Hi I've read that a lot of bloggers say that an email list is the best thing you can do on a blog to get more regular readers. However, most people generally offer a free ebook/newsletter or something else. I do not have any of these at present and realistically don't have the available time currently to create them due to family constraints. I have adsense and affiliate ads on my blog at present, so wonder if I set this up would it likely boost my revenue which is currently very low. Does anyone have experience of where it has worked in this situation? If I set up a system to handle this, are your posts sent in full with the accompanying on page ads? Is it a bit of a turn off and thought of as a bit spammy if you have ads on a post sent by email? Should I just forget all this for the time being until/if I do an ebook, and is this the more successful and profitable route? Appreciate any advice or experience Thanks
I'm not sure if i understand your question correctly. Do you want to know if an email list is profitable? Or since you don't have a free ebook to give away would it be ok to use ads in subscriber emails instead? List building is the most effective and profitable asset any business can have. The idea is that you have a way to contact the person repeatedly and will be able to market to them repeatedly. This is the customer for life who will give you repeat business. The problem - getting them to sign up to your newsletter in the first place. To get them to sign up you have to give them a reason to in the first place. Like you say many people do this by giving a way a free ebook or whatever will provide them with benefit. It can be anything as well. If you have something related to your blog that separates you from the competition then that could be your answer. Whether its a product buying guide or weekly deals or whatever. Just give them a reason to sign up even just email alerts may work. But the bigger the incentive the better. If you are running ads and affiliate links then users don't take notice, it won't put people off or lose visits unless you go way over board making your website unresponsive and drastically reducing the user experience. You wouldn't normally send them the entire blog post in email but rather a brief summary and a link to it on the website. This also encourages users to comment and share your blog posts which will grow your website. Ads in emails don't work. Don't focus on the money first. Think customers and value and then the money will follow.
Hi, thanks for your very detailed and informative reply. You've managed to explain the situation clearly so I understand now what's required and what challenges there will be. I like when you mention 'customer for life', this made the whole reason for email lists click for me - I didn't really understand their usefulness before, now I can see how they'll work and be of benefit. As you say the tricky bit is getting people to sign up in the first place. I'll have to give some more thought to what I can uniquely offer. I just presumed the whole post was sent out to the subscriber. Now I can see that by offering a summary of the post it hopefully acts as a teaser to get people to come back to your blog. Including any other beneficial content with the email will hopefully act in the same way. Is there a site that you would suggest to handle the form and email distribution. At this point I really want a free one as I do not have funds at present to go for a paid service. Are there free services which later allow you to transfer your lists to other providers if necessary? I've heard this has been a problem in the past for some people. Thanks again for your help, much appreciated.
Its actually very easy to get people to sign up when you know what you are doing. Also you can use PLR as your gift. PLR=Private label rights, that's some kind of ebook, video course that somebody else created and you are allowed to rebrand and use as your own. You can buy PLR for $5-$25 then you just go to fiverr and rebrand it and you have a gift. You can use Aweber as your autoresponder to mange your email lists.
List building could really help out to improve revenue. You may have the ebook on a later time but maybe you can start with tips and information for your readers. You can create short videos regarding your tips if you would like to have less text. There is a lot you can do and email list should not just be all about eBook. Still, eBook is still needed.
No Problem glad I helped. I haven't used any subscriber list opt ins other than the ones I have made myself. Aweber is highly recommended though although it is not free. Gd luck
I think you need a 1-decision answer. Build the list, sell an ebook that you create. I think you should abandon the adsense/affiliate log idea and go straight for where the automated money is... ebooks and high ticket info-products.
Mail Chimp will let you mail up to 2,000 subscribers for free. It also intergrates well with services like Lead Pages when you get a little more money and want to build your own lead capture pages. You can check it out at http://link.leadpages.net/aff_c?offer_i=5819d=6&aff_id