List Building Secret #4

List Building Secret #4 - Use Free Viral Ebooks To Get New Subscribers

Want to get thousands of new subscribers for your ezine without spending a cent on advertising and you've tried all the methods above but you still want more?

Viral marketing is the way to go! Writing viral ebooks that get passed around

Writing viral books is nothing new, but it's still a great way to get your newsletter noticed.

There are a few methods you can use when creating viral ebooks.

You can either create them as a free product, or charge for them and give people the reprint rights to the product so they in turn can give your product away while making some money in the process.

I prefer the reprint right route. The key here is tho, once the momentum of the first book wears out, write another and another and another and another! All in the same method, all with reprint rights and all with your newsletter subscribe from plastered in them.

The goal really isn't to make money from the sales of the book, it's to get more subscribers.

So again, find a group of publishers in your markets, let them know you created a new ebook with sales letter that they can use and plug straight into their website and give them a mailing promotion to use and tell them they can have the book for free and that they can either sell the book or the book and the reprint rights to their customers.

This is easy money for them and more subscribers for you!

Doing audio interviews with experts in your field also is a great idea to get more subscribers. I'm not going to get into how to create audio products as that's a whole other book, but interviewing experts over the phone and recording it on mp3 will get your newsletter splashed all over the Internet, especially in fields other then Internet marketing where people don't expect to get this much quality information for free

When you take marketing tactics from the Internet marketing field and apply them into other niche markets where they have never been seen before, you will get noticed more. Everything has been done in the Internet marketing field, we are all  immune to even the most brilliant marketing tactics as we see them almost everyday, but other niche markets eat these things up.

Creating audio interviews isn't hard at all equipment wise and finding experts to interview is a piece of cake.

Do you know how I find experts in any field almost instantly?

Well most FAQ pages at FAQS.Org/faq/ have who its written by and an email address for them. These guys are obviously knowledgeable in their fields, and they would make great experts to interview.

Tell them you want to interview them because you've read information they've written and it was great and you think your subscribers would appreciate the information.

Most will do this without charging you a cent if you are outside the marketing field, they will just get a thrill out of being interviewed.

Once you have these interviews, tell all the publishers you've been in contact with recently that you have this great set of mp3's just completed and you want to offer them for free to their lists.

Setup a section on your website with the download link to these mp3's and also put a subscribe form near them for your newsletter and you will be surprised how many people will sign up AFTER they listen to your mp3s.

Don't make is so these people have to sign up for your newsletter before they get the mp3s.

List Building Secret #3

List Building Secret #3 -  Offer An Outstanding Bonus Or Gift

I've had a problem in the past with offering freebies to get people to subscribe to your newsletter, but I also know it can work well, if done properly.

Why do I have a problem with it? Well I really want subscribers to be signing up for my newsletter because they want my newsletter not because they want the freebie im offering.

The best way to offer a freebie is to create one yourself and not something you have reprint rights to with 500 other people. You want it to be unique, and you want it to be something that plugs your newsletter heavily.

Do you know what makes a good bonus? Back issues of your newsletter!

Blog Comments and Input

Comments and Input

In order for your readers to return again and again, it’s important to make them feel like your site is their site.  You need to make them feel at home in your Blog Empire.  One way to do that is by allowing them to make comments, ask questions, and provide information through timely feedback.  This can be done either through the blog-supplied comments, through special free add-ons such as Haloscan or by adding an attached forum through a free service such as ForumUp. Be aware, however, that on the internet as in life, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.  Free service providers are actually providing the same service to advertisers that you are by putting ads in front of your readers.  If you send your readers to a forum on someone else’s server, you will generally not receive the advertising revenue that traffic creates.  That’s their payment for providing the service to you without cost.

The comments sections of popular blogs are “where the action is.”  Arguments can last for days, even weeks, and provide consistent fodder for updated or pointed entries.  If you’ve stated something controversial on the front page, your readers will certainly let you know what they think, providing the perfect opportunity to clarify, modify, or expand your argument.  If you’ve listed ways that a certain software package can be modified, knowledgeable readers can provide additional information, making your blog that much more valuable to your other readers.  Comments can also provide valuable feedback to you, and what is sometimes more important, encouragement to let you know that your efforts are appreciated and worthwhile.

