If you have spent any amount of time looking into advertising your business online, then you know there are all kinds of options available to you. All of them seem to be screaming that they are the best method, but the truth is that any internet marketing can be effective if you know how to use it. The two methods we’re going to compare are solo ezine advertising and safelist solo ads. First, let’s take a look at what each one is.

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.

Solo ezine advertising refers to ads that are sent alone (with no other ads or content) to an online magazine’s (ezine’s) subscriber base. There are really two types of solo ads: those that are sent to the ezine subscriber base as described earlier or those that are sent out to safelist members.

Safelists are comprised of people who sign up in order to advertise their own products/services and, in turn, agree to read other advertisements that are sent by other members. With safelists, you agree to receive all of these promotional ads in your inbox and, when you click on these ads, you earn credits to be able to send your own ads.

An advantage to advertising in ezines is that you will be sending out your ad to people who have subscribed to the ezine in order to get information, resources and updates on that particulare subject. If your product is very well suited to a particular ezine niche, you can get tremendous results. With safelists, it’s different. People do not subscribe in order to learn about a particular topic. They subscribe in order to be able to advertise. A completely different mindset.

The average ezine readers subscribes to more than one ezine. However, they are not bombarded with hundreds of emails every day because of their subscription. If someone is subscribed to several safelists, they will get hundreds of emails per day in their inbox. Again, the only incentive to read these emails is to gain credits. They are not seeking information or news. So, here again, solo ezine advertising is probably preferable to solo safelist advertising.

Ezine solo ads can vary greatly in price from one publisher to the next. Of course, the price depends on the size of the ezine’s subscriber base, the perceived quality of content, the frequency and perhaps days and times that the newsletter is sent out, etc. In any case, solo ads are not free. With some safelists, members can actually send out “free” solo ads. This is a little bit tricky because they aren’t actually free. You still have to earn clicks in order to be able to send out these ads. So, whether you pay in time or in money (because you have upgraded to buy your clicks), you are paying.

In the end, some marketers swear by safelist solo advertising. It often has a lot to do with the products you offer. If you are offering a product that will generate traffic or an e-book that will help with safelists, for example, safelist members will be more apt to click on that because those are the reasons that they are using safelists in the first place. However, if your product is in a different industry (health, beauty, etc), you’ll generally be better off by doing solo ezine advertising instead. This also works the other way around. Advertising your health or beauty product in a safelist will most likely not get much response.

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First of all, come up with a list (as long as possible) with all of the ezines that are related to your niche. Make sure you note how big each subscriber list is, how often each newsletter is sent out and the prices charged for ads. The site Directory of Ezines will take most of the work out of this for you, you can search by size price or type of ad. After you’ve compiled your list, cross out (lightly) the ezines that are charging more than you can afford.

You should not take these off of your list because you may be able to afford them later on down the line. Check out the reputation of the ezines that are still left on your list. If you find that some of them come up in scam reviews, or get a lot of negative testimonials, cross them out for good. When you have your skimmed down list, you’ll want to subscribe to each of the ezine advertising services that you’ve chosen.

Once you start getting their communication, you can compare them and understand which ones are worth advertising with and which ones you can forget, at least for now. To decide whether an ezine is a good pick, check to make sure its web page is not on a free platform like Blogger or WordPress.com or Yahoo hosting. Make sure that they clearly state what they offer in terms of advertising.

As far as the emails you will be getting from each ezine, first make sure that you must opt-in two times in order to receive the newsletter. This ensures that the subscriber base is responsive. Also, check to see that the publisher informs you of the types of email addresses that they can accept. Many email providers block spam.

If the ezine won’t allow you to use some of these, this is a good thing. It means that emails will be delivered to recipients rather than to the junk box. If you are receiving one or more email per day from the ezine, you don’t want to advertise with them. That’s too much competition. And you only want to go with the ones that have “real” subject lines provided by the advertiser and not by the publisher. You want to be able to create your own subject line for your ads. Check out the content of the newsletters you are receiving. If it is valuable content and not just ads, then it’s worth going for.

You may have more than one ezine advertising service that has passed your “test”. At this point, just go with the least expensive one.

First, identify your target market if you haven’t already done so. It’s surprising the number of people who start businesses without realizing who their customers are, or many long-term business owners who haven’t kept up with the shifts in customer trends. In order to eventually reach your ideal internet advertising campaign, you need to understand your customers/potential customers very well. What are they looking for. What concerns them? Write down a list of questions that you could ask your target audience and find the answers. This will help you to reach them with your promotional efforts.

If you are on a low budget, you can start with free advertising at any of the social networking sites like FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. The key here is to be social. Include all of your business information and websites in your profile but you shouldn’t go out blasting your network with promotional messages or comments.

You can also start a free blog at Blogger.com which provides information about the products and services you offer.  Still staying in the low cost and blogging sphere, you can create your own blog to represent your business at a low cost and improve your business appearance over the free blogging platforms.  Sites like Blogging Beginners will show you how.

