Ezine Advertising Live

Charlie Page’s

Ezine Advertising Live!

FFIINNDDIINNGG TTHHEE RRIIGGHHTT EEZZIINNEESS

The Right Ad The Right Ezine

The Right Offer The Right Timing

http://www.ezineadvertisinglive.com

EZINE ADVERTISING LIVE

© Charlie Page

About Charlie Page

Charlie Page is the author of over 10 eBooks on Internet marketing and

the owner of the Directory of Ezines.

The Directory of Ezines is the world's first and best online resource for

advertising and article marketing with ezines, also known as

newsletters.

He is considered the leading expert on marketing with ezines.

Charlie began his online career as a copywriter. His specialty as a

copywriter is writing sales letters, selling emails, and autoresponder

messages that cause readers to take action in record numbers. One of Charlie's sales letters

garnered an amazing 34% conversion rate during the introduction of a very well-known

eBook about Internet marketing.

In 2000 Charlie joined the Directory of Ezines as a member and began using ezine

marketing to grow his business. The result? 18 months later he bought the company! He continues to teach his DOE members how to create their own success story using ezines.

Charlie has contributed to books in print as well as eBooks, helping Robert Allen complete

Multiple Streams of Internet Income as well as working with Jay Aaron and Jay Conrad

Levinson (the father of Guerilla Marketing) to create their web and print project called Guerilla Marketing to the Masses.

Important note from Charlie

Before reading the transcript below please download and print the Success Guide for this call.

The Success Guide is an interactive document that will help you get the most out of

this transcript and help you quickly and easily apply what you learn here.

The Success Guide is free – my gift to you.

You can get the Success Guide now by visiting this link.

http://www.EzineAdvertisingLive.com/guide

http://www.realworldtactics.com/ebooks-by-charlie.html

http://www.directoryofezines.com/

http://www.gmarketingtreasures.com/page

http://www.ezineadvertisinglive.com/guide


© Charlie Page

The Eight Ezine Advertising Live Modules

1) Ezine Advertising Secrets Revealed: “Make Ezine Advertising Work for You”

2) The Right Ezine: “Endless Pools of Pre-Qualified Prospects”

3) The Right Ad Part I: “Write a Power Ad & Get It Seen By Millions”

4) The Right Ad Part II: “Advanced Ad Writing Techniques”

5) The Right Ad Part III: “Where and how to submit your power ad”

6) Track & Analyze Results: “Repeat the Winners and Achieve Real Success”

7) Advanced Techniques: “Expert Methods That Give you an unfair advantage”

8) FAQ: “Your Ezine Advertising Questions Answered By Charlie Page”


© Charlie Page

This is Charlie Page, and this is the second call of Ezine Advertising

Live. I really look forward to sharing with you the many proven ways that

I've discovered over the years to find just the right ezine for any product

that you're promoting. This is really important - matching the ezine that

you use to the product that you're offering is a highly important thing.

Over the years I've promoted many products myself and for my

clients, and while preparing for this call, I was making a mental list of just

how many things I've promoted with ezines. And the list became very long

indeed.

Before I go farther, let me stop here and remind you to have your

success guide for this call ready for note taking. The success guide for

tonight will be very helpful as we go through the ways to find the right

ezines for your offer. If you don't have the success guide right now, you can

go to www.EzineAdvertisingLive.com/guide and get it. Let me repeat that

URL – www.EzineAdvertisingLive.com/guide

As we go through our live calls, you should know that you can always

get a copy of the most current success guide at that URL. In addition, you

can login to the member’s area and get a copy of any of the success guides

by clicking on the number of the call you're interested in.




© Charlie Page

While we're doing a little bit of housekeeping, let me remind you that

the audio and transcript for Call One can be found in the member’s area as

well. If you didn't make Call One and haven't had time to read the transcript

or listen to the audio, please do as time allows. I've created Ezine

Advertising Live so that one call builds on the next, creating an easy-to-

follow, step-by-step system for successful ezine advertising. Of course, you

can listen to the calls in any order you'd like, but they do flow nicely if taken

from Call One through Call Eight.

Now, where was I? The products I've promoted using ezine

advertising include: health products, information products, business

opportunities, promotions for charity events or charity organizations, selling

membership sites, responsive to natural disasters to solicit money, building

mailing lists, selling tangible goods like cookbooks and care, selling legal

services, and much more, really too many to count. After ten years, it's

been a lot of different products.

So why does that matter? Why mention it? Because I want you to

know that what you are selling can be on that list. No matter what you're

promoting now, I promise you that we'll find profitable ways to promote it

using ezine advertising during our Ezine Advertising Live course.


© Charlie Page

And don't forget that you can ask questions any time you'd like, as

well. You can enter your questions on the pages for each call. You can use

my support center, whichever you prefer. A link for the support center is on

just about every webpage I have. http://www.realworldtactics.com/support

No matter how you get in touch, I do want to help you personally, one on

one if I can.

So let's look at some ways to find ezines that are right for your offer.

The first thing I want you to do is to have in mind a specific product,

something you want to promote. Write it down. If you have your success

guide handy, go ahead and write it down. If you just have a legal pad or a

piece of scratch paper, go ahead and write it down. I know you might be

promoting more than one product right now. Many people are, and that's a

good thing, but having one product in mind will make the examples we

share tonight more vivid and provide you with the best understanding of the

process to follow when finding ezines in which to place ads.

If you know me, you know that I'm a big believer in processes. I

believe that if you find or create a step-by-step process for a task, especially

a marketing task, the odds of finding repeatable success go way up. And

the key word there, of course, is "repeatable." That's my goal for you with

Ezine Advertising Live, to help you discover a repeatable way to advertise

any product you want, any time you want, and create the highest

http://www.realworldtactics.com/support


© Charlie Page

return on investment possible. Pretty good goals, so let's find out how

we do that.

Of all the mistakes I see people make with ezine advertising, one of

the top mistakes is choosing the wrong ezine in which to run their ad. I

think it's a mistake we all fear making. You know, it's a natural thing to be

afraid of making that type of mistake, because the result of choosing the

wrong ezine is clear. The ad won't work as well as it should, if it works at

all. The money you spend will be wasted, and that's not what you want.

Now, on the last call I mentioned not spending more than 25 percent

of your budget on any one ad, and if you follow that rule, you'll find that the

fear of making a mistake is taken out of the equation, because even if

you do make a mistake, it's not a mistake that puts you out of the game. A

big mistake that people make with ezine advertising, and one of the

promises I made you before you signed up was I was going to help you

avoid embarrassing and costly mistakes, as well as teach you the things to

do.

So let me say this about mistakes. One of the biggest mistakes is

choosing the wrong ezine. We're going to fix that tonight. Another is using

your entire budget on one ad or at one time. That's something I want to

really emphasize. It's a big mistake to use all your money up front, because

then you don't have any go back position. You don't have any second


© Charlie Page

chance, and I don't know about you, but every time I do something, I do it

better the second time than the first. And I said in the last call, and I'll say

it again, I think if that idea wasn't true that we get better with time, very

few of us would be married.

So if choosing the wrong ezine is a problem, how can you know

what ezine is right for you? Let's look together at six ways that you can

know if an ezine is right for you. Now, if you have your success guide

handy, please turn to the second page and get ready to fill in the blanks and

make some notes. If not, just jot these six ways down, and you can fill in

the success guide later if you like. Using the success guide for each call will

create a powerful reference library for your future ezine advertising

efforts, so I encourage you to get each one and fill it in.

Let me give you the number one way to know if any ezine is right for

you. If you have your success guide, this is the first one. An ezine that is

right for you will have the right readers. So number one is the right

readers. Now, what do I mean by the "right readers?" I mean this. The

right readers are people who are interested in what you offer right

now. You don't have to get them interested in your product. You only

need to capitalize on their existing interest.


© Charlie Page

I want to emphasize that point. That's really important. There's a

huge difference in selling between trying to create interest in a product

and capitalizing on existing interest in a product. Much harder to

introduce a new idea to someone, get them interested in it, and bring them

to the point where they will take action than it is to find people who are

already interested in a particular product or thing or idea and then cause

them to take action on yours.

