In my opinion, Electronic Magazine (Ezine) advertising is the greatest, untapped source of online advertising available today.

The reason: Ezine Advertising (EA) matches your product or idea to people with similar interests.

Example: who better to sell your health product to than a large group of people subscribed to a health newsletter? Or, you could pitch a business opportunity to a group already subscribed to another ezine about MLM and Biz Ops!

The idea of EA is fairly simple - but to make yours a success, you have to first determine which ezines or newsletters produce results, and which ones to avoid.

After a year and a half of EA, I’ve created a formula that produces increasing profit because I’ve learned how to avoid poor performing ezines and rip offs, while revealing the gems.

Strategy for Profit

I used to get ripped off about once for every 2 or 3 ezines I advertised in. They either took my money without running my ad (and ignored my subsequent emails), or my proven ads did too poorly for the money I paid.

The reasons ranged from abandoned ezines with working payment links, unethical newsletter owners, to a lot of ignorance and impatience on my part.

If you follow my proven strategy, you’ll discover the best sources of ezines to advertise in - no matter who your target group is. And, you should see positive results every time.

This article outlines the steps to making your EA a successful return on investment (ROI).

Writing Your Ad

I won’t go into details about ad writing, but if your ad is poorly written or untested, you should start with the cheapest ezines first. If you’re really unsure of your writing abilities, I further suggest hiring a professional to write your ad for you.

Because you can run your ad as many times as you want, your investment in a professional will more than pay for itself in the end.

Target your advertising

If you leap into EA without first researching your target group, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time and money. Plus, you probably miss some of the best ezines available.

To determine who your prospect is, take the time to list the possible keywords that directly relate to your product and do keyword searches for ezines, newsletters, and ezine directories.

For example, if you sell herbs, a good keyword search would include: herbs, health, nutrition, supplements, etc.

Avoid Co-ops

While doing your ezine research, you will probably stumble upon the offer to use Co-op (bulk) advertising as the means for your EA.

To be blunt, you should never pay to use Co-ops for your EA because they are too difficult to track and usually contain untargeted ezines. Worse still, you’d find that most never run your ad.

Subscribe

Now that you’ve found your ezine target group, you’ll want to know whether the ezines you found are a good option (i.e. profitable) for your EA.

I’ve found the best strategy for making this determination is to subscribe to the targeted ezines.

To keep the subscriptions readily available for further research, I recommend creating a separate folder to store your subscription data.

And because you’ll need to subscribe to quite a few ezines, I also suggest creating separate email accounts dedicated to your ezine subscriptions.

Double Opt-In Subscriptions

In the process of subscribing, you’ll quickly determine possible ezines to avoid. When you subscribe and get a notice that you must confirm your subscription, the ezine is referred to as "double opt-in".

Double opt-in ezines indicates a better quality of subscribers with a lower risk of bulk email addresses. For you and me, this means better ad responses (yeah!).

Solo Ads

Within the first week of your new ezine subscription, you should see solo ads from other advertisers. If not, the ezine may be too new, or worse, no one is advertising because of poor results. Worse yet, the ezine took the advertiser’s money and failed to run the ad.

On the other hand, if you see two or more solo ads a day, their list is probably burned out due to over advertising. You’re looking for no more than one ad a day, or a minimum of one ad a week. Keep watching!

Subject Line

Does the ezine put the advertiser’s subject line in the subject of the email or do they just say something like “Solo ad from xyz ezine”?

Your subject line is the most important part of your ad and definitely should be in the subject of the email.No subject line equals no response.

Advertiser Response

Repeat (or regular) advertisers in an ezine is a very good sign that the subscribers are responsive. To further test responsiveness, I recommend looking through the ezine’s online archives (if available).

Archives are previous email publications that the publisher has posted to their website for visitors to view. The archive search is not only quick and easy, but archives can also provide an extra trickle of visitors when your ad gets archived.

Testimonial Page

After passing the above steps, see if your prospective ezine has a testimonial page. If the ezine has gotten this far, chances are it will.

Waiting Period

Another indicator of responsive subscribers is the waiting period to run an ad in the chosen ezine. If the waiting period is a month or more, this indicates a very popular ezine with responsive readers. You’ve uncovered a real gem!

Web Forms

I’ve found that the better ezines have web forms that get your ad to the publisher’s inbox and usually send auto confirmation of receipt. If there is no web form, try emailing the publisher a question first, like when the next ad run date is.

