A lot of people have tried and e-zine advertising with mixed results. Some love it for its targeted reach, some don’t because of the low response rates through email response.

Let’s put ourselves in the e-zine owners’ shoes. They have to satisfy their members with good content regularly, that adds value to their lives or solves their problems. On the other hand, they need to balance this with enough cash flow from advertising to sustain their operations for the long term. Too much percentage of each in an e-zine is not ideal.

Let’s give ourselves two typical scenarios that allow us to understand more the world of e-zine publishing. If an owner decides to allow a high percentage of advertisement in his regular e-zines to his readers, he may end up with declining membership, as people find the content of little value. On the other hand, it is hard to sustain a magazine if the owner allocates minimal space for advertisements.

So a lot of e-zine owners are struggling on how to survive for the long term, and yet be profitable enough to sustain the business. How does this concern you? You want to separate out the gems and diamonds from the rest of the glass beads or stones. You want to be able to select the best of these e-zines to advertise in, and avoid the top pitfall in paid e-zine advertising of selecting the wrong e-zine to advertise in.

Here is a tip on how to go about selecting the best e-zine. Do not go and source out e-zines to advertise in as your very first step. Analyze and do your fair share of market research. Join your preferred e-zines as members first, and scrutinize every bit of content and action from the owner. Then, if you are satisfied, contact the owner.

You can pay the owner, or you can let the owner know that you are prepared to share part of the sales proceeds with him. The latter is known as a joint venture or affiliate marketing.

The whole internet marketing game takes time to master, so learn from those who have been there to shorten your learning time, and avoid painful mistakes.