So how can you know what these readers are interested in? You can

know by what they are reading, by matching the subject of the ezine

they've subscribed to with the product that you promote. Now, that's not as

simple as it sounds. Remember last time we talked about Einstein saying

things should be simple but not any simpler than they have to be? Let me

explain what I mean by this a little bit by matching the subject.

If you're selling memberships to an investment website, the odds are

that buying ads in an ezine that goes out to skateboard enthusiasts would

not be a very good idea. Now, I know that's an extreme example, but I've

seen mistakes like that made in the past. You see the key is to find readers

who are interested in things that complement what you are selling, as well

as topics that are specifically about what you're selling.


© Charlie Page

That's really important, so I'm going to repeat it and get you to write it

down if you're the type who likes to make notes. The key is to find readers

who are interested in things that complement what you are selling, as well

as topics that are specifically about what you're selling. So "complement" is

the key word there.

Using ezines that are only about the specific topic of the product you

are selling is too narrow an approach in my view. It's a very common

mistake. I often hear people ask questions – in fact, we got nine questions

on this one topic alone a couple of weeks ago – well, about a month ago

during the preview call. I hear people asking questions about ezine

advertising being saturated, that too many people from the same business

opportunity or are selling the same product are running ads in the small pool

of available ezines, and that is making those ezines saturated. But nothing

could be farther from the truth if you follow the advice I'm giving you right

now.

You see, if you limit your advertising exposure only to those

ezines that are specifically about the product you are selling, two things will

be true. One, you'll have more competition, because most people make

that very mistake. They limit their exposure. Two, you'll miss the easy


© Charlie Page

sales, the ones where a reader is reading an article about a particular topic

and then sees your ad for a complementary product and becomes curious.

Now, I think a case study is going to help illustrate this point, and

while we're on the topic of case studies, I want to say something to you

about the membership area with Ezine Advertising Live. I'm going to be

asking you – in fact, if you want to not wait, you can just submit a support

ticket in the next day or two. I'd like to know the business that you are

in. I'd like to hear from each of you and find out what business you are in

so that when I am putting together case studies, I can put together case

studies that are meaningful to you.

So put in a support ticket and let me know what business you're in.

Be sure to choose Ezine Advertising Live as the department. That's what's

really important. When you go to the support center, you don't have to

login. You don't have to register. Just click "submit a ticket," and then

follow the steps. But be sure to choose Ezine Advertising Live as the

department. Just do this any time you want to, and I will reply to you

myself and start using case studies that are based upon the industry you're

in.

So for now, let's take a look at a case study that illustrates the point

that we're making about complementary products and how to choose ezines

and that type of thing. Let's say that you're selling a travel business


© Charlie Page

product. This product allows you to travel at a discount, and it's a business

that you can sell. There are some very popular programs online right now

that are just like this. I'm sure you know the names. Some of you are

probably involved in those businesses.

So the first to ask is who are the people that might buy this product?

What common characteristics might they share that will help you find

them using ezines? Because that is the goal - the goal is to find them, so I'd

like you to write down, if you're a note taker, common characteristics,

because we're going to make a list now of some common characteristics.

That's going to help us choose the ezines that are going to work best for this

product.

So let's first look at their personal makeup, and then we'll start

talking about some specific ezines that might work and talk about some that

might fail. The person interested in this business can be a man or a

woman. That's the first thing to consider. Some product offerings really

are gender specific. This particular product, be it the travel part of the offer

or the business part of the offer is really not gender specific. So the person

interested in this business can be a man or a woman. So we can write that

down – man or woman. That helps us choose the ezines correctly.


© Charlie Page

The person interested in this product can be of any age but is likely

to be middle aged or younger. Now, remember I said "likely." We're not

ruling out any age group for this offer, except the very young. Probably 25

is a good starting point on this. It's unlikely that people younger than that

are going to be buying much travel or buying a travel business. It can

happen, but it's unlikely, and today's seniors do travel. It's not like it was a

long time ago when "senior citizen" meant that you stayed home forever. I

mean, it's a whole different world now, so you can't really rule people in or

out. But it's likely to be middle aged or younger.

What's next? The person interested in this product wants their own

business and probably want an online business so they can experience

the freedom an online business offers. That's an important common

characteristic to write down. So we've got …

Man or woman

Probably middle aged or younger

Somebody who wants their own business.

The person interested in this product needs to have some

resources so they can afford to provide the travel product or to travel or to

pay for the business or all of that. So we're not looking for freebie seekers

on this offer.


© Charlie Page

Now, let me be clear, and I always try to define this carefully. I don't

think "freebie seeker" is a dirty word. A lot of people say, "Oh, I don't want

any freebie seekers." I don't think there's anything in the world wrong with

people who are looking for resources that don't cost any money. I do think

that that mindset doesn't lead to success online, and I do think that that

mindset meant that people in that group will behave a particular way. But I

don't think there's anything wrong with that.

But for this particular offer, this is not who we're going to look for. So

we're not going to look for ezines that talk about free stuff. We're

going to look for different types of ezines. It's important to write this down.

I would say not freebie seeker. I would say person with resources.

What's next? The person interested in this product is probably

interested in travel but might only be interested in the business aspect.

You never can really tell for sure, but you have to make these choices. Now

my experience tells me that they're interested in both even if they can't do

both right now. I know a lot of people in these type businesses, and

generally they say to me they would like to travel but can't right now. And

so they want to use the business aspect of it to make some money, and then

when they're situation is right, they will travel. So I would, if it was me


© Charlie Page

doing the ezine advertising, I would write down both interested in travel and

interested in the business.

So that's what I would write on my particular profile. Now, we've got

a fairly decent profile built, and I know that profile is not a politically correct

term these days, but that's not the kind of thing we're talking about. We're

talking about drawing up a snapshot of a person who we're trying to

watch online. There's nothing wrong with that.

So here's what we've got:

Man or woman,

Probably middle aged or younger,

Probably wants their own business,

Probably an online business.

They need to have some resources so they can buy what we're

selling, because this is not a cheap offer, and

They're probably interested in travel.

So that's what I would write down on my sheet as far as drawing up

common characteristics.

Now, what types of ezines might work for this particular offer? Which

ezines are going to reach readers that have these characteristics?


© Charlie Page

Here's the list I would use. First and obviously would be the business

opportunity ezine.

You would be shocked at how many people stop right there.

In other words, they have a travel business opportunity that it offers

both the business opportunity aspect of it, and it also offers the ability to

travel. And they absolutely stop after they consider looking at business

opportunity ezines. I've seen this mistake made with travel businesses that

are also an opportunity, health businesses that also offer an opportunity,

and a range of others.

Sure business opportunity ezines are our first best choice. I mean, it's

logical. It makes sense, but you'd be shocked at how many people stop

there. And if you're selling a business opportunity, you know you do want to

reach people who are looking for a business, but there are so many more

that you can reach. So let's, continuing with our travel example, our travel

business case study, let's take a look at what else we could find.

Next and pretty obvious would be travel ezines, because we believe,

at least I do, that our person is interested in travel. So it would be a very

easy approach to make to say, "Hey, traveler, how would you like to travel

for less and even make money by writing reviews of where you go or taking


© Charlie Page

video when you're on your trips or those type things?" A very logical

approach is to reach out to travel ezines.

Another would be golf ezines. Now, if you know me, you know I'm a

little golf crazy, and that's what's coming out there. There's some method

behind the madness. You might be surprised to hear me say golf ezines, but

here's my reasoning. Golf is an expensive hobby. It's one of the more

expensive hobbies, in fact. Golf clubs can easily cost $1,000, and a round of

gold can cost anywhere from $25 up to several hundred. Many golfers pay

these fees twice a week or more, while others belong to country clubs where

they can play golf as much as they like. But these country clubs aren't free.

So they are spending money. Everything about golf is expensive.

Golfers pay three bucks for golf balls that they lose by the dozen, and I'm

talking three bucks apiece if they buy the premium ones. And they lose

them by the dozen, so we know they have some money. But what about the

travel aspect of it? They meet one criterion, but do they meet the other?

