FREE vs. PAID ADVERTISING

There are many ezines that do offer free ads to their subscribers. Some of these are worthwhile others are not. It really comes down to reader involvement. If people are still reading ezine and not just subscribed to put their ad in every week, it may be worth your time. If ezine has passed all of you're other criteria up to this point, it has to be worth a shot. At least this costs you nothing but your time.

Paid advertising at this point where you have studied, selected, and analyzed many ezines and come up with a short list is definitely going to be worth cost.

Let's just review what you have gone through in selecting ezines to advertise in.

1. Targeted Content that matches product, service, or opportunity you are advertising. 2. Acceptable Potential Market based on content of ezine and what ezine's editor says about his or her subscriber's interests. 3. Acceptable Ad Formatting and Placement in Ezine. 4. Acceptable Subscriber Base as described by way ezine gets it's subscribers and keeps them.

Now comes kicker, ad cost. What's a good price, and what isn't?

Well, it just depends. That's not what you wanted to hear, I know. You'd rather I provided a simple rule to go by that made all of your decisions for you. Sorry, but I don't believe that is possible. It is a big subject, however, so we'd best save it for final installment in this series.

Ad Mark Ad Sheet also available in multiple ezines and claims to be sent to over 2.5 million readers. Try this one: http://www.shopmystate.com/logon/12-09-01/index-2.html

The point of these programs being that your ad is immediately presented to many thousands of subscribers at once.

The drawback to these programs is that you have little control over which ezines your ads will be seen in, nor timing of when your ad runs. This could lead to your ad being featured in ezines of an entirely different subject matter, and also makes ads that pertain to timed events or schedules difficult to deal with.

Again, whole point to this approach is simply pushing for largest numbers possible in hopes of achieving results.

OPTION #2 -- Targeting Your Advertising

While this approach takes more work, idea is that since advertising is targeted it will achieve more response per subscriber view and therefore be more cost effective.

The work involved in this approach lies in selecting best ezines to run your ad in. This involves searching out appropriate ezines, researching ad rates and subscriber bases for those ezines, and talking with editors or advertising agents for ezines in question.

Selecting ezines for advertising will be focus of next article in this series due out next week at this time. Then we will cover subject in more detail and relate how best to get job done.