Everyone knows that advertising is essential to growing a business. One problem that small business owners have always faced is the high cost of marketing. Most, however don’t realize that there is an effective way to reduce the cost of your advertising while – at the same time – increasing its reach.

Advertising co-ops are nothing new. Usually they are a “perk” offered by major manufacturers to encourage retailers to promote their products. Because the retailer has direct access to customers that would want to buy certain products, it only makes sense that they should do joint advertising. You’ve seen it – McDonalds mentioning Coke in their commercials, Dell stating that you get a free Epson printer with purchase and so on.

The retailer doesn’t make the product the manufacturer is providing, but it IS a great match with what they DO offer. Nobody would want to eat a Big Mac without something to drink, and a computer wouldn’t do a lot of good without a printer.

Now you can use this same strategy to create your own advertising co-op to increase the reach of your ads and drastically reduce the cost, too.

— How It Works

Generally speaking, the cost of any advertisements (bulk emailings, ezine ads, banners, newspaper, etc.) would be split equally between all participants. If you and two associates decide to purchase a solo ad, you would each receive equal mentions in the ad and you would each pay equal portions of the cost.

So if the solo ad were going to a list of 200,000 and cost $150, each of the three would pay $50. You get to reach 200,000 people for 1/3 the cost you would have normally paid. And, because this ad relates you to other types of businesses, you actually expand your advertising reach.

— Getting Started

So who would be qualified to enter into an ad co-op with you? It depends on the nature of your business. Think of others that reach your same target customer and make a list. If you design Web sites, you might approach hosting companies, graphic artists, copywriters or programmers. If your business is landscaping, you could invite yard maintenance companies to join you.

Once you have a list of one or more business types, think of current associates you know who belong to those groups. Also, ask others if they know of any reliable businesses that fall into the categories you’ve outlined.

— Making the Approach

When you have a list of businesses to approach, simply write or email them with your offer. Be sure to point out the benefits such as:

* a win-win situation
* reduced cost of advertising
* expanded reach of advertising
* larger, more prominent ads for a fraction of the cost

Also, be sure to ask about the advertising outlets these businesses currently use. You will likely find new avenues that lead to greater exposure.

— Finalizing the Deal

You’ll need to work out payment arrangements with your partners prior to placing the ad(s). The best way I have found to handle the finances is for each party to pay me for their portion of the cost with a credit card. I then place the ad order with MY credit card. This way, you are assured of receiving the dollar amount due to you; and your partners have the assurance that – should you default on your end of the deal – they have recourse for getting their money back.

Working in cooperation with other businesses can lead to tremendous successes with advertising. When like-minded companies pool their resources to reach one target audience, the impact is doubled while the cost is reduced by at least half. That’s the best advertising bargain around today!
About the author:

Diane C. Hughes * ProBizTips.com

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HIT COUNTS AND ADVERTISING

For important tips about the topic of one way links – read the web site. The times have come when concise information is really only one click of your mouse, use this possibility.

Advertising plays an important role in your business (every business, actually!). But, there is one BIG mistake advertisers frequently do and this mistake could cost you a bundle!

What is it?

The fact that you don’t analyze what type of advertising is working for you and which are not doing so well!

Analyzing the results of your advertising campaigns will help you determine where your money should go. If you skip this task, then you’d probably spending too much money on a lousy campaign! Of course you don’t want that to happen do you?

I know that this task is very time consuming and boring, that’s why most advertisers always neglect this one. The fact is, it becomes time consuming and boring if you don’t create a system for that. This system should inform you the performance of all of your advertising campaigns.

This is what makes online advertising so great. Many online advertising services give you ad campaign reports on a regular basis. They inform you which ads are working and which ones are not. Although not every type of online advertisings have this feature, one of them who does is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.

But what if you advertise in ezines (lots of ezines) and ad classifieds? What if you put several banners and text links here and there? How to monitor their performances?

Well, in case you didn’t know, there are some services in the internet which really could track your ads and make your job a lot easier. To learn more about this service, you can go to HyperTracker

Once you know exactly the performance of all of your ad campaigns, here are some steps that can save a lot of your advertising budget:

o Determine Your Target Market

Who would be interested in your products? What problems do your products solve? Believe me, reaching untargeted market would only hurt your advetising budget. Don’t go for quantity, but go for quality! Many people love blasting ads to a huge community and ended up with no sales at all? Why? Because they are simply reaching the WRONG people.

o Set Up a Realistic Budget

How much money could you put aside for advertising? Remember, don’t waste all of your advertising budget on a single campaign! You have to test what type of advertising that will work best for you.

o A Great Sales Copy

Make people want to click through your URL. Your target here is to make them click, not to sell! Let your site do the selling for you.

o Test Several Ads

Test several ads at the same time. Tweak your sales copy. You’ll be amazed at how a little difference you add to an ad could result in a HUGE difference in the response. This part is a lot easier if you use the good old HyperTracker

o Analyze and Re-invest

Analyze your ads performance. Stick to the ones that give you best results. Now that you know what works and what doesn’t, you could re-invest your advertising budget ONLY on the best type of advertising.

