An ezine is basically a newsletter that is delivered to the subscriber’s computer via email. The ezine will cover one topic and appeals to those who are interested in the topic. Each issue of the ezine may contain ads, but such ads will be competing with other ads as well as the actual content of the newsletter. That’s where solo ezine advertising comes in. This is where the publisher of the newsletter will send your ad to all of their subscribers, without anything else competing for the reader’s attention.

Safelist solo ads are a bit different. A safelist is an email exchange. Everybody that signs up agrees to read email messages in exchange for their message being read. Readers click a special link within the email to prove that they have read the message, so they can receive credit. The more messages you read, the more people you can randomly send to. However, if you pay for a solo ad you can normally choose how many people will get it, or (at the highest level) have it sent to everybody participating in the safelist.

The big benefit of solo ezine advertising is that the newsletter covers one topic. Therefore, if you sell a related product or service, then you can be sure that you are targeting people that will be interested in your offer. Safelists typically don’t have any requirement as to specific topics, so the targeting of safelist solo ads is more tricky. Your best bet with safelists is if you’re selling something safelist users would want; such as information on how to make more money with safelists.

Another big difference between the two is that ezine subscribers are more likely to actually read each issue they receive. So when they receive your ad, they are more likely to spend time to read it, and consider your offer. Safelist messages, on the other hand are not typically read all that closely. Why not? Because most safelist users are only trying to build up credits to get more people to read their ads. So, instead of reading each message, they are just hunting for the link that will give them credit, and then they move on to the next one.

Does this mean solo ezine advertising is better than safelist solo ads, or vice-versa? Not at all. It just means that you should understand the pros and cons of each one before you use it to market your own business using either one, or both, of these methods.

But once it’s set up and once it’s ready to go, even once you have all your content planned out… then what?

This is where many people get stonewalled. They either end up trying to friend too many people or not enough, or can’t seem to get their social media profiles off the ground and get those customers into the business.

Don’t despair. There is a way to work social media platforms in order to ensure that you will get traffic to your website should you have it, or if nothing else be sure that your social media site gets the attention it deserves. The key? Moderation.

One of the biggest mistakes that business owners make when they are starting a social media profile is to friend four hundred people at once. If thousands of people end up getting the same invite, they may assume that you are fishing for friends and delete your profile off the bat without giving it any heed. The better solution is to friend no more than twenty people at one time. Once you’ve cultivated a “friendship” with those twenty people – or however many of the twenty deign to respond to your invitation – you can move on to the next batch.

Another great way to get interest to your profile is to friend other businesses as well. It helps if you can network with fellow businesses or groups that have the same interests and products as you do, as not only will it give you more information, it also makes your profile look more “well-rounded.”

Don’t forget to advertise the fact that you’re on social media sites at your physical store, too. A sign asking customers to follow you on Twitter might be better received than you originally think. It’s also good to start with your local base, because the more followers you have, the easier it gets to recruit other people to friend your profile or follow your feed.

Also, don’t forget to keep your content interesting and fresh. Don’t update every day if you don’t have something to say. While updating Twitter feeds constantly might be the thing among the preteen sect, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best idea for your business. Only update when you have something to say – and if that “something” is an offer or a sale, that’s all the better!

Sometimes it is best to rely on simple tools and small opportunities when you are just starting out in the industry. You will have much time to grow your business and expand your customer base if you follow the simple steps outlined in this guide. So let’s begin first by talking about subscriber leads.

Subscriber Leads

One easy way to build your list is by collecting subscriber leads. This is one of the best ways to expand your business. There are many ways to acquire leads, but the best way to collect leads is to gather them automatically, through email or by your website through various forms. In the next few sections of this book, we will go into greater detail about the ways you can grow your subscriber list and maintain your list over time.

You will find as you run your business that your subscriber leads prove vital to your businesses success and ability to grow and expand over time.

Opt-In Leads

Like subscriber leads, opt-in leads are a good tool for building your business. Opt-in leads are leads you get when you invite someone to enter their information into your database. When they do this, they are granting you permission to contact them in the future about new products or updates to your site.

For example, when you create your website, you can set it up so each person that visits has the choice to sign up for a newsletter or some other type of routine e-mailing. By signing up, visitors are “opting in” to your list. Setting your site up this way allows you to gain visitor’s email addresses. While you can never force someone to do what you want them to, this approach often works if you encourage people to sign up by describing all the benefits your site offers. You can then reap the benefits of gaining important subscriber leads.

Survey Leads

Another way to produce automatic subscriber leads is by conducting surveys on your website. This is a simple way to increase the number of subscribers to your list. You can place survey ads on your website so they pop up when a customer checks out.

