Selling a product, real or digital is not always the only way to create income on the internet. You can also sell a ’service’. One of the most popular and longest running services on the Internet is the E-ZINE. Ezines are basically digital periodicals that you send out to your subscribers. People pay you to be in your e-zine and going out to your different subscribers.

Some sites will gather your email and name, then use this to send you offers.  Some of them don’t send offers, just an e-zine. Ezines can be just updates on what’s going on at the site, or offers that are for products, goods or services that the site owner thinks his list may be interested in.

Pricing:
Because e-zines are like most other read materials on the internet, having your ad or name closest to the top, where most everyone will read is much more desirable than being closer to the bottom, where people usually don’t even read because they scan through the first 3/4 ads and then cruise on. Now being on the bottom doesnt mean that its a useless effort, there are some people that do read the entire publication, there are some clever publishers that put special offers or eye catching graphics at the bottom so that their readers ARE drawn down the page and read your article. But as a general rule of thumb, the closer to the top the better. Because the top spots are more desireable, more people want them, and publishers can charge top dollar for the very top spot. As you  go down the page, spots general get cheaper. Usually the pricing is similar to this

TOP - $50
SECOND - $40
THIRD - $30
FOURTH - $20

Or something similar. The point is the farther up the page you go, the higher the price gets. Some advertisers go that little extra mile and have a ‘general’ area at the bottom of the page, where you can put in 1 line ads for $2-$5 bucks. Generally these ads aren’t all that great for R.O.I. but if the Ezine goes out to an extra large list, and the ads are super cheap, they might be worth the occasional purchase.

Benefit:
Of course the main benefit is traffic. Getting on a good Ezine can bring in great traffic for a site, it can also create good traffic for the e-zine publisher, so it’s a good thing all the way around. Another good benefit for the advertiser is ease. A good e-zine publisher can save a LOT of time in a marketing campaign while getting your ad out to the maximum amount of people.

Things to watch out for:
Watch out for fly by night sites. There are many sites that pop up offering great returns on an e-zine purchase with them. Many times these sites are sending out ads to bought lists or blind mailings. If you don’t know, thats spamming and they will get shut down…taking your money, and its a good possibility that YOU will get shut down as well, so choose wisely.

Pay attention to what the ezine is oriented around. Many E-zines have a them or they are aiming for a specific group. If you are selling the greatest cheeseburger in the world, advertising to a vegan mailing list will probably not get the response that you are looking for.

All around, e-zines are very much worth the effort as long as you pay attention to who the  list is going to and where you are on that list.

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