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How To Effectively Use Offline Advertising

Find out helpful info about website traffic – please make sure to go through the page. The times have come when proper info is truly only one click of your mouse, use this possibility.

If you are going to be placing ads on your website, you’ll want to put some thought into how you’ll integrate them. Poor integration of ads into your website will cause visitors to click away fast. Successful integration of ads into your site can be highly profitable. Before I show you where to position ads, I want to mention a few important points about ads.

1. Ratio of ads to content

How many ads should you place on your website? There is an optimum ratio of ads to content. If your website has too high a proportion of advertising relative to content, the traffic on your website will suffer and you will lose money. If your website has too low a portion of advertising relative to content, the sales on your website will suffer and you will lose money.

What is the optimum ratio of ads to content? I can’t point to any studies, but I feel the optimum ratio is somewhere around 20 to 25 percent ads relative to content. Go much above that ratio and, despite more ads, the revenue from your site goes down. But, there are ways to exceed that ratio and still make more money.

Ads as a service

Advertisements can provide useful information, as well as content. In that case, the ads become content. Here’s an example. Rather than post ads that pay you the highest commission, post ads that provide the best value to the visitors to your website. These are ads where the value is so good you might respond to the ad yourself. This type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

Another example is ads for gifts around the holidays. People expect and are not turned off by an increase in ads around the holidays. Finding gifts for everyone on your list is difficult work, and people appreciate gift ideas. Again, this type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

You can safely exceed the normal ratio of ads to content if you hide the ads in the content. An example of this is product “reviews”. For example, computer magazines are almost 100 percent advertising posing as product reviews.

2. Repetition of ads and ad management

I have seen websites that display the exact same banner on every page. If I didn’t respond to the banner on the first page, what makes them think I will repond to it on the second, third … hundredth page?

Displaying the same banner on every page of your website is annoying to your website’s visitors, and a money losing propostion for you. Keep your ads fresh. Ads are boring enough without repeating the same ad over and over. Display a variety of ads, and use an ad management system. An example of an ad management system is a banner rotator.

3. Ad type relative to response rate

I have heard claims that text ads receive the highest reponse. I’m sure these results are not related to whether the ad is text or graphics, but more likely related to the fact that text ads are usually placed in the more responsive areas of a webpage. All thing being equal, a graphic ad will always get better response than a text ad.

A graphic ad will get higher response than a text ad, and an animated graphic ad will get higher response than a static graphic ad. But animation can be taken to an extreme. Some types of animation are annoying and not only does the ad get a low response, but it also causes visitors to click away from your website.

Examples of annoying animated ads are banners that flash or jiggle or do something else that distracts the visitor so they can’t read the webpage content. Those visitors that don’t click away will scroll the webpage so this type of ad goes off screen while they try to read the webpage.

A secret few advertising designers know is that the graphic that will get the most attention is a picture of a human face. People are genetically predisposed to look at a human face in their view area. Try it yourself while you’re browsing the web. If a webpage has a human face on it, that’s the first thing you will look at.

Where to position ads on your webpage

To discuss where to place ads on a webpage, we need to divide a page into five sections as listed below.

Header
Footer
Left Margin
Right Margin
Center column

Note: There is a sixth area of the webpage which is the popup window. There are many forms of popup windows; pop-over, pop-under, delayed, and exit. The polite way to use popup windows is the self-closing popup window. Because of popup window blockers, popup windows are much less effective today, and, from my own experience, when I tried using popup windows, the page views on my website dropped by 50 percent.

The most common position to place advertising banners is in the header section of a webpage. Web users have programmed themselves to ignore banners in this position. The response rate of banners in the header section of webpages has dropped to something like .0001 percent. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has tried to overcome this problem by defining giant (what I call “battleship size”) banners. I don’t know of any studies that show this works.

Using banners in the head section of your webpage is a waste of processor time, but most webpages still use them. Making a sale this way is a long shot. Banners in the footer section of a webpage are even less responsive.

