CodingElite.com | Articles

Promoting Your E-zine| Article #88 :PAID ADS FOR YOUR E-ZINE

This is always a delicate subject for e-zine owners and subscribers. Many e-zine publishers shy away from including paid ads in their e-zine.

Why?

Well, let’s look at it from the perspective of the person who has subscribed to your e-zine. They’ve subscribed primarily for the purpose of getting information. Now, I am sure they realize that you run a business and aren’t doing this for charity, but still, they don’t want to be sold on a constant basis. This applies not only to paid ads for your e-zine but also to your own ads. You know, those things that you throw in there from time to time in order to make a few bucks. For the most part, subscribers don’t want to be bombarded with these ads. And certainly, at least at the very beginning, you don’t want to send them any ads at all. You want to build a relationship first.

So, then how do you handle paid ads, or for that matter ANY advertising for your e-zine?

What follows is strictly from my own personal experience. I am in no way suggesting that this is the ONLY way to handle the situation. All I am saying is that this is what has worked for me. You may want to experiment and try different variations of this. That is entirely up to you. I’m just giving you the benefit of my experience.

First of all, my e-zines are sent on a weekly basis, which means that my subscribers only hear from me 4 times a month. I don’t send them any ads, either of my own or paid, until after the 4th week. And then after that, I only send them an ad once a month. Usually, the e-zine will focus on a topic, or related topics, for that month. Then, at the end of the month, I give them my sales pitch. I find this very effective because you’ve spent a month explaining a concept to them and then at the end, you show them how they can take that concept to the next level by offering them whatever product you are promoting for that concept.

This is how I handle my personal ads.
But what about paid ads?

Well, for starters, you have to look at this from the viewpoint of the person who is paying you to run an ad in your e-zine. They are going to want to make sure that their ad is going to be sent to a responsive list and one of some size as well. If you’ve only got 100 people in your e-zine, you’re not going to get too many advertisers to pay for an ad unless that ad is dirt cheap.

So this is how I handle paid ads for each of my lists.

I don’t even consider offering paid ads until my list has at least reached 1000 members. Then, what I do is offer ad rates based on how many members as the list grows. What you charge is up to you, but for me, I charge $20 for a quarter page top sponsor ad for every 1000 subscribers. If I have a list with 2000 subscribers, it’s $40.

What I tell advertisers is that 1900 subscribers gets the same rate as 1000, so you might want to lock in your $20 ad now before this list hits 2000, which it will probably do soon.

Want to guess how many advertisers you get once the word of this gets out?

Again, I would only offer 1 paid ad per month for each e-zine. So the only way I’m going to make any money is if I am running a lot of e-zines. Some people will just take as many ads as they can and run one everyday if they have to. Sorry, but that’s a good way to destroy your list.

Paid advertising for your e-zine is not a full time income. It’s just something to make a few extra dollars. If you don’t lose site of this, you’ll be just fine when it comes to running ads for your subscribers.

Read The Next Article On This Topic.

View All Articles Under This Topic.

P.S: If you would like to learn more about this topic, you can do so by joining our mailing list. Just go to the top right hand corner of this page, enter your name and email and click "Join Our Newsletter!".