No response may indicate a poor choice in the ezine, or your email was filtered or blocked as spam. Wait at least 2 days and try emailing again using a different email account.

If your emails still don’t get through, neither will your ad. (Ironically, your payment always go through). Trust me, if they fail to communicate, save your money and time and move on.

Free Classifieds

If the ezine offers free classifieds, this is another good place to run your ad. Since classifieds usually don’t produce responses, any activity from your ad here would further indicate an active readership.

Ad Tracking

Never advertise without using an ad tracker. You can purchase one or better, use one of the many available online for free. Ad trackers give you a url that you use in place of your website address.

The new url gives you important information like how many visitors you had, where they came from, and some list the number of sales per visitor.

This tracking information is crucial to the direction of your ad campaign because you’ll learn of the need to change your ad and/or the sales page. More importantly, you’ll know for certain whether the ezine produced enough visitors for the advertising price you paid.

Run Your Ad Twice

If your ad produced a great response, wait a week or two and run the ad again in the same ezine. I’ve found you’ll probably get as good if not better results the second time around.

I would advise against running the ad a third time in a row because most of your prospects will be found in the first two runs.

Using a Capture Page or Auto-Responder

To maximize your efforts, you want to “capture” your visitors so you can send them additional information about your product, related merchandise, and pertinent updates.

This is done with a capture page that provides a place for visitors to put their name and email address. There are different methods to accomplish this and you may want to hire someone to do it for you if you’re not comfortable installing scripts on your website.

You might also want to send your visitor directly to your autoresponder, where you have a series of messages set up to “warm and inform” your prospect about your product or service.

Rotating Ads

Once your ad has been tested and you have a base of 5-10 solid, performing ezines, start rotating your ad between your ezines.

For optimal results, make sure 2-3 months have passed before running your ad in the same publication. Keep building your base and watch your profits grow!

Greg Root started using ezine advertising almost exclusively since 2003 and owns and maintains ‘The Ezine Ad Tester’ at http://www.maxprofitpro.com/ See the results of his ezine advertising campaigns to find the best ezine marketing resources on the internet.

If you’re like me, you have a book and the passion to spend the rest of your life making it a success. But, with all the ways to market your book, the costs and the inevitable sinking feeling of utter helplessness, what can you do?

You COULD run around in circles trying to get your book in every bookstore in town. You COULD write Oprah or the Today Show, and hope for a call-back. You COULD spend months crafting a book proposal and wait another six months for the exact right time to send it to the exact right editor at the exact right publishing house with the exact right level of interest to stand behind your book.

But those are lies (well, for most of us, most of the time, they are) and here are the TOP TEN LIES and how you can avoid believing them:

Lie #1: You NEED to get your book in bookstores.

No, you don’t. Visit your local bookstore-any bookstore-and you’ll see thousands (maybe millions) of books crammed, piled, stacked and displayed. Do you really think that simply adding your book to this haystack will catapult you to success?

Truth: The right bookstore at the right location selling the right kind of books to the right customers CAN catapult your book to success. What is the right bookstore? One that sells your kind of book, whether it be a Christian bookstore, a success store, a health store, etc. For my book, “101 Ways To Pray Better And Get Faster Results,” I am targeting Christian bookstores in my area, especially bookstores in churches. They will give me the greatest amount of exposure to the people who will actually be interested in my book. Who buys your kind of book? What is the best place to sell it? Maybe it is at a grocery store, a pet store, or at an airport.

Lie #2: You MUST get on Oprah.

Yes, it would be nice to get on Oprah. Certianly, it could not hurt your book sales. But most people with this goal ask themselves the wrong question: “How do I get on Oprah?” Getting on Oprah is not the point, albiet a good objective, though a long-shot for most authors. However, as a natural optimist, I must admit there’s no reason for you not to try!

Truth: The RIGHT question to ask yourself is: “How can I create a book that Oprah would want on her show?” Why is this a better, more powerful question? First of all, it is focused on Oprah’s needs, and she will only care about your book if it helps her and her show get more people watching and talking about (you guessed it) her. After all, you want people to read and talk about your book, don’t you? That’s why you’re reading this article. Start with the right question, and you will end up the right answers. So how do you create a book that will appeal to Oprah? Write one that appeals to her television audience, mostly women who are at home at the time of her show. You can get more detailed, of course, and you should. Case Example: the new book “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Oprah has had one of the co-authors of that book on her show twice since its release.