Actually Web users have programmed themselves to ignore all advertising on the web. However, from my own experience, you can get some response from ads in the left and right margins of a webpage. Most websites are designed with the menu in the left margin and possibly ads in the right margin. This means if the user has a low resolution display, depending upon the width of the webpage, the advertising may be off the screen.

Place your menu in the right margin and use the left margin for advertising. This places the user with a low resolution display in the positon of having to scroll to view the menu. Too bad. They should get a bigger display. Website revenue comes first.

The most responsive position to put your ads is in the center column of the webpage along with the content. As visitors are reading the article on the webpage, they come upon the ad. It’s unavoidable.

If you imagine the center column of your webpage divided into three parts; top, middle, and bottom, the most responsive position for your ad will be right in the middle. As the visitors are reading the article on the webpage, they are forced to look at the ad as they continue to the lower part of the article. This might be a little annoying to the reader, but let’s hope your content is worth that slight annoyance.

I would recommend placing your ad at the bottom of the center column. As visitors read the article on the webpage, they end up looking at your ad. This is almost as effective as placing the ad in the middle of the column, and a lot less annoying to the reader.

As you can see, how you integrate advertising into your webpages has a major impact on your ability to produce revenue from your website. Poor ad integration will cause visitors to click away. Proper integration can make your website highly profitable. But, ad positon is not the only determining factor, don’t forget the ratio of ads to content, ad management, and ad type relative to response rate.

Copyright(C) 2004 Bucaro TecHelp.

Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.

Stephen Bucaro

To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on the Web visit bucarotechelp.com. To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter visit http://bucarotechelp.com/search/000800.asp

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Sell Advertising On Your Web Site

Read realistic recommendations about the topic of web traffic – please make sure to study the web site. The time has come when proper info is really at your fingertips, use this possibility.

Advertising is the life blood of any business, no matter how big or how small. No advertising usually means no business. Large companies have an almost unlimited source of advertising dollars. Small business owners on the other hand, are limited in the amount of money they have for advertising. So, the problem is how to make ones advertising dollar get the most bang for the buck. It’s not enough to advertise. Your advertising must be effective. So, once you have a website or an ad to advertise, check out the following ways to advertise for little or no cost.

1. Advertising coop- Many businesses, especially work at home businesses, offer advertising coops. They will send people to your business for a fee. Usually the fee is relatively small. This is nice because you already know that these people have at least some interest in your business. Although they may not spend a penny with you, you at least get the exposure.

2. Website-The age of the internet has expanded the possibility of owning your own business to an almost unlimited number of people. It also has expanded the advertising audience to a tremendous amount of new people, world wide, who otherwise you would never have been able to reach. Although websites will cost you to get hosted, you can advertise it many ways for free. Things like link exchanges and article submissions allow you to get exposure to your website with no cost except for you time. And as we will see in a moment, your website can be advertised many other ways for free. The advantage of a website is that it centralizes all your business and products into one central location. It gives you somewhere to send people so that you don’t have to do as much selling because you let your website do the selling for you.

3. Answering Machine-Change the message on your answering machine to reflect the fact that you are now in business for yourself. You could say something like,” Hello. You have reached the home office of John Doe of My Business.com?..” That way when you call that person back, they may ask you about your business and thus the door is open to discussing your business.

4. Put a sign in your front yard or in the yard of a friend or relative with your name and website address on it. This is a good way for your neighbors to find out about your new business as well as any people that ride by your house.

5. Place a magnetic sign or bumper sticker on your car. Now, when you are riding down the road, sitting at a stop sign, or leaving your car parked at the mall or grocery store, you are getting free advertising.

6. Wear your ad-Place your website on a sweatshirt, tee-shirt, or a hat. So, when you are out in public, people will see you ad and again it will open up the door to discussing your new business.

7. Flyers-There are many places that will allow you to place a flyer about your business. Businesses like grocery stores, libraries, laundromats, hair salons and others will let you place a free ad on their public bulletin board.

8. Business cards-Don’t leave home without them. You never now when the chance to hand one out will happen. You may see an old friend, meet someone looking to get out of the 9-5 rut or who is in need of a new opportunity.

9. Free Classifieds-Use the internet and the many free classified ads on it to advertise your business. A search using “free classifieds” will give you an almost limitless number of places to submit your website and ad.

10.Ezines or electronic magazines are also a good place to advertise your business. Some charge a fee for placing your ad in the best location, some let you advertise for free. Again a web search will allow you find numerous ezines to place you ad in.

11.Place your web address in your e-mail signature.

12.Place a flyer or business card in your out going mail.

