Opt-In–Auto-Responder??
What the heck is an opt-in list. An opt-in list is a list of subscribers that you send email to. For example you add a news letter to your website. People who visit your website subscribe to this newsletter to stay updated on the latest things and information. That is one example, another that you see a lot is free information or giveaways. We have all seen it. A landing page with a promise of free items or a free trial and so on. Some people use this as a way to catch your email. They then send a email with permission making sure you want to receive information from that specific website. This email with a verification link, is you opting to receive emails from that website, and makes the website less likely to get reported as spamming.
Some will notice that we don’t have a news letter on this website. We are getting to that, but generally all the information, programs, and sites we think that are valuable are on this site or blog already. We will hopefully soon start a mailing list giving out even more information that helps you make money.
Now back to the mission at hand.
The reason I am telling you about this is this is a very valuable tool. People make millions off just mailing their huge opt-in email list affiliate offers. Granted this doesn’t help 90% of you reading this because you don’t have a huge email list, but the idea here is to create one so it can help you in the future.
I am not a big fan of the sites that have a sales or landing page and try to capture the email there. We do have some good offers on our main page that employ this technique, and sometimes if they are good companies with good products, I don’t mind getting emails every once and a while about products or information. In the past I, like many of you have been taken advantage of with mass emails. Since everyone as dealt with spam, you know this is no fun, and you know this is a road you don’t want to go down with your website.
The information I am trying to get across to you is that if and when you set up your website, at some point and time you should set up a news letter. This allows you to provide your customers and visitors with information and keeps your website in their minds. You can also provide the occasional products or website you might be promoting if you think it will help your audience.
The mistakes I see a lot are people doing are getting a mailing list, then bombarding their mailing list with affiliate offers. Any reputation you had with your website, goes down the drain by doing this. There are people that I thought very highly of that I no longer even read emails because of them doing this. I see no point in working very hard to build a email list to destroy it with this kind of bombardment. The other mistake I see are people getting a mailing list, sending only an email every week or two. Now this is fine, but they still only advertise products in the emails.
You have to build your reputation with people you are mailing. Send them information, tell them about special discounts or new areas of your site. Tell them about other interesting websites that could give them information. Then send the occasional email promoting something that will help them. Don’t send them crap to buy, and make that all you ever send them.
You also need to make the emails relevant to your niche. If your website is about golf, it doesn’t make sense to send them information about cars, or making money. Send them relevant info, products and sites. Make yourself an authority on your niche and be there to help.
Now that was the hard part. The easy part is how you set all of this up. You need an auto responder service for all of this. There are several on the web. Some cost and I have heard of some free ones, but never tried them. As usual, you can search Google for “auto-responders” I personally use this one HERE. It has a great reputation and is used by a large group of people. It is not free, but is not that expensive either.
If you want a different one than the one I mentioned, be careful. Like with any service for 1 good one, there are 20 scams or bad ones. The last thing you want is to build a huge news letter email list and then lose it because you chose a crappie service. Which brings me to another thing. Always back up your mailing list.
Now with the service I use, you can setup different things which you want mailed, the dates, and time when they need to go out. For example: A visitor subscribes to your newsletter. The auto-responder immediately sends an email to verify the email account, welcome the visitor, and make sure they want to opt-in. Then you set up another email to go out the next day after the visitor subscribed giving him some helpful information and giving more detail about your site and its mission. A week after the visitor subscribes, another information email goes out with helpful information, and so on, and so on. You can set all this up in advance. You can set a whole article series you have written to go out at certain times and weeks for your visitors. It is really simple to maintain.
Another tip. If you have a blog with your website and you post a new article, add a snippet to your auto-responder and send it. This allows your subscribers to see that you have a new post and decide if they want to visit your blog. More than likely they will come to the blog and read the whole article. Just remember the important part is not sending advertisements or products every time. If you have a product that you are excited about than go ahead and send it if it is relevant, but don’t send another product the next day. This will make you hated, no matter how good the two products are. In fact if you are too lazy to send anything but products, there really is no point is even trying this method, because you will hurt your website in the long run.
One thing I forgot to mention. You can give free products, to get people to subscribe to your mailing list. You can read my blog post about the digital and eBay products HERE. This article includes a place to get a ton of digital products. You can also find an eBook or something on your own. Just make sure you have the right to give it away. You can also use this method on landing pages. We put 54 landing pages and other helpful things in our Free Zone page. The form used for the subscription or opt-in are found at the auto-responder I gave you or should be found at the one you are going to use.
Remember this is a technique to use along your working at home journey. It will make you money, if you don’t abuse it. This is not something that you need to focus on now if you are a newbie, just something you need to remember to do later. Right now as a newbie, you need to get into some of the programs on the first page and start making money. Then your next step is to get websites of your own up, letting the money your making fund this. Then set up your news letter. I just wanted to throw this in here because I know there are hundreds of make money sites selling this info as a “Big Time Secret That Will Make You Millions!”.
Now you know the big secret they are selling for $40.00.
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