Copyright (c) 2006 Homer Farey
The straight answer is YES. It does work but not in the way that a lot of people try to make you think.
If you think that you can put an advert in a newsletter or ezine and sit back and watch the orders and the money come rolling in, you are in for a bitter disappointment. It just does not work like that.
Purchasing an advert is just the same as purchasing any other business commodity. You purchase it in the expectation of making a profit.
In business you cant expect to purchase goods for $20.00 and then resell them for $2020.00 that kind of mark-up just does not exist in the real world. Why do people think that they should get that type of profit from an advert?
Answer: Because of all the hype surrounding the advertising business. If you are told something often enough, you are inclined to start to believe it. The trouble is that the people putting out all this hype have started to believe it themselves.
Let us look at it logically. It is all about percentages. An ezine has a certain number of readers. A percentage of them will read your advert. A smaller percentage will reply to your advert and another smaller percent will buy your product.
Now lets look at it in numbers. We decide to place an advert in an ezine that has 20,000 names and addresses on its list. A small percentage, perhaps 5% will not even read the newsletter. For one reason or another they will just delete it without even opening it. That leaves us with 19000 readers.
A large percentage will skim through your ad but will not be interested in what you are saying at that time. Perhaps 85%. That leaves us with just 2850 members of the list who are interested in your offer. If your offer is a good one, about 10% of these will be interested enough to click on your link to learn more about you and what benefit they will receive by accepting your offer. That leaves 285 readers.
Perhaps 1% of these will accept your offer and make a purchase. How many actual sales can we expect from this mythical list of 20,000 names? Answer: 2.85. Lets round it up to 3 people who actually purchase your product.
If the advert cost you $25.00 and you are selling something like an e-book valued at $29.99, You have a return of $89.97 from an outlay of $25.00 leaving you with a profit of $64.97. You have made a profit of over two and a half times the cost of the advert. 250% is not a bad mark up.
As I said earlier, it is all about numbers and percentages.
What I have just described is an actual scenario of an advert that I placed a week or two ago. It was in a top spot ad at the top of the page that cost me $25.00. The only difference is that I was selling an item valued at $39.99 and I made two sales. A mark up of well over 200%
With a less expensive item you may make more sales from your advert but dont expect to have thousands of potential customers pounding on your door desperately wanting to buy.
When I placed my advert in the ezine, I also placed it in nine other ezines as well. It cost me altogether $290.00 and I ended up with a return of $973.00 A profit of $683.00. Again well over the 200% mark.
The numbers on the email lists varied between 6000 and 23000 and I estimate that overall I can gurantee a profit of at least 2 times my outlay every time tha I use these particular ezines.
I use various other methods of promoting my products but ezine advertising is the only one that I know that I can rely on to make a decent profit every time that I place an advert.
If you are very selective of the e-zines that you advertise in, its quality that you are looking for, not quantity. You should soon have a list of a dozen or more e-zines and newsletters that you can be sure will make you a profit every time that you use them.
The more times that someone sees your advert, the more likely he or she is likely to buy. So once you have found ezines that work for you, keep on using them time and again. Profit is what we are after. |