13.Word of Mouth-The least expensive form of advertising and maybe the most effective way to advertise your business is word of mouth. Simply tell those you come in contact with that you are in business for yourself. They will tell others and they will tell others and it can go on and on. Sooner or later someone will take a look at what you are doing.

Obviously, there are many more ways to advertise your business for little or no money. The point is you don’t have to have the big bucks to successfully advertise you business or product. There are many people who have started and become extremely successful in their business on a shoe string advertising budget. There is hope for the small business owner. All you need is a website or add, a little creativity, a little time, and you too can advertise your way to success without going to the poor house.

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What is Advertising and What Does it Mean

Obtain useful information about the topic of web traffic – please make sure to study this page. The time has come when concise information is truly within your reach, use this chance.

“Pay-per-click,” by far the most popular form of online advertising, recently came under fire as charges of rampant “click fraud” gather steam on the Web.

Google and Yahoo! earn the majority of their money through sales of advertising to tens-of-thousands of online merchants, companies, and professional.

In fact, some estimate that 99% of all Google’s revenue comes from advertising sales. Unfortunately, allegations of click fraud may well rain on Google’s otherwise sunny parade and cause a whole scale revamping of current online advertising practices.

Pay-per-click advertising does exactly what it sounds: advertisers pay for each click on their ad, usually mixed in among search engine results or displayed on relevant websites.

“Click fraud” occurs when, for whatever reason, an ad gets clicked by someone or something (usually an automated “bot” that simulates clicks) with no intention of ever buying anything from the advertiser.

The sole intention of click fraud is to simply drain an advertiser’s budget and leave them with nothing to show but an empty wallet.

Who commits click fraud?

Usually an unscrupulous competitor who wants to break a rival’s bank, online “vandals” who get their kicks causing other people grief, or search engine advertising affiliates who want to earn fat commissions by racking up piles of bogus clicks.

Regardless of who does it or why, click fraud appears to be a growing problem search engines hope stays under their advertising clients’ radar.

This problem isn’t exactly news to the search engine giants.

In fact, on page 60 of their 3rd quarter Report for 2004, Google admits that they have “regularly refunded revenue” to advertisers that was “attributed to click-through fraud.”

Google further states that if they don’t find a way to deal with this problem “these types of fraudulent activities could hurt our brand.”

Bottom line for Google and Yahoo! (which owns Overture, the Web’s largest pay-per-click search engine): as word of click fraud spreads across the Web, they must act quickly to calm the nerves of advertisers who could well abandon them over doubts about the veracity of their advertising charges.

The search engines all claim to carry measures that identify and detect click fraud, but details about how they do it and to what extent remain sketchy.

They claim revealing details about security would compromise their efforts and give the perpetrators a leg up on circumventing their defenses.

This sounds good, but affords little comfort to advertisers who feel caught between losing out on their best traffic sources and paying for advertising that won’t result in revenue.

One way to protect your business against click fraud is to closely monitor your website statistics.

Look for an unusually high number or regular pattern of clicks from the same IP address.

If you need help, enlist the aid of your hosting provider to aid you in spotting suspicious trends in your website traffic.

Also, a number of services such as ClickSentinel.com have sprung up online to help advertisers spot and quickly analyze and compile the data necessary to effectively dispute fraudulent click charges with the search engines.

About the Author

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…

Simple “Traffic Machine” brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months… without spending a dime on advertising!

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Three Proven Steps to Improve Your Home

Gain pragmatic info in the sphere of website traffic – go through the publication. The times have come when proper information is truly only one click of your mouse, use this opportunity.

Free Web Advertising – searchEstate ? The search engine advertising solution for free web traffic.

searchEstate is the ultimate Internet Advertising Solution, optimised for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

To those who are not aware of searchEstate;

It?s a Major Search Engine that PAYS YOU to advertise and gets free web traffic to your website through its free web advertising …

Quote:
?searchEstate is an Internet Advertising Solution based on an Internet search engine. We are member-based and share our advertising spaces and revenues with our members.?

About searchEstate…
searchEstate is an inversion of the ?pay-per-click? model employed by the major search engines. It?s like having your own SEO Company working for you 24/7. searchEstate is becoming known as ?the peoples search engine? because it allows the individual to profit from Internet advertising, instead of the major corporations.

searchEstate gives fast search results and you can even share revenue from the free web advertising. Internet advertising fees that the searchEstate search engine generates, is shared amongst its members..

The Difference…
Until now, free web advertising was only available to those who knew the search engine optimisation techniques required for top placement. searchEstate is a search engine that changes the way you advertise. Now it is possible, without specific technical knowledge, to attain top search engine rankings and get free web traffic to your site.

