Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Power of the Opt-In Newsletter

I do not care if you are an affiliate marketer, a wholesaler, a dropshipper, or even selling a product, if you do not have an opt-in sign-up on your website, I think you are missing out on a whole lot of sales! In most cases, this is an expense. But in the world that we live in, it sometimes takes money to make money. The $15 per month is very trivial in the whole scheme of things. If you are satisfied with $10-$20 per day in sales, then may not want to spend the money and that is fine. I assume, though, that if you are doing any of the above money making programs, you intentions are probably to make more than this. Believe it or not, $15 per month is probably a cheaper and more effective than spending $15 on PPCs, classified ads, etc.

Why are opt-ins so important? The average number of times a person will look into a product to purchase it online is roughly 6 times. Lets assume that you were interested on making money online and entered make money online into a search engine (something most of us have done at one point or another). You see an ad on the right that says Make $500/day Easy. You click it and there are 3 reviews of different affiliate marketing programs. If you were me, you probably did not buy the first thing you saw. You decide at this point to look up: what is affiliate marketing, is affiliate marketing a scam, Rick Jerk Review, etc. etc. etc. So if you were the first, second, third site this person visited, they probably just passed right over the affiliate link for your sale. Now you may be that 6th site and just happen to be the prompting force to cause the sale, but you just missed 5 other opportunities with others. The opt-in, in this case, keeps the customer interested in your site. And usually, people dont buy products on the first day. It may be a week or month later. The opt-in provides an invited reminder to the customer that you exist and that they should go through your website to make the purchase.

And this is not SPAM, either! The point of the opt-in is that the customer chooses (opts in) to receive your emails. When I first starting affiliate marketing, someone recommended spamming to me so I tried it and what a disaster! I become very hated and I spent months rebuilding my image. Remember, spamming is un-invited solicitation. Opt-ins are invited solicitations.

How do you make an opt-in successful?

1) First, you need to convince people that by joining your newsletter or opt-in, they will receive something in return. Offering free eCourses, free eBooks, free software or free exclusive accesses are just few ideas to do this. If you do plan on offering free services, be sure to follow through on your promise.

2) I mention above that the point of an opt-in is for solicitation. In reality, this is true, but you should hide this fact as much as possible. Offer your subscribers good content, but subtly blend in your products or websites. If you email looks like a big advertisement or spam, they will immediately opt-out of your newsletter.

3) Allow your subscribers to opt-out of your newsletters very easily. Also, do not sell your lists to anyone (and be sure to place a note on your opt-in sign that states will not sell them either). The opt-in letter is more than sales, it is developing trust.

4) Dont overwhelm your subscribers with emails. I once joined a newsletter that sent me an email twice a day for two months. At first, I was annoyed, but I was curious to see how long it would go on for. Further, this person started repeating the same letters once every two weeks. A few letters in the first few days in fine with a weekly or monthly follow-up. But again, your content should be related to what they signed of for. Once you start advertising un-related products, the newsletter starts approaching spam.

Adding an opt-in to your website these days is very trivial. There are programs called autoresponders (both browser based as well as server based) that makes running an opt-in letter virtually no work. They provide the code to create the web form. Then all you do is create the content and newsletters and when each subscriber will receive them. The emails are automatically sent out for you. Once the initial set-up is complete, the program essential runs on auto-pilot. You may get hundreds of subscribers per day that are self-managed.

Because opt-in letters are critical to sales, affordable and so easy to use, there are no excuses for anyone who is even moderately serious about making money online not to use one today.

Matthew is a 32 year old online entrepreneur and engineer currently living in San Diego, CA.

Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on todays hottest online money making ventures.

Squidoo Marketing Strategies and Squidoo Marketing Traffic Tips

Creating successful search engine friendly and surefire profit grabbing bum marketing Squidoo lenses with simple squidoo marketing strategies and tips for generating residual affiliate income is easier than you may think.

When creating powerful Bum Marketing Squidoo lenses there is more than grabbing the best tags. That is vital for fantastic search engine results. However, there are many tricks and tips that will make your Squidoo lens stand out from the crowd using Squidoo marketing strategies that are effective.

The first thing you want to consider is to build a solid introduction block. Be sure to have your niche researched and your keywords aka Squidoo tags ready for inclusion when setting up your lens.

If you need ideas of what the most popular niches are right now you can go to the Squidoo home page and take a look at the tag cloud. Click on any of the keyword/phrase aka tags and you will see which Squidoo lenses are highest in rank for any particular tag. This is a fantastic way to take a look at your competition to see what other Squidoo lens masters are marketing.

