Ezine (electronic magazine) advertising is a great method
for exposing your offer to a targeted audience (niche). This
type of advertising can be quite expensive though if you
don't know what to look for.
Two years of experience advertising in dozens of ezines has
revealed a few money saving trends and commonalities. These
tendencies will save the ezine marketer a considerable
amount of money, especially when combined.
You may not realize it, but ezine ad specials and deals are
fairly common if you know where to look and what to look
for.
In this article, I will show you how to find these specials,
what types to look for, and the details you need to know
about each one in order to take advantage of these offers.
Subscribe
This may seem obvious, but I never subscribed to ezines,
simply because it wasn't necessary in order to purchase an
ad. I would go to the website, fill out the ad form, hit the
PayPal button, and submit the ad. What I didn't know was
that, though sometimes ad specials are available on the
website, the best ones are usually offered to subscribers.
With that in mind, always subscribe first. In fact, I
recommend subscribing to about 20 or more ezines in your
niche if you can find that many.
Why the large number?
This is to insure a greater chance that one or more specials
will appear in your email with regularity. It's a good idea
to set up a separate email account just for these
subscriptions.
The following are some of the special offers you'll find as
a subscriber.
Free Classified Ads
A few of the ezines you subscribe to will allow you to
submit a free classified ad as a bonus for subscribing. Some
even allow you to
submit your ad every week for free. If you take advantage of
these freebies, you'll find a few gems that do pretty well
and are worth the effort of submitting. Additionally, many
ezines post their ads online. I receive a steady trickle of
visitors from such ads.
Subscription Specials
From time to time, you'll receive some great advertising
specials. The key here is to keep your eye out for them and
be ready to respond because these deals are usually limited
in number and time of availability
Some common specials you'll see are buy one get one free
solo ads (your ad alone goes out to the entire list of
subscribers), volume ad discounts, and ad packages. The ad
packages usually have a mixture of ads for example, a solo
ad, top sponsor ad, and a classified ad.
Off Season Ad Specials
Summer and mid Winter (December and January) are usually
slower months in terms of advertising. Many ezine owners who
don't normally offer ad space in their publications will
offer special deals to subscribers. These advertising
specials are limited in number and may sell out quickly. A
recent ad I ran in one of these ezines produced the best
response I've had yet.
Submitting Articles
As a subscriber, you'll get to submit articles to some
of the ezines. This is an increasingly popular method of
getting your message prominently in front of ezine
subscribers for free.
The key to this method is to offer quality information and
then put a subtle pitch for your website at the end in the
author's bio. This method works best if you own your own
website versus affiliate or replicated web sites.
Additionally, you can submit your article directly to other
ezine publishers who accept them, to article announcement
lists, and to article directories.
I highly recommend that you do not miss out on this type of
promotion. In fact, hire a ghost writer if you have trouble
writing.
There are hundreds if not thousands of places online that
will accept articles for free. You'll recover your
investment.
If you want to save money and put your ad campaign in high
gear, employ the methods mentioned and keep a sharp eye out.
The
combined savings will be quite substantial. Of course, that
means an increase in your profit margin. |