The Alternatives…
searchEstate has two modules, free and pro versions.

The free version allows you to build a Free Web Advertising network that rotates around the search engine on millions of pages, thus giving your business great exposure. The more people that are in your free advertising network, the greater that exposure becomes. SearchEstate search boxes are now starting to appear on many websites.

The Pro version of searchEstate offers a great deal more. A thousand automatically mailed ads each month. Twenty advertisements with 100 keywords and strategic exchanges with the top Internet search engines. Commissions on paid members through an affiliate program. Logo ads, Banner Ads, Text Ads and Search Engine Ads are all catered for and tracked by the searchEstate program.

Quote…
?The key to success is to sponsor others into searchEstate. You can do it by yourself or we can do it for you via our amazing Advertising Co-op. For a limited time, we help you build your downline easily through our 1000 fresh leads each month.?

Summary…
It seems that now there is an alternative and complete Internet Advertising Solution to paying the major search engines! As we are told, the best route to success is to actually own your own business. Your own Internet Advertising Solution is a great way to promote your main business.

Quote…
?What if we were to tell you that we can strategically go in and place ads in your billboards that other people will pay for? What if, say, the average pay-per-click fee was $0.10? Something really low cost, just to be on the safe side. Well, for 100,000 ad billboards, just having 1 ad get 1 click per day will net you $1,000 per day, minus our 5-10% service fee!?

Well, that?s certainly something I could live with! After a very concise conversation with the CEO, it seems a very viable proposition. A true ?Swiss Army Knife? sort of business solution.

Why pay for your advertising when you get nothing in return? searchEstate seems the perfect solution. Why use anything else? The major search engines are fat enough already. Of course, there will be sceptics. That is why I took the trouble to talk about searchEstate with its founder and joint CEO.

When someone actually shows you how it works, it?s a lot different to just telling you.

There is no limit to a search engine database. It is not reliant upon sustained memberships. It is only reliant upon advertising. Isn?t it nice to know that now the Internet user can grab his/her share of some of the revenues generated?

From the inside, this certainly looks very lucrative. The Beta-Testing has shown amazing and consistent results on the Major Search Engines. searchEstate is certainly capable of achieving it’s promise of free web advertising.
About the author:

Michael A Fowler, M.B.A.
Helping people online since 1998.
Creator and Author of ‘The MBA Way’ system. Expert Author and Web Writer.
Online Trainer and Coach.
E-Mail – Goldcard43@aol.com
Website – http://www.the-mba-way.com/freewebadvertising.htm

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Effective Advertising

Grab vital recommendations about free traffic – go through the web site. The time has come when proper information is really only one click of your mouse, use this possibility.

I decided to try something a little different and illustrate the marketing challenges of a small business. I’m using one of my clients, PrescottWeddings.com.

PWC is an online resource guide for couples planning their weddings. Along with a ton of information for brides and grooms, the site includes a resource guide where local businesses can advertise their products and services.

We launched PWC in November 2001. Like many start-up businesses, PWC didn’t have much money for marketing. Yet we had two major challenges (three counting the limited budget):

1. PWC had to attract two kinds of target markets to the site — advertisers and couples — essentially at the same time. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we had to appeal to each group even though one was dependent on the other — advertisers wanted brides and grooms logging onto the site, and brides and grooms wanted a complete resource center.

2. Several bridal print publications had come and gone in Prescott — and had burned their advertisers while racing out of town. Businesses were understandably hesitant about sinking their money into another bridal venture.

Armed with those challenges, we went to work. Now, just over two years later, PWC enjoys well over 40,000 hits a month and has increased its advertising base by over 600%. On top of that, PWC is well on its way to establishing a reliable brand in not just Prescott but throughout Yavapai County.

So how did we do it? A great Web site with great content plus three main marketing strategies:
1) Using print to drive traffic online
2) Thinking small
3) Frequency, frequency, frequency

I’ll cover number two and three in the next two articles. Today we’ll talk about number one: Using print to drive traffic online.

The cornerstone of PWC’s marketing program has been print advertising, more specifically monthly advertising in the local newspaper. Print advertising is an excellent choice for many businesses — from small to large. In fact, it’s not uncommon for small and medium-sized businesses to build their advertising program around print.

The strength of print advertising is its flexibility. Print publications come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can appeal to a broad readership or a narrow one. They can be published every day or once a year. This variety gives you a lot of flexibility in fitting print advertising into your campaigns.

