My good buddy Ian Fernando, who is on my team at the Top Affiliate Challenge, has a launched a great new WordPress plugin call OptIn Comments that will encourage your commentators to subscribe to your newsletter or RSS list. It’s a fantastic way to build or increase the size of your mailing list.
How OptIn Comment Works
OptIn Comments works seamlessly with WordPress and Aweber (or any other mailing program). When a reader makes a comment on your blog, OptIn Comment will email that reader a thank you letter and ask if he would like to subscriber to your newsletter or RSS list. For example, if you’re a new reader and you made a comment to any of my posts, you will receive this message in your inbox once your comment has been approved.
Hello [Commentator name]
Thank you for commenting on John Chow dot Com. I would like to offer you my free eBook, Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com as a gift for making the comment. To receive the book, simple sign up to my newsletter by clicking the link below.
Thank you and I look forward to reading more comments from you.
John Chow
Not only does this help you get more newsletter subscribers, but your reader will think you’re really cool guy for sending him a personalized thank you letter.
Installation and Set Up
OptIn Comments is very easy to install and set up – just upload the file to your WordPress Plugins folder and then activate it. The Plugin works best with Aweber but it will work with whatever program you use to handle your mailing list. Options include auto sending the commentator the thank you email, or letting them decide to opt in by checking a box at the end of the comment.
Special Price for John Chow dot Com Readers
Ian has set the price for OptIn Comment at $97.00 and it would be worth every penny. However, I strong armed him into giving John Chow dot Com readers a special Top Affiliate Challenge price. If you order OptIn Comment at their website, the price is $97.00. However, if you order it via this special link Ian set up for me, you can get it today for only $57.00.
My personal results with OptIn Comments has been amazing. Normally, I get 30 to 50 new signs up per day to my newsletter. I installed Optin Comments yesterday and my subscription went to 170 new subscribers the next day! OptIn Comment is a great way to build up your mailing list.
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{ 96 comments }
I dont like this at all. It’s nothing new and nothing great. It’s comment relish all over again.
I certainly hope that most blogs avoid such plugins. When I post a comment, I certainly dont sign up for unwanted and uncalled for emails. These auto generated mails are nothing but nuisiance to me. Just one more email I would delete without reading.
I love the banner anyway
yep, this is just a variation of the comment relish plugin that is free
That is what i had think, price is two high! Don’t say give it for free, but max 20$ would be fine.
I agree…a bit high on price.
Huh…money again! What about giving it 50 percent off Mr. Ian Fernando. That’d sell more I guess.
comment relish is a good plugn .. While I understand that this plugin might not be a good one, I believe comment relish is a cool plugin and it shows that their is someone at the blog that cares for you as a reader as long as you don’t spam it with bunch of subscription links for your users.
there is a huge difference from comment relish and optin comments. the idea of optin comments did come from comment relish but on the aspect of marketing. optin comments is there to capture potential leads and does not use your own server to send emails, it uses the auto responder services. the main function f optin comments is to capture leads and potential leads at that. optin comments creates that intimate interaction between reader and webmaster, for a list builder or email marketer this plugin is very powerful.
I’m wordless at your plug-in Ian, I like the idea and of course it will get a lot of readers, but I personally think that the price is too high!
I don’t like the “automatic” feature.
Basically, i comment a blog – i join their newsletter. It should always be “let the user decide” if John or any blog set it to automatic, i’d stop reading and commenting on that blog.
Actually I already got a few from John. You do get to choose to subscription or not.
users decide anyways on the first verified optin letter, to be can spam compliant – when I first created this plugin – buyers were asking some specific features and so I did and have adusted the features to work with buyers
Yep, I agree this would be great for nice little niche blogs where you are pushing products. I think people here assume it’s should only be used for their main blogs…I wouldn’t use it on my regular blog but would be great for niche blogs.
But I agree with a comment from above, price is WAY off. $20 max for something like this in my opinion.
It all depends who your readers are, if they are frequent bloggers/affiliate marketers/internet junkies that hate seeing confirmation emails for everything they put their email address in then yeah, it probably will piss them off. However, owners of blogs in niches where the readers do not frequent the internet, and only visit a couple sites here and there will appreciate a thank you email.
It all depends who your readers are.
This Plugin Will ALSO pump up your Feedburner RSS stats!
Had to say it. Aweber newsletter subscribers get counted as feedburner subscribers in the chicklet…. now you know.
How is this any different from the free plugin called Comment Relish?
The plugin is available at http://www.justinshattuck.com/comment-relish
Why pay $97 or $57 when a free tool does the job, or am I missing something here?
Exactly my point… why pay when something is free?
Why pay for Mp3′s, Video games, or any software then. you can get all them free via torrent sites anyways….. yet people are those people dumb for trying to sell it?
I for one didn’t know about comment relish.
It’s obviously not the same, because downloading comment relish isn’t illegal so there’s no reason not to do it.
That stuff is illegal. Comment Relish is a free plugin.
That makes no sense & would only make sense if Comment Relish wasn’t free & people were downloading/passing it around as if it were.
