Affiliate Marketing - How Ezine Ads Explode your Online Profits
So we're looking at E-zine advertising. Just a quick overview - ezines are basically email newsletters, but most don't redirect to a site, they just leave the full text content in the email. A good ezine publisher will engage more with their subscribers and readers by sending them to webpages where the content is a bit more interesting - find out if they do this as ezines like this nurture a more involved and active subscriber. Ezines can be done around virtually any subject there is out there and it will build up a subscriber base in time and eventually these publishers may begin to offer advertising space to companies and, of course, affiliates.
Now, there's two types of ezine ad placement you'll find authors offer you - a small ad similar to the one's you write with pay-per-click, you know, a few lines of enticing text that has the sole aim of getting a click-through to a website. The other type of placement is a solo ad. A solo ad allows you to take over one whole issue or mailing of the ezine and write your own content in there often without limited space (although it tends to be 500 words for an optimum solo ad). To place an ad costs money in most cases and you'll find the costs vary, but the most expensive ads will be the solo ads, followed by top placement sponsor ads, and then the middle to bottom classified ads.
You'll find that with solo and top place sponsor ads, you have no competition ads around you so it's just your message getting across, but with middle and bottom ads there can be 3 - 5 ads all competing in a very limited space, so you want to think about your budget and choose wisely. Solo ads range from $20 (and I'm gonna use US dollars here as it's a universal currency) $20 to ridiculous amounds like $2000, but most are under the $50 mark.
If you go to www.ezineadauction.com you'll come to a great site which is similar to ebay but obviously aimed at ezine advertising. Once you've signed up for free, you can browse the listings and find ezine publishers in the niche you want to promote in. These publishers will be offering ad space to you for various amounts of money. What I find is the more subscribers an ezine has, and the more competitive it is, the more the publisher charges you to place an ad. Some will be offering placement for the top of the email, middle or the bottom and again, costs vary accordingly. A top ad is obviously going to get the most attention because it's the first thing readers will see when they open the email.
The good thing is, you can guarantee most of the ezine's subscribers will at least see your ad because they signed up to receive that newsletter in the first place. Here's some tips I've learned over the years about placing small ads in ezines...
Avoid middle placement because when people are in the middle of reading an issue, they're not likely to just abandon it midway through if it's at all engaging. A bottom ad is actually much more attractive than marketer's think because to get to your ad it takes a very active reader to read all through the issue right to the bottom, and then naturally they've finished with the email, so your ad right at the bottom is in a way a new action for them to take - an active reader = an active response to your promotion.
If you've targeted the right ezine niche, people will often click on your link because they think it's a continuation of the ezine or "more information", and that's something you can build on in your ad, if you write "for more information on?" A good tip here is to contact the publisher just before you're about to send them your ad and just ask them what the jist of the next issue is. So if it's an ezine about home and garden, and the issue you're going to be advertising in is specifically covering water features then you should capitalize on this and select a good affiliate product closely related to this. Simple. This is an unknown trick because marketers don't even think of asking "what are you writing about in your next issue" - find out and offer something of relevance, don't just guess with something broad, remember targeted niches get the best response.