21 Days to a More Profitable Blog Tutorial > Day 16! Expand your reach and add a newsletter
(It’s 12:45pm – where HAS the day gone??)
I really do have to apologize for the lateness of this lesson, yet it does go to show that even probloggers can fall prey to physical limitations. Yesterday, I participated in adult karate sparring against some extremely brilliant fighters half my age and taller by far than me. I was knocked off my feet, flat on my back, twice, yet (and here I’ll admit it – I’m very proud of myself), I scrambled to my feet in both times and resumed the match. I caught some ringing kicks on my head and chest (was wearing gear of course) but amazingly enough – it wasn’t frightening at all (it just really mad me madder than a rabid mama bear!).
After returning home at 9:45pm, I tried sleeping but awakened at 1:30am or so (my back felt like it was laced with cold fire, what an, ahem, unique sensation). Got up at 2am, wrote Remembering Tiananmen Square Massacre, 19 years ago – 10 Crucial Resources, worked until 4am, slept again, got up at 5:30am, took my kid o the 2.4 mile circle walk in the rain, got utterly soaked (but kid and I had a great time!), and now finally can sit down and write again.
I still feel a wee bit more comatose than a fossilized clam, but hey, coffee is starting to percolate thru my veins and my mind is actually engaged. Admit it – my life would make Indiana Jones envious! 🙂
Of course, that brings me to:
Today is Day 16 of my series, 21 Days To A More Profitable Blog!
And for today, I’d like to discuss:
Going beyond your RSS subscriptions.
Yes yes yes, I know…when folks subscribe to your feed, you’re getting more potential eyeballs that see all the goodies about which you write.
Go beyond that.
Don’t limit yourself to solely being a blogger who makes money with his or her blog – add the distinction of being an Internet Marketer who happens to blog as well.
One of the best ways to achieve this is to build your own mailing list via offering a newsletter, an ezine, a downloadable book, something, anything (well, let me amend that…anything that ends up making your customers happy) that gives excellent value in return for obtaining permission to proactively send email to an online individual.
I’ve been doing that now since 1998 to great success. Even here on my blog, BarbaraLing.com, you can see up to the right my Private Newsletter subscription option. And whenever something new and interesting comes across my radar, I can alert my readers to it.
Do NOT underestimate the importance of this! Don’t simply rely upon your RSS feed to deliver readers to your blog…proactively engage people as well. It’s easy to accomplish – you simply need to use an autoresponder.
And here’s how !
Before You Begin – Sign up for an autoresponder.
Wasn’t that simple?
Next,
Step 1 – Set up your autoresponder.
I wrote a quick guide for setting up your autoresponder at Beef up your list by powering up your autoresponder mastery. Please review that article for some rather nifty tricks to maximize your autoresponder benefit….the most important aspect is determining what you decide to offer in return for a signup, such as:
- Free 7 day eclass
- Sample of your product
- PDF report
- Website graphics
- List of plugins you use on your own supercool blog
- etc.etc.etc.
Next,
Step 2 – Set up your thank you page.
A thank you page is another opportunity to add value to your reader. Mine can be found at Thank you for subscribing!!. Notice how I give individuals instructions on how to white-list my address (very important!) and point them in the direction of my free download Beginners Make Money Cookbook.
Once everything is ready, all you have to do is simply:
Step 3 – Add the autoresponder signup code to your blog template.
After you create an autoresponder, you can generate the code to include it on your blog via selecting List Settings (circled in red) and then Web Form (circled in blue) like so:
From there, you can create your webform and then click "Get HTML". This will return the code you need to enter into your blog template. It’s very easy to do – you approach it the same way you did when you added eBay affiliate links to your sidebar on Day 8 of this tutorial.
And you’re done! Now every page of your blog will have your newsletter signup, giving you yet another marketing opportunity in the future.
aWeber even offers a tutorial for adding an autoresponder via a WordPress widget as well. Some more great resources include:
Nice, eh?
In closing
In today’s lesson, you learned how to add a newsletter to your blog.
And of course (you really didn’t think I’d close a post without this now, did you?) an opportunity now arises!
(remember, there’s no such things as problems in real life – just misunderstood opportunities)…..
HOMEWORK – Wouldn’t it be great if people could pass around your affiliate link for excellent products to their friends…which will give you affiliate commissions should they buy from your link?
Hmmmm? 
Thus, until tomorrow! (and don’t forget, if you think any of your friends would benefit from these tutorials, please do share them! They’ll thank you for it…guaranteed).
Enjoy,
Barbara Ling
#BEGIN highlights of this blog writing post:
Beginners make money blogging tips: Sign up for an autoresponder.
Intermediate and/or Advanced make money blogging tips: Create a 7 days class as a deliverable that uses your own affiliate links within each lesson.
#END highlights of this blog writing post
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ps – speaking of autoresponders:
Get Started Here
You’ll love what you learn… Promise!