For the netrepreneur seeking targeted free and low-cost advertising, ezines are an excellent resource. Using the following strategies you can get hundreds of dollars worth of ezine advertising on an ongoing basis, absolutely for free. You can also use these resources to structure an advertising campaign to fit your budget.
Before you get started, make sure you set up a special email address just for your ezine subscriptions – this will be very important to help you stay organized. Be careful about using a web-based email account, if you go out of town or miss a few days, there’s a chance it might fill up too quickly. If your emails start bouncing, your ads will not run. If you do not have access to a separate email alias from your current ISP and need to set up a free web-based account, it’s best to use one with a large amount of storage space, such as:
http://gawab.com
To get started with your free ezine advertising campaign, first visit:
http://subscribeme.net
This is a free service you can use once every three months to get your classified out to over one million subscribers.
Submitting your classified to the service above is just the beginning of your new free advertising strategy. When you use this service, you will be automatically subscribed to many excellent ezines. A number of them offer free weekly classifieds to subscribers, so your next step is to read through the ezines, looking for the directions provided as to how and where to submit your next free classified.
If you’re the organized type, here’s where you might start making note of which ezines offer ongoing free ads, and tracking your ad submissions. After your ad is published, you can record it’s publication date also.
Each ezine will have different specifications for the size of your classified. You will need to format your ad to a certain amount of characters per line, and a certain amount of lines. It will help if you set up a text file with multiple versions of your ad formatted to the varying guidelines. There are several great resources you can use you can use to make sure each line is a certain amount of characters. You can use this online text editor, simply enter your ad copy and specify the number of characters per line:
http://formatit.com
Or you can download this free software (NoteTab Light) and format the characters per line on your computer:
http://notetab.com
Next, you can find more ezines which offer free ads, some only for new subscribers, others on a regular basis.
The links below contain ezines which offer free advertising:
http://www.ezines-r-us.com/freeadvertising.htm
http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/ezines2.htm
http://www.motherearthpublishing.com/journal/freeezineadvertising.shtml
You can also search through various ezine directories to find more ezines to subscribe to, such as:
http://www.ezinelisting.com/index.html
http://www.internetmarketing-success.com/email-marketing/ezine-directories.htm
Now that you’re subscribed to a wide variety of ezines and have your ongoing free classified ads, you have another great opportunity to get even more high quality free advertising, such as free banner ads, top and bottom sponsor ads, solos, and more. As you take the time each day to go through your subscription inbox, you will find tons of contests you can enter to win advertising.
If you take the time to diligently enter every contest, you may find yourself winning high quality free advertising once or twice a week!
Another great benefit of being subscribed to multiple ezines and actively reading them is that you will sometimes find the publishers sending specials and discounted advertising rates straight to your inbox that you would not have access to if you had just ordered an ad without subscribing.
You can track the results of all of your ads to test different ad copy and see what is pulling the most, and which of your ezines are performing the best. This will give you a real headstart when you want to order some paid advertising.
Subscribing to many ezines is an excellent business strategy for gaining ongoing free advertising, winning additional free advertising, testing your ad copy, discovering which ezine subscribers are most receptive to your offer, and accessing valuable discounted advertising rates. So subscribe, and invest a few minutes to go through your inbox daily. Your attention will pay off. The time you spend will be a worthy investment.