Well, the fact is that golfers love to travel. Many, if not all, travel

websites offer gold getaways, golf packages for groups, and more, and this

is one of those secondary considerations that really help you zero in on the

ezines you want to find. When you see other sites making certain specific

offers, like you see the big travel websites offering golf packages that tells


© Charlie Page

you something. And what it tells you is that golfers travel. If they didn't,

they wouldn't be targeting them.

So you can kind of piggyback on the research of these big websites by

noticing what they sell and then targeting similar products to the same

market. Does that make sense to you? It's a very common approach

among professional marketers but a very uncommon approach among

people who are just starting out or who are having a hard time finding their

way.

So there's a little inside tip that can help you a lot. If you go to big

websites and you notice the type of things they are advertising, the type of

packages they sell – I'm not talking about people who run ads on their sites,

but I'm talking about the type of packages they sell, if you notice what those

are, you can know they're targeting the people who come to their site, and if

you can think about who is that, you can target them too.

Now back to golfers. Golfers love to travel, so I think there's

something there. There's the attraction of playing golf courses that golfers

watch people play on TV. They'll visit Scotland, the home of golf. There are

just a lot of reasons that I believe personally that golfers are a good market.

I think they're a great target for this, as a matter of fact.


© Charlie Page

But you know, I subscribe to a bunch of golf ezines, and I have yet to

see an ad for one of these travel business opportunities in one of these

ezines. Talk about unchartered territory. My goodness! I believe that's an

opportunity just waiting to be seized.

Let's move on. There are ezines about owning airplanes. Odds

are somebody who owns an airplane might like to travel somewhere. If your

travel business or your travel business opportunity is one that offers

packages where the person has to get themselves there but once they get

there they get like this huge week in a resort type thing, then that would be

a perfect ezine, because they've got the transportation problem licked but

they have to pay when they get there to stay. So there's an opportunity.

I think ezines about tennis might work, because tennis players do

travel around. They especially go to tournaments. That might not be

perfect, but I think there's something there. Ezines about sales and

marketing would be another category that I would look strongly at. Now

why would I do that? Because our person is going to need to market their

business, right?


© Charlie Page

If they buy the business opportunity, if they buy the product to travel,

not so much, but if they buy the business opportunity, they're going to need

to know how to market that business.

And it doesn't matter what kind of system they get into, I think

everybody knows that you're also going to have to make some of your own

efforts. And so they're going to have to learn something about sales and

marketing, particularly on the Internet. So that leads us to Internet

marketing type ezines or ezines about advertising or any business

related ezine.

So there are bunches of categories right there. I can't even count how

many I listed. One, two, three – it looks like six so far or seven. Here's

another category that people would miss, and I'll make this the last one,

because it could be a long list, but I really want to give you only the ones I

would spend money on. I don't want to give you this, "Well, it could be this,

and it could be that. And it could be this other thing," list. I want to give

you the list I would create, the list I did create this afternoon, as a matter of

fact.


© Charlie Page

And here's the category a lot of people would miss, and that's the

category of fine living. There are ezines out there that are dedicated to the

idea of find living, and people who are into that fine living like to travel.

They love to save money, too, even if they won't admit it. So as you can

see, the list is plentiful. There really is a good list there, and we've identified

six or seven, I think, categories that you could look at. Now, you're going to

definitely find ezines in these categories.

Now, let's look at some ezines that would be a mistake. If you're

a person who takes notes, you might want to draw a line and say, "These

are mistakes," or "no-no's," or however you do it.

I would not advertise this product in a parenting ezine, because too

many parents with young children, and that's who typically reads parenting

ezines, don't have the money to travel, and they stay close to home due to

financial pressures or because traveling with children can be challenging.

Not everybody does it well.

Now, this is not a blanket statement. There are exceptions, of course,

but not enough exceptions for me to spend my money on ads to this group,

especially when we've seen that there are really great groups that we can go

after.


© Charlie Page

Another group I would avoid is gardening ezines. Gardeners

generally like to be home which is why, in part, they garden. Other groups I

would avoid are joke ezines, recipe ezines, and general interest ezines.

Even though general interest ezines – and by general interest, I mean the

ezines that go out with a wide variety of topics in them. They're not topic

specific. They're just of general interest. Those are too broad for my tastes

for this. There are just too many good resources to risk precious advertising

budget on any group that's not targeted.

So do you see the process at work? It does work. It will work for

you if you apply it. You create a profile for your customer, and again, we're

using the word "profile" just to bring common denominators, common

characteristics. And then you look at ezines that that person might read.

It's really a very simple process, especially after you've done it a few times.

It just makes all the sense in the world.

So I hope that helped you see the process I use when choosing ezines.

Now this is just the first cut. In other words, these ezines are going to have

to meet certain criteria that we're going to speak about in just a few

minutes. But this is how you start choosing ezines.


© Charlie Page

You see that the universe of possible ezines for your offer is much

broader than you first imagined if you follow this process.

If you want to stay limited, just sell business opportunities in business

opportunity ezines. But that means you're going to go head to head with

everybody else who only does that and stops, and I think that's a

mistake. I think it's too competitive. I think there's no point in not going

after more fertile fields, as they say.

So finding the right readers is a major key in choosing the ezines in

which to place ads. If you have any questions about what I just covered,

please contact me and let me know. Send me your product – I mean, not

your product itself, but let me know what product you're doing, you're

working with, so I can do a case study for that. And let me help you find

ezines.

Now, point number two – and the rest of the points aren't going to

take quite as long. That first point – very, very important, the right readers.

Obviously, you're going to sell your products to people, and the people are

the readers. So knowing something about the people that you're interested

in reaching is very important.


© Charlie Page

Point two is the right articles. So if you're following along the

success guide, write down "the right articles." Now why would I say the

right articles? Here's why. The quality of the articles, the quality of the

articles is what keeps people reading ezines. That's not how they start

reading ezines, but it's how they keep reading ezines, and it's an important

distinction.

Everyone, or almost everyone, goes through the same process when

they subscribe to an ezine. I'll bet you went through this process when you

subscribed to your ezines, however many you read. They're giving it a try

for a while to see if they like it. Ezines are free, by and large, so no harm

done in trying. What happens over the first few weeks or months,

depending upon the frequency in which the ezine is published, will determine

if the person who subscribes stays a subscriber or they leave. And that has

to do almost exclusively with the quality of the articles in the ezine.

I would say this, that in my own ezine, which I think I've published for

six years now, I believe it's six years, I have subscribers that I know have

been with me since I began. And I believe that what keeps them coming

back is that the quality of the articles is high. Now, I'm not patting myself

on the back and saying that I'm some great writer, but what I'm saying is I


© Charlie Page

try to give helpful information in my ezine. So the quality of the articles, as

judged by the reader, is what matters.

People subscribe to get information. If the information is good,

they stay. If the information is bad or there's not enough of it or it's

disproportionate to the number of ads that are run – we're going to talk

about that tonight, too – these people will leave. They will go away. One of

the real things you want to look for, I mean, it's a super key to ezine

advertising, is how long have people been subscribed. Some publishers can

tell you. Some publishers can't. But if you find a publisher who can tell you

authoritatively that, yes, my subscribers have been around for X period of

time, then that's going to be a very good thing for you.

So how can you know if the articles in a particular ezine are any good?

There are three ways to know. First, look for online archives. Online

archives are a wonderful thing, and some publishers provide them, some

publishers don't. If you were on Call One, the last call, you know that we

looked at the site of an ezine publisher named Abby Drew who publishes an

ezine called DEMC. Now that's David, Edward, Mary, Charles. That's four

initials, so her URL is www.demc.com .

http://www.demc.com/


© Charlie Page

If you've seen her site when you were on the call last week, you know

that her articles are right there on the site. They're on the very front page,

as they should be, so you can quickly determine the quality of the articles.

Because the article is the heart of the ezine. The ezine is not about

advertising. It's about information. She also lists who her main

contributing authors are. So you can get a sense from that of how good the

quality of the articles will be. That's another important consideration. If you

can find a publisher who lists who their contributors are, that's a really good

sign, something that should be paid attention to.

Now here's a second way. The first way is to look for online archives.