How do you get someone to fill out a survey? It is not as hard as you think. For starters, some people enjoy filling out surveys. For those that don’t you can employ some simple tactics to encourage them to offer their information to you. For example, tell your customers what benefits they will reap from filling out your survey. Don’t assume your customer’s know what benefits they will gain by filling out a survey. You have to tell them. Maybe they will gain access to your website, which contains thousands of free articles on the topic they are researching. Maybe you will enter them into a contest to win a free gift. Giveaways are a great way to encourage people to sign up for just about anything.

It’s funny how quickly people are willing to give up their personal information, including their name, address and email for a gift. We’ll talk more about gifts later in this guide.

Make sure you offer them an irresistible reason to fill out your survey. Tell customers how they will profit by signing up. This is a very easy and successful tool marketers use to produce new leads. Most times visitors are willing to offer their email address for a survey.

Let’s talk now about the next simple tool you can use to build your subscriber list.

Affiliating

One way you can collect leads for your subscriber list is by affiliating. Affiliating means joining in or offering an affiliate program. When you take part in an affiliate program you immediately realize the benefits of getting leads that an affiliate will create and then forward to you.

For this process to work you need an opt-in program and an auto responder programmer. We will devote an entire section to auto responders later in this guide. Using these programs you can gather information and instantly send out confirmation emails to new subscribers on your list. Don’t worry about having people fill in their address fields or phone number. Most people are hesitant to provide this information, but very willing to provide their email address. There is much less pressure involved when you are collecting email addresses instead of personal information.

Choosing the right price for your E-Book is one of the most critical parts of the marketing process. The first rule of pricing E-Books is to never underprice. Determine the highest price your audience can afford, and then if you find your book isn’t selling, you can always reduce the price. Before you take that step, make sure you are promoting your book like crazy on the Internet and on websites. The price should be aimed at bringing in profits, but you should never forget that price is one of the factors that people use in judging the value of your E-Book ? before they buy it. So always start with the highest price, and then launch a mega-marketing campaign.

Pricing an E-Book is particularly difficult because E-Books are a fairly new commodity. Since they are digital, the value of an E-Book is as confusing as the understanding of what digital actually is to the average layperson. This means that we must look at E-Books in a different light in order to determine their actual worth in this brave, new cyber world.

Let’s look at the difference between a book in print and an E-Book. A printed book is an object you can hold in your hand, store on your bookshelf, even hand down to the next generation. It is priced on factors such as paper stock, design and production costs, and marketing.

But the fact that unites E-Books and print books is that they are composed of ideas. It is the ideas in these books that have the ability to change, or possibly transform, people’s lives.

What do you think an idea is worth when evaluated against the cost of paper and ink?

It is the IDEAS that are valuable! That is how you determine the cost of your E-Book.

What should I charge for my ideas?

There are all different formulas and methods for determining the correct price for your E-Book. Let’s begin with honing in on your ultimate goals.

Decide if your goal is to get wide distribution and maximum exposure. This goal is aimed at drawing customers to your business or service, or to establishing the credibility of your reputation. If this is your main goal, you should aim to keep your price on the low side. Some authors have even priced their E-Books at a profit loss to draw a high number of new customers. The key is to find a price that maximizes your profits and the number of books you sell.

This is an excellent pricing strategy if you are looking to acquire long-term customers. Long-term customers are extremely likely to buy from you again and again as long as the first E-Book they buy is of exceptional quality and beneficial to the customer.

However, if your book contains valuable and more importantly NEW information, references, or techniques then you should aim to price it on the high end.

After you figure out your goal, you must figure out what your audience’s need is for your E-Book. For example, does your book solve a particular problem? If it does, and solves it in a way that hasn’t been written about in one hundred other E-Books, you will be able to achieve high sales at a high price. If your book solves a problem or answers questions in a new and unique way, you should price your book as high as you can go. You will achieve larger profits this way, but bring in fewer customers. Just make sure the question or problem that your book solves is one that is important and relevant to the majority of your market audience. If your ideas are not common knowledge, or you are presenting a brand new technique, you will be able to sell books at a high price. Just be prepared for your competition to undercut you on price as soon as they hear about your book.

Keep in mind that the above pricing strategy is temporary. Eventually, you will cease to sell books at this high price. So figure out in advance how long you plan to offer your E-Book at this high price, and when that time is up, change your pricing strategy.

If you want to see large profits over customer draw, aim for an audience that is looking for easy solutions to their problems at a low price. If your book is aimed at solving one particular problem rather than general advice, then you can charge more. Start at the highest price the market will bear to bring in the largest profits, and plan to discount the book a number of times throughout the year.

