Here’s a big tip – the secret to succeeding with smaller ads is to set it up like a campaign over a few issues. If you go for the top ad, run the same promotion for 3-5 issues testing different ad copy (we’ll get to some good ad writing tips in a minute). Now, what this does is it builds a rapport with the readers so you become a familiar and trusted presence in the ezine. As I’ve said countless times in this course, you cannot expect all customers to buy first time round, and by appearing in several issues of an ezine you’re overcoming this problem and giving them more chance to click on your link and find out what the fuss is about. I would also recommend as part of your campaign to get at least one solo ad in there as well to heighten your familiar presence even more – again, use the same link and the same product so this familiarity really hits home. With a solo ad being the first ad in your campaign and following up with top placement sponsor ads, you will be setting yourself up nicely there for some affiliate commission.
When writing your ad, whether it be at the top middle or bottom of the email, you have to grab the reader’s attention right there and just get them to click and take action. So, you first need a catchy headline preferably all in capital letters with maybe a couple of asterix on either side of the title phrase. Some people think this asterix thing makes it look cheap and tacky, but it does work from my experience in just getting those clicks, because the page they go onto probably won’t be tacky if you’re promoting anything of use to the reader. Once they find relevence do you think they will care your petty little ad title was "tacky"?
Don’t be long winded about anything, you should include a couple quick, sharp benefits and then a call to action like “click now” after your affiliate link or URL. Now, make sure you include the full address with http:// so then in plain text emails people will be able just to mouse over your link and click to open the page in a new window. Questions as headlines work well followed by maybe half the solution and then your link, website and product becomes the full solution.
With solo ads where you have 500 words to sell your product or website, you should leave out any hype and terms such as "money" and "income" etc., because spam filters pick up on certain phrases and will divert your solo mail to the junk folder - in my experience many ezine publishers don't have time to edit your ad in this way so you must anticipate deliverability through spam checking programs. This won’t happen though, if your langauge is genuine and conservative (and not in the political sense!).
Use what I taught you about writing articles and perhaps intergrate one of your articles that got a good response into a solo ezine mailing, you know, you could spen $30 for a solo ad placement and you get $25 commission per sale for the product you’re promoting, so if mailing out to 10,000 subscribers you only make 3 sales that’s not the end of the world, and if you repeat mail the same subscribers that number of sales will go up and up as your credibility and familiarity increases.
Just a few words on what results to expect: A well written ad such as a top or bottom placement will generally get a 5-10% response rate, that’s clickthroughs not sales. So if the ezine has 15,000 subscribers which is quite a common number, you can expect around 1000 people to click on your ad to see what it’s all about. Now, on the sales front this all depends on the sales pitch the visitors are subjected to or, more importantly whether you have a CBMall type site or mini-site to build that relationship and offer a service. A good conversion rate is 1-2% so every 100 visitors, 1 buys. This would mean 10 sales from the 1000 visitors if all goes smoothly for your ad, and with a typical $25 commission rate that would be $250 which is not bad at all. Remember this is with a well written ad and a good quality product that targets exactly what those people desire. If you do the research like I mentioned earlier, you’ll meet this criteria.
On the subject of research, it also helps to sign up for the ezine yourself and visit the publisher’s website, if anything to check they seem genuine and professional about all this. When looking for how many subscribers an ezine has you should bear in mind that an ezine with 5,000 subscribers is going to be a more responsive, warmer list than perhaps an ezine with 100,000 subscribers. This is because a subscriber base this huge will often be bought from co-registration services (which I’ll go into more at a later date) rather than using the one-by-one, every subscriber is individually valued method as with smaller lists. With smaller ezines, there’s usually a better relationship between author and reader.
Another important thing is look for weekly run ezines rather than monthly. A monthly ezine would have subscribers that don’t expect much content from the author on a regular basis, so think of this like the author is not interacting with them enough to have built a warm relationship. A weekly ezine would generally be more profitable to advertise in because people who sign up to receive weekly content are more actively involved – it’s a weekly thing for them, a more regular interaction, so these readers will be way more valuable to advertise to.
Apart from ezineadauction.com I mentioned, you should go onto Google and search for ezine authors and ezines. Just type in the niche you want, and make it a slightly broader term such as gardening, home, skiing, golf, cars, etc., followed by the word ezine, then in a separate search try the word newsletter because often those words are interchangeable. There’s also the directory of ezines at directoryofezines.com which lists about a thousand niche ezines but there is a fee to join this directory.
This was just ONE part of ONE stream of income affiliate marketing gives you. Learn OVER 20 streams of easy income in Mike Beatham's free Video & Audio E-Course at:
http://www.FutureAffiliate.com
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