Lesson learned The Hard Way

If you’ve been blogger for several years then you’ve been leveraging several ways to make money. For example, you have banner ads, PPC, PPV, CPA’s, selling ad space on your blog and even affiliate marketing. However, some of these strategies work better for some compared to others and it depends on the niche your in. I remember when I started blogging I tried Adsense then CPA offers and had very little success. I actually lost a lot of money because in order for me to promote offers and products I had to invest in advertising networks to drive traffic.

Generating money from your blog is about profit to expense ratio meaning you should make more per sale then you’ve spend on converting it through advertising. The equation is pretty simple to understand once you get the hang of online marketing. I’m NOT going to dig deep into online advertising because the best strategy to generate money has nothing to do with paid advertising. However, some people will argue otherwise, I would suggest adopting the following strategy.

Are you ready?

Every top blogger will agree building an email list and setting up a follow-up sequence is the best approach to generate profits. I unfortunately realized this after spending $10,000 on advertising converting $1,500 worth of sales. There are a few reasons why email marketing is the best way to leverage visitors…

  • You can remarket to the same people over again
  • Once there on your list, your NOT spending money on getting them back to your website. It’s as simple as sending a follow-up.
  • It’s a great way to build your brand and credibility
  • If you don’t get the initial conversion, you can convert subscriber at a later time

However, you have to know how to obtain the initial subscriber. When I was testing different strategies there were two that worked very well…

#1 – Organic Search

This strategy takes much longer to implement, but once your generating organic traffic then email subscribers are very easy to obtain. The initial time spend is writing high quality content and building links. However, the best way to actually streamline the entire process is through guest blogging. Before I started to guest post I was generating roughly 500 visitors per month. However, after I started to post on niche authority blogs my visitors jumped to 6,000/mo. This means each person visiting my website was a potential subscriber. I needed an incentive to get them to opt-in and I decided to offer two things. First, a complete list of 80 do-follow article directories, and secondly, on-page SEO checklist with both being relevant to my niche. The conversions were awesome and I tweaked the landing page until I got an optimal conversion rate.

Next,

Overtime I sent them a series of awesome content and tracked which content got the highest engagement. This told me what my readers are looking for and when I was ready to start promoting a relevant product I had 11,000 email subscribers I can blast a product review to. I also created my own article directory with a featured listing price of $5.00 and knew that people were interested because of how many people downloaded my do-follow list. I had a separate list for these people and blasted out the URL to 5,000 subscribers with 25% of them purchasing the featured listing package.

The main thing to keep in mind is the organic method is FREE and only required time writing content, guest blogging and building links. However, the conversions through the email form are amazing and I still continue to convert the list 2 years after the first subscriber joined.

#2 – Paid Method

Using paid advertising can be tricky and you have to keep one thing in mind. Your objective should be to convert the visitor into a subscriber or its money down the drain. For example, if someone clicks through on an advert your going to be paying for the click no matter what. Not having a funnel to remarket to the visitor is a lost investment. For example, the likelihood of the person purchasing a product on the first click is very slim so you need to find a way to get them back to your website without paying money for a return visit. Capturing the email address will allow you to send a series of follow-ups hopefully converting them at a later time. By doing this you’ve redeemed the money you’ve spent in marketing. I don’t recommend using paid advertising unless your very familiar with the different marketing methods. You should have experience in optimization and know how to tweak campaigns into a winning strategy so you don’t blow enormous money along the way. If you can handle paid advertising and have a budget for testing and tweaking then use the following strategy to convert paid visitors into subscribers…

First, purchase the product your selling and create a mini eBook outlining some of the important elements. It’s important to not give away all the juicy secrets, but just enough so they’ll be hyped to purchase the product. Make sure it’s a common problem where people are looking for a solution. Some that work well are: Health, Wealth and Romance.

Next,

When the visitor clicks-through and arrives on your site you should have a tested landing page offering them a FREE download of the eBook. This way you’ll capture the email address, provide them useful information and can remarket at a later time. If you don’t capture the email address you’ve just paid anywhere from $0.50-$3.00 per click (depending on niche) and got absolutely nothing in return. Capturing the email address will tell you a few things about the visitor…

  • They are interested in the product, but not sure about purchasing. At this point you can run through a follow-up sequence.
  • Demographic
  • They are interested in other products related to the niche

In conclusion,

Capturing email subscribers is the best way to build brand awareness and generate income through return visitors related to your niche. The problem is I didn’t start gathering email subscribers from the beginning and this reduced my subscribers by a couple thousands. Always collect subscribers if simply selling a product through landing page or if you have a full fledge blog.

Click Here To Download John Chow’s New eBook, The Ultimate Online Profit Model!