Help with ezine advertising...

[sylviad]

Ezine ads are supposed to work very well, but in the past I have not benefited at all from paid solo ads placed in 3 different ezines.

I'd like to try it again, and know there are places to put free ads. There are ezine directories that charge you to get a peek at their list, but I need to find free directories / ezine advertising opportunities.

A search in Google did bring up some, but they do want payment. Zinester seems to have a good deal... at .10 per 1000 targeted views (.05 for non-targeted). I know they've been around quite a few years.

Is this a good deal?

I'm looking for ezines in the dog care, self help & fitness niches

Have you experienced good ezine directories? I was a member of the Directory of Ezines, but at that time I hadn't a clue what I was doing so cancelled. Now, it costs about triple what it was then to join.

Appreciate your input.

Thanks.

Sylvia

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by sylviad

Ezine ads are supposed to work very well, but in the past I have not benefited at all from paid solo ads placed in 3 different ezines.

I'd like to try it again, and know there are places to put free ads.

Sylvia, I suggest you to change your mind. Maybe this article will help you: Free Solo Ads: Stop Lying to Yourself

[sylviad]

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for the article. It makes a lot of sense. I'm aware that free advertising does have many drawbacks, but I'm not in a position right now to pay for advertising - which is why I'm hoping to find some free opportunities that are worth bothering about. I'm quite familiar with the nonsense approach of safelists, traffic exchanges and the like. That's not what I was looking for.

At the very least, I'm hoping to find places that have minimal prices, although minimal means different things to different people. $80 doesn't sound like much, but... not right now, especially since one mailing for $80 is worthless. We all know that you need to get your ad out there more than once - 5-7 times in fact, so 5 x 80 quickly turns into a lot of money.



Sylvia

[gpsterra]

Sylvia,

You need to be very careful. Ezine advertising doesn't work very well anymore, or at least not for the ones that openly accept adverts. Their lists are exhausted. To them, you'll just be one more offer...

The better way is to contact people with a list (that aren't advertising their advertising rates) and work out a deal. They may not call what they do an ezine, but that is effectively what they are.

[sylviad]

Thanks gpsterra,

I've always veered away from real "adverts" simply because I think in general they are not as effective as other forms of advertising. For instance, businesses that wanted to advertise in our newspaper often opted for the Advertorial, rather than a straight ad. Basically, this meant that the reporter wrote a review, or one of their own ad staff would write an article related to the product or service. The company would buy an ad to go with it the review or just buy half a page or whatever and use it to display their Advertorial. These were much less in-your-face advertising and more likely to be read.

I still believe this is a much more effective approach, although having done very little real advertising myself, this is only based on my experience on the paper and putting out my own little magazine. The general concensus seemed to be that businesses had come to distrust the traditional forms of advertising.

Sylvia

[gpsterra]

There are huge differences between advertising in a magazine/newspaper and advertising on an "ezine".

Unfortunately anyone can have an "ezine"... the barriers to entry are near 0. Because of this, the quality of content and ratio of content to advertising is much lower than newspapers/magazines, and you can feel it in the response rates.

Advertorials in newspapers work great, but are very expensive. They also are where the great copywriters like Halbert and others have absolutely made a killing and shined. I can't tell you how many copywriting seminars I've seen/listened to where they talk about the mechanics of advertorials.

A similar option online is the standard JV offering where you can write an email for the person with the list and provide good, valuable content with a soft sell (or no sell at all).

[MikeGriffith]

Sylvia,
I agree with gp. Ezine advertising isn't as effective as it used to be. You can end up breaking the bank and still not getting the results you want. There are many free methods of getting the word out...especially posting in forums. Forum posting allows you to learn while you promote your business. It's a great place to be! Have a great day.

[sylviad]

Originally Posted by MikeGriffith

Sylvia,
I agree with gp. Ezine advertising isn't as effective as it used to be. You can end up breaking the bank and still not getting the results you want. There are many free methods of getting the word out...especially posting in forums. Forum posting allows you to learn while you promote your business. It's a great place to be! Have a great day.

After starting this thread, I began looking at some other options. As you say, there are many, including niche forums and contacting niche sites directly to work something out with the owners, as someone else suggested.

In a sense, offering articles for ezine publishers to use is about the closest you can get to the Advertorial I spoke about earlier, but you don't talk about your business except in your resource box. What you do is talk about the subject of your business and offer a few tips to entice people to visit your link. So far, I've focused on just submitting articles to the top 5 or so article directories, but approaching other people in my niche will be much more targeted.

I spent the afternoon submitting to site directories, just to get things started but I definitely will be utilizing many more marketing opportunities from now on.

I'm certainly open to ideas and suggestions, if anyone has more.

Thanks,

Sylvia