Why pay for Mp3′s, Video games, or any software then. you can get all them free via torrent sites anyways….. yet people are dumb for trying to sell it?
I for one didn’t know about comment relish.
I agree with the above, people are there to comment, not sign up for everything.
It is a bit more advanced than the free Comment Relish though.
Comment Relish is the first thing I thought of when I read the first paragraph.
Hate to say it, but I don’t know if he’ll be getting a lot of sales since there’s already a plugin like this that’s for free, unless he adds a whole lot of new features [not entirely sure what could be done.]
Kill up the competition with the greatest product, and the success comes along the way.
I’ve not heard of Comment Relish – but this sounds like a great idea!
Please dont use this. It sends unsolicited emails that’s what it does. It’s certainly aggressive and may earn you a few subscribers but would also antagonise many regular readers.
Well, it prompted me to immediately create a filter and send everything from johnchow.com to the spam box.
It is indeed a great idea. And it will surely increase your subscriber count.
But is there any chance to get it free.
Isn’t the price a bit too high? Plugin seems very nice, but for that price you can promote your blog and have more subscribers with a traffic growth.
I’m glad to see other commenters feel the same, asking people to pay $97 or $57 for a pluggin is absolutely ridiculous. It’s a good idea sure, but as people have said there are probably free alternatives, so this is not even an original idea.
Also, I don’t see how you perceive the value or a pluggin for that cost. I only recently discovered your blog John and it looks great, but you might want to be careful how much you try promote your TAC team and how much you will compramise your own blog / brand to win a competition because a post like this really reduces credibility IMO.
Interesting plugin but for that much its better to advertise.
Yeah, $50 bucks seems a little extreme. If it is a new and improved version, then charge a few bucks… but $97 to most, $47 for JC readers… Ouch!
On another note, I am looking for guest posters for a new blog about making money in adult industry. It is generally the same industry. If you are interested… hit me up. Obviously I would credit you with post and leave “follow” link on blog. Sorry for the plug JC…
Ouch! I don’t have that much money.
then just get Comment Relish which is free.
So are there any free alternatives to this one.
So are there any free alternatives to this.
Yes – Comment Relish. The link is posted in the second comment.
Yes Chetan, I have mentioned it on my blog too. A very cool plugin, Comment Relish
“Capture every prospects”, I don’t think so. The best motto for this plugin is, “Capture everyone. ”
it captures prospects because it will capture readers who are somewhat interested in your blog, it captures potential leads. capturing every traffic would be hard, especially traffic that is not intereste in your site. optin comments captures readers who are somewhat interested in your blog
Yeah, I got that e-mail since I used this new e-mail address of mine. Somehow it annoyed me due to the fact that it was most unexpected.
Ian is great! I am sure many people are wondering why they didn’t come up with this idea!
People did come up with the idea
I really think he should make this plugin free and promote his name and blog by putting it in the admin side of the plugin somewhere. Wordpress is free and so should the plugins. If you feel your work to make a plugin is worth money than your coding for the wrong reason. The only thing I think should cost money for wordpress blogs would be a custom blog design since that does take a lot of time.
There are a few plugins that are worth paying for and which will make it easier for you to make money. Two that I am happy I bought are WP affiliate pro and bayrss (like phpbaypro).
But I don’t think every plugin should be marketed. Some work and are worth it, others not so much.
how much you pay for WP affiliate pro ?
What is the purpose of this WP affiliate pro ?
If it’s cheap and easy to manage, i would consider to get one
I believe that’s the plugin that not only masks affiliate links, but also keeps track on how many clicks they get.
Also John, your readers most likely increased because of the TAC show.
Is this related to the Top Affiliate Challenge? Seems like a hack of Comment Relish to me…
I thought Ian was the first to go. Is he secretly waiting on set to pop back in during an earth shattering plot twist?
Well I’m definitely not coughing up $57 for something I could get for free!
Me too !! I rather get it for free man..i dont think poor man will buy it before they earn.
way to expensive.
and of course I got one of the autoresponder e-mails from this plugin after leaving my last comment. Extremely annoying and will definitely be heading to the spam box.
Hehe I started getting this a few days ago but perhaps John should’ve turned it off for a couple days until after the posts subsides.
They make this same thing for free and I have been using it for weeks. http://www.u-g-h.com/index.php/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-plugin-comment-email-responder/ If you are trying to promote a product to sell in order to win on the TAC I wish that would be made more clear.
this is not a TAC competition – i voted myself off and using and leveraging my time here in Nebraska to promote and help with my relaunch of my product
I’d pay about $20 for this.
ask them whether you can get it in $20 or not
Well if people are daft enough to pay for this when Comment Relish does the job just as good then they are stupid.
Cannot see the point paying for something that has already been dne and is free.
Just an addition to my last comment this will actually put me of commenting as soon as i posted my comment i got a request to confirm my subscription. Dont think so as i did`nt request one.
In these days when more & more mailing lists subscriptions services are requiring a double opt-in process to reduce spam & stay CAN-SPAM compliant, it seem that this plugin is moving in the opposite direction. By ‘forcing’ you past the first opt-in when you simply enter your email details to make a comment.
should have been a free pluggin
cash grab. stupid tax. if you want to comment spam your readers, then comment relish it. If you want your readers to comment…let them comment and leave it at that friends.
