How to build your ezine list by "buying" subscribers
It's getting harder and harder to build a decent subscription base
for your ezine.
In the old days, two or three years ago, word of mouth and other
free methods were enough to build your list. But now there is so
much competition that people are already suffering from ezine
overload.
One way - and the best way if you can write well and quickly - is
to submit articles to ezines and websites. But writing well is not
something all of us can do.
But one other sure-fire way to get new readers is pay for them.
Call it advertising if you like.
We all know that advertising works. The big companies are the
ones that spend most on advertising and marketing. The bigger
the promotional budget the bigger the sales. When I was in
England the other week I read that Walkers Crisps became the
countries biggest selling potato chip last year by spending
around $500 million dollars on advertising. Do you think they'd
have reached that coveted number one spot without spending
big on advertising? Of course they wouldn't.
It stands to reason that if you advertise your ezine heavily
you're going to get a lot more subscribers than if your ezine
remains a little known secret.
( though whether you retain the new subscribers you "buy"
depends on the quality of your publication )
Here's what to do:
1. Decide how much you can afford to spend on promotional
activities...on marketing/advertising. Set aside a budget for
buying advertising - whether it's a percentage of the income
you make from your web site, or just money you can afford
to set aside by quitting smoking or something. You also need
to work out how much a new subscriber is worth. Here's a
clip from Ken Evoy's brilliant Sales From The Edge ezine,
which you can subscribe to http://salesnow.sitesell.com
_________________
"Before forking out any money, always think of what you can
get in return first (sorry, I'm a mercenary guy here). So
ask yourself... if you pay GoTo.com $x per click-through,
how much profit can you get in return?
Confused? A little math will clear things up in a jiffy...
Suppose you are selling a digital product (i.e., zero
incremental per-unit cost of production) at $50, and you have
a 1% conversion ratio, i.e., you make one sale for every 100
visitors. So one visitor is worth $0.50 ($50/100), and that
is the maximum amount you should bid at GoTo.com for each
keyword. We will call this your BID CAP."
_________________
Of course, if you're not selling a product, just giving away an
ezine, you need to look at it a little differently. A simple way
is to add up your monthly advertising income + affiliate program
sales income and divide it by the number of subscribers. If
you make $500 a month from 2000 subscribers then each
subscriber is worth 25 cents. ( though if they stay subscribers
they will be worth a whole lot more over time ).
2. Buy spots on Goto and similar pay-per-clickthro search
engines. I've listed a few on the Goto pages I put up at
http://www.ozemedia.com/goto.htm
You'll also find links to some great Goto keyword tools
3. Buy advertising in other ezines. You can find a lot of info
on this at Ruth Townsend's Directory of Ezines at
http://www.lifestylespub.com
4. Running an affiliate program where you pay people to
send subscribers to you. Two ezines that do this are Bizbot
and Web Promote. I'm not sure how well this works though.
I signed up for their affiliate programs maybe a year ago,
but I've never received a check from either of them so I
guess I haven't sent many people their way.
5. Directly paying for subscribers. A number of web sites have
sprung up which act as newsletter subscription points. The
details of your ezine are entered into their databases and a
subscription form to your ezine is placed on their web site.
You then pay them for each subscriber they send your way.
Most of them charge between 8 and 15 cents for every new
subscriber they get you. And it can work out to be expensive.
With Newsletters For Free you have to agree to pay for 3000
at $300 a month, if they can produce that many subscribers
for you.
One thing to think about before you start using these services,
is that when people find your ezine through one of these sites
the unsubscribe rates may well be higher than usual. This is
because people often just check a number of subscribe
boxes, then later realize they've got too much mail, and go
back and tick the unsubscribe boxes.
The best way to avoid people leaving your newsletter is to
put out a quality publication.
List World
List World will get you subscribers for $0.15 each. You can
elect to receive them as individual emails or they can be
added via email commands directly to your list server.
http://www.listworld.net/
Newsletters For Free
Newsletters for Free charge you 10cents a subscriber. It's
a good professional site with plenty of traffic. The downside
is that you have to agree to pay for at least 3000 a month
if they can send you that many. You can elect to have new
subscribers sent to you daily, weekly, or monthly, and you
should elect to get them daily. If someone signs up and
doesn't get a welcome letter from you for weeks then they
might think you're spamming them.
http://www.newslettersforfree.com/
Best Newsletters
This site used to charge you $15 a month for 100 subscribers.
If they didn't get you 100 new people you didn't pay, but
now they've changed to charging a fee of 8 cents a subscriber.
http://www.bestnewsletters.com/
Cumili
This one works differently by billing you a yearly fee of $100,
but you can reduce this to just $30 if you run two newsletter
adverts for them, plus link to them in your "thanks for
subscribing"letter.
http://Cumuli.com/
You can find a lot of excellent information on building your
ezine list, on how to set ad rates, on how to judge the value of
a subscriber - and a lot more - at http://www.ezine-tips.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phil Wiley
All the Secrets Marketing and Free Publicity Newsletter
http://www.ozemedia.com