Marketing Strategies

The key that unlocks the sales potential of your E-Book is to find a single sentence that becomes your selling handle. This sentence states what question or problem your book answers and the benefits your E-Book can provide. Then be sure to use that sentence in every piece of sales and promotional material, and every time anyone asks you about your E-Book.

Besides promoting your books assiduously online, there are several other strategies that can help you sell more books.

One is to give something away for free with your book, such as a valuable bonus item. Or bundle several E-Books under one price, which lowers the price for each E-Book if they were sold separately.

An effective technique for figuring out a price is to send out a survey to your current customers. If these customers have already bought an E-Book from you, ask for their opinion in terms of price. Do this by creating a sales page for the new book, but don’t include a price on that page. Instead, add a number of links to survey questions that ask pointed questions to aid you in assigning a price to your E-Book.

Another strategy is to test out prices by creating a number of duplicate sales pages with different prices on each page. Make sure your sales copy is exactly the same on every page, and includes your selling-handle sentence. Then figure out for each page the conversion ratio between visitors to your site and sales of your book. This will tell you what your optimum price is.

Ultimately, if you’ve written a book that solves a problem or presents a new technique, your book will bring in both traffic and profits. So be sure to write that selling-handle sentence that sums up what problem your book solves and what the benefits of your book will be to the customers who purchase it. And then watch your market come to you!

Place the ad on the free sites. You never know, the one person who really needs what you are selling may just be looking there right now. Why anyone would ignore such a good resource is beyond me but even I know someone who has listened to the naysayers and she has not been very successful in her internet business endeavors because she has no online ad traffic. Just think of the millions of people she could have reached if she had just placed that ad on the free sites.

Learning how to write a n effective ad will put you one above the rest. If you can’t write or are intimidated by the process then hire someone to write it for you. You will need to make sure you have the budget for this.

The cheapest way is to learn to write for yourself. My advice to you is to take a look at what is out there for writing samples on the internet. If you can speak English and can hold a pen in your hand you are qualified to write your own ads. Some of the stuff you find out there is so bad it will leave you shaking your head in wonder as to how they ever got published in the first place. Some of it doesn’t even make sense!

Anyway, you can do this, I have faith in you. First, make a list of, say, ten free classified ad sites you think you can trust. Then, research them to be sure you can trust them. Make sure they are on the up and up with no funny stuff going on. When you get ready to submit your ad, be sure to follow their rules for submitting ads closely. Remember you are trying to get more traffic to you website not the other way around.

Read all of the directions before you do anything. Find out if you can upload a picture of what you are selling. This will help increase sales. The free sites may not allow pictures but check it out and if they do then put one up. It can’t hurt.

These free sites may not have categories of ads listed so your ad may get lost in the jumble but like I said if it is not out there then it surely will not be seen. Use every advantage you can find when it comes to trying to drive online ad traffic to your site. Use the free sites to start and then graduate to paid sites when the money starts rolling in.

This method can also be harnessed effectively for advertising purposes, particularly with the development of smartphones. All smartphones these days come with Bluetooth programmed in so consumers can use wireless headphones and transmit information from the device in a way other than traditional wireless communication. This Bluetooth toggle is nearly always on, so the smartphone is receptive to information that could be casting around the area.

This is a perfect way to step in for advertising. Bluetooth advertising works by setting up “hubs” in areas where you believe that interested consumers might be hanging out. A good example of a Bluetooth hub might be at a mall, or a dining hall at a busy college campus. Any place where there’s a high density of people is a great place to set up a Bluetooth hub. When a customer with a smartphone walks by that has Bluetooth activated on his or her phone, the hub will pick up on it. At that point, the hub sends a query to the customer’s phone, asking if he or she would like the information that the hub is sending.

The information sent by the hub can be anything from a screensaver to a coupon to a link to your website to ringtones to a multimedia display. Anything that can be sent wirelessly can be sent to a consumer through Bluetooth. The range of an individual hub can be between 200 and 300 feet – so if you’re at a convention or any place where there are a lot of people wandering around, think of all the customers that can be queried by your hub!

If you’re a startup who doesn’t have a whole lot of money to spend on constant mobile marketing campaigns, using Bluetooth technology can be a great way to get started, since it doesn’t require constant costs. If you’re heading to a convention or you have a booth in a mall, you can have a Bluetooth hub set up for that particular event. Even better, you can track the amount of people who accept your Bluetooth-sent queries, so you can effectively figure out how interested consumers are in your information and make adjustments regarding the broadcasting of information and your Bluetooth offerings.