You can also track print to a certain extent (coupons in newspapers for example). Print is physical, allowing your customers to carry something around with them.

However, print’s weakness is also its strength. It’s a visual medium only, so it requires more effort and interaction from your audience to make an impact (they need to stop and read it).

In the case of PWC, we chose monthly advertising in the local paper as the foundation of our marketing program. We decided upon the local newspaper because it has the broadest reach. Prescott isn’t big enough to have its own evening television news, so the newspaper is the best vehicle for local news.

If you live in a big city, the local newspaper may not be practical because of cost. In that case, you may want to try a niche newspaper or magazine, like a business or lifestyle journal, or maybe a regionalized newspaper. In Phoenix for instance, the Arizona Republic is the main newspaper, but all the cities around Phoenix, like Scottsdale and Tempe, also have their own papers.

Because PWC is a Web site, there’s an assumption we should be using only online methods to advertise. Online methods are good, and PWC does use them, but they only take you so far. Print is a part of the “real world” — something you can touch and pick up, not virtual like a Web site. Print has also been around a lot longer, and carries more trust with it. We found by using print, some of that trust and “real world” essence rubbed off, making PWC seem less anonymous and more like a “bricks and mortar” business (a business with a store front).

Also, since we were trying to drive local traffic to the site, it made sense to advertise locally rather than attracting people from all over the world. But even with our local advertising, we still have a substantial number of visitors from around the state, including Phoenix and Tucson, as well as all over the globe.

The point of our marketing program was to advertise regularly so we could both build the PWC brand and drive traffic to the Web site. Yet it was essential to keep our costs down. So we leveraged our monthly newspaper advertising to stretch our marketing dollar as far as we could. More on that and how we “thought small” in the next article.

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Three Proven Steps to Improve Your Home

Gain pragmatic things to know about the topic of web traffic – go through this publication. The time has come when concise info is truly at your fingertips, use this chance.

As the newsletter market becomes increasingly more competitive, it’s important to follow several key steps in your pursuit of potential advertisers. Simple steps such as providing basic information and practicing timely follow-up can contribute to the success of your overall advertising revenue.

Follow these tips to quickly boost your advertising revenues.

1. Contact Information – Always place contact information toward bottom of your emails and articles. Include Company Name, Contact Name, Tel, URL, Email, Fax, and Address. Buyers prefer to purchase ad space from companies and individuals that are easy to contact and have a physical location. List an email address for purchasing advertising (Ex. advertise@TheAdStop.com).

2. Target market – List your target market and demographics. If you have not yet performed a survey of your subscribers, then list your perceived target market. To gain actual demographics, email your subscribers a simple survey. This allows you to not only learn about your subscribers, but will also aid in efforts to increase subscriber base. A survey will also help you to develop editorial content geared towards your readers main concerns or interests.

3. Subscriber Numbers – Numbers are important when considering an ad purchase. Don’t hesitate to list the number of subscribers to your newsletter as well as the average monthly percentage of growth rate.

4. Follow Up – This may be one of the most valuable steps in increasing advertising revenue. After a sale, be sure to communicate with your advertiser. It’s a lot easier to re-sell ad space than find a new ad buyer. If the advertising run is a one-issue purchase, email the advertiser the day before the newsletter goes out to remind the advertiser when it’s scheduled to run. Then telephone or email the advertiser after the ad run to learn of the effectiveness. If the advertiser is happy, resell them on the spot for a longer term. If the advertiser was unhappy with the results, ask “why” and then encourage them to buy another advertisement at a discounted rate. If the advertiser decides to purchase another run, be sure they make changes their ad copy. The effectiveness of the ad often depends on the ad copy itself.

If Advertisement is run for multiple months or issues, email the advertiser weekly asking their feedback. Telephone your advertiser once per month. Also, you should always email the advertiser to inform them of an approaching renewal time and attempt to renew their run. If there is no answer, call two or three days later and try to sell over phone.

5. URL Tracking – Have advertisers create a tracking URL to verify advertising was included and allowing analysis of the gains achieved from ad placement.

6. Credit Cards – Allow advertisers to purchase ad space with credit cards. It is inexpensive and presents a very professional organization. Better yet, it is easier to re-sell as the advertiser only needs to say YES. The easier you make it to buy the more sales you’ll make.

7. Partnerships – Increase the size of your advertising offerings by partnering advertising sales with similar newsletters and Ezines. Partnering allows you and partners to collectively sell advertising space. The larger subscriber base will attract larger advertising buyers. Provide a 15% commission to the selling party, which could be you or your partner(s). This works well for newsletters with under 10,000 subscribers.

