This post is part of a 30 Day Secret Experiment. Be sure to read the previous posts to follow my progress.
I spent most of Day 3 working on integrating my mailing list with my website and finding something to offer people that come to my website free.
If you’ve read anything about internet marketing, you’ve probably read that it’s the mailing list that matters most. You want people to raise their hands, identify themselves and tell you that they’re interested in what you offer. They can do that in all sorts of ways - like making a purchase, leaving a forum post or blog comment, or joining your mailing list.
Starting a mailing list from scratch is hard work. One of the biggest questions in internet marketing is “how do I build my list of subscribers?” Well, that’s what I’m going to tackle during these 30 days.
Here’s what you need to get started:
1) The easiest way to start collecting names and email addresses is to sign up with an email service provider. I use Aweber.com because they have great customer service, they’re reasonably priced, their emails have a high delivery rate (that is, they make it into people’s inbox, not the junk or spam folder), and they have good email statistics (they show you who’s opened your email, who’s clicked through, on what links they’re clicking).
2) Once you set up your account, Aweber.com will give you specific code to integrate into your website. You simply copy and paste it into your website template and a form appears. You manage everything within the Aweber.com administrative section, so you don’t have to worry about handling subscriptions, unsubscribes, or making sure you have all the legal necessities in place (like a valid address) to comply with the law.
3) Next, you need to have something that will encourage people to actually join your mailing list. If you have good content on your site, you’ll get people to sign up for your mailing list as long as the form is visible and can be found easily. To give the rest of your visitors an incentive to sign up, you’ll want to offer something free. This can be anything from a free ebook, ecourse, audio or video - something that they’d find valuable and would like to watch/read/use.
4) Finally, you have to set up your email account so that when people fill out your form and subscribe, they receive an email that contains links to your free ebook, audio or video - or if you’re offering a free ecourse, that each day for the next few days, Aweber.com will send them an email automatically (an “autoresponder”) with today’s lesson.
I spent much of today getting my freebies together. Wallace Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich is all the rage these days since Rhonda Byrne mentioned this was the book that changed her life. Luckily, the book happens to be in the public domain, which means anyone can distribute the content for free without worry that someone may sue them.
I found the text online, compiled it into an ebook, then gave it some design. I’ve seen a number of different versions of the ebook out there, but most are either secured (meaning, you can’t print them) or poorly laid out. I decided it would be easiest to create my own ebook, so I designed the book using Adobe Indesign and Adobe Photoshop. (Yes, Adobe products are expensive, but they’re the best! If you need substitutes, Free Serif Software has a number of freebies. You can get a scaled back graphics editing program, PhotoPlus, and a page layout program, PagePlus, for free.) I found a picture to use for the cover at IStockPhoto.com, and made my graphics.
Since there are tons of people out there giving away The Science of Getting Rich, I decided to sweeten the offer. My colleague, Kathy Perry of PeakPerformanceWomen.com, did a 40 minute teleconference last week on The Secret, and she graciously let me offer it as a freebie on this site. In it, she covered the basic principles of The Secret and some of the controversy surrounding the movie. The Q&A that followed also brought up some great points.
Now that I had an ebook and an audio program, it was time to “package” them. That means, creating the cover designs (which I did in Photoshop) and making web graphics I could display on the site.
I then integrated the mailing list form with some text and put it on the front page of the site - where you’ll see an offer to join the mailing list and get 2 freebies. I also created a download page, so once people confirm their subscription to the mailing list, they are immediately taken to the page where they can download their goodies!
I encourage you to give it a try - go to the front page and subscribe to the mailing list or use the form on the right side of the page.