Welcome to Affiliate Marketing Guide
Affiliate Coffee Join Our Program Article
. For a permanent link to this article, or to bookmark it for further reading, click here.
The Marketing of Affiliate Success: eBay - ezine Advertising Coops
from: BW GriggsIntroduction & Boilerplate
What does it take to successfully market a software product
using only the Internet? This is the question I was faced with
in January 2005. I had just completed development of my
Affiliate Success: eBay software and now all I needed was a
couple of thousand sales I would be happy. I quickly realized
that developing my software was just the first step. I knew this
all along but I had not really put any energy into marketing
while building my product.
As I began researching various marketing avenues I made the
decision to share my marketing trials and tribulations with the
world. The decision to do this was driven in no small part by a
discussion I had with a certain super-affiliate who shall remain
nameless at this point in time. Every series needs a little
mystery and intrigue right? There are tons of books about
emarketing and some even provide real-world examples but
wouldn't it be fun to actually come along for the ride? To learn
as I learn? To see the real deal, blemishes and all? And so, the
series The Marketing of Affiliate Success: eBay was born.
Each installment is this series will be posted on my website as
well as on several article directories, and will also be
available via newsletter subscription. Each installment will
focus on a specific marketing channel or approach. A few
examples: marketing using ezine ad coops, marketing using
Adwords, joint ventures, forum marketing, and website
advertising, and niche newsletter advertising.
The Marketing of Affiliate Success: eBay - ezine Advertising
Coops
This first installment of The Marketing of Affiliate Success:
eBay is concerned with ezine advertising coops. At some point
while searching for advertising opportunities I ran across a
website that offered advertising within an ezine ad coop. The
focus of the ad coop was home business related - a perfect fit
for my product. My original plan was to do some focused ezine
advertising but when I discovered I could have my ad placed in
dozens of ezines I figured this would be a great deal. I must
admit I was slightly suspicious when I noticed that they
required me to subscribe to each newsletter but after another
hour of research it was clear that all ezine ad coops had this
requirement. Well, I thought, it does make sense that I should
be a subscriber since then I will be able to verify that they
actually run my ad.
The Concept Behind the Ezine Advertising Coop
The general idea behind an ezine advertising cooperative depends
on your perspective. For ezine publishers, membership in an
advertising cooperative is a great way to build their newsletter
membership. Remember, in order to run the ad I had to become a
subscriber to a bunch of ezines. The more subscribers a
newsletter has, the larger the potential financial return on
marketing activity and these guys are all about marketing.
From the advertiser's perspective, the value proposition is that
for a minimal cost the advertiser can get his message in front
of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Ideally,
the coop will be focused on a niche that the advertiser's
product fits into but this doesn't always have to be the case.
Bottom line - the cost per pair of eyeballs appears to be very,
very low.
My Campaign Begins
The sum required was minor - around $30. Not a big deal
considering my ad would run in dozens of ezines with a total
combined readership of well over one million people. So,
although I was suspicious of the subscribing requirement, I
figured I couldn't lose on the deal. Look, I thought, if only
one person purchases my software I have paid for the ad and put
$70 in the bank (before taxes.) It seemed to be a very favorable
value proposition.
So, in a great flurry of activity I created an ad, revised it,
threw it out, and created another! I worked feverishly to
perfect my ad. Night became day, day became night and finally, I
was done. Here is what I ran -
----------------> AD BEGINS
I Made $29,000 Last Year On Just One Of My Websites. So Can You!
I will show you how you can make thousands of dollars on your
website using my software and one of the leading affiliate
programs on the net today. One guy calls my software "Adsense on
Steroids!" without the Adsense! No website? Build a 27,000 page
website instantly. http://www.shrubsoft.com/ase-ez1.php
----------------> AD ENDS
I will grant that it's a little cheesy but those $$ titles
really pull clicks. My thinking was that since the ad cost was
limited to my initial outlay, I could afford to pull all
potential traffic - even unqualified traffic. My reasoning
behind such a generic ad approach was that I felt it would be
very challenging to pull any traffic if my ad referenced eBay
Web Services and PHP. These words and concepts are alien to many
people. I planned to use my sales letter to convert people with
little technical sophistication. My approach and my ad copy was
different when I entered the world of pay-per-click but that is
the topic of another installment.
Next, I went to the website that offered the ezine ad coop
service, filled out the form, and PayPal transferred the cash to
the owner of the coop. I quickly received a response from my new
ad agency and it had some very interesting information contained
within it. I had to subscribe myself to over a dozen of the
ezines. But it wasn't simple. Yahoo Groups hosted one ezine,
several required I send emails to listserv machines, and in
several cases I had to go to websites and fill out a form.
Ezine Ad Coop Campaigns Are Hard Work
One hour later I was regretting my decision to forego the
slightly more expensive option of advertising without the need
to become a subscriber to all those newsletters, but that was
only the beginning of my regrets. I next had to confirm my
subscription to various newsletters - double opt-in and all
that. One of the ezines actually had me wade through 15 pages of
surveys and "would you be interested in this offer" pages before
finally confirming my subscription. I then found that the ezine
had been dormant for seven months!
Finally, after confirming that I was successfully subscribed to
all the ezines, I sat back and let out a sigh of relief. In the
coming days about half of the ezine owners sent me notes
informing me when my ad would run. The ad runs were spread
across the next six weeks.
Am I The Advertiser?
