The Directory of Ezines

Are ezines the secret to advertising? And more importantly does ezine advertising have to be so expensive?  It seems that most people are probably still not sure it’s worth the time and effort.

BTW, if you were looking for the official Directory of Ezines (DoE) 2.0 site – then look no further than here:

>>>>>>>  Official DoE Website <<<<<<<<<

The DoE is one of the most valuable and under rated products for Internet Marketers around and definitely the most valuable product for building your subscriber base.  It seems like there’s never been much hype around list building except for that brief period of time when Frank Kern launched his List Control course.  It seemed like the Internet community lit up around the idea of list building but then easily got distracted by other shiny objects.

However – if you talk to anyone who is making serious money online almost all of them will tell you they build e-mail lists.

If you are interested in building your list and gaining access to other people’s lists (and many in the DoE are massive) then the DoE is the best solution.  If you’re more captivated by the latest trends and eye candy – Twitter Ads!  Social Media Traffic! PPV! – then this isn’t for you.

I strongly believe in researching what works and replicating it.  I’ve spent a lot of time studying what successful Internet Marketers do and from all of my research I can tell you that successful marketers across many niches focus on 3 areas to drive traffic to their offers:

1. PPC – Pay per click (specifically targeted media buys and search engine marketing)
2. SEO – Search Engine Optimization (specifically aimed at driving traffic from Google)
3. E-Mail & JV’s – Building a list of loyal subscribers who happily purchase your stuff and partnering with others in your niche

As a matter of fact – Internet advertising dollars are split nearly 50% between PPC (specifically search engine marketing – not social networking) and E-Mail advertising.  This is across the entire industry – and I’m talking about big name companies like Apple, Best Buy, Amazon and others who are heavily invested in marketing their brands online.

I focus as much as I can in those three areas and it’s worked very well for me.  The return on investment I get from doing SEO & SEM is much higher than anything I’ve done in the Social Media space.  The return on investment I’ve gotten from investing in list building is by far the best yet.

Is the DoE Just a Listing of E-Zines? – Can’t I Get That For Free?

Yes and no.  Obviously, at nearly $200 for a life time subscription the database of Ezines is the most comprehensive on the ‘Net but you get more than that.  The DoE is better organized and has higher quality.

You get training on email marketing also.  It depends on how experienced you are in this area.  If you’re an old pro – then you might learn a few new tricks here and if it’s your first time doing solo ads, JVs, swaps etc. – then the webinars and training information will pay off big.
Here is what else you get:

• A talk with Charlie Page one on one
• Get three ads written free as part of your membership
• Free Ads on the DoE Web Sites
• Access to the Article Marketing Live Program
  

Do You Really Get to Talk to Charlie Page?

Yeah – there are scheduled conference calls and Webinars available and your questions do get answered.  Personally – I figured he’d have better things to do with his time   I’ve never actually used the opportunity to engage with him one on one.  I really haven’t seen the need to.

What Are the Red Flags?

Any review of an IM product wouldn’t be honest if it didn’t include the negatives. To be honest, I’ve found the webinars and marketing guides to be informative but geared for newcomers.

I suppose the DoE team had to put this together because so many marketer’s are new to the game and don’t understand what’s involved in email marketing.  Plus, if you’re new and naive it’s easy to make the wrong decisions.

I can’t really think of many downsides to the program but I would point out that this is something that will require some effort on your part – once you’re a member you just don’t get to push a button and have money flood into your ClickBank or PayPal accounts.

I’ve also got to say that some of the mailing lists in the database are badly out of date and the DoE staff needs to prune their database of dead lists.  I’m not sure why that hasn’t happened it’s certainly noticeable and I’ve seen this complaint from others voiced on the various internet marketing forums out there.  So I know I’m not the only one who has noticed this.

>>>>>>>  Official DoE Website <<<<<<<<<

So What Can You About Tech Support?

The support has been very good.  The DoE staff manages a FAQ that gets updated so the most common questions you have are probably already answered.  Tickets opened are also responded to quickly.  DoE members have a support website to use and it works very well.