’s Adcenter, they are more likely to move their successful campaigns onto each platform. This means that in theory, someone can take their ‘profitable’ campaign from Google, and duplicate it on the other search engines without having to manually set up each one, a task so tedious and time consuming that most Internet marketers willingly leave money on the table rather than go through the effort.
Affiliate Radar has another feature that I found very interesting, the Offer Vault. This is a searchable database of product offers from the major affiliate networks. This allows me to search across different affiliate networks by keyword, showing me all offers that match my search. This addresses another common Affiliate Marketers problem of finding affiliate offers for specific niches they are attempting to target.
Keyword tracking is essential for PPC success, and by itself can improve ROI tremendously. By further combining the keyword tracking capability of Affiliate Radar with a campaign-generating program such as SpeedPPC and an ad spying program such as ZamDoo, an enterprising marketer can piece now together an end-to-end affiliate marketing “system” that has the potential to increase their reach and effectiveness.
Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress
Ezine Advertising Strategy Exposed-15 Tips to Boost Your Profits
Greg Root asked:
In my opinion, Electronic Magazine (Ezine) advertising is the greatest, untapped source of online advertising available today.
The reason: Ezine Advertising (EA) matches your product or idea to people with similar interests.
Example: who better to sell your health product to than a large group of people subscribed to a health newsletter? Or, you could
pitch a business opportunity to a group already subscribed to another ezine about MLM and Biz Ops!
The idea of EA is fairly simple – but to make yours a success, you have to first determine which ezines or newsletters produce
results, and which ones to avoid.
After a year and a half of EA, I’ve created a formula that produces increasing profit because I’ve learned how to avoid poor
performing ezines and rip offs, while revealing the gems.
Strategy for Profit
I used to get ripped off about once for every 2 or 3 ezines I advertised in. They either took my money without running my ad
(and ignored my subsequent emails), or my proven ads did too poorly for the money I paid.
The reasons ranged from abandoned ezines with working payment links, unethical newsletter owners, to a lot of ignorance and
impatience on my part.
If you follow my proven strategy, you’ll discover the best sources of ezines to advertise in – no matter who your target
group is. And, you should see positive results every time.
This article outlines the steps to making your EA a successful return on investment (ROI).
Writing Your Ad
I won’t go into details about ad writing, but if your ad is poorly written or untested, you should start with the cheapest
ezines first. If you’re really unsure of your writing abilities, I further suggest hiring a professional to write your ad for you.
Because you can run your ad as many times as you want, your investment in a professional will more than pay for itself in the
end.
Target your advertising
If you leap into EA without first researching your target group, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time and money. Plus, you probably
miss some of the best ezines available.
To determine who your prospect is, take the time to list the possible keywords that directly relate to your product and do
keyword searches for ezines, newsletters, and ezine directories.
For example, if you sell herbs, a good keyword search would include: herbs, health, nutrition, supplements, etc.
Avoid Co-ops
While doing your ezine research, you will probably stumble upon the offer to use Co-op (bulk) advertising as the means for your
EA.
To be blunt, you should never pay to use Co-ops for your EA because they are too difficult to track and usually contain
untargeted ezines. Worse still, you’d find that most never run your ad.
Subscribe
Now that you’ve found your ezine target group, you’ll want to know whether the ezines you found are a good option (i.e.
profitable) for your EA.
I’ve found the best strategy for making this determination is to subscribe to the targeted ezines.
To keep the subscriptions readily available for further research, I recommend creating a separate folder to store your subscription
data.
And because you’ll need to subscribe to quite a few ezines, I also suggest creating separate email accounts dedicated to your
ezine subscriptions.
Double Opt-In Subscriptions
In the process of subscribing, you’ll quickly determine possible ezines to avoid. When you subscribe and get a notice that you
must confirm your subscription, the ezine is referred to as “double opt-in”.
Double opt-in ezines indicates a better quality of subscribers with a lower risk of bulk email addresses. For you and me, this
means better ad responses (yeah!).
Solo Ads
Within the first week of your new ezine subscription, you should see solo ads from other advertisers. If not, the ezine may be too
new, or worse, no one is advertising because of poor results. Worse yet, the ezine took the advertiser’s money and failed to
run the ad.
On the other hand, if you see two or more solo ads a day, their list is probably burned out due to over advertising. You’re looking
for no more than one ad a day, or a minimum of one ad a week. Keep watching!
Subject Line
Does the ezine put the advertiser’s subject line in the subject of the email or do they just say something like “Solo ad from xyz
ezine”?
Your subject line is the most important part of your ad and definitely should be in the subject of the email. No subject line
equals no response.
Advertiser Response
Repeat (or regular) advertisers in an ezine is a very good sign that the subscribers are responsive. To further test
responsiveness, I recommend looking through the ezine’s online archives (if available).
Archives are previous email publications that the publisher has posted to their website for visitors to view. The archive search is
not only quick and easy, but archives can also provide an extra trickle of visitors when your ad gets archived.