The second way is to subscribe to the ezine, and I know that probably

sounds like, "Yeah, I knew that," but it's something that a lot of people miss.

Subscribing to the ezines that you're interested in is very important. In fact,

I recommend it for every ezine you are considering spending money on. If

you're considering buying ads in an ezine and spending your hard-earned

money, now you worked hard for that money, and you need to know what

the ezine looks like and whether you like it before spending your hard-

earned money.


© Charlie Page

You absolutely can subscribe with a Gmail address or a Yahoo! address

or whatever you want to do. I use my primary email address, and I filter

things out. I get lots of email every day. I really don't have that hard a

time managing it, but however you do it, you've really got to subscribe to

these ezines so that you can get a look at them. You can read an article or

two, and you can know, yeah, this is somewhere I would be proud to have

my ad show up. I feel like this is going to be effective for me.

Now, here's a third way. It's not really recommended, but it can be

done, so I'm going to mention it, and that is to email the publisher directly

and ask for a recent copy of the ezine. Doing this helps you know if the

publisher replies to email, but in fairness, publishers don't often respond to

these kinds of requests, nor do I think they necessarily should.

I think if the standard is that the ezine publisher answers every single

email that comes in, then that indicates that their boundaries are a little out

of whack and they're not spending time on things they have to spend time

on. They're busy serving existing subscribers. They're busy making sure

that things that need to be done get done, so if you send an email like this

and a publisher doesn't respond, I don't consider that to be a red flag.


© Charlie Page

Now, if you've purchased an ad, you've been a subscriber for a long

time, you send an email that makes sense, and you're asking a question and

you don't get a response, I think that's a red flag. But sending an email

saying, "Hey, can I read one of your articles," it's not recommended, but it is

a method some people use.

So always remember to look at the quality of the articles. Quality

articles create long-term readers, and long-term reader buy better than any

other group available. It takes time for the reader, the subscriber, to trust

the ezine publisher enough to relax and consider offers that are sent to

them. It's just a fact of life. You probably won't hear anybody else ever say

that, but it's true. So the longer term the readers are the better the

response will be. I think that's one reason DEMC and others respond so

well.

Now, point three, write down "the right ad," if you want to take notes.

If not, that's okay – the right ad. Now what do I mean by the right ads? I

mean do they sell the type of ad that you want to buy? Some ezines only

sell classifieds. Some sell solos and classifieds and sponsors. Some only sell

sponsor ads. But the ones that only sell one type of ad – let's say they only

sell classifieds and you're wanting to buy solos, then that's not a good fit for

you.


© Charlie Page

So you have to make sure they offer the right ads before spending any

time considering them. That's something that needs to be put – I put it on

point three on purpose, because I kind of take these one, two, three. This is

the process I use, and I've seen so many people over the years get excited

about a particular ezine only to discover they don't sell ads or only to

discover they don't sell the type of ad the person wants to place. They went

out and bought themselves a nice solo ad by a professional copyrighter, and

now they discover the ezine only takes sponsor ads.

There's nothing wrong with that. The publisher has the right to do

whatever they want to do, but it's really hard for a person to take that solo

of 500 words and squeeze it down to 150 words in a sponsor ad. So they're

kind of stuck. I think looking to see if the ezine sells the right type of ad is

an important factor.

Here's point number four – the right price. I'll bet you could deliver

this information better than I could. I mean, you know what I'm going to

say before I say it, but I'll say it anyway. An ezine can be perfect in every

way, but if the ad costs too much, then it just costs too much. And that

ezine is not right for you right now. There's nothing to say that I won't be

right for you in the future.


© Charlie Page

So if you find the perfect ezine but can't afford it today, by all means

bookmark the page so you can return. And so you won't run into this very

often, but it does happen.

So for an ezine to be the right ezine for you, it has to be affordable.

I'm going to make this point one more time, and I don't want to be on a

soapbox about it, but I'm recommending that you spend no more than 25

percent of your ezine advertising budget on any one ad. So bear that

guideline in mind when considering costs. There are exceptions, but that

guideline will protect you over time.

Now, point number five is the right policy. The right policy – what

does that mean? You know, believe it or not, it is very important to get this

one right, and I'm going to show you why. What I mean by the right policy

is this – An ezine publisher must not send so many ads that they burn

their list out and cause the ezine to become ineffective for advertisers. This

is very important. I'm going to say that again. An ezine publisher must not

send so many ads to their list that they burn their list out and cause their

ezine to become ineffective for advertisers.


© Charlie Page

Now, I know ezine publishers want to sell ads, and I respect that. But

there is a line. There is a boundary there. I see this with a lot with ezine

advertising co-ops. If you don't know what a co-op is, let me refer you to

the free ezine advertising glossary that I provided in the member center of

Ezine Advertising Live. A co-op is a site that sells ad packages comprised of

ads from small ezines, and those ads go out to small ezines for one low

price. The co-ops often sell classified ads, and a lot of times they sell solo

ads.

The ezines are usually bundled by subject or size of subscriber base –

usually by subject. So for one price you're buying an ad in between 20 and

50 ezines, which sounds like a great deal and it can be. I want to be very

clear about this. Co-ops can be good. They can be profitable. We're

going to talk about co-ops a little bit later tonight, but here's the problems

with co-ops that I want to cover right now. I call it cross-pollination, and

here's what I mean by that.

An ezine publisher wants to sell ads, so he or she lists their ezine in as

many ezine co-ops as they can. It makes sense, right? They need to sell

ads. These co-ops are going to sell ads for them, and so they list it in as

many of these as they possibly can.


© Charlie Page

What happens next is that the co-op does their job. The co-op sells ad

space, and begins sending the publisher many more ads than he or she

anticipated, but the publisher has to run them, because that's the deal.

That's the agreement, and so they do.

If this continues very long, the publisher will burn out their list, and

response will drop to near zero. But get this, because here's the important

part. The publisher will never know that, because the ad they run is also run

in 50 other ezines or 20 or whatever the number is. But it's usually 12 or

more. That's the nature of a co-op, and the publisher never knows that the

ads don't work, because the advertiser never knows.

Now, why is that? It's because the advertiser can't track response

in any one ezine. Does that make sense? If you go to a site and it says

for 20 bucks I'm going to place your ad in 50 ezines, you're going to fill out

a form. You're going to fill out a form. You're going to fill out the ad, and

you're going to pay your 20 bucks or 50 bucks or whatever it is, usually by

PayPal, and you're going to place that same ad in a bunch of different

ezines. It is impossible to track the response of any one ezine in that

scenario. And if you can't track it, you can't know if it worked.


© Charlie Page

So if you get response – let's say for the sake of discussion that you

place this ad in this co-op and it goes to 20 ezines and you get no response.

Does that mean all 20 ezines are bad? No, not at all. Let's say that you get

some response. Let's say that you place and ad in a co-op, and again, I'm

going to say co-ops can be good. I'm going to talk about how to use them

in a little while, but if you place an ad in a co-op here's the risk you run.

If you get some response, you can't possibly know where it came

from, and so you can't repeat your success unless you buy the same

package from the same co-op going to the same ezines. That is inefficient,

and you'll never receive the higher return on investment by doing it that

way. Now, can it work? Sure it can work, but if you can't track it, you

can't repeat it, and that's a bad thing.

Back to the right policy. If an ezine contains too many ads or sends

solos out too often, then that ezine is not going to be effective for you.

There's no hard number I can give you on this, but my personal rule is that

any more than three solos a week is too much. Again, that's not hard

and fast. I have run ezine advertising in ezines that send more than that

and done well, but my general rule of thumb when I buy ads is if they send

three solos a week and an ezine, they're talking to their people four days out

of the seven, anything more than that's too much.


© Charlie Page

As to classified ads, how can you know if the classified ads are too

much in an ezine? Again, it's not a hard and fast rule, but here's what I

generally look at. If the classified ads take up more room than the article

that's in the ezine, I'm going to be a little bit careful. I have no problem if a

published wants to sell ads all day long. That's perfectly fine with me. This

is how they make their living. I respect that, and I have no problem with it

at all.

But when they load up and ezine with so many ads that you have a

little tiny article and a big block of ads, then I think there's a problem there.

