Which of these mistakes are you making with ezine advertising?

 Ezine advertising has been glorified by experts the world over as
the last refuge for the little guy/gal to make a buck online. Well,
I hate to deliver bad news, and please don't shoot the messenger,
but there are some draw backs to ezine advertising and many of the
Inner Sanctum E-Letter subscribers are making them daily.
Let's look at the most common mistakes and their solutions.

Mistake #1: Not Tracking Your ads.

Many business owners have no idea how they can track every ad they
place. Whether for an affiliate program or their own product, they
just don't know. Not knowing what ad is working and producing the
sale will cost you and your business thousands of dollars. When you
know what ad produces and what ad doesn't you can cut the worst of
the ads and only keep the ad/s which is producing for your business.

>>Solution:<< If you own your own website and domain name, you can track
every ad by creating a special redirect link that is only used in that
ad. Or you can add a question mark to the end of the URL and check
that on your stats page.

A simple, http://www.yourdomainname.com/pagename.html?trackingcodehere
will suffice in most cases. Check with your web host to see if have
access to your web site stats log. Or sign up for one of the free/fee
tracking services online.

Mistake #2: Writing me-too ads.

When writing your ad you must take your ego, your desire to boast
about you and your company, out of the equation. An example of a
me-too ad:

"Acme Law Offices have been in business for 20 years. Our staff of
lawyers all graduated from Harvard Law School with honors. Call us
at 1-800-acme-law today!"

>>Solution:<< Write benefit and results oriented ads. Example:
"Guaranteed Settlements! Win your settlement guaranteed and save
43% on attorney fees by calling ACME Law Offices at: (blah,blah, blah)"
This ad focuses completely on the end result, the main benefit.
Guaranteed Settlements. Which ad do you think would pull more
responses?

Mistake #3: Running Classifieds.

Since they don't cost much, business owners tend to use classifieds
to save costs. Classifieds are cheap, $5-$20 per ad, and in most
cases run faster than solo or top sponosor ads because the ezine
publisher runs 10-20 per issue.

What's not so commonly known is the fact classified sections
are often times scanned by the reader (I scan past them every time)
and get very little eye time.

>>Solution:<< Run Solo or Top sponsor ads. These ads get more exposure.
They are exclusive (solo mailings) or only have 2-3 (sponsor ads)
per issue spaced out between the content.
Mistake #4: Going for large subscriber bases.
Large subscriber stats are impressive. 30,000 subscribers is a
ton of eye balls and the potential to return a profit is greatly
increased. Well, this is completely untrue.

A recent test we ran took our breath away. We spent $180 on a solo
ad to a subscriber base in a general marketing publication of
30,000 subscribers. We ran that same solo ad for $65 in an ezine
about pop-up marketing strategies with a subscriber base of 1200.

Ad #1 to 30,000+ brought back $0!

Ad#2 to 1200 specifically targeted subscribers brought back
$900 in pure profit!

>>Soltuion:<< While tons of subscribers may seem like the right way
to go, before you invest money, check out smaller, highly targeted
ezines and test your ads in those. You'll save money and odds are
your returns will be greater.

Mistake #5: Running your ad once.

When I first started advertising ezines I would run one ad one
time, if it didn't produce results I would switch ezines and run
the ad again. This was I tested the ad. Many business owners are
doing the same thing today. By running the ad only once, you're
cutting your chances to profit in half.

By running it 2-3-4 times, even if the first run didn't make a
profit gives your ad more exposure, readers will "think" it's
producing because you ran it more than one time, therefore other
subscribers must have thought it was worth looking at helping
your ad produce.

>>Solution:<< Run every ad at least twice. Then instead of switching
ezines, switch ads. Run that ad twice. Do this with all your ads.
You'll be suprised to find the ezine actually produces profits
for another ad and not another. So now you can run that ad 4-5-6
times and squeeze more profits from the ezine.

Ezine advertising is profitable. It takes testing, tracking, solo
or top sponsor placments and more testing to pin point ezines with
high sales ratio's. Don't give up on the ezine just because a
successful ad from another test didn't work. Place another ad,
test it, test another and so on.

All you need is 5-10 profitable ezines and you'll increase sales
and profits for your business.

About the Author

Jason Mann is a profitability consultant who works with small and
medium web business to increase their overall profit using easy to
deploy, cost effective marketing strategies. Visit his web site at:
http://www.innersanctumeletter.com for more helpful information about
web marketing.

 Jason Mann

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