Testimonial Page
After passing the above steps, see if your prospective ezine has a testimonial page. If the ezine has gotten this far, chances are
it will.
Waiting Period
The best indicator of responsive subscribers is the waiting period to run an ad in the chosen ezine. If the waiting period is a
month or more, this indicates a very popular ezine with responsive readers. You’ve uncovered a real gem!
Web Forms
I’ve found that the better ezines have web forms that get your ad to the publisher’s inbox and usually send auto confirmation of
receipt. If there is no web form, try emailing the publisher a question first, like when the next ad run date is.
No response may indicate a poor choice in the ezine, or your email was filtered or blocked as spam. Wait at least 2 days and
try emailing again using a different email account.
If your emails still don’t get through, neither will your ad. (Ironically, your payment always go through). Trust me, if
they fail to communicate, save your money and time and move on.
Free Classifieds
If the ezine offers free classifieds, this is another good place to run your ad. Since classifieds usually don’t produce
responses, any activity from your ad here would further indicate an active readership.
Ad Tracking
Never advertise without using an ad tracker. You can purchase one or better, use one of the many available online for free. Ad
trackers give you a url that you use in place of your website address.
The new url gives you important information like how many visitors you had, where they came from, and some list the number of sales
per visitor.
This tracking information is crucial to the direction of your ad campaign because you’ll learn of the need to change your ad
and/or the sales page. More importantly, you’ll know for certain whether the ezine produced enough visitors for the advertising
price you paid.
Run Your Ad Twice
If your ad produced a great response, wait a week or two and run the ad again in the same ezine. I’ve found you’ll probably get as
good if not better results the second time around.
I would advise against running the ad a third time in a row because most of your prospects will be found in the first two runs.
Rotating Ads
Once your ad has been tested and you have a base of 5-10 solid, performing ezines, start rotating your ad between your ezines.
For optimal results, make sure 2-3 months have passed before running your ad in the same publication. Keep building your base
and watch your profits grow!
Create a video blog…instantly.
In my opinion, Electronic Magazine (Ezine) advertising is the greatest, untapped source of online advertising available today.
The reason: Ezine Advertising (EA) matches your product or idea to people with similar interests.
Example: who better to sell your health product to than a large group of people subscribed to a health newsletter? Or, you could
pitch a business opportunity to a group already subscribed to another ezine about MLM and Biz Ops!
The idea of EA is fairly simple – but to make yours a success, you have to first determine which ezines or newsletters produce
results, and which ones to avoid.
After a year and a half of EA, I’ve created a formula that produces increasing profit because I’ve learned how to avoid poor
performing ezines and rip offs, while revealing the gems.
Strategy for Profit
I used to get ripped off about once for every 2 or 3 ezines I advertised in. They either took my money without running my ad
(and ignored my subsequent emails), or my proven ads did too poorly for the money I paid.
The reasons ranged from abandoned ezines with working payment links, unethical newsletter owners, to a lot of ignorance and
impatience on my part.
If you follow my proven strategy, you’ll discover the best sources of ezines to advertise in – no matter who your target
group is. And, you should see positive results every time.
This article outlines the steps to making your EA a successful return on investment (ROI).
Writing Your Ad
I won’t go into details about ad writing, but if your ad is poorly written or untested, you should start with the cheapest
ezines first. If you’re really unsure of your writing abilities, I further suggest hiring a professional to write your ad for you.
Because you can run your ad as many times as you want, your investment in a professional will more than pay for itself in the
end.
Target your advertising
If you leap into EA without first researching your target group, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time and money. Plus, you probably
miss some of the best ezines available.
To determine who your prospect is, take the time to list the possible keywords that directly relate to your product and do
keyword searches for ezines, newsletters, and ezine directories.
For example, if you sell herbs, a good keyword search would include: herbs, health, nutrition, supplements, etc.
Avoid Co-ops
While doing your ezine research, you will probably stumble upon the offer to use Co-op (bulk) advertising as the means for your
EA.
To be blunt, you should never pay to use Co-ops for your EA because they are too difficult to track and usually contain
untargeted ezines. Worse still, you’d find that most never run your ad.
Subscribe
Now that you’ve found your ezine target group, you’ll want to know whether the ezines you found are a good option (i.e.
profitable) for your EA.
I’ve found the best strategy for making this determination is to subscribe to the targeted ezines.
To keep the subscriptions readily available for further research, I recommend creating a separate folder to store your subscription
data.
And because you’ll need to subscribe to quite a few ezines, I also suggest creating separate email accounts dedicated to your
ezine subscriptions.
Double Opt-In Subscriptions
In the process of subscribing, you’ll quickly determine possible ezines to avoid. When you subscribe and get a notice that you
must confirm your subscription, the ezine is referred to as “double opt-in”.
Double opt-in ezines indicates a better quality of subscribers with a lower risk of bulk email addresses. For you and me, this
means better ad responses (yeah!).
