Example: who better to sell your health product to than a large group of people subscribed to a health newsletter? Or, you could pitch a business opportunity to a group already subscribed to another ezine about MLM and Biz Ops!

The idea of EA is fairly simple - but to make yours a success, you have to first determine which ezines or newsletters produce results, and which ones to avoid. After a year and a half of EA, I've created a formula that produces increasing profit because I’ve learned how to avoid poor performing ezines and rip offs, while revealing gems.

Strategy for Profit

I used to get ripped off about once for every 2 or 3 ezines I advertised in. They either took my money without running my ad (and ignored my subsequent emails), or my proven ads did too poorly for money I paid.

The reasons ranged from abandoned ezines with working payment links, unethical newsletter owners, to a lot of ignorance and impatience on my part. If you follow my proven strategy, you'll discover best sources of ezines to advertise in - no matter who your target group is. And, you should see positive results every time.

This article outlines steps to making your EA a successful return on investment (ROI). Writing Your Ad

I won't go into details about ad writing, but if your ad is poorly written or untested, you should start with cheapest ezines first. If you’re really unsure of your writing abilities, I further suggest hiring a professional to write your ad for you.

Because you can run your ad as many times as you want, your investment in a professional will more than pay for itself in end.

Target your advertising

If you leap into EA without first researching your target group, you'll end up wasting a lot of time and money. Plus, you probably miss some of best ezines available.

To determine who your prospect is, take time to list possible keywords that directly relate to your product and do keyword searches for ezines, newsletters, and ezine directories. For example, if you sell herbs, a good keyword search would include: herbs, health, nutrition, supplements, etc.

Avoid Co-ops

While doing your ezine research, you will probably stumble upon offer to use Co-op (bulk) advertising as means for your EA.

To be blunt, you should never pay to use Co-ops for your EA because they are too difficult to track and usually contain untargeted ezines. Worse still, you’d find that most never run your ad. Subscribe

Now that you’ve found your ezine target group, you’ll want to know whether ezines you found are a good option (i.e. profitable) for your EA.

I’ve found best strategy for making this determination is to subscribe to targeted ezines. To keep subscriptions readily available for further research, I recommend creating a separate folder to store your subscription data. And because you’ll need to subscribe to quite a few ezines, I also suggest creating separate email accounts dedicated to your ezine subscriptions. Double Opt-In Subscriptions In process of subscribing, you’ll quickly determine possible ezines to avoid. When you subscribe and get a notice that you must confirm your subscription, ezine is referred to as “double opt-in”.

Double opt-in ezines indicates a better quality of subscribers with a lower risk of bulk email addresses. For you and me, this means better ad responses (yeah!). Solo Ads

A friend recommends a film that just came out: "You've GOT to see this movie! It's SO (funny, scary, suspenseful, etc.)." They start quoting lines, excitedly taking you through plot. You're hanging on their every word. Seems like cinema doesn't get any better than this! So you run out and plunk down $10 to see movie. And what do you discover? That this is “just another movie”... mildly entertaining, at best. Next time this friend starts crowing about another fantastic film, you're not so willing to listen. In fact: you’ll never go to another movie on their recommendation again.

What happened? Too much build-up. Someone “over-sold,” and lost credibility because of it. The same is true for advertising. Too much build-up can break sale. It’s what happens when your ads are “anticlimactic.”

What do I mean by advertising that’s anticlimactic?

Let’s say you came across an ad for a mysterious “something” that can give you same ecstatic feeling as being in love. The advertiser doesn’t mention what it is... he’s too busy painting a picture of how this thing can change your life. The ad goes something like this:

“Ahh, that blissful, lighter-than-air feeling of being in love! When you feel like this, you’re at your best... like you can do anything. When you’re in love, you’re on top of world! Now imagine if you could summon this feeling to life at any time you wanted. Just think of what it could do for your career, for your personal relationships, for your quality of living!”

How would you feel if, after reading paragraph after paragraph about this elusive euphoria that can be yours for just a few dollars, you came to learn that ad is about CHOCOLATE. You’d be a little annoyed, wouldn’t you? You might even feel like someone had played a dirty trick on you. How likely is it that you’d buy that chocolate (even if it happened to be Godiva-quality), knowing you were duped in such a way? Not very! In fact, you’d more likely buy chocolate from guy who told you outright, with minimal fanfare, that he was selling delicious, gourmet chocolate. Because he was being honest. And you, consumer, appreciate honesty. Don’t you?

Right now, hard-hitting ad copy is all rage. Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably seen those long sales letters that promise moon and stars, if you just BUY NOW. Looks like those internet gurus have become pretty darned successful, right? And you want what they have: persuasive skills that guarantee results for your business. You want it so badly you can taste it. That’s why when they dangle their secrets under your nose, you listen with rapt attention. And you think, well, if they’ve become millionaires with their hard-sell strategies, maybe I should follow suit. But should you? Or will it just come across as a big build-up followed by a letdown? How will you avoid trap of creating ads that are anticlimactic?