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Low Cost E-zine Advertising
By: Jim Conley II, MerchantSeek.com

Locating effective, low cost marketing techniques that will
work for your business can be difficult. More often than
not, finding a low cost promotion solution is a lot easier
than finding one that is both low cost AND effective. For
marketers who don't have a whole lot of capital to work
with e-zine advertising can be a very effective form of
promotion for your website.

To start off with, locate a few e-zines to advertise in. E-
zines you'll want to advertise in will be ones with a large
subscriber base and that relate to your business industry.
For example, there's no use advertising your cookware
business in an e-zine that talks about web marketing. To
achieve good results always advertise in e-zines that
compliment your site. Here are a few sites you can use to
locate some places to advertise:

http://www.ezinesearch.com
http://www.liszt.com
http://www.zinesearch.com

Alright, so you've written down a few e-zines you would
like to advertise in. Good. The next step is to subscribe to
these particular publications and read an issue or two to get
a feel of the layout and what they accept and don't accept.
It's also a very good idea to write to the editors of the
publications and ask them for specifications as to cost,
number of lines your ad can be, etc. Always remember to
use the editors first name when writing to them if at all
possible. This will show that you have genuine interest in
doing business with them, personally. Another good idea is
to use their name again somewhere towards the bottom of
your letter.

Once you hear back from the editors as to their
specifications and restrictions it's time to figure out how
you want to present your advertisement to their readers.
Writing an effective ad takes time and practice. Most
people don't get it exactly right the first time, that is, unless
you have a professional do it for you. The best and fastest
way to find out which ad is most effective is to write up
several different renditions and submit each to the different
publications you want to advertise in. Then you can track
your results to see which produced the most traffic and
sales. We'll get to that in just a little bit. It's time to
write those advertisements. There are two main parts to writing
an effective ad.

Part 1: The Headline

This is the first part of your ad readers will see and thus is
the most important. If you fail to grab the readers attention,
they will pass by without a blink of an eye.

One way to catch the eye of a reader is to use the word
FREE somewhere in your heading. Shoot for placing it
towards the beginning of your heading. In general it's best
to keep your headline short, somewhere around 4 to 7
words. An example of a weight loss company headline
might be:

FREE 1 month weight loss sample!

Another might be...

Lose 10 lb. in just ONE week!

Here are some tips to follow when writing your headline:

- Don't write your whole headline in ALL CAPS. This will
cause the reader to have to slow down to read your heading
and is an eyestrain.

- Don't overuse exclamation points (!) or any other ending
punctuation for that matter. This gives the reader an uneasy
feeling that your product/service is a hoax.

- Refrain from using symbols. Symbols like ~@#& and
other ASCII symbols. These confuse people and are an
annoyance rather than helpful.

- Keep your headline interesting. Buy a few magazines
from the newsstand, like the National Enquirer, for
example. These publications headlines can give you some
great ideas when writing your own headlines.

Part 2: The Ad Body

The next part of writing an effective advertisement is the ad
body itself. You won't have enough room to write
everything about your product/service so it's important to
pick out and write in only the points that show why people
should visit your website for more information. Give them
benefits. People want to know what your product/service
will do for them. The tips listed above for writing your
headline should also be considered when writing the body
of your ad. Write up several different renditions of your ad,
each different from the one before it. Keep it interesting
and lead the reader to click the link to your site. Here's an
sample ad for that example weight loss company:

Start your new year's resolution on the right foot! Lose 10
lbs. in just ONE week on our low cost weight loss
membership program. Consult with health professionals,
receive encouragement from other members and MORE!
Watch the pounds melt off, guaranteed! Visit us today at
http://www.gee-id-love-to-lose-weight.com

Here are more tips to follow when writing your ad body:

- Don't make unrealistic promises that you know you can't
deliver. Write only the facts, hype will drive people away
quickly.

- Always follow the publications guidelines for ad
submissions. If the limit is 4 lines, stick to 4 lines at 64
characters wide.

- Perhaps offer a discount to only the subscribers of that
particular e-zine and tell them to include a special code
when ordering.

- Make sure your spelling and grammar are perfect.

- Don't write ads for affiliate programs you are a part of,
people may view you as biased, thus not clicking further.

Tracking Your Results

A few paragraphs back I talked about tracking your results.
This is VERY important. You want to make sure that you
get a good ROI (Return On Investment).

Make a copy of your homepage and put it in its own
directory on your web server with the name of the ezine as
the directory name. An example URL (Universal Resource
Locator) would be:

http://www.gee-id-love-to-lose-weight.com/lose4less/

Remember to keep the copied pages filename as index.html
and upload it to the directory folder in ASCII format. After
that go and place a tracker on your site so you can monitor
the amount of activity the page is experiencing. A good
tracker to use is Extreme Tracker at http://www.extreme-
dm.com/tracking/ It is an excellent free tracker you can
place on your special homepage. They also offer an
invisible tracker for around $5 a month. Be sure to try out
the URL before placing it in your advertisement and
sending it off to editors. Repeat these steps for the other
ads you made for the other e-zines. Also, be sure to sign-up
for a new tracker for each directory you set up.

Once you have everything set up, tested and ready to go
you can go ahead and submit your advertisements (with
special URL's) to the appropriate editors. When your ads go
public watch your tracking results to see how much traffic
you're getting, and see how many sales are resulting from
the traffic flow you are receiving. Any investment you
make that results in making your initial investment back
AND profiting is a good investment indeed. Anything less
and you need to either refine your advertisements wording
or place the ad in another e-zine. More often than not, if
your ad in a highly distributed e-zine fails to uncover a
good ROI chances are you need to tweak the current ad
you're using. Also be sure to compare your results with the
other different ads you placed in other e-zines. They will
most likely give you a clear indication as to which ad was
the most effective. After your research you may find you'll
want to use that ad in the other e-zines that produced less
than a good ROI.

Though e-zine advertising isn't the most effective marketing
you can do, the results from it can be quite good if you
implement good ad writing skills. Watch and see what
other advertisers are doing. Spend time reading other
articles on the topics of e-zine advertising and writing
effectively. Monitor and research your ROI so you can
make good knowledgeable decisions and reinvest part of
your profits into more advertising. Lastly, always
remember the best way to perfect your writing skills is to
keep on trying and learn from your mistakes.

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Jim Conley II is the CEO/Founder of MerchantSeek. MerchantSeek allows merchants from around the world to search FREE for a Merchant Account Provider that best fits their businesses needs and budget. Visit us at http://www.merchantseek.com/