With the ezine ad coop business behind me, I returned to my
marketing research with the revised thought that if only two
sales resulted from the goat rodeo I had experienced I would be
satisfied. Within a few days the newsletters started arriving,
and not just newsletters but plenty of highly valued and very
important solo ads that were filled with text like this:
F.ree mo.ney for you. No effort required. Easiest MLM pro.gram
ever!
They have to insert those periods or the SPAM filters will flag
the messages every time. Why? Because the message is SPAM! Okay,
I understand that SPAM filters are sensitive and sometimes you
need to insert a period or two to lower the SPAM Assassin score
of your broadcast message but these solo ads had a punctuation
density so high that the messages approach being unreadable; I
began to think I was reading Morse code.
For the uninitiated, a solo ad is an advertisement that is sent
in a single email without other newsletter content to
subscribers of a newsletter. Generally this would be considered
SPAM but the subscriber agreement you accept for these types of
ezines contain language stating that you agree to receive such
communications. I like to call it opt-in SPAM.
It continued like that for six long weeks. They were easily six
of the most painful weeks I have ever lived. It was interesting
to note that many of the ezines were not delivered via email.
The list owner would instead simply send a broadcast message
informing me that the newsletter could be viewed on their
website. Interesting thing though, the solo ads were delivered
directly into *my* mailbox.
eZine Advertising Coop Campaign Results
The result of my ezine advertising campaign was 89 referrals
from various newsletters in the cooperative to my ezine
destination URL. I know because I created a specific URL with
redirection code so I could track the click-through performance
of the campaign. While I have no way of tracking each individual
source since some newsletters were delivered via email, I did
know the aggregate results and 89 click-throughs was not the
level of success I had expected. More importantly, 89
click-throughs and zero sales.
The campaign was an unmitigated disaster. Of course the deck was
stacked against me from the start. I quickly noticed that 95% of
the ezine publishers had dozens of ads in each newsletter issue.
There was generally a top, middle, and bottom sponsor ad and
these ads were generally demarcated very well and they probably
received decent response too but they were for "their"
advertisers. I generally found my ad near the bottom of their
newsletters in a special section for the ad coop. In many cases,
the newsletter belonged to multiple ad coops so there might be
40 ads and five coop sections in each issue! The slickest trick
I found was the publisher that actually had a special edition of
his newsletter filled with ads. Yes, filled with ads. Sure he
also threw in a syndicated article that he grabbed from one of
the article sites but it was rather clear that his normal
readers ignored the "special edition" of his newsletter each
week. I know I would. If Adsense has taught us anything it's
that ads are most effective when they are integrated into the
text on a page. These guys segregate ads so their subscribers
don't need to bother ignoring them within the main body of their
newsletters.
Worse though was the quality of many of the ezines. The only
original authorship in some of these ezines was the editorial
and by the time I made it two or three sentences into that it
became obvious why! If you believe we live in the age of
universal literacy you are wrong. It wasn't all bad though.
Several of the newsletters actually provided some decent content
but more often than not content came in the form of articles
culled from the article sites. I don't have a problem with
article sites but I expect a newsletter to provide significant
original value.
Lessons Learned
I did learn some things though. I know that a HYIP (High Yield
Investment Program) is a really cool way to turn $10 into $20. I
found that I really needed an e-gold account if I wanted to
achieve financial freedom. I learned that the government
*doesn't* want me to know about the secret banking system, that
my money was not at risk even though they didn't have FDIC
insurance, and that I could truly take part in a risk-free
investment that would double my money and pay me interest every
single hour of the day. I learned that people apparently fall
for this crap.
I learned that I could buy "make money at home" leads by the
thousands, import them into my autoresponder, and then SPAM
these leads. Apparently it's okay though because the nice folks
on the list I have purchased filled out a survey and expressed
an interest in making money from home. I learned that people
just don't understand what double opt-in means.
But most important of all, I learned that ezine ad coops exist
for one reason only - to dupe people into joining a bunch of
marginal ezines so they can market their crap to you. I
discovered that the insult is that much more powerful because I
gave them $30 for the privilege of being assaulted day after day
with SPAM in the form of solo ads and substandard newsletter
content. I suppose if you need to market your new HYIP, sell
some red hot "work at home" leads, or push your latest
get-rich-quick scheme you will find kindred souls in some of the
ezine ad cooperatives operating today but if you need to market
a legitimate, quality product you should look elsewhere.
Final Conclusion
If you want to advertise in ezines, locate ezines in your niche,
subscribe, and once you are sure that they publish to high
standards, toss them a couple of bucks. Ask the publisher what
his subscriber count is. Inquire as to click-through rates on
previous ads. You also need to insure you know where your ad
will be published within the newsletter and when it will be
published.
Don't bother with ezine ad coops especially when their home page
feels like a trip back to 1999.
Rest assured, most installments in this article series will be
informative *and* upbeat. This ezine ad coop episode represents
an ugly departure from what is generally proving to be an
exciting, profitable, and informative learning experience. And
please don't misunderstand my message. I obviously did not work
with *every* ezine ad coop so I can't with conviction say that
they all operate in this way or that they are all comprised of
solo ad slinging, no original content newsletters.
About the author:
BW Griggs is a software developer and active affiliate. He is
the author of Affiliate Success: eBay, a nifty piece of software
that takes advantage of eBay Web Services.
Learn more about Affiliate Success: eBay here:
http://www.shrubsoft.com/ase-details.php
Read new articles in this series here:
http://www.shrubsoft.com/blog/published-essays/
Affiliate Coffee Join Our Program News