OptIn Comments by Ian Fernando
written by John Chow
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 $57.00.
My personal results with OptIn Comments has been amazing. Normally, I get 30 to 50 new signs up per day to my newsletter. I installed Optin Comments yesterday and my subscription went to 170 new subscribers the next day! OptIn Comment is a great way to build up your mailing list.
Find out what I am doing right now by following me on Twitter! If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.
(18 votes, average: 2.06 out of 5)
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I dont like this at all. It’s nothing new and nothing great. It’s comment relish all over again.
I certainly hope that most blogs avoid such plugins. When I post a comment, I certainly dont sign up for unwanted and uncalled for emails. These auto generated mails are nothing but nuisiance to me. Just one more email I would delete without reading.
I love the banner anyway
yep, this is just a variation of the comment relish plugin that is free
That is what i had think, price is two high! Don’t say give it for free, but max 20$ 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.