Writing Effective Text Ads

[seventiesluver]

Hi,

I am having some problems writing an effective text ad for ezine swaps/link swaps and etc.. How do you guys write yours?

Also, is there an easy way that I could track the effectiveness of each ad?

Thanks,
Jesse Seymour

[mjames]

Make your text ads consise, precise, and description. Try to get the readers attention and make them want to read and visit your site. Presenting special offers or sales will also be effective. Good luck.

[adam]

Make it sound like an offer they cant afford to miss, use the word FREE and don't LIE!!!

Adam

[Aidan Bahta]

If you have access to logfiles, use something like:

For all that you could ever want for free, go to http://www.thisisasite.com/?ref=sitepointforums

Whatever you put after the question mark does not affect the page's load (unless its a database) and/or uses PHP/ASP/etc. When you look over your log files, you can see that a certain amount of people visited through ?ref=sitepointforums. This would translate to the number of clicks you got. Tracking this way does not require a new browser or anything like that.

You could also set up a special page for each campaign.

For all that you could ever want for free, go to http://www.thisisasite.com/ref_sitepointforums.html

You'd then have a tracker.

Good luck!

[seventiesluver]

Thanks, the advice that you all gave was really helpful. I'm sure I'll be able to write and track ads, thanks again!

[Addto]

To write an effective text ad, you may consider of buying a book called Make Your Words Sell.

To track ad, you can use some ad tracker programs. You can find some at cgi-resources and another called ROI but I forget its' URL.

[TWTCommish]

I'd also recommend what SitePoint does right now.

When they don't have someone using up one of their ad spots (I think that's it), they put this at the top of where the ad would go:

"I Caught You Reading An E-Zine Ad!"

It then goes on to explain why it's effective. And, after all, if you're reading it right now, then it must work! I plan to use something similar to this in the future...something to get their attention and then explain to them whatever it is I'm trying to explain/sell.