If you decide to allow comments and feedback, it’s important to decide how much time you want to spend monitoring the traffic it generates.  If discussions get “off track,” you may need to publish (and enforce) forum rules, which may be as simple as editing content for bad language or as complicated as ensuring – if your blog is related to the stock market, for example - that information presented is not in violation of a myriad of SEC regulations.  Remember, your readers, like the author they read, always come with their own agendas.  If your comments section gets wild and crazy, that’s great for your traffic.  If it becomes a haven for spammers or stock manipulators, you may have to spend more time reading and editing than that traffic is worth.

Banning Readers

Once your comments section takes on a life of its own, you’ll certainly meet a lot of well-informed and interesting people who will make your job easier and your content more valuable.  You will see relationships develop and blossom and you’ll get to know your most faithful readers as far more than just words on a screen.  Getting to know your readers will provide encouragement as you see how the content you provide them helps them in real life.  It’s one of the finest pleasures of the job.

But you’ll also attract those readers whom you would rather not deal with.  They may be spammers who use your forums to promote their own sites.  They may be ne’er-do-wells who simply show up to gainsay everything and abuse their fellow readers.  And that means that you may have to ban readers, making it impossible for them to post on your site.

Banning readers is not something that ought to be done lightly.  However, for your forums and comment sections to succeed, they must conform to the goals you have set for your overall site.  If after several warnings, a reader insists that the rules do not apply to him, it may be best for the rest of your readers to remove that reader from the discussion.

Visiting And Reading Other Blogs

Visiting And Reading Other Blogs – Meet the Competition

Once you have staked out your little corner of the blogosphere, it’s time to really size up the competition.  You may have met a few of them through blog rings and traffic exchanges, but now it’s time to really read their sites and – gasp – get to know them.  Just because a blog is a competitor does not mean the blogger is an adversary, and an excellent way to build your reputation and increase your traffic is to introduce yourself to your fellow bloggers and their readers through the comments section of their blogs.

Bloggers love comments because readers who are engaged in a discussion in the comments section will return to a page again and again. Some popular blogs have hundreds of comments on some entries, and for every commenter you can be sure there are dozens who are following along but who do not care for whatever reason to get involved in the discussion.  Comment areas will usually allow you to enter your email address and blog address in addition to your name, so for every comment you make, you’re insuring that another link to your blog is placed in front of people who might be interested in what you have to say.

However, avoid “comment spam,” the practice of dropping comments just for the link or blatantly advertising your site without adding anything useful to the discussion.  It’s not only a good way to alienate potential readers; it’s a good way to get you banned from a site. A good commenter will often earn a link from the host, and if the host has more traffic than you (and it’s a good idea to comment only on those blogs that are more established than yours) you’ll often pick up readers who see your site linked from that blog.  Be sure to reciprocate quickly and thank the other blogger for linking.  You’ve made a friend who will consistently send targeted traffic your way. If a site has an established link policy, be sure to follow it to the letter.  You want to give other blogs every reason to link you and no reason to cut you off.

Your Blog Entries

Your Blog Entries

What stories are to a city newspaper, blog entries are to your Blog Empire.  And while your layout is important, readers will not return again and again to admire your layout or ruminate over your clever title.  They’ll return again and again to read your writing or view your artwork or check the links that you provide.  In other words, while they may read because of your layout, they will return because of your entries.

An entry is simply a published piece of material, and your readers will have definite expectations for your entries that you will need to meet, again and again, in order to woo them into coming back tomorrow.  Luckily, most of those expectations are set by you in prior entries. Those expectations are insight, relevance, timeliness, accuracy, and consistency.