8. Ad Networks – List your ad offerings with one or more Ad Networks. Gain a professional sales force with extensive resources to sell your space. Realize, you will earn less per subscriber, but you will most likely sell-out your advertising space. This also allows you to concentrate on marketing and content which is usually the main interest. Also, many Ad Networks do not require exclusives, so you can continue to sell your own space with an assurance that advertising sales will occur for every issue.

Follow these eight easy steps and you’ll quickly see an increase in advertising revenue. Good Luck!

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How To Effectively Use Offline Advertising

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If you’re like most ezine advertisers you wish to generate FAST Sales by sending your message in front of thousands ezine subscribers.

Some spend hundreds in ezine advertising hoping to generate a BIG profit… but it ends up costing them more than they earn.

Yes, ezine advertising works, but if you really want to WIN the ezine advertising GAME you must take in consideration the strategies below:

1. What do you plan to advertise?

e.g. an affiliate product, your own product, a course by e-mail, an ebook, etc.

You must know exactly what you want to promote in other ezines before advertising in them; ask yourself these questions:

Is the product related to your target audience?
Is the product valuable?
Does the seller offer a money-back guarantee?
Does the Web Site make you want to purchase the product yourself?
Does the Web Sales Letter convert into Sales?

2. Who is your target audience?

The product you plan to promote in other ezines must be related to a certain niche (target audience) so don’t make the mistake to think that everyone needs or wants what you promote.

e.g. if your product is related to dog lovers, don’t advertise in ezines related to cat lovers because you won’t make any sales.

3. Where to find the ‘BEST’ ezine to advertise in?

The ‘BEST’ ezine to promote a product in is the one targeted to your audience.

The more specific your target audience and the ezine TOPIC, the more sales you could receive.

Also, the ‘BEST’ ezine to advertise in is the one where the publisher has already built TRUST with his/her subscribers and they purchase regularly from their recommendations.

4. What’s your BUDGET?

If you only afford $300 to spend on ezine advertising, you don’t want to spend it all on one ezine. Try to invest your money wisely, step-by-step.

Have you seen a publisher claiming their ezine has 90,000+ subscribers and they sell advertising for $25 – $50 or so?

If these offers sound too good to be true, maybe it is!

5. How many subscribers does the ezine have?

Numbers don’t count, the quality of the ezine CONTENT itself is what makes the difference; if a publisher sends too many ads to their subscribers, I suppose you imagine there are not too happy seeing all those ads.

The more CONTENT and less advertising an ezine has, the better RESULTS you could receive from your advertising.

6. Who wrote your Ad Copy?

You know exactly the ‘BEST’ ezine to advertise in, how much you want to spend on advertising, but your ad copy is weak … try to improve it yourself or ask a copywriter to rewrite it.

How to make your Ad Copy bring in GREAT results?

- write an eye-catching headline or no one will read your WHOLE ad copy;

- use powerful / action words in your headline & ad copy like ‘INSTANT’, ‘FREE’, ‘GET’, ‘CASH’, ‘UNLIMITED’, ‘TURN’, ‘BOOST’, ‘CREATE’, etc.

- write your ad copy to promote a FREE offer like a FREE course by e-mail, a FREE ebook or a FREE sample of a product.

7. Don’t want to track your Ad?

Why not? How will you know that the ezine you advertised in is profitable or not?

Most advertisers don’t track their ads. Just look in other ezines and you’ll see their regular Web Site link, no tracking URL available.

A tracking URL will show you how many clicks your ad receives and how many sales it makes from those clicks.

http://www.probiztrack.com

8. Don’t want to use autoresponders in your Ad Copy?

Autoresponders are one of the SMARTEST internet marketing tools simply because they allow you to follow-up with your leads and send out more promotional offers automatically. You only write your messages once and then put them on the autoresponder sequences to be delivered at pre-determined intervals like 1, 2 or more days. You can even use autoresponders to build your own mailing lists of leads and customers.

Instead of sending prospects to your main Web Site page, direct them to a Web Page where they can GET a FREE course by e-mail. Use this course to educate them and build a relationship with them, gain their trust.

9. Want to play with ‘SPAM’?

Don’t do it if you are SMART. Search on your favorite search engine for “spam laws + email marketing” and you’ll get a picture of what ‘SPAM’ is and how you can protect yourself!

Make sure you read about the CAN-Spam law if you want to know how to legally send commercial emails.

Also, don’t forget about the FTC laws on e-mail marketing!

10. What ads are ‘BEST’?

If you want to sell something directly from your ad, try Solo Mailings (one e-mail sent to all subscribers with no other ads in competition!)

