Now, finally, we come down to actual cost of purchased advertising. How much is affordable and what is too much?

As I said in part three of this series, it just depends. I don't mean to give a misleading answer with that statement, nor do I mean to skirt around subject. It's just that price is a subjective item that revolves around product or opportunity you are promoting and ezine you are promoting in.

So, while I cannot give you a simple rule to follow, I can give you a way to analyze cost. However, there are still a BUNCH of other factors that I'll bring up afterward.

First, let's use term 'ad hits' to describe number of people that view your ad in an ezine and then answer it by either going to site you want them to or emailing to you or your auto responder.

Now, look at following formula:

(# subscribers) x (% response) = Expected Ad Hits

Example:

1000 subscribers x 3% = 30

>From there, naturally, it depends on how many sales you get from ad hits you receive and how much money you make per sale. Getting 1 sale out of 30 hits is a 3.33% sales ratio.

Now, if you can do at least that, consider how much you make per sale as opposed to how much ad cost you. If you make $10 per sale and ad to 1000 subscribers only cost you $5, then there's your profit of $5.

So essentially equation you need to use is this one:

Income for ad =

(# subs) x (% response from ezine) x (sales % from site) x ($ made per sale)

After having selected ezines to advertise your program in based on how content of ezines relate to what you wish to advertise, there is still another process to choosing best ezines for your marketing dollars.

Analyzing ezines is a rather subjective process, however. There are no hard and fast rules to follow that give you a clear indication of whether or not an ezine is worth cost. However, there is an information gathering process that can help you to make better decisions.

AD FORMATTING

One important aspect is how ads are handled in ezine itself. Where are ads located in ezine? Are they made visible by being placed directly between or at start of articles, or are they pushed all to end of ezine or published separately in an ad sheet?

How many ads are run in each issue? Are headlines of ads offset to attract attention, are ads separated in some way from each other, or does entire ad section look like one big chunk of text?

Naturally, anything ezine publisher does to give visibility to ads is a plus for you as an advertiser.

SUBSCRIBERS: Who Are They and Where Did They Come From?

Don't be afraid to contact editor, publisher, or advertising agent of an ezine and ask them some questions. Find out not only how many subscribers they have, but get their opinion of what type of markets their subscribers are interested in, AND how they get their subscribers.

Some marketing practices, such as automatically subscribing people that post to an FFA or ad site, may pull a lot of subscribers for an ezine, but result in very little readers. Ads for subs programs also have mixed results. Some stick around and read ezine, but many don't. The best subscribers are those that are completely volunteer opt in readers.