Thoughtful, Insightful and Unique Content

Whether your blog provides photographs of the rain forest, reviews of Pacific Northwest restaurants, or the largest collection of ethnic jokes on the planet, your readers expect that every time they come there, they’ll find something new, unique, and worthwhile.  They’ll expect to find something they can’t find anywhere else or find by themselves without searching all over.  In short, they’ll expect you to provide insightful and unique content on a certain consistent subject or issue.  Your insight and your dedication to providing quality are what will draw them back.

Your Blog Links and Commentary

On a news blog, for example, your readers expect that your commentary will provide interesting and relevant news, probably with a link to an original story or a source site.  They will also expect you to provide expertise that they do not possess, information they have not found elsewhere, and an up-to–the-minute take on relevant trends and rumors.  They want to read the entry and come away feeling they now know more than they did, that they learned something interesting, and that they leave with a reason to return.

A blog that reviews restaurants will meet those same expectations in a different manner.  Timeliness is less a factor – restaurants don’t change as quickly as the daily news – but relevance and thoroughness become more important.  Your readers are not going to return for your reviews of Portland’s collection of Subway restaurants, nor for your fifth review of Kell’s Irish Pub, even if you think it the best place in the world to eat.  They demand an expanding collection of useful content, and they want each entry to tell them everything they need to know to make an enjoyable dining decision. They want you to be clear, honest, and thorough.

Perhaps your blog is a reference blog, collecting and publishing links by subject.  While readers may not have expectations for your commentary, they will expect the links to be accurate and present a thorough overview of the subject from all angles – or at least from the angle your readers have come to expect from prior commentary.  Consistency and thoroughness are again the watchwords.

Whatever the theme of your blog, your readers will expect every entry to be timely, relevant, and accurate.

Blogging With Consistency

Because your blog shares many attributes of your local newspaper, think for a moment about what the newspaper look like.  It has a masthead, headings, and stories.  It has a certain number of columns, fonts of a certain size and type, and stories categorized within sections.  It looks that way every day. It is consistent.

On the other hand, imagine what you’d think of a newspaper that placed random obituaries in the sports section, put the top story of the day in the classifieds section, or used random fonts and character sizes across an ever-changing number of columns.  You wouldn’t have a lot of respect for that newspaper, would you?  It would not be taken seriously by most readers.  They would ignore it, even though it may be incredibly informative and insightful once they get past the layout.  They will ignore your blog, too, unless you learn a lesson from the papers: consistency makes a good first impression.

That means your entries have to look smart and interesting, even before the reader scans a single headline. And your entries must be readable, especially if you are quoting a source and explaining or arguing with that source.  This can be done through the use of bolds, indentations, color (either font or background) or as many ways as you can imagine.  The only limitations are your imagination and a respect for consistency.  What works for one entry should be made to work for all.  If a specific layout does not work for most entries, keep experimenting until you find one that does.  Your readers will appreciate it.

Your blog entries, laying one after the other on a page, will present the same visual opportunity to make a first impression as the consistent fonts and columns of a newspaper.  That means your entries should all look similar.  They should have the same font in the same size.  The headlines and links should be treated the same way all down the page.  If you use images, they should appear in the same place in each entry.  The entries, at least on the front page, should be the same size, with no entry so large that it takes up the whole front page unless that’s the only story you’re doing for the day – and you do it every day.

But how do you do that, since you’ll not have the same amount to say about every subject or the same number of images to present?  Extra commentary should be handled, like newspapers do it, “behind the fold.” 

Take a look at a few of the favorite blogs you chose earlier and notice a linked line at the bottom of many stories. It may say, “More behind the fold” or simply, “Read more.”  Notice how each of the entries looks the same, with no long entries taking up the entire page.  Notice how if a story does not interest you (and not every one will) you can see the next story without paging down.  That blog realizes that if a long story does not interest a reader, she will most likely not skip to the next one unless she can see it; she will likely surf away instead.  If it does interest the reader, the rest of the story is only a click away.

Whatever blog software you choose (and we’ll review a few types later) should allow you to put data behind the fold, saving your front page for multiple stories, just like a newspaper does.  Remember, the New Media will take the best from the Old Media, and a consistent and serious presentation is one of the best lessons you can learn from them.