I think there's a problem of reception among the readers, because readers

want information. They want the article.

Now, here's something else I'll say just flat out. In my opinion

sending solos every day to a list is too much. I will not buy ads in

ezines that send solos every day. I never will. I have. I've tested it, but I

won't spend my money that way.

So the right policy is this. The publisher must not send so many ads

that you will get lost in the clutter. That's really important.


© Charlie Page

Okay, number six, the right format. The right format – what is the

right format? I'll be candid. I'm not sure there is a right format

universally, but formats matter, so we need to talk about it a little bit.

There are two formats for ezines, plain text and html. If you don't know the

difference, you can consult the glossary, but suffice it to say that HTML

ezines look like web pages when you read them in your email program,

while plain text are, you guessed it, plain text.

There's been a debate about which format is more effective for a long

time. Ever since email programs became html compatible so that they could

view html email, as well as plain text, there's been a debate about which

format is more effective. There are pros and cons to both, and while it's

true that almost everyone can get html email in their email program, I still

prefer plain text ezines for advertising for my ads, and I'll tell you why.

When my daughter sends me an email, it's in plain text. When my

golfing buddies want me to make a tee time and they send me an email, it's

in plain text. There are no banners. There are no moving arrows, not bold

or italic text, it's just information. When marketers send me messages

trying to get me to buy things, the messages are often in html. They look

like a web page. Some of the best ezines I get, and I read a lot of ezines


© Charlie Page

every week, are in html. They're fun to read. They're entertaining. They're

colorful. They're clearly trying to sell me something.

So you see the connection there? They're colorful. They're fun. They

got all the widgets and gadgets, and they're absolutely trying to sell me

something. So for me plain text email is friendlier. For that reason I try to

place ads in ezines that are published in plain text. But that's not to say

that I won't place ads in html ezines or to say that I don't know the

difference. There is a difference.

There are huge advantages to html ezines, including the ability to

track open rates, to include links that are not clearly links so that you can

have any of the wording that you're talking about in your article to learn

more, you know, just, "If you want to learn more, use this link." You don't

even have to say, "Use this link." It's just like a web page. Any text can

become a hyperlink.

You can use color. You can use graphics. You can use movement.

Again, you can track the open rate so that you know how many of the emails

are opened out of all the ones that are sent. You can't do that with plain

text. But for me, those factors are trumped by the fact that plain text looks

friendlier. And that really matters to me.


© Charlie Page

So what matters to you? All you need to do is know what your own

preference is and you'll have figured out how to choose the right format for

you.

So I hope you've got all six written down somewhere or, if not, get the

transcript, because it's really helpful to have the ability to look back and to

see what these points are kind of in an overview sense. I always think that's

a really good thing to be able to do.

Okay, let's shift gears a little bit, and if you have the success guide, go

ahead and open it up to Page Three. I'm going to do that right now, and I

want to talk to you a little bit about media kits. Now, last week we talked

about the four types of ezine publishers. One of the types of ezine

publishers that we talk about was the professional publisher, the publisher

that publishes for a living. They sell advertising for a living. They create

unique content, and they're very adept at sending out emails in such a way

that they get opened, that they get read and get acted on. These are top

tier ezine publishers, and there are lots of them out there.


© Charlie Page

Most of these are going to offer you what's called a media kit, and so I

took some time to put together some pieces of a media kit in order to show

you what that looks like, and then I also did this other thing which is that I

uploaded to the members area two full media kits from very professional

ezine publishers so that you could download them and look at them at your

leisure. They both are from professional ezine publishing companies, as I

said. They both have the ability to send email out to literally millions of

people. They are very professional and very good at what they do, and they

provide a media kit to help you.

So if you have you success guide, take a look at page three. If you

don't, that's okay. You can still follow along and it won't be any problem at

all. Here is what a media kit will do for you. Now I'm not going to cover

everything that it will do, but I'm going to cover the most important things

that it will do.

The first is it will show you the reach of the publisher and the

publications. Now, the media kit that I used in this example is for a

company called ArcaMax. ArcaMax is a great ezine publisher who publishes

75 newsletters believe it or not. It's what they do, obviously, for a living,

and they do it very well. And here's what their media kit says.


© Charlie Page

"Every day we send more than five million online newsletters to our

loyal readers who enjoy our family friendly, consumer-oriented editorial

content. ArcaMax offers 75 newsletters, including both original and

syndicated content, on a variety of topics from humor to current events. We

also boast a growing audience on ArcaMax.com, which delivers 15 million

banner impressions every month."

Not a bad opening paragraph. Five million online newsletters a

day, 75 newsletters to choose from total. So that paragraph which is at the

beginning of the media kit talks a little bit about their reach. That's very

important. You don't want to have to guess all this. You want to be able to

find it quickly and efficiently and make your decisions and move forward.

Now there's a second thing that a media kit should tell you which is

the types of ads available. If you have the success guide, on Page Four

you'll see that I have little screen shots showing that ArcaMax offers

newsletter banner ads, in other words banners that appear in their html

newsletters. They offer solo emails so that you can send your solo email. It

will stand alone and go to their list. They also offer newsletter text links.

This is something that publishers of html newsletters will offer. It's a little

box that will contain four or five text links. Very inexpensive and very

effective when you match the ezine to your offer.


© Charlie Page

So a media kit is going to talk about the types of ads that are

available. Again, this is not everything in a media kit. It's the most

important thing.

The next thing and the last thing is that it will talk about pricing. If

you have your success guide, you'll see on Page Five the exact price of solo

emails to ArcaMax subscribers. Now, if you don't have the success guide, I'll

tell you what that is. It's $2.50 per thousand. "Your solo email," here's

what it says, "will be distributed to ArcaMax subscribers who had opted to

receive special offers from ArcaMax advertisers. This high-demand

opportunity has limited availability in 2008, so contact us today to reserve

your spot."

Now a good media kit also going to very clearly show you how to

contact that company. And when you contact them, they are going to be

highly responsive to your request, highly responsive. So $2.50 per

thousand is well within the range of what we've talked about in Ezine

Advertising Live. It's a great price. Now, not everybody can afford to do

this on a mass scale, but my goodness, these ezines are highly responsive

ezines.


© Charlie Page

So download those media guides. Take a look at the media kits if you

have time. Take a look at the success guide if you have time, and get

familiar a little bit with media kits. Not all publishers use them, but the big

ones do, and that's a very good thing. It's a situation where it's very easy

to understand. All the information is in one place and it can really

benefit you.

We've spoken about a great many things about how to find ezines,

how to know which ones are right for you, how to match the ezine to your

offer. Very important to go beyond the obvious and consider ezines

where the content of those ezines is complementary to the product that you

sell, not only directly about it. Sometimes I think we forget this – we are

reaching out to people. Those people are just like you and me. They have

needs, and they have wants and desires and fears and things that excited

them and things that motivate them. And the more that we can tap into

these things with our advertising, the more effective our advertising is going

to be.

So if you have your success guide handy, turn to Page Six. And we're

going to start looking at the six proven ways to find ezines once you

know the type of ezine that's right for you.


© Charlie Page

The first way that we're going to talk about is the Directory of Ezines.

Now, this is not a sales pitch for the Directory of Ezines, but I truly believe

the Directory of Ezines is the best resource on the planet for finding ezines

in which to advertise. We're working very hard to make that even better,

and let me tell you a little something about that for just a moment.

I feel comfortable speaking about the directory, because I checked

today, and 99 percent of the people on this call right now are lifetime

members of the Directory of Ezines. Over the years, we have decided that

we want to change the programming in the Directory of Ezines. And since

January, we've been working on just that very thing. In the next few weeks

we're going to introduce a new and improved Directory of Ezines that will

have different ways to search for ezines and make your searching tasks

faster.

In addition, we've taken on a researcher to find ezines to add to the

directory and a person to review the ezines that are in there now and update

them. So we're not relying on other people to update the directory or to add

ezines to the directory as much as we were before. I think you're going to

see some improvement in the directory in the next few weeks.



© Charlie Page

It's a great resource now, but our obligation, our desire, our mission is

to make it the best that it can be. And we're working hard to do that.

