How To Choose the Right Ezines For Your Ads

By Michael Southon
Posted Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Do you feel bewildered when you begin an Ezine Advertising campaign?

I do.

Take 'The Free Directory of Ezines', for example. There are over 800 Ezines in the Directory that accept paid ads. How do you decide which Ezines to place your ad in?

There are several factors that narrow down the choice for me.

First, I look at the subscriber numbers. If an Ezine has less than 400 subscribers, I move on.

Then I look at the Publication Dates. I prefer to advertise in Ezines that are published weekly, or even more frequently; I don't want to wait a month my ad to appear.

Then I look at the number of ads that appear in each issue. If an Ezine has more than 15 ads per issue, I give it a miss; I want my ad to be seen.

Then I look at the payment method; if the Ezine doesn't accept online payment with the major credit cards, I move on.

Then I look at the Ad Rates - on a 'blind date' like this, the most I'm prepared to pay for an Ezine ad is about $20.

Finally, I look at when the Ezine was last updated. If the Ezine listing is more than 6 months old, the ad rates have probably gone up, or maybe the Ezine itself has folded up.

These are all factors that you can use to narrow down your search for the right Ezine for your Ads. But it's still a 'stab in the dark'.

There's another technique, however, for choosing the right Ezines for your ads. Basically, you want Ezines that will give you a high response-rate to your ad. The following technique will tell you this with pinpoint accuracy. I used this strategy a couple of months ago and it produced excellent results.

First of all, I signed up for a 'Pro' account with ROIBOT, an 'Ad Tracking' service. It costs $17 per month, but you'll get that back easily from a successful ad campaign. You can find out more about ROIBOT at:

(http://www.roibot.com/)

In the 'Manage Your Campaign' area of ROIBOT, I generated 50 traceable URLs for my ads.

Then I went to my own eBook, 'EzyAds', and subscribed to 50 Ezines that give a free ad to new subscribers. I submitted an identical 25-word ad to each of those 50 Ezines. Each of those ads contained a unique URL generated by ROIBOT.

I then sat back and waited. My 50 ads were published during the following month, some the very next day, others 2 or 3 weeks later. Once or twice a week I went to the ROIBOT website and checked how many clicks I had got from those traceable URLs.

The results were very interesting. Of the 50 Ezines that I placed free ads in, 15 produced an outstanding response. At the end of the month I purchased paid ads in 10 of those 15 Ezines. And I continue to get a high response rate from those 10 paid ads.

About The Author
Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3 years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this simple technique to get massive free publicity and dramatically increase traffic and sales. Click here to find out more: (http://www.ezine-writer.com/)