Send A Email A Day

Ezine advertising is cost effective…but there are a couple ways you can advertise for free in ezines (AKA newsletters), too. Some, or all, of these options may be available…and be creative, you might come up with more optins…to you with the ezine you choose…or they may not be…but if you don’t ask you can’t get a “Yes” so check it out and see.

Don’t rely entirely on free advertising with ezines…the publisher has to make a living too…but if you can offer a more than fair exchange you could find that you get some good traffic at no cost. Later, as your advertising budget grows, be sure to pay for advertising in any ezine that was gracious enough to give you free ad space. Especially if you got a good benefit from it-either in sales or in building your list.

• Articles: many ezine publishers are looking for content…so you can write unique articles for a particular ezine as opposed to submitting it to an article directory. Check with the publisher for details…but you should be able to have a link to your website or product in the article resource box.
• Joint Ventures: in this case your product is promoted in exchange for a percentage of the profits generated rather than a flat advertising fee. This can be a great way to get your information out if you don’t have an advertising budget…and it costs you no more than a joint venture with another affiliate…
• Space filling: the publisher wants their ezine to look full. What “full” looks like is an individual taste, but generally speaking, they will want the space to look appealing to other advertisers as well as their readers. If they only have one or two ads then it might not look to another advertiser like it is a good ezine to promote their product in…so by have space filling ads for free or a discounted price they can actually make more money in the future.
• Link Trading: if you have your own web pages with existing traffic you might suggest linking from your pages to the ezine in exchange for free advertising in that publication.

Don’t let “free” be the only determining factor when choosing an ezine! You are still going to want to be sure the newsletter is in your niche of course. Free traffic from an ezine for work-at-home-moms won’t benefit your dog training site!

List Building Tips With Ezine Advertising

One of the reasons I strongly recommend ezine advertising as a list building tool is because ezines can provide you with super high quality, targeted traffic. What does that mean, exactly? Well, targeted traffic is traffic that is focused in on a particular niche…the same niche that you are in. With targeted traffic you can have a smaller list, or smaller traffic flow coming in to your website, and get better results than massive traffic that doesn’t have a focus.

When you are writing an ad for ezines the first thing you want to realize is what the purpose of the ad is NOT. With an ezine ad you are actually creating a two step process.  

The ad is not meant to generate a sale directly. Ads that are written with sales as their primary goal usually flop!

So what is the purpose of the ezine ad? It is to generate a click! You want people to come to your squeeze page and get on your list.

With a 2-step process you want to get the subscriber curious enough, or give them incentive enough, to take further action…to click on the link and visit your site!

Then, once they are on your site you determine what your next goal is. Of course I will tell you it is to get them to opt-in so you are growing a list. Other people will say at this point the goal is to make a sale…which if they buy and you can get them on your list is cool…other people will tell you their goal is just to get more eyes to read a sales letter.

Bottom line, the point of the ad is to get them to click a link.

So how do you write an ad that gets the click?

There are three parts to an ezine classified ad: the headline, the body and the offer or Call to Action.

Headline

I think of the headline as the ad for the ad. The purpose of the headline is to get people to read the rest of the ad. So you want to make your ad stand out. Some ways to do that are:

***Asterisks or Arrows around your headline >>>>

Capitalize The First Letter Of Every Word In Your Headline

*********

Asterisks above and/or below the headline

*********

Use Power Words

Make it Exciting, Show Enthusiasm without making it too salesy

Body

This is the section between the headline and the call to action and should include:

• Benefit statements (not features)
• Short sentences
• Power words
• Convey the biggest benefit they will get if they take action
• What’s In It For Them
• Bullets are fine, but not required

The Call to Action

This is the purpose of the ad. You want to tell them what to do and why they should. Tell them exactly what they should do.

• What
• Why
• Why NOW
• What’s In It For Them

Keep in mind the purpose of the ad is the click! If you follow the guidelines here and use this 2-step strategy when writing your ezine ads, you will be able to take advantage of highly targeted traffic and grow your list quickly.