If you want to TEST your ad or want to promote a FREE offer, try Classified, Top Sponsor or Bottom Ads.

They are much cheaper than Solos and could bring ‘POOR’ results.

If you invest in Solo Ads, make sure your ad copy is short and to the point, don’t bore your prospect with long ad copy.

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Web Surfers Revolt Against Pushy Advertising

Find useful tips about the topic of one way links – study this web site. The times have come when concise info is really within your reach, use this chance.

As you begin marketing and promoting your online business you are going to run into some unbelievable advertising opportunities. Generally speaking if the ad offering sounds too good to be true–It is.
There are companies that will tell you they will get you listed in the top 10 search engines or place your link on millions of sites or they will get you listed in the top 10 returns of search engines. This last one sounds similar to the first, but there is a big difference.

Google searches over 3 billion pages during their searches. The companies that tell you they will get you listed in the top 10 of the major search engines would have to defy all the principles of math to do this. They could not work with more than a few companies in order to achieve this and honestly, there is no way they can get you listed in the top 10 of the search engines placements at all unless they make up their own search terms and people search on that specific term.

Stay away from the companies that tell you they are going to place you in search engines for a fee, for the most part they will do nothing more than use a site software submitter. You can get your own software for this or use an online service and submit your site yourself for a lot less than what most SEO companies charge for this service.

Guaranteed traffic– They work fine for free sites or if your goal is to build a database of names, but if you are selling a product or service, you will get hits, but not many sales.

Mass email — Any company that tells you they will send your ad to millions of people for $20 or $30 is simply taking your money. This might sound inviting, but do not waste your money. They are either using site submit tools or sending your ad to millions of harvested email addresses. The companies who tell you they are going to submit your site to millions of pages will most likely do what they say, but you will not see any return and may even get you Spam complaints.

Mass emails are a complete waste of your money regardless of what product you are selling. There are many sites that will tell you they will send your ad to double opt-in lists of people. We have tried over a dozen of these services and have barely received a hit, much less sales. The problem is you lose control over your ad when you use mass email companies. There is no way to verify the ad was sent and if you could verify it was sent, there is no way to tell it was sent to the numbers they promise. Plus, you run the risk of being accused of Spam.

Solo ads– These are by far one of the best methods of promoting your product and service. They are targeted, you can verify the numbers and you can subscribe using a unique email and verify the ad was sent on the day and time it was supposed to be sent.

Consultants– Use your best judgment when hiring consultants, call some or send an email and ask about a money back guarantee if they cannot meet the objectives they set forth. I am not a big believer in money-back guarantees because if a service is valuable and you can see the value before you buy, then a money back guarantee is not necessary. However, if someone comes to you and says, I can make your site profitable within 30 or 60 or 90 days and it is going to cost you X amount of money, then they should give you your money back if they do not achieve the desired results.

A good consultant will work with companies that he or she knows they can help by relying on their background and expertise in certain areas of marketing and advertising. Nobody knows everything, but if someone has an expertise in an area that I lack knowledge with, I would hire him or her in a second if they can honestly help me and they can prove they can help me and they will back up what they tell me.

We get emails every day from people who want to join ISOR with the plan of retiring in a month, making a million dollars without doing anything, etc. and we turn every one of them down. There is no business on the Internet or in traditional business where you can accomplish this type of unrealistic goal.

There are, however consultants who will tell you what you want to hear, just to get your business. They take your money and run and they will not help you a bit. We hired a copy writer one time who seemed like a good fit for our company and only after she finished the writing at $120 an hour did she tell me that she would not buy my product. Not because she could not benefit from it, but she refused to pay for anything online. Her copy was terrible and we ended up re–writing the entire sales page. Her feelings and beliefs came across in her writings. It was simply impossible for her to write positively when her mind was telling her negative things.

We have many marketing and advertising partners and all the companies we partner with have been tested by us to offer valuable services, but there are thousands of other companies on the Internet and you might find a very good company with a very good service that works for you and within your budget. Not all companies are out to cheat you, but the purpose of this article is to forewarn you regarding where you spend your advertising dollars.

We have spent a lot of money and time buying and trying different advertising options and by using our own ad campaign and link tracking system for all our advertising campaigns we have the data to back up what we say.

Research your advertising options carefully and do not get pulled into a good deal just because it sounds like a good deal. You do not need to spend a lot of money to advertise and promote your business, you just need to use your common sense and think long term.

Copyright 2004 Jeremy Gislason

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Integrating Advertising into Your Web Design

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