What worked for me ... with actual results

Add your site to the review section on this forum. We will give you tips.

 

Thanks BrianJump... you are right on... just sharing some real data, no tricks, no gimmicks, no BS. These are my results and I share them in hopes others won't make the same mistakes I did.
I hear lots of reasons here why some failed.... check the posters sites and see very little activity on their sites. Maybe they are too busy here giving advice?

 

On one of my sites I've got a recommend this page feature (it's a media site), I tend to see that 5-10 of my 3-4,000 daily users use this feature to mail their friends. Since it's a personal recommendation it works very well. I'd suggest using that. It's slow but it's working. Almost all pages can use such a function - it's a great way since people use it to mail people that isnt already on the site (parents, siblings, friends, colleagues etc).

 

OK, I'm assuming that you purchased the email lists originally. You said you followed CAN-SPAM, so you let them opt out.

My question is, how many opted in, or remained opted in to the email list?

 

Opt-out is totally stupid and lame. Nobody sane would ever click ANY link in a spam message since it's very easy to record if a specific user did click. You often see links to subdomains and / or urls with parameters in them. Rest assured those urls are carefully crafted to log which users actually click links. Thus confirming the existence of a email-addy and if the user reads their spam.

Using opt-out is the same, a confirmation that the email is read. Never ever opt-out.

 

I agree and disagree.

With unreputable SPAMMY emails. I would never click unsubscribe. On an email that is obviously making an effort to be CAN-SPAM compliant I would feel safe clicking unsubscribe

 

I have a pop up on my own site that says everything here is free, would you like to sign up for a our free newsletter. I find this gets a good number of sign ups about 4 times what I get if I just have a form in the page. I have never had a complaint and it still works on one site I haven't maintained in a few years. Sorry no exact data.

 

OutBackPro3's, Very good info either way. I gave you green rep. Others should too maybe?

 

emails are the internet marketers best friend.

 

outbackpro3 and jhmattern,
Thanks for all the great info. A lot of people like me are still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't and apparently what works now may not for long as things are constantly changing. It used to be that 2-3 well written niche articles would bring great converting traffic. Now that is definitely not the case as you need 10 times that for the same traffic or less. Press releases are all different. Fresh content is constantly being stolen by thousands of other sites. Google keeps changing their SEO requirements and search placement. Competitors are getting crazy - I have one that has called every legal office and police or government agency to spill lies and try and stop us - especially with our sales on Ebay. Ebay is absolutely nuts.


Micah