Today's lesson Aweber
Submitted by adisf on Fri, 06/06/2008 - 00:00.
I couldn't agree more with Jeremy about Aweber. I have used their service for a while now. Although I haven't made any money through emails (well, that's another story and that's why I am here) I must say that their service is worth every penny.
Their website is fairly easy to use. But their best asset is their support.
You can either chat online (during business hours) or call them on the phone and they are ALWAYS helpful, courteous and eager to help.
And for the service you get they are not that expensive.
I am not getting any commission for this, obviously, and I agree 100% that their service is excellent.
For what it's worth these are my 2 cents.
Best of luck to everybody
Adis
Mailing List
I am paying 100% attention to all of the lessons that are being provided, but was wondering how long it typically takes to build a viable mailing list? We obviously don't want to waste our time, and money mailing to those who have no interest in our niche. I know that nothing is free, or easy. but, can you suggest ways to start building a viable list? Robert
You can build a list through
You can build a list through paid search, if your landing page has an opt in form.
If you get free traffic, that's another way to build a list but as we are learning, getting traffic from organic search takes time.
My list comes from paid search and it has grown slowly over time. This past month I had 5 leads but again it depends on what it is that you are offering in exchange for their name and email address.
So far my list has 66 members but I am not too happy with the results and this is one of the reasons I am taking the BIP course.
People will sign up if you offer value and if you are honest. Like Jeremy said, you should sign up for other newsletters, such as your merchants and competitors and see how they do it, get ideas and yet make your USP (unique selling proposition) different.
PPC + Optin = Success!
The great thing about using PPC to build your list is the quality of the traffic. It is highly targeted and you know exactly what they are looking for. To me this is much better than purchasing a mailing list (I don't recommend it). I recently launched a site and my primary landing page is an opt-in form. That page has only one goal: get people to sign up. The first day I spent $200 and had about 150 people subscribe. Because I was using conversion tracking I was able to see what keywords were not converting and also know how to optimize my landing page. The next day I spent $85 and got about 60 subscribers. I then was able to run a report and see which ads were not converting. I always run multiple ads and split test them. So I got rid of the poorly converting ads and the next day my costs went up to $100 but I got 140 subscribers. I spent half the money as I did the first day and got the same number of subscribers! Now I spend about $50/day and get 60 to 70 subscribers. I lowered my daily spend to stay within my budget but I will recover all my costs over time. The point of building a mailing list is not to make money on the initial signup, but to make money with that subscriber over a period of time. Initially you want to build a relationship with the subscriber and after some time you can then start marketing various related offers to them. If you want to build a list fast, then use PPC and landing pages that match what the user is looking for. Provide them with something of value when they subscribe; otherwise why would they want to signup? Use conversion tracking to monitor your campaigns success and then optimize. Use these techniques and you are sure to build a list quickly and develop a following that is interested in your niche.
Cheers,
Jason Woods
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Hey Jason, what tool(s) are you using
what tool(s) do you use or recommend in order to track the conversion keywords? Thanks.
Mike, I use Yahoo Search
Mike,
I use Yahoo Search Marketing's and Google Adwords' conversion tracking. It's free and I can see my conversions inside my campaign. I know there are a ton of other tools out there but these work for what I'm doing. You simply put a little JavaScript on your conversion page or have the merchant do that for you. In my case I have an optin page that redirects to a thank you page. I place the conversion tracking code on the thank you page and that's it.
If you are working with a merchant and trying to promote their product(s) you will want to have the merchant place the conversion tracking code on their checkout page. If the merchant doesn't support conversion tracking I usually will not work with them.
Cheers,
Jason Woods
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