Or you can try article marketing which means creating informational articles about your business and submitting them to the article directories. YouTube is another fantastic way to do free (social) promotion. Upload a video or tutorial that is helpful to the people you are trying to target. More and more people are jumping on the YouTube bandwagon. It’s not the only video sharing site, but it is the most popular. Other forms of no-cost promotion include participation in your industry’s forums and/ or placing free online classified ads. Free advertising can be very effective, but it does take time to start seeing results. The goal is to provide real value to your audience and to be persistent and consistent in your efforts.

In terms of paid advertising, you can choose to run some PPC (pay per click) ads on your favorite search engine, paid online classifieds and banner ads on other websites that are relevant to your business. Ezine advertising is another effective method. Again, here it’s important that you do some research. Choose an ezine which suits your target marketing. Of course, you want to go with the ones that have more subscribers but the responsiveness of the subscribers is also very important. Get as much information as you can from the ezine publisher before committing to an advertisement.

Your internet advertising campaign should never be stagnant. It changes and adapts as you learn and your business grows.

These are just some of the many internet advertising places. There are many other venues that you can use to promote your business, products and services:

1. Article Directories, Article Marketing and Content Sites. Registering with Ezine Articles (and the hundreds of other article directories), Hub Pages and Squidoo is completely free. Your goal with these sites is to create informative articles about your products/services and publish them here. Doing this will earn you credibility, expert status and possibly higher ranking in the search engines once you start bringing in traffic to your site.
2. Search Engine Pay Per Click (PPC) Platforms: All of the major search engines and many other search engines offer the possibility for you to advertise on their sites and some of the most sophisticated internet advertising help. It works like this. . .you place an ad based on some keywords that are relevant to your business, products or services. All of the search engines give you free tools that you can use to find the keywords that you want to target. You will bid on each keyword that you advertise and the search engines will also help you to identify what your bid should be. Once you have placed your ad, whenever anyone types in the keyword that you targeted into that search engine, your ad will come up. Where it appears depends on how high you placed your bid and how relevant your ad is to the keywords that you specified.
3. Ezine Advertising. Advertising in online magazines, called ezines, is another very effective way to get started with internet advertising. As with all of your advertising efforts, this requires some research on your part. Your goal is to find an ezine which fits your target market and advertising budget. Don’t discount ezines with small subscriber count. They may allow you to advertise for very little and often have very responsive lists.
4. Banner advertising. Placing banner advertisement on high traffic sites within your industry is also an effective way to bring in traffic to your own site.
5. Online Classified Ads. Many online classified sites allow you to place free advertisements within restrictions. Upgrading to become a paid member usually allows you to place more sophisticated ads more frequently than if you are a paid member.

Each of these methods offers internet advertising help in the form of written instructions, tutorials and support communities within their sites.

Free or low internet advertising cost methods include article marketing, blogging (on a free blogging platform), participating in any of the social networking sites or forums, placing free online classified advertising, using safe lists or traffic exchanges and more. Article marketing means creating informational articles that your target audience would be interested in reading and acting upon and submitting them to various content sites like EzineArticles, HubPages, Squidoo, etc. This type of advertising builds up your credibility, expert status and can get you ranked higher in the search engines. You can set up a blog at Blogger.com and promote your business there. Setting up a profile at Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or any of the other hundreds of social networks is a way to be seen and establish relationships with potential customers. Getting traffic to your blog, profile or answers on forums requires that you participate with other members of the network in a social way. Being too promotional will not win you any points with your audience and it may even get you penalized by the network itself. Doing advertisements on free online classifieds allows you to do more hard-core promotional (less social) advertising. When it comes to Safelists and Traffic Exchanges, the key is to come up with a short headline that compels whoever sees your ad to read further.

When it comes to paid internet advertising, pay per click (PPC), e zines (online magazines) and banner advertising are three popular choices. Pay per click can be very cheap, or it could be expensive. It all depends on how much you bid. If you have a low budget, you will want to bid low and on uncompetitive keywords (terms that people aren’t searching for very much). Luckily, it’s easy to find out what the uncompetitive keywords are in any of the search engines that you advertise on. They will provide you with the tools that help you identify keywords. Once you start getting some traffic and making money, you can gradually start to bid more on the keywords.

Ezine advertising prices vary greatly as well. The price you pay for advertising on an ezine depends on the size and quality of the subscriber list so you will need to research the best ezines and possibly go through some trial and error before you find some that consistently perform. Banner advertising is a way to promote your products on other sites that are ranked well in the search engines and not direct competitors. The internet advertising cost for this depends on the site that you choose as well.

Email marketing is another option but this requires either you have your own list or you use an email list rental service to send out your emails.  Once you build your own list email marketing is basically free the price of renting a list varies depending on if the list is targeted or generic.  A company like RentAList can get you started at a reasonable price.

Along with email marketing you can also look at a little ad in other people’s emails and ezines.  This is commonly called a top sponsor ad.  You have probably seen this where there is a little four line as at the top of an email you receive that promotes another site or project that isn’t covered in the email.  You can get these top sponsor ads from your friends, JV partners or use a service that provides top sponsor ads or from ezine publishers.