Lie #3: You MUST get a big advance from a big publishing company.

Again, good idea, but it doesn’t guarantee succes anymore than carrying around a four-leaf clover ensures good luck. You need more than big bucks to get people to read your book. In fact, the only thing that a big advance gives you is the knowledge that the publishing company will try hard to make people buy your book. Yes, that’s a plus. Yes, you want that. But it takes more than that to squeeze into the ranks with Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Seth Godin (author of Purple Cow, among others).

Truth: What you really need is a good book, written well, formatted with the reader in mind, that entertains, informs, pursuades and gets customers talking to each other. No easy job, I assure you. But it can be done. And is done. Here’s how you can do it, too:

*Gather up the most popular, talked-about books in the last five years (Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code, among others). *Ask yourself, “What makes people talk about these books?” *Copy the strategies, change/add/delete whatever you need to make your book more success-friendly.

Also, create something (a flyer, a bussiness card, a bookmark, something) that your customers can pass on to each other. Or post up on a wall or keep in their purse or wallet. Make it good, funny, entertaining, informative, but make it something people actually want to keep (like a good article on book marketing =).

Lie #4: You MUST get radio or television interviews.

Like the other lies, this one seems true because all the big-name, big-book, big-salary authors do them. And I must admit that we, if possible, should do them. But, the lie is that you actually NEED them to boost your book sales. They might and they might not.

Truth: What you REALLY need is to get your book in the hands of people who are ready, willing and able to buy them. How do you accomplish this? First, sit down and write out a description of the people who are most likely to be interested enough in your book to fork over money for it. Second, figure out where these people congregate: online, conventions, magazines, etc. Where do these type of people go to find the type of information which is in your book? Be specific. Write it down. Third, and lastly, get your book infront of those people in those places.

For example: My book is on prayer, so I want to get it infront of people who are interested enough in the topic to trade thier hard-earned money to learn how to improve their prayer lives and get closer to God. So, in addition to attmpting the normal routes (getting book in bookstore, creating a website, trying to get book on Amazon.com), I also will contact Christian groups and organizations to give FREE talks on prayer, after which I’ll offer my book.

Lie #5: The MOST important part of book promtion is having a good book.

Sorry, no that is not true. Yes, you should try to write the best book possible and give it a great, eye-catching cover, with a mind-grabbing title to boot. But, none of those savvy stratigies are the MOST important part of your book promotion. They only work if you can do ONE thing…

Truth: The MOST important part of book promotion is (drum roll please) getting the right people to experience the great benefits of your book. If your book entertains, then that is the benefit. If your book explains or teaches, then that is the great experience.

Who are the right people? People who will tell others about your book.

*What are the three MAIN benefits of your book? *Who should experience them?

Lie #6: If you do all the things in this (or any one else’s) article, your book will out-sell the Harry Potter Series.

Truth: The outcome of your book promotion will be the result of your tenacity, creativity, passion, talent, and willingness to try new things until somthing clicks. If you can do that, you will one day succeed. And, my friend, I hope that day comes soon for you.

If you enjoyed this article, why not print it out and share it with a friend or your writing group! Good luck!

Christopher Kokoski is the author of “101 Ways To Pray Better And Get Faster Results,” http://www.lulu.com/ck His passion to write great books(fiction and non-fiction) and help others succeed with their own books. He wishes you well and a quick rise to publishing success.

A Tokyo day care company has begun marketing a “talking picture,” which can play messages for up to 12 minutes by holding up a pen-shaped scanner on the photograph. The scanner uses invisible barcodes to activate the sound.

“The pictures would be useful for those who hope to hear the voice of someone living when they are far away; maybe they have passed on, or maybe they live on the opposite side of the globe. Either way, it brings loved ones closer together more often by "seeing them" and "hearing them".

There is no point in having a talking picture if you can’t see the picture clearly. Make sure you have saved the picture in the correct resolution. Ensure that the color model used is the right one for what you want to do with your picture. All these things make a difference.

Assuming the audio attached to the photo is of good quality, one drawback of this new technology is that the photo may not be of the best quality or has some imperfections. One could very easily remedy this by learning how to edit a photo to your satisfaction; make it look right! Go to http://www.abcphotoediting.com to learn the simple easy to follow steps to make your photos look great!