"Key Your Internet Ads!"
We all agree that placing ads on the Internet is an essential
and important part of the exposure and promotional process that
is so unique to CyberSpace.
There are a great many different locations where you can place
ads on the Internet. Literally, there are several hundreds of
thousands of such FREE Ad sites, and you can find both FREE and
Fee based online publications.
We have even set up a web site that links you to almost 12,000
of the more popular sites that are available with almost 100
sites detailed individually to ease posting:
http://emailexchange.org/freeads.html
But before you jump into posting ads online, especially if you
opt to pay for an ad, you should establish a clear-cut plan to
chart your responses.
The only way to chart your responses accurately is to "Key" all
the ads you place, whether online or in off-line publications.
Once upon a time, the simplest manner to "Key" any ad was to
write, Dept. No. 1234, or whatever number/letter combination you
might want to use, and this allowed you to know from where you
were receiving your responses.
Whether an ad is FREE or paid for, if you know if it is drawing
responses then you can make informed decisions about continuing
to place ads at those particular sites or publications.
Afterall, it does not make any sense to keep posting ads in
sites or publications where you never receive responses. Such an
effort is a complete waste of your valuable time.
Those sites that do work for you can then become the focus of
your online ad campaigns.
All it takes is a working "Key" chart.
For those of you that are spending the monthly fees to receive
web space, email aliases, etc., the solution can be as easy as
setting up individual email aliases for each account or each of
your different ad sites or publications.
For example, you place an ad at ABC Ads and you "Key" them as
abc@whatever.com. or 123@whatever.com, etc. That is the beauty
of being able to control the "Key".
Otherwise, if you request respondents to your ads to "write"
ABC, or 123, they might easily forget to do so and then you will
not be able to tell where the response is coming from on the
Internet.
If you know HTML, you might be able to set responses using the
"Quotation Marks" that go before an email address to "Key" your
ads. Or you can code the URL in the ad with a question mark,
like: http://emailexchange.org/sig.html?ad5
Reviewing your logs will show you how many people actually
accessed your sig.html document from the placement of Ad number
5.
For those of you that do not have access to code a web site or
the luxury of email forwarding aliases, you can employ the use
of FREE auto-responders to code your various ads.
Most of the FREE auto-responder services now available will
encourage you to set up as many as you need. You can set up one
for ad1@autoresponder.com, ad2@autoresponder.com, etc.
Access a FREE list of auto-responder services for this use at:
mailto:freeautoresp@emailexchange.org
Either way, you just need to keep a log and list your "Keys" in
an easy to follow manner, such as 123, abc, a100, etc. along
with which sites or publications they correspond to.
We currently use a list of just over 100 FREE Newsletters and
Ezines that we have found give us consistent responses to our
ads. Access a FREE copy via Auto-Responder at:
mailto:newsletters@emailexchange.org
Having been online for over eight years, as of this month - :-),
we have seen many Ad sites and publications come and go.
That is the current nature of the Internet; one of constant
change.
Placing a "Key" in your ads is the only way to keep track of all
the movement that comes to take place as a result of your hard
efforts to promote your product or service or lack of response.
So make certain to make every ad posted count and "Key Your
Ads"!