So what I'm going to say next speaks to almost all ezine

directories, because there's a lot of ezine directories out there, but I'm

going to use some information from the Directory of Ezines, because it really

it the best resource for this type of thing. So the first proven way to find

ezines is the Directory of Ezines, and if you have your success guide, turn to

Page Seven, and you're going to see how to find ezines in four steps using

ezine directories, again, any ezine directory.

Here are the four steps.

The first consideration is category. As you've heard on this call

tonight, category is a very important thing, and that's the first best place to

start finding ezines. When I need to find ezines for the ads I place for

myself or for clients, the first place I look is category. But as you've heard

tonight, I don't stop with one category. I don't stop with the obvious, and I

think that if there was one thing that I could tell you tonight, one piece of

information, one nugget of truth that I'd have you take away from this call it

would be, "Don't stop with the obvious."


© Charlie Page

Obviously you don't want to keep going too far, but you don't want to

stop with just the obvious category. So category is the first step that I take

in looking for ezines using a directory.

Now the next step is do they sell ads? The Directory of Ezines

makes this very, very easy to determine, because we list ad content. We list

the ad costs, the sizes, the times they run. We just list everything. We

have so much information in the directory, so the first step I do is I look at

category. Secondly, do they sell ads? And specifically, are they selling the

type of ads that I want? Not everybody sells solo ads. Some people only

sell classified ads, as we covered. So do they sell the ads, and do they sell

the size that I want?

I'm a little but careful with ezines, even the ones in the Directory of

Ezines, that offer free ads. That concerns me a little bit in the respect that

they can become so overwhelmed with requests for free ads, that their

content becomes a little out of balance. So sometimes when I'm searching,

I will say, "Free ads – no." In other words, I want an ezine that doesn't

offer free ads, that only offers paid ads; because the fact of the matter is

free ads don't work. They can work for doing some testing, but they don't

work as a marketing method, and they don't work to sell products generally.


© Charlie Page

So I will choose, "Free ads – no." And then I'm looking for the other

types of ads that I want to find. I only choose one ad type at a time,

because I'm only interested to know do they sell solos or do they not?

So after I'm doing with that, you can turn the page if you have the

success guide, I want to look at ad costs. Now again, we're talking about

how to use the Directory of Ezines. Since the Directory of Ezines lists all of

this information where you can find it quickly, I'm able to quick determine

which ezines I want to use. As you'll see in a little while, it's much harder

when you're using other resources, which is why we exist.

But inside the directory there's really only four steps for me –

category. Secondly, do they sell the ad that I want? Third, what are the ad

costs? Now happily inside the Directory of Ezines we list exact ad costs. We

don't allow publishers to say, "Go to the site, and check the ad costs." We

want member to be able to quickly find exactly what they're looking for. So

I look at the ad costs and determine are they within my budget? Are they

within the budget that I have for this particular campaign?


© Charlie Page

The next thing I want to do is determine available dates. Inside the

Directory of Ezines, you will see that we have a section that talks about how

often they run ads, where to submit ads to, and that type of thing. But if

you want the next available date, you'll need to either contact the publisher,

or you'll need to visit their website.

Happily, we make that easy, too, because we list full contact

information for publishers as often as we can. We get phone numbers, fax

numbers. We get a contact email for the publisher himself or herself. We

even get addresses. We try to be very thorough. We can't always get all

the information, but we try to be very thorough in getting the information

that you need to contact the publisher quickly.

Now I do have members that say from time to time, "You know, I

emailed this publisher and the email bounced." Or, "I emailed this publisher

and never heard back. The email just went into the ether." In that case, I

recommend visiting their website. Or if you're comfortable making a

phone call to them, make a phone call, but I recommend you visit their

website.


© Charlie Page

Because of the proliferation of spam over the past few years,

publishers do sometimes stop using an email address, but they don't notify

us about it. So an email address that we might have listed temporarily

won't work. They've gone, instead to a contact form or, like I have, to a

support center. So if you find an email address that won't work, let us

know, but mostly go to their website. We list all of the details of how to

contact them.

So on the Directory of Ezines it's really a four-step process. Find the

category. Find the type of ads. Determine the ad costs. Determine the

next availability. From there it's a very simple matter of placing the ad.

Very quick. Very easy. I was a member of the Directory of Ezines. That's

what I liked about it, and as the guy who owns the place, that's what I like

about it, too. And I'm putting new programming in place to make it even

better. So that's how you use the Directory of Ezines.

Let me stop and say at this point that I'm going to make a video about

almost everything I'm talking about in the second half of the call, how to

find ezines with the DOE, how to find ezines using other ezine directories,

how to find it using search engines, etc.



© Charlie Page

I'm going to make videos about almost all of this over the next few

weeks, and as those are made, I'm going to put those in the members area

of Ezine Advertising Live. And of course, for the Directory of Ezines, we're

going to put them in the new pages of the Directory of Ezines. You're going

to see a lot of changes coming up pretty soon.

Now, you're on page eight of your success, and just stay there for a

moment. The next way to find the right ezines is other ezine directories,

and I'm going to talk about these, because I think it's only fair to not talk

about only the Directory of Ezines. Some people make a mistake and think

that the Directory of Ezines tries to list every ezine in the world, and we

absolutely don't do that. In fact, we're a little bit hard to get into in the

respect that publishers have to meet certain criteria before we'll list them in

the Directory of Ezines. Those criteria are found on the page that we have

on our site for people who list their publications.

But basically they have to publish articles, or they have to sell

advertising. We have to see back issues. We have to communicate with

them, things like that. And those criteria are very important to us. Other

ezine directories – not speaking badly about them at all – just saying that

they don't necessarily follow that same routine. So let's talk for a moment

about other ezine directories.


© Charlie Page

Free ezine directories are advertising driven. In other words, they

display AdSense ads on their site, and that's how they make money. So if

we think about this for a little bit – now you know me well enough to know

that my motto has always been that quality is more important than quantity.

And while I'm on that, let me just say that your goal with searching for

ezines is not to find 50 or 100 or 150 that we might advertise in. When I go

looking for ezines, I'm looking for five. I'm looking for three. I'm looking

for maybe seven at the most if I have a big budget, because what I

want to find is the right ezine for the offer that I have, not a cornucopia of

ezines that might be right. I find that to be wasteful from a time standpoint.

So I'm looking for the quality ezine, the one where I feel like my ad is

going to have a good chance of bringing me a return on investment. The

reason I bring that up is this. Free ezine directories are perfectly fine, but

they exist primarily to make money for the owner of the ezine directory by

displaying AdSense ads on their site. So follow this logic with me. If they

have more pages, then they can display more ads. So if they lower the

threshold of what they will accept as a listing, they'll get more pages and

be able to display more ads.


© Charlie Page

This is one reason we have never gone towards a free ezine directory

model, even though we certainly have the resources to do that, because

what we're about is the quality, not the quantity.

So when you go to a free ezine directory, one of the challenges you'll

face – and please understand, I want to be careful here. I am not in any

way talking bad about these people or these ezine directories; because they

can be useful, but one of the challenges you will face is they have many,

many pages.

One of the reasons for this is that they will list any ezine, even

those that have five subscribers. Now you know and I know and they know

that placing an ad in an ezine with five subscribers is ridiculous. It's not

going to happen, and if it does, it's not going to do you any good. But you'll

have to weed through those in order to get to the nuggets that you are

looking for. So that's something to be careful about, because I don't want

you to waste your time.

Another thing is that most of these listings are not checked by hand.

They don't determine if there's actually a website, and they're not updated

very often, if at all.


© Charlie Page

One thing, too, about free ezine directories are that you will find many

times people will list ezines that aren't really ezines but actually sales

letters. That's a very common problem in the ezine directory world.

In fact, let me tell you what happened to me last week. There's a

fellow who listed his "ezine," and I'm saying ezine in quotes, and he listed

that he had 13,000 subscribers. Okay, that's fine. He listed that he sold

solo ads for a particular price, classified ads for a particular price. He

accepted articles. He put all his contact information in there, and when I

checked the link, when I clicked the link that he listed as his ezine home

page and the page you could subscribe from – he even listed that he'd had

this ezine for three years. Sure enough, it took me to a sales letter for a

product. No ezine in sight. No nothing anywhere.

