A Solo Ad Rant

Every week and every day in this publishing business
provides me with new knowledge and new challenges. This
week has been an interesting one for subscriber and
advertiser questions, and I thought I would share some of
this newfound knowledge with you all.
I have decided that there is a true art form in writing a
successful solo ad! There are many articles on the subject,
in fact I have published a few that I felt were relevant
(you can find them within this topic:
http://bizopzine.com/topics.php?topicId=13 )
But I had one advertiser that was very unhappy. He had
purchased a solo ad, I sent it out and he did not have the
response that he expected. This of course makes me unhappy
on his behalf also. I would love to be able to guarantee
success for all the ads here on BizOpZine.
But the truth of the matter is that I can't guarantee your
ad to be successful. If the local grocery store puts an ad
in the newspaper for lettuce, it certainly has no guarantees
that people will want to come buy their lettuce. They hope
they will -- they have advertising agencies and huge
advertising budgets to increase the chances that you will
come buy their lettuce. But as the small internet marketer,
our advertising budgets are substantially less! We might
not write ads that sell lettuce nearly as well as the pros
do.
I had another solo ad that I ran which upset a few of my
subscribers when they felt that things weren't being
represented properly in the ad. I received a solo ad from
someone else from another ezine that had such a dramatic
headline that I understand the flak from that ad caused
them to lose a great number of subscribers.
So how does this all affect you, and isn't this my problem?
Well, yes and no. It affects you very directly if people
aren't responding to your advertising. You may be writing
some terrific ad copy .. but maybe it cuts a few corners in
the truth department. Your headline may be sensational and
gets lots of clicks .. but it offends some people. And no
matter how good of an ad you think you have, if people
aren't buying, than either your product or your ad needs
some adjustment.
It is my problem when people don't get response from their
solo ads that they have paid good money for, and they don't
become repeat customers. So it is to all of our benefits if
you write good ad copy!!! 
Before you purchase that next solo ad, read and re-read it.
Think about all the types of people who may read it,
including their level of internet experience. And don't be
afraid to change it! If your solo ad didn't sell well,
consider it a learning experience. Work on your ad writing
skills, and remember it is an art form that always is
evolving. 
OK, enough of a rant -- LOL! Please be sure to check out
the articles I have listed here. There are more in the
ezine, so go read and enjoy!