VERY IMPORTANT! Pick your keywords carefully and optimize your Squidoo lens for them. Be sure to add your main Bum Marketing keyword aka tag along with your other Bum Marketing keywords when you are setting up your Squidoo lens. This will get your lens to show up for each tag of the keyword phrase you are going to use. You can add more tags later if you want to. Remember to apply your Bum Marketing keyword research skills and you will be rewarded greatly for the right niche choice and long tail keywords!

You will want to include an image of a photo or graphic of the niche product relating to your lens if at all possible. Always try to write enough text to fill the entire space around your photo or graphic. Remember to include a link to your website if you have one.

When creating a Bio for your Squidoo lens make sure you include a picture along with a link to your sites as well. This is very important because your lens can get rotated in the top Squidoo lens later down the road. Without a picture you dont have that opportunity.

Squidoo marketing strategies using external links with clear descriptions to your Bum Marketing Ezinearticles will go a long way. You want to provide people with useful information relating to your niche lens. You want to link to other peoples quality related sites as well. Over time you will want to set up and link multiple Squidoo lenses together and drive traffic using several selling points.

Be sure to write or have someone write your own content. This is where Bum Marketers have a major advantage because we are already writing quality keyword niche content articles and USFreeads.

You want original content for your Squidoo lens for Google search engine bait. Be sure to display a couple Writing Modules within each Squidoo lens so you can quickly add your fresh content. This is vital even if it takes more time, you will be rewarded later for your Bum Marketing Squidoo marketing strategies.

Dean Shainin is known as "The Bum Marketing Wiz" and has helped 1,000's of Internet marketers to go from flat broke to making money using article writing techniques. Grab your copy of his best selling PDF Ebook called "The Ultimate Bum Marketing Squidoo Secrets Unleashed" series loaded with tips and secrets at:
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Best Article Marketing - Uncover 4 Responsive Methods to Accelerate Your Article Marketing

Marketers prefer article marketing over other promotional tools because of numerous reasons; it is hassle-free, cost-effective, and it delivers! It is currently the best internet tool in augmenting your website's traffic, establishing yourself as a key person on your chosen niche, and improving your page ranking.

Here are the 4 responsive methods to accelerate your article marketing:

1. Articles. Your articles are the key factors in this marketing campaign. You need to make sure that they are well-written, optimized, content-rich, informative, short, direct to the point, interesting to read, and relevant to your target niche. By doing so, you are increasing the chances of your articles being read, picked up, and republished by other online users. This can lead to numerous inbound links for your website that can improve not only your traffic but also your page ranking.

2. Submission. The other equally important aspect of article marketing is the submission. In order to strengthen your online presence and realized your other marketing goals, you need to consistently submit your articles to publishing sites. In doing so, you need to create an article summary, keywords that you have used on your content, and a powerful resource box.

3. Tracking. You need to monitor the performance of your articles to identify which ones are bringing quality traffic to your website and which ones need revisions. You can simple log on to your accounts on various publishing sites to see your clickthrough rates. Identify the strong points of your performing articles and apply them on your other articles to increase their open rate.

4. Redo the whole process. The success in article marketing cannot be achieved overnight or after a couple of submissions. In order to succeed in this technique you need to continuously write, submit, and monitor the online performance of your articles until you realized your marketing goals.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Profitable Article Marketing - Latest 4 Big Steps to Increase Your Article Marketing

Every webmaster dreams about getting huge, steady traffic for their website. Why? Because online traffic is the backbone of anything that exists in the World Wide Web. Traffic spells out profit, online recognition, and strong online presence.

One of the best traffic-generating tools these days is article marketing. It is considered the best not only because it is efficient but it is also cost-effective and easy to utilize. It only requires you to write and submit articles to instantly obtain quality inbound links for your website.

Here are the 4 big steps to increase your article marketing:

1. Write more. Strive to create additional articles on a daily basis so you can quickly augment the number of your inbound links. Utilize all proven techniques that can help you multiply the number of your output. Some marketers are spending more time writing articles while others pick topics that are easy and quick to write.

2. Never sacrifice the quality of your articles. Your articles will not be read nor picked up by online users if they are not well-written and content-rich. Make the quality of your articles your number one priority as this is the only element being looked for by online users when they read and republish articles.

3. Increase your clickthrough rate by utilizing attention-grabbing titles. Your headlines are your front liners. If they cannot serve their purpose, your whole marketing strategy is doomed to fail. Make sure that your headlines are enticing, intriguing, has the ability to pique the curiosity of online users, and most importantly, they must be able to communicate the benefits that your whole article can offer.

4. Increase your conversation rate by writing a powerful resource box that can easily move online users to click on your website's URL.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.