Are You Wasting Your Time With Free Ezine Ads?

By Michael Hopkins
Posted Tuesday, August 17, 2004

There are lots of ezines (newsletters) out there that offer free classified ads to new subscribers (and many even offer free ads on an ongoing basis).

This can be a nice little source of free traffic and exposure for your website/ebook/ezine but, if not handled properly it can have its downside.

The biggest problem is that, by joining a whole plethora of ezines your mail box risks becoming very crowded very quickly, and it's easy to become overwhelmed with it all.

This is especially true if some of those ezines send out messages every single day -- as many do.

To get around this, and to keep your free ezine advertising campaign under control, follow these steps:

STEP 1. Create a separate e-mail address for your ezine subscriptions (e.g. my_ezines@.....).

STEP 2. In your email software (e.g. Outlook Express) create a folder (directory) called 'free_ezine_ads'.

STEP 3. Using your e-mail software set up a rule that sends all mails that arrive to your e-mail address 'my_ezines@....' to the folder called 'free_ezine_ads'.

STEP 4. Prepare the free ad you want to place in the ezines and keep a copy of it handy in a text file.

Different ezines have different rules about the size of ad they will accept. Study each one carefully and be sure to comply with all their submission guidelines.

You may also want to consider the mood and tone of each ezine, and create different versions of your ad for each one.

STEP 5. Submit your ad to each ezine editor. Be sure to double-check that you've complied fully with their submission guidelines.

STEP 6. For those ezines which give you a one-off ad, it's time to re-assess their value to you. If you don't find the content useful or interesting, you should unsubscribe rather than let it clog up your 'free_ezine_ads' folder.

Remember, though, if the ad in that ezine drew a good response from its readers, you can always check out their advertising rates and see if it's worth paying a few dollars to place your ad again (or, if you're sneaky, you could try re-subscribing at a later date and doing it again, making some changes to disguise your wicked deception:-)

STEP 7. For those ezines that allow free ads on a regular basis, make a list of all the submission deadlines and make it part of your regular marketing routine to check that list and see if you're due to place an ad.

Finally, as you continue placing regular ads with those ezines, be sure to continue measuring their effectiveness. In many cases you'll appear in the middle of 20 other ads, so it may not bring in much of a response rate.

Likewise, the response rate from each ezine is likely to drop off over time -- especially if you don't vary your ads.

Decide for yourself whether it's worth your while continuing and be sure to try out different ads to see which ones work best with that readership.

And there you have it, a pretty straightforward approach to keeping on top of things when it comes to free ezine advertising.

About The Author
Michael Hopkins is owner of BizzyDays eBook Publications.
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