My post on how I made $4,000 in one day with my mailing list went over really well and receive a lot of positive responses. One sticking point I’ve noticed among the comments is some people are reluctant to sign up with Aweber because they feel it will take too long to build up 500 subscribers. This is really the wrong way to look at it and chances are you’ll never start if you take this attitude. Yes, it might seem like a waste of money to pay $19 per month when you only have 10 subscribers, but if you do your marketing correctly, it’s possible to build 500 subscribers in only a few days. That’ll make the monthly fee easier to justify.
The Keyword Is Marketing
It really is true that most bloggers suck at marketing. This is the main reasons why most bloggers will never build their sites to any substantial size or make much money from it. Setting up a newsletter list is more than just signing up for Aweber and adding a newsletter sign up box. If that’s all you’re doing, then you really are wasting your money. Unless your blog gets a ton of traffic, doing that will get you only a handful of sign ups. You need a marketing plan to drive as many sign ups in the shortest time possible. The best way to do that is with an incentive promotion.
As I’ve stated in my original post, your newsletter sign ups increase greatly if you offer some incentive to the people who sign up. I use my eBook as an incentive. The key is the capture every lead that comes to your blog. If you’re doing everything I recommend on my how I made $4,000 in one day post, then you’re on your way. Here’s how to kick it up to the next level.
The Contest Promotion
The promotion I like doing most is a contest where the rules require the reader to sign up for the newsletter in order to enter. Gyutae Park and Shoemoney has done these types of contests with great results. In Shoe’s case, he actually got over 1,000 sign ups in one day when he offered to give away a Macbook Air to a newsletter subscriber.
You don’t need a super expensive prize like a Macbook Air to get a ton of people to sign up. Even something as simple as a Flip Mino can produce great results. I added over 200 new Twitter followers in a day when I announced my Twitter contest with Market Leverage.
Leverage Another Site If You Don’t Have The Traffic
If you don’t have enough traffic to generate the buzz to get people to sign up to your newsletter, then you need to leverage a bigger site to help you. This was what Gyutae Park did when he was starting out. Gyutae set up a contest with some great prizes. All you have to do enter was subscribe to his newsletter or RSS. Back then, Gyutae’s blog didn’t get as much traffic as it does now. Even though he had some great prizes, just posting about it on his blog wouldn’t get enough people to enter. So Gyutae leveraged my readership by having me blog about his contest.
Find the big blogs that are in your niche and see if they’re open to any joint promotions. Keep in mind that you have to provide something of value to the blog you’re trying to leverage. If the email just reads, “Hey! Can you blog about my contest?” chances are, it’ll just be deleted.
Go with Aweber From The Beginning
I’m seeing quite a few bloggers say they’re trying to build their list using a low cost or free solution and will switch to Aweber once the list hits 500. This is a big mistake and I speak from experience because I’ve made this mistake. Before discovering Aweber, I used the SendStudio newsletter software. I had built my list to over 22,000 subscribers before switching to Aweber.
Here’s the problem. Aweber, and all other mailing list service providers, requires the reconfirmation of any list you upload. Even though my 22,000 subscribers were double opted in, Aweber has to send them an email asking if they wish to opt in again. The result: only 4,000 subscribers reconfirmed. I lost over 18,000 subscribers. Had I gone with Aweber from the beginning, my list would have over 35,000 subscribers now.
The best way to prevent this problem is by going with Awber from the get go. If you promote it properly, there’s no reason why you can’t 500 subscriber before the month is up.
Build Your Newsletter and RSS Number At The Same Time
Here’s a major bonus that is only available to Aweber users. If you enable the blog broadcast feature in your Aweber control panel, Aweber will report your subscriber count to FeedBurner.
Given a choice between newsletter or RSS subscriber, I would take newsletter every time. However, I also want to increase the FeedBurner counter for social proof. With Aweber, I have the best of both worlds. Because Aweber reports my subscriber count to FeedBurner, all my newsletter subscribers are included in the FeedBurner counter. This is why I was really upset that I didn’t go with Aweber from the get go. Had I did, my FeedBurner counter would be at over 61,000 instead of only 48,000. I’ve reposted my screen cast on how to do an Aweber blog broadcast below.