This guy absolutely didn't publish an ezine. All he did was tell a

bunch of lies in order to try to get listed in the Directory of Ezines, because

he thought that would drive traffic to his site. And he was right in that

regard. If he had successfully listed with us, he would have driven traffic to

his site, but we preempted that, because we're not going to waste members'

time. So we deleted the listing, and I wrote to him and said, "I think we

both know you don't have an ezine, and that's okay. But you know, don't do


© Charlie Page

this again, please." And of course I never heard back, and these things

happen, I'm not exaggerating, five to seven times a week.

People will list an ezine that's not their own thinking they'll get traffic

to their affiliate link. They'll just blatantly make up information and try to

list what they're calling their ezine. And then there are some people who

honestly misunderstand. They take the time to fill out the forms, and they

list their ezine not understanding what they're doing. And we communicate

with each one of them. One of us communicates with them via email

or phone every time, but we check every link, and we're not letting them

in.

So that's something you have to be careful with. With a free ezine

directory, you're going to bump into a lot of sales letters, even

though the listing is going to look very legitimate.

Unfortunately, you'll also find porn sites and gambling sites and things

like that. Most of these sites are fully automated. That's why. You put this

site. You put a little programming in place. There's no approval process.

There's no review process, so it's just boom, boom, boom. You list whatever

you want, and you're listed.


© Charlie Page

Another thing is that publishers will list on every possible directory

they can, and when they find that these free ezine directories will list them

immediately, they list on all of them. That's fine, because the publisher's

job is to promote his or her publication, but it wastes your time because

you're going to see that same ezine in many different places.

So these are the downsides to free ezine directories. The upsides to

them are they do contain a lot of information. Some of it is very good. I

would use the search facility that they offer as much as you possibly can,

and when searching on free ezine directories, I would be very careful to look

at the date that they listed. I'd be a little careful, although one click to the

site will generally do the trick. It just takes time.

Method number three is ezine advertising co-ops. Now we talked

about co-ops a little while ago, and we talked about cross-pollination. And

we talked about being careful of ezines that put out too many ads to their

readers, and all of these things are true of ezine advertising co-ops. You

have to beware of the quality. You have to know that they are often

going to have very small ezines, not necessarily five subscribers like with the

free directories, but sometimes 150, an ezine with 150 subscribers will be

listed, and they often have outdated information.


© Charlie Page

Now, I'll be the first to tell you, it's hard to keep up with information.

It's hard to keep up with big masses of information and keep it updated, but

some of these haven't updated since 2002, and that's a long time. So you

have to be careful with the ezines you find within the co-ops.

I want to be careful to make the distinction here. I'm not saying the

co-op is doing anything wrong or that they'll take your money and run or

any of those things. What I'm saying is that the ezines that exist within the

co-op, the ones that they list in their co-op, can be questionable. That's why

I recommend that if you're serious about a co-op, you go ahead and click on

the links for the individual ezines.

Now, this is time consuming, and you should know that the ones in the

co-ops that check out are mostly in the Directory of Ezines but not all of

them. So you could find ezines that you don't find in the DOE by using

these co-ops. And I will say also that it's an incredibly inexpensive way

to reach a large number of subscribers. It's good that it's a very large

number, because I question how much deliverability is going on, but that

said, I want to be 100 percent clear that co-ops can work. I'm not saying at

all that you should completely shy away from them.


© Charlie Page

Method number four is search engines, and I want to dig into this

a little bit and talk about search engines, because they can be very helpful

for finding ezines. We use search engines all the time. We use them as a

tool of research all the time. In fact, I have people who are just very good

at using search engines to find exactly what they're looking for.

If you have your success guide, you'll want to turn to Page Nine, and

you'll notice that some pages that follow are about search engines. Now this

information is an excerpt of a book that I've written about search engines

that I'm going to provide to Ezine Advertising Live members at no cost. But

I want you to have some of the information now, because the book's not

ready yet. It's simply a book about how to use search engines to find what

you're looking for. It might be ezines. It might be the right Weed Eater.

Nonetheless, search engines are very helpful.

Now you use a search engine – I'm sure everybody listening to this

has been to Google many times, and you probably know how to use Google,

but what you might have never done is you might never have clicked on the

little tiny link next to the search box that says "advanced search." I'm

going to make a video about this very thing, because I want to show you, as

well as talk to you, about how to use search engines to find ezines. For the

moment we'll talk about it.


© Charlie Page

The first thing to d when you go to a search engine is use the

advanced search feature. I suggest that you click that link and learn

something about advanced searching. And certainly the information that I'm

providing in the success guide will help with that, but the first thing you're

going to want to do is to enter a search phrase that's as descriptive as

possible about what you're looking for.

Now let's say for the sake of discussion that you're in the financial

industry, and you want to find ezines about financial matters to see if you

can purchase advertising in them and promote your financial-based product.

The first thing I would do is I would enter into Google the term "financial

ezine" in quotes. Now, if you're near a browser and you want to do this,

you can certainly follow along. There's nothing wrong with that at all. I'm

going to put in the search box "financial ezine" and then look for the

search results.

I've got quite a few, and what we're going to want to do is try to

determine do they sell advertising. So if you pick the page that you want to

go to – here's the secret with this. This is a little trick. It will come across

better on the video, but this is something I have found to be true across the

board when using search engines. The first thing you want to look for when

you use a search engine and you've clicked on a link that you suspect is a


© Charlie Page

site that will sell you advertising is you want to go to the bottom of the

page and you want to look for the word "advertising."

If it's there and you click that link, you will then be taken to a page

that will explain what type of advertising this ezine offers. Sometimes

it's a little hard to figure out. Sometimes and most of the time, I have to

say, it's very obvious. But the first thing to look for is a link that says

"advertise."

Now when I do research using search engines and I'm trying to find

ezines in which to advertise, I look for that advertise link first, and if I don't

find it, I'll be candid, I move on to another site. You may want to be more

persistent than that, but I tend to move pretty quickly when I'm doing this

type of research using these methods, because I can find what I need in the

Directory of Ezines. But I'm also looking for other things, so I'm going to

move pretty quickly. And I'm looking first for that link that says

"advertising." If I find it, then I'm going to get in there, and I'm going to

determine what type of advertising they have.

If they have a media kit, I'm going to download that media kit and

save it for later and then move on to the next, because I'm gathering

information that I'll eventually put into either a spreadsheet or I'll analyze it

a little bit later.


© Charlie Page

If they do sell advertising and you click that link, you can determine

what size ad, what cost, and other parameters.

If that's not clearly listed, here's what I suggest. I suggest writing

up a standard email – as a matter of fact, I'm going to provide you with

the standard email that I use for advertising request, and basically it's just a

short email that says, "Here's who I am. Here's what I'm looking for, and do

you provide it?"

Now in this case, I have found that most of those emails I do get a

response. I will get a response from most publishers when I'm making and

advertising request if they have an advertising link. Again, if they don't

have an advertising link, I've moved on, but you have to dig into these, and

you have to get the important criteria. What are the categories? Obviously

you're on their site, so you should know what it's about. What types of ads

do they run? What are the costs? And what are the availabilities. Those

are the big three: types of ads, cost, and availability. So if you can

determine that from the site, make a note of that or purchase an ad and

then move on. If not, send a standard email to the publisher, bookmark the

site, and move on to the next.


© Charlie Page

Search engines are really very easy to use for ezines, but you're going

to want to use a few keywords in there. Obviously, if you're in the financial

business, financial might be, bond, stock trading. You're going to want to

use the keywords that you use normally to describe your site or to describe

your product, and that's going to be a very important consideration. You're

going to want to add to that the word "ezine," and you're going to want to

add to that the word "advertising."

Now using advanced techniques, you can drill down and find more

specifics than you can otherwise. Your search statement is, of course, the

word or phrase you type in to begin the search. The words don't have to

make sense. This is something, too, that I think people don't understand

about using search engines, and this is not a seminar about how to use

search engines, but it is something about how to use search engines to find

ezines. So understand that your search statement doesn't have to

make sense to a person.

