By Alessandro DeBarros

Ezine advertising has been glorified by experts world over as last refuge for little guy/gal to make a buck online. Well, I hate to deliver bad news, and please don't shoot messenger, but there are some draw backs to ezine advertising and many of Inner Sanctum E-Letter subscribers are making them daily. Let's look at most common mistakes and their solutions.

Mistake #1: Not Tracking Your Ads

Many business owners have no idea how they can track every ad they place. Whether for an affiliate program or their own product, they just don't know. Not knowing what ad is working and producing sale will cost you and your business thousands of dollars. When you know what ad produces and what ad doesn't you can cut worst of ads and only keep ad/s which is producing for your business.

--Solution--: If you own your own website and domain name, you can track every ad by creating a special redirect link that is only used in that ad. Or you can add a question mark to end of URL and check that on your stats page.

A simple, http://www.yourdomainname.com/pagename.html?trackingcode will suffice in most cases. Check with your web host to see if you have access to your web site stats log. Or sign up for one of free/fee tracking services online.

Mistake #2: Writing Me-Too Ads

When writing your ad you must take your ego, your desire to boast about you and your company, out of equation. An example of a me-too ad:

"Acme Law Offices have been in business for 20 years. Our staff of lawyers all graduated from Harvard Law School with honors. Call us at 1-800-acme-law today!"

--Solution--: Write benefit and results oriented ads. Example:

"Guaranteed Settlements! Win your settlement guaranteed and save 43% on attorney fees by calling ACME Law Offices at: (blah, blah, blah)"

This ad focuses completely on end result, main benefit. Guaranteed Settlements. Which ad do you think would pull more responses?

Mistake #3: Running Classifieds

Since they don't cost much, business owners tend to use classifieds to save costs. Classifieds are cheap, $5-$20 per ad, and in most cases run faster than solo or top sponsor ads because ezine publisher runs 10-20 per issue.

A: Almost every one is trying to make an extra buck off of advertising in some fashion.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but many years ago when affiliate programs seemed innovative, I too tried to cash in by linking to Amazon.com books and music. Did that actually work for anyone? Chances are most will say no. Didn't work for me either. Not only did I not make an extra buck, I didn't even make an extra penny. In fact, even my site mrcgiguy.com (shameless plug), which receives around 500 unique visitors a day does not produce particularly good results from affiliate programs. The bottom line is, most affiliate programs won't work for most web sites. Vague, I know. But from my experience, unless your audience is very general, you'll need to find affiliate programs that are very specific to your niche in order to produce even slightest result. Though, these days, even well targeted affiliate programs don't seem to produce much.

Like myself, most modern day web developers have opted not to join affiliate programs and have instead turned to ad networks such as FastClick, TribalFusion, Burst, etc. I joined FastClick since it was said to have highest CPM rates. And for a long while, I was pretty happy with results. I was able to make a breath-taking 50 cents a day. Yes, I was happy with that. I wasn't expecting millions...reality sank in long ago...somewhere between days of being an "Amazon affiliate" and having my job dissolved after dot.com crash. So, 50 cents a day, or an approximate $15.00 a month was great. Every bit helps when you're self employed.