John,
This is a powerful add on for wordpress! I truly consider having it included in my blog!
Cheers
Seems pretty steep for me. But I buy off brand toilet paper.
Then, we might as well trade spams. This comment was brought to you by http://www.majorpowersellers.com/ .
This plugin sounds like it would do nothing more then annoy my commenters not get them to come back.
You may gain a few subscribers or convert some leads, but you’re going to piss a lot of people off with it. Whenever I take an action and I get something like this that wasn’t requested or expected I instantly lose respect for the source.
This sounds like a great way to woo your readers into the newsletter. What would be better is if they could get the plugin to read the Name entry in the comment and have it send a completely personalized e-mail. That would give the messages a nice little touch.
I think this is a really good idea. I have left messages on blogs before and been sent an email ‘thank you’ and polite message asking if I wanted to subscribe to their feed. Personally I thought it was a nice thought and a great marketing technique.
It’s a good thought, I don’t think it would drive anyone away, but at that price, I think there should be several viable free options.
I was pretty shocked when I received one of these e-mails yesterday from this blog. If i’m correct, Aweber requires a monthly fee, so I would actually stick with Comment Relish.
I believe that Ian’s plugin is indeed useful for some marketers that use use subscribing services. However, Comment Relish still does the same job…and for free.
-Mike
I agree with you. You can probably adapt comment relish easily enough to make it work like this plugin. If it was $10 it might not be worth the trouble to change but at $97 (even $57), I’d come up with a hack myself.
Yeah, I agree. CR isn’t really hard to hack at all.
You must be kidding.
Look at OIO publisher. It costs $37 and it completely monetizes your blog. One click activation of inline ads, text links, 125 banners, sponsored posts, and more. It automates the entire sales process and sends detailed statistics back to the buyer. You get 100% of the revenue. For $37.
And Ian wants us to pay $97 for two lines of code that send an email? BWA HA HA. Ian, my blind dog missing one leg could write a better plugin in between taking bites of dog food and hobbling around trying not to fall over. Go back to losing at TAC. You clearly suck at marketing and a logical thought process. You should be charging $5 for this garbage.
ouch! Really kicking a guy when he is down… but, if the guy is trying to get $97 bucks for something that is offered elsewhere for free… don’t forget the elbow drop! My thought is that he should keep it under $20 and sell the sizzle.
nice article and advice.Thanks..
I could probably pull up 10 different plugins,widgets,or scripts that would do the same thing. With about 1 hour, I could whip one up in PHP. (45 mins to make it look pretty with graphics, ect.) I am sorry but it isn’t worth almost 100 bucks. Besides that, 99% of your readers don’t make any money. They just read about making money. They can’t afford $97 for a website they don’t even have yet.
Shudogg Dot Com – Make Money Online Blogging
Agree hehe! Many reader doesn’t make money and not afford to pay for that. After getting and we are not 100% get the profit.
I suggest that they should give out free trial for 100days or whatever, if user really found that’s work and worth it, then only buy it or stop it.
You have a point. The price isn’t an issue for me, although I do think it should be lower. And the fact that it says [on the site] they’re the first ones to come up with this is false.
Nice plugin
i like it
This Plugin Will ALSO pump up your Feedburner RSS stats!
Had to say it. Aweber newsletter subscribers get counted as feedburner subscribers in the chicklet…. now you know.
Interesting. I don’t use Aweber, so I didn’t know that.
Hmmm, I’m still not sure whether this plugin going to make our commentator comfortable…
If you can’t recognise this you will be left out of the marketing arena and whilst others that you live with are making large & incredible sums of revenue, you will miss out!
I’m in…because I believe the Internet’s system is changing and if we don’t apply ourselves to the changes we may as well pack up and head for the hills?
$97 for a Wordpress plugin is a lot of money this is a steal! Software that has been developed in more than 3 years with long hours of work is sold at way lower prices. Anyway this is just my opinion, besides the Comment Relish plugin does the same thing and is available free for everyone at :
http://www.justinshattuck.com/comment-relish
Enjoy!
comment relish is free and it only sends a thank you email. in the thank you email you can say thank you and subscribe to my rss
but what if you can give them something free right there and at that moment where they were active on the blog, it has a higher chance of converting into subscribers. comment relish only says thank you to your first time readers, optin comments attempt to capture your potential leads
John, generally you offer information about plugins for Wordpress! Please do not forget the bloggers who loves Blogger.com !
Why you do not offers for us in the same mode ?!
That’s a cool plugin. But I thought it is free
Can’t afford to buy it 
So how many have opted in for opt in comments?
Wow its very cool plugin…
Has anyone seen any rise in their opt-in list? Does anyone have any stats to back up their claimed rise? I am a big numbers guy and I like to see the numbers before I buy.
I just got an email from this plugin
Do you prefer this to Subscribe to Comments? I am looking to install one, and a friend recommended this. Before I got around to it though, I read your post. Just curious if you have experience with this one too.