How to Use Ezine Advertising

Ezine advertising can be a powerful boost to any business, whether your business is online or offline. Learn how to use ezine advertising to your advantage.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A business, website, product, or service you wish to promote.
• Contact information and prices for an ezine you want to advertise in.
• Ad text to promote yourself, plus links to your website or images of your product.

1. Ezine advertising can be a great way to promote your business, your website, your products or your services. Ezine ads are published in a company's online newsletter. Ezines are usually sent out to readers via email, and some of them contain excellent articles or advice columns. It's important to study ezines which are already being published and take a close look at their format, readability, content, and style. You'll want to find an ezine that suits your business and compliments the overall message you want to get across about your services or products. Also do some research to find out how many subscribers the ezine has. Advertising in ezines with a large readership (10,000 subscribers or more) can be more costly than advertising in smaller ezines. Sometimes the extra cost is worth it, but sometimes it isn't. If you're on a tight budget, consider advertising in a smaller ezine that has a loyal readership. You can still get great sales conversions when advertising in smaller ezines. In fact, sometimes these readers will be even more excited about buying your products than subscribers to larger ezines would be.

2. Determine your budget. What are you willing to spend on your ad? Contact the ezine publisher to find out rates.

3. Another important factor when it comes to ezine advertising is figuring out your ad's placement. Where in the ezine will your ad be placed? Will it be buried at the end of the newsletter, featured right after an exciting article or advice column, or will it appear at the top of the newsletter? Placement of your ad is very important. You want to make sure your ad isn't completely buried within an ezine, hidden next to irrelevant or unappealing material. If the ezine publishes multiple ads in a row, right on top of each other, your ad could get lost in the shuffle.

4. Find out the publication schedule for the ezine. Is the ezine published daily? Is it weekly, or is it monthly? How long of a lead time does the newsletter have? With popular ezines you may only be able to reserve ad space for six months to a year in advance. Smaller ezines are usually more flexible and can often publish your ad sooner. See if you can get to know the ezine publisher and try to get a good deal. This is where offering to help the publisher can be useful. Volunteer to write free content for the newsletter in exchange for your ad, or see if the publisher would like a free back link from your website. All of these things can help you to build a good relationship with the ezine publisher, which will make them more disposed to running your ad in an appealing and interesting way.

5. Prepare your ad text, images, and any hyperlinks (links to your website) which you want to promote. It's always a good idea to get another pair of eyes to review your ad. Show your completed ad to a friend or colleague to see if it needs tweaking. You want it to convey a brief yet enticing message which will encourage readers to click on your link and buy your products or services.

Tips & Warnings

• Try running different ads in different ezines. Ezine advertising is not an exact science, so try to publish ads in different publications and test their performance.
• Maintain a good line of communication with the ezine publishers and editors. The more you can build a good relationship with them, the more you can help each other to build your respective businesses.
• Consider buying multiple ads for a cheaper price. Sometimes if you buy ezine advertising for multiple issues, the cost per month or per issue will go down. See if you can negotiate a good price for multiple ad runs.