Solo Ads
Within the first week of your new ezine subscription, you should see solo ads from other advertisers. If not, the ezine may be too
new, or worse, no one is advertising because of poor results. Worse yet, the ezine took the advertiser’s money and failed to
run the ad.
On the other hand, if you see two or more solo ads a day, their list is probably burned out due to over advertising. You’re looking
for no more than one ad a day, or a minimum of one ad a week. Keep watching!
Subject Line
Does the ezine put the advertiser’s subject line in the subject of the email or do they just say something like “Solo ad from xyz
ezine”?
Your subject line is the most important part of your ad and definitely should be in the subject of the email. No subject line
equals no response.
Advertiser Response
Repeat (or regular) advertisers in an ezine is a very good sign that the subscribers are responsive. To further test
responsiveness, I recommend looking through the ezine’s online archives (if available).
Archives are previous email publications that the publisher has posted to their website for visitors to view. The archive search is
not only quick and easy, but archives can also provide an extra trickle of visitors when your ad gets archived.
Testimonial Page
After passing the above steps, see if your prospective ezine has a testimonial page. If the ezine has gotten this far, chances are
it will.
Waiting Period
The best indicator of responsive subscribers is the waiting period to run an ad in the chosen ezine. If the waiting period is a
month or more, this indicates a very popular ezine with responsive readers. You’ve uncovered a real gem!
Web Forms
I’ve found that the better ezines have web forms that get your ad to the publisher’s inbox and usually send auto confirmation of
receipt. If there is no web form, try emailing the publisher a question first, like when the next ad run date is.
No response may indicate a poor choice in the ezine, or your email was filtered or blocked as spam. Wait at least 2 days and
try emailing again using a different email account.
If your emails still don’t get through, neither will your ad. (Ironically, your payment always go through). Trust me, if
they fail to communicate, save your money and time and move on.
Free Classifieds
If the ezine offers free classifieds, this is another good place to run your ad. Since classifieds usually don’t produce
responses, any activity from your ad here would further indicate an active readership.
Ad Tracking
Never advertise without using an ad tracker. You can purchase one or better, use one of the many available online for free. Ad
trackers give you a url that you use in place of your website address.
The new url gives you important information like how many visitors you had, where they came from, and some list the number of sales
per visitor.
This tracking information is crucial to the direction of your ad campaign because you’ll learn of the need to change your ad
and/or the sales page. More importantly, you’ll know for certain whether the ezine produced enough visitors for the advertising
price you paid.
Run Your Ad Twice
If your ad produced a great response, wait a week or two and run the ad again in the same ezine. I’ve found you’ll probably get as
good if not better results the second time around.
I would advise against running the ad a third time in a row because most of your prospects will be found in the first two runs.
Rotating Ads
Once your ad has been tested and you have a base of 5-10 solid, performing ezines, start rotating your ad between your ezines.
For optimal results, make sure 2-3 months have passed before running your ad in the same publication. Keep building your base
and watch your profits grow!
Create a video blog…instantly.
Writing Tips – Tracking Your Articles by Clicks
Janet B Cole asked:
Another way of tracking the propagation of your articles is to use clicks. This method is geared towards tracking the effectiveness of your article or article submission process when you are submitting for the purpose of generating immediate article directory clicks instead of looking for mass submission of back links.
You could use ad-tracking software to do this, or you could create an opt-in page or a separate web page for each of the different article directories that you intend to use. So when you are submitting your articles, you should include the software tracking link in your article. This will allow you to determine exactly how many times your article is clicked and will show you which article directories are the most effective.
Yet another method is to create a new web page for each of the article sources that you will use. So that’s one for article directories, another web page for pay per click and yet another web page for ads placed in ezines. You need to be able to check the results in your website traffic tracking software in order for this to work. If your traffic cannot be sorted this way, you could use an auto-responder. For me using an auto-responders is an efficient way of monitoring my stats. You would need to use the auto-responder opt-in code in order for this to work for you.
What this will reveal to you is which source of traffic is generating the most clicks to your website. If one source far outweighs another then you should focus more of your attention on the better source
Caffeinated Content
Another way of tracking the propagation of your articles is to use clicks. This method is geared towards tracking the effectiveness of your article or article submission process when you are submitting for the purpose of generating immediate article directory clicks instead of looking for mass submission of back links.
You could use ad-tracking software to do this, or you could create an opt-in page or a separate web page for each of the different article directories that you intend to use. So when you are submitting your articles, you should include the software tracking link in your article. This will allow you to determine exactly how many times your article is clicked and will show you which article directories are the most effective.
Yet another method is to create a new web page for each of the article sources that you will use. So that’s one for article directories, another web page for pay per click and yet another web page for ads placed in ezines. You need to be able to check the results in your website traffic tracking software in order for this to work. If your traffic cannot be sorted this way, you could use an auto-responder. For me using an auto-responders is an efficient way of monitoring my stats. You would need to use the auto-responder opt-in code in order for this to work for you.
What this will reveal to you is which source of traffic is generating the most clicks to your website. If one source far outweighs another then you should focus more of your attention on the better source
Caffeinated Content