Big Opt-In Lists, Trade Secrets
& Fishing Trips
Last weekend, on a beautiful
Saturday morning, I went fishing with a friend on the Pecos River here
in New Mexico. We had been fishing for a couple of hours when my friend
decided he would carefully approach the subject of getting more opt-in
subscribers for his newsletter. He knew I had over 400,000 opt-in
subscribers for T-Shirt King’s newsletter and he wanted to know how I
did it. He was afraid that it was a trade secret and I would brush him
off and continue to fish. That was my reaction initially.
You see, I get this type of
question all the time. When it comes at a time when I’m fishing, a
simple answer like that is the easiest, and it keeps us fishing instead
of talking. However, this morning I was a softy and, after some
prodding, I gave in.
To begin with, let me quickly
explain that there are two sales tools that all online retailers should
use regardless of what you sell. You should have a newsletter and an
affiliate program. My friend already had a newsletter and an affiliate
program and I’m going to assume you do too. If you need one - http://www.manzanomarketing.com/Resources/ultimateaffiliate.html
We put our poles down and sat on
the edge of the river to discuss how my friend could build an opt-in
list of over 100,000 this year. He had a lot bigger expectations for his
opt-in list than he did for this fishing trip. He never did get back to
fishing.
His first question was about
getting people on his site to opt-in. He had an opt-in subscription box
on his site already and it was prominently placed. But, with over 5,000
daily visitors, he was only getting about twenty subscribers. It was a
real disappointment.
So, my first suggestion was to set
up a contest. He could give away just about anything he wanted to from a
free t-shirt to a free fishing trip. I use a free t-shirt a day on
T-Shirt King. To join the contest, you just have to join the newsletter
(opt-in). Check it out – http://www.t-shirtking.com/
The next suggestion was to use a
pop-up to promote the contest and the subscription offer. Of course, my
friend immediately groaned at the thought of adding a pop-up to his site
(for a minute there, I thought we might get back to fishing). However, I
told him about using a cookied pop-up that occurs only once a day for
each user. This way it minimizes the annoyance of pop-ups. Plus, anyone
that really hates pop-ups already has pop-up blocker software. But the
proof is in the results. When I added our contest and a pop-up, we did
better than quadrupling our subscriber rate. For my fishing buddy, it
would take him from 20 opt-in’s a day to over 80.
Note - Free Pop-Up Generator: http://www.manzanomarketing.com/popup.html
The investment for a contest can
be minimal when compared to the cost of gaining subscribers any other
way. You know that you can find companies that will sell you subscribers
for fifteen cents a piece or more – right? Why pay such a high price
for poor quality subscribers when you can make a smaller investment and
get more subscribers of much higher quality?
At $.15 per subscriber, that’s
$15,000 for 100,000 subscribers of questionable quality. Using these
methods can cost you less than a hundred bucks for 100,000 high quality,
targeted subscribers!
Alright – now for the big guns.
Uh, er, the “heavy tackle” - since we’re fishing. Let’s take
your list building operation and put it on hundreds, or even thousands,
of other websites. There are two methods. Building a newsletter co-op
and arming your affiliates with a secret weapon.
These methods use two inexpensive
pieces of software that will become a key to selling your product
successfully online. Of course, they help you build your opt-in list,
but the true end result of a big high quality list will be increased
sales. You’re going to love the feeling of sending your newsletter out
and watching the sales immediately begin to come in! It’s a great
feeling. So is waking up the next morning and checking your sales before
you take the day off to go fishing – because you can.
These tools take some effort to
set up but once they’re established, they run on auto-pilot which
leaves you the time to go fishing. Your co-op members and affiliates do
the promoting and list building for you.
The first tool is Opt-In
Explosion. This is a newsletter subscriber co-op. You’ve probably seen
them run by other people. You could join one of these co-op programs and
you would substantially increase your subscriber rate. Or, you could
start your own co-op and build your opt-in list at hyper speed.
You see, when you join their
lists, typically, you get your newsletter subscription offer shown four
times for every time you show the co-op subscriber box. Not bad. But
start your own co-op and it’s your members that get four exposures for
every one time they show the subscription offer. You get your newsletter
offer shown on every exposure, on every website, to every visitor –
every time. If you even get a small number of members, your subscription
rate will explode!
To see this tool, visit: http://www.optinexplosion.com
At this point, my friend was so
excited, he wanted to leave this beautiful Saturday morning, quit
fishing (he’s obviously not making enough money) and start right away.
However, I saved the best for last.
Newsletter Syndicator! How about
putting your subscription sign-up box prominently on hundreds, or even
thousands, of websites? And, you can offer the webmaster credit for the
sales of your product generated from their list? What a great idea! This
little program allows you the ability to give out subscription boxes to
your affiliates. They can put them on their site and begin building
opt-in subscriber lists specifically for your newsletter.
Using Newsletter Syndicator, when
you send your newsletter out it will automatically replace your standard
url with their affiliate url. Your newsletter with your url and the
affiliate’s get your newsletter but with their unique affiliate url.
It’s easy for you to set up and it’s easy for your affiliates to set
up. Makes you money and makes your affiliates money. Even if you have a
small website with very little traffic, one good affiliate can sign-up
more opt-in subscribers in a month than you would get all year.
To find this tool, go to: http://www.newslettersyndicator.com
At this point, my friend was no
longer interested in fishing. When I was done talking, he packed up and
headed for the car to get back to his website. I was glad we drove
separately. I settled back in to a nice day of fishing. I could afford
to because I knew that I was getting a whole lot more opt-in subscribers
during that day of fishing than I was fish. In fact, there’s a limit
to the number of fish I can get in a day. There’s no limit to the
number of opt-in subscribers.
You can get both programs for
under a hundred dollars. At fifteen cents per subscriber, that’s only
667 subscribers. You’ll get more than that in no time. With some
honest effort, 100,000 high quality opt-in subscribers this year is very
possible.
It’s not rocket science and
it’s a lot easier than catching those Pecos River Browns. Give these
three methods a try and you will get to know the excitement of sending
your newsletter out and watching the sales roll in. There’s nothing
like it.
© 2003 by Bill Broadbent
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Written by Bill Broadbent Free eBook Available – Affiliate Detective 1.0 Visit:
http://www.affiliatedetective.net
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E-mail: bill@manzanomarketing.com
Author's URL: http://www.manzanomarketing.com
Written by Bill Broadbent http://www.ManzanoMarketing.com
Free eBook Available – Affiliate Detective Visit: http://www.affiliatedetective.net