They have to make sense to the search engine.

In other words, "find a financial ezine" is not any better than "financial

ezine."


© Charlie Page

Now the hits that you see are going to be search results. Sometimes

they're a homepage, and sometimes they're a page that might just be

optimized for the words that you searched on. Unfortunately, that's not a

guarantee anymore that the pages will have that content.

Here's another thing that you should know, just a couple of search

engine tips, and that is that search engines and directories are

different. Google is a search engine. Yahoo! is a directory. If you do an

identical search on each, you'll see quite a bit of difference. Search engines,

of course, create their listings with what's called a spider, a little program

that scans the Internet continuously looking for new or updated pages, and

search engines used keywords in order to determine which search results

they're going to return to you.

Directories often depend upon humans to submit sites for listings and

to review sites, although Google does review more sites now with human

editors than they used to. Directories use their own systems to

categorized sites into groups and determine the results you see.


© Charlie Page

I think a lot of people go to Google and forget about Yahoo!, and that's

fine. You know, you can do what you want, but I'll tell you, I use Yahoo! a

lot, because as a directory it's very good. And sometimes I find results more

quickly doing that. I find that directories return fewer results, but

sometimes that's a good thing.

How many times have you gone too Google, typed in what you're

looking for, and four-and-a-half million hits? That's not unusually helpful.

They're not grouped in any particular order. Sometimes they're a little hard

to wade through. I find that occasionally a directory will return fewer but

sometimes more relevant results, so you have to try these different search

engines and see which one fits you. There's Google and Yahoo! and Ask and

these others. Search engines and directories work the same way, but they

provide different results.

Here are a few tips to use when you're using search engines. Avoid

repeating keywords in your search statement. You don't want to put the

keywords in too many times. Keywords are good, but you don't want to

repeat them. Using jargon actually helps you search better if you're in

an industry that uses jargon, particular phrases. Those phrases will

generally be unique to your industry, and because of that, using the phrases

instead of their synonyms will help you find sites more quickly.


© Charlie Page

I have a friend who sells a bond-trading product, and the phrase "bond

trading" just doesn't really appear on a lot of ezines about collecting sports

cars or playing golf of cooking. So using jargon can actually help your

search statement, and it brings back some very interesting results.

You probably know, but in case you don't, if you use quotation

marks, it will combine words into one phrase, and so those words

have to be together as that phrase.

Search engines tend to automatically place an "and" invisibly in

between words. So if you have "health ezine," it's going to be "health and

ezine." Again, the book that I'm going to provide you, I think will be very

helpful for that, and I think you'll enjoy it.

So using search engines to find engines to fine ezines can be tedious,

because once you're found the ezine, you have to determine do they sell

advertising. The way to do that is to look for that advertising link. I find it

90 percent of the time, literally, at the very bottom of the page. Why

publishers do this, I don't know, but they tend to neglect putting their

advertising link in their regular navigation. So you'll come to an ezine site

that'll have left-hand navigation with all of those nice little scroll things that

change when you roll over them. Not a word about advertising, but down at


© Charlie Page

the very bottom you'll find the advertising link. If you find it, follow it. If

you don't find it, I'd move on to the next.

That's the first pass; do they sell advertising? If they do, you want to

determine types, costs, and availability as quickly as you can. Using search

engines to find ezines can be very time consuming. I don't recommend it as

your first best choice, but it can be effective if you have lots of time.

Let's move on to method five, which is word of mouth. Now this

might surprise you a little bit, but asking your friends and asking other

people who do ezine advertising, it can be very effective. But it's something

that people often forget. One thing I would mention is this. If you're in any

kind of a network marketing or MLM type of business, you should definitely

ask your upline which specific ezines they're using to advertise that

program. These people have a vested interest in your success, and there

should be no hesitation to help you succeed. So I think it's a valid idea to

ask them which ezines they use if they use ezine advertising. Some do and

some don't.

Now, there are a couple of ways to gather ezine information using

word of mouth. One way is to ask your upline if you're in that type of

business. Another thing is to visit the forums.


© Charlie Page

If you have your success guide, you'll find on Page 11, which is the

last page of the success guide, Page 12 is just for your notes, you'll find a

list of forums that I have used over the years to talk about ezine

advertising. Sometimes I've done research by asking questions on these

forums.

Mostly, to be candid, I've answered questions about ezine advertising

and how it's done and that type of thing. But it's happy that there are

people on forums who will answer questions. I always say this when I talk

about forums. You need to know going in that forums can be a little

contentious sometimes. Sometimes the people on forums are there, and

they're a little fussy. And they're fuss at you, but I have found often if you

stick with it and you're patient, you can get some really good information on

forums.

So what I've done is I'm compiled a list of forum resources for you,

and I've put that on Page 11 of your success guide. I visit the Warrior forum

a lot. Probably you're familiar with the Warriors of Internet Marketing

created by Allen Says. If you're not, it's a forum that I suggest that you

visit. Anthony Blake runs a forum, as well as Michael Green, his

HowToCorp.com forum is very good, and I've listed five or six others that

can be very helpful, too. I like Harvey Seagal's forum on ClickBank products


© Charlie Page

if you're an affiliate marketer who sells ClickBank products. Often if you go

in and just post a question about ezine advertising, was it effective, have

you used it, can you share specific ezines, then you'll get some interesting

feedback.

Now sixth and finally, there are professional researchers. This is

an area that people overlook, and it can be done pretty cost effectively

depending on how serious you are about finding a large list of ezines. I

don't suggest this as your first method, of course. That's why I listed it last.

It's not a method many of you will use, I think, but it can be done.

There are sites like Elance and Rent a Coder and places like that were

people who do research for a living, these people live to be in front of their

computer and ferret out pieces of information, can find some information for

you about ezine advertising.

The reason that I don't suggest this is a good method or a first best

practice method for this is because it's generally a little bit costly, and

not all of the researchers get it when it comes to ezine advertising.

They'll find ezines, you betcha, all day long, because that's an easy

thing to do. But to determine if that ezine sells advertising, publishes

currently, how to contact them, and all of the other data that is in the

Directory of Ezines is a very difficult thing to do.


© Charlie Page

Let me recap these methods for you.

1. The first is Directory of Ezines.

2. The second is free ezine directories, or I should say other ezine

directories.

3. Number three, ezine advertising co-ops, something worth

looking into but enter with caution.

4. Fourth is search engines. Again, you'll get a video on this as

soon as I can possibly make it, and I'll show you exactly what to

look for on the page. That's the key. The key is when you

arrive at the page to quickly filter them in or out. Make a

decision quickly. Don't get caught up in the content. Don't get

caught up searching around for a link. If you can find it, it's

there, and if not, move on.

5. Fifth is word of mouth

6. Sixth is using professional researchers.


© Charlie Page

Now let me say this in closing – The goal is not to find a huge list

of ezines you can use.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!

The goal is to find a core set of ezines you can profit from time

and time and time again. Finding 100 ezines might be fun. It might be

interesting. It might make you feel like, "Oh, look at how many I have to

choose from," but I'm telling you that what you're looking for is three to

five powerful ezines that can work for you. Go beyond the obvious,

and find three or five ezines that will work well and that you can afford to

test with and you'll have success with ezine advertising.

I looked back today at the campaigns that I ran over the years, both

for myself and for clients, and almost all of them began by finding five

great ezines and then moving on, once success was happening, once the

money was flowing in, now the campaign funds itself. You place those first

few ads. You use 25 percent of your budget, no more than, in one location,

and you don't spend all your money in one place. You have a powerful ad,

as powerful as you can make it, and you start with a core set of ezines that

are right for you, because they're well matched to your offer.


© Charlie Page

The readers see that ad, and they're going to say, "Oh, yeah, that's

something that interests me." You don't have to gin up their interest. You

don't have to generate their interest. You don't have to create their

interest. You don't have to interrupt them and get their attention. You'll

have their attention, because you know they're interested in what you're

offering. Once you do that, you'll begin to have real success with ezine

advertising.

Thank you as always and I hope you enjoyed call 2 of our Ezine

Advertising Live series! Good night.

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