Before there was "@" by PacoAlcantara via Flickr

If you’re not building a list, then you’re leaving money on the table. However, you’re also letting a lot of money slip through your fingers if too many of your visitors are leaving your site without opting in to your list.

Here are five ways to get more people to subscribe to your newsletter…

1. Write a Squeeze Page

You can’t just put up the words "free newsletter," post your subscription form and expect a rush of new subscriptions.

Instead, you need to create a squeeze page, which is a sales letter for your newsletter. This page should include the usual parts of a sales letter such as the headline, the bulleted benefit list and a strong call to action.

Here are two additional tips:

Answer the "what’s in it for me" question. From the second your reader lands on your squeeze page, he’s going to wonder, "what’s in it for me?" Your headline should answer that question by promising a big benefit. And every line of your copy should continue answering that question until your prospect is convinced he needs to join your list.

Make it reader-oriented. Your letter should use the word "you" as much as possible (otherwise the reader will lose interest). If you have statements that include the word "I," see if you can rewrite them using the word "you."

Example: "I’ll show you how to train your dog."

Rewritten: "You’ll discover how to train your dog."

2. Offer a Freebie

Yes, your newsletter is free. But you need to offer a little extra bonus to entice subscribers to join now. This extra bonus might be something like:

• A free report or ebook.
• A free multi-part ecourse delivered by autoresponder. (This is one of the best freebies, because it trains your subscribers to read your emails!)
• Free access to a membership site.
• Free access to teleseminar.
• Free audio recordings.
• Free video.
• Free software.
• Or other free tools or resources.

3. Provide Proof

Your prospects don’t believe you. And if they don’t believe you, they’ll guard their email addresses and click the back button. That’s why you should include proof such as endorsements, testimonials, screenshots, video, pictures and other evidence that your claims are true.

Examples:

You might provide "before" and "after" pictures on a bodybuilding site.

Or you might provide video proof of your Clickbank account to show that you know what you’re talking about in terms of affiliate marketing.

4. Arouse Curiosity

One of the best ways to boost your conversion rate is by arousing your prospect’s curiosity about your newsletter and/or your freebie. You can do this in your headline as well as in your list of benefits.

Examples:

"Discover a sales letter trick that doubles your conversion rate overnight – see page 18 to learn this surprisingly simple trick!"

Or "You’ll find out what five words you can say to a marketer that will virtually guarantee he’ll agree to your joint venture!"

5. List Your Privacy Policy

Finally, you should include a link to your privacy policy on your newsletter subscription page. Most people won’t read it. But it can boost your conversion rate for among those individuals who are concerned about how you’ll use their contact details. Be sure to let subscribers know you won’t trade, sell or otherwise share their information.

Congratulations – you now know five ways to get more people to join your list. Naturally, just knowing these tips won’t grow your list.

So start applying them today, because the sooner you do, the sooner you can reap the rewards!

Slideshow Presentation

Join the Rebels! by Brainbikerider via Flickr

You’ve created a membership site with quality content that your prospects want. You’ve put up a compelling sales page and an order button.

Now what? How do you convince your prospects to become a member?

Like this:

1. Specialize and Focus Like a Laser

It seems almost counterintuitive – you’d think that if your site would appeal to as many people as possible, then you’d get more members. But it doesn’t work that way. Instead, you’ll get more members once you focus your site and all marketing materials to focus in like a laser on one niche.

Example: Let’s say your site teaches people how to build a website. You should focus on one niche, such as "web design for ebook marketers" or "web design for private practice doctors."

Now think about it…

Let’s say an ebook marketer wants to learn how to build a site. Is he going to go to "Joe Blow’s Web Design" membership site… or to the "Web Design for Ebook Marketers Site?" That’s right, he’s going to choose your site because it’s geared for his needs.

2. Give a Free or Low-Cost Sample

You can get more paying members if you first give people a free or low-cost trial membership (such as $1 for one week).

Doing so gives people a chance to get a look at the inside of your site to see if it’s right for them. And since you collected their credit card info before they joined the site, you can automatically start their paid subscription once the trial is over.

3. Share the Benefits

As mentioned previously, you’ll need a sales letter to help turn prospects into members. While you’re sharing all the benefits of your membership content in general, don’t forget about the benefits of the membership site itself. For example:

• Small price. A monthly fee (such as $10 or $20 or even $50 per month) sounds small compared to a one-time fee such as $297. As such, you can get more members by focusing on this small recurring fee. You may even break it down further by reminding your prospects of the daily cost (e.g., "just 75 cents a day – about the price of a candy bar…").

• Not overwhelming. If you have a training site and you’re tackling a big topic, then let prospects know that they won’t get overwhelmed since you’re offering a step-by-step course in weekly installments.

4. Let People "Peek" Inside the Site

Whether you offer free trials or not, you can get more members simply by letting prospects "peek" inside the site. There are multiple ways to do this, including (but not necessarily limited to):

• Providing partial content, such as the first paragraph of an article with a link or a description of report with a link. When people click on the link, they’re encourage to become a member.

• Screenshots of the inside of the site, which shows the materials available, the community forum, etc.

• Video of the inside of the members-only area of the site. Just use a screen recording software like Camtasia Studio and record yourself "touring" the site. Very compelling.

There you have it – four surefire ways to get more members into your paid membership site.

Just create good content, put up a good offer, write a good sales page – and then apply these four tips and enjoy meeting your new members!

Three Dubious Kings by loungerie via Flickr

No matter what type of affiliate product or service you’re promoting, you’re probably always looking for opportunities to get your offers in front of more prospects… and you’re looking for ways to get those prospects to click on your affiliates links. That’s because marketing is a numbers game – the more targeted prospects see your offers, the more money you make.

With that in mind, here are Three Zen Ways to Boost the Click-Trough Rates on Your Affiliate Links…

1. Build Trust First

People buy from those they know, like and trust. So if you’re a virtual stranger who’s asking people to click on your affiliate links, guess what happens? Not a darn thing. No one clicks because no one trusts you.

Instead, what you need to do is publish a newsletter (and preferably a blog, too). That way your prospects get to know you with each issue you send or article you post. And you’ll also build trust with your audience by providing free, quality solutions to their problems.

2. Pre-Sell Your Products

Even if people know, like and trust you, they’re still not going to rush to click on your affiliate links unless you give them a good reason to do so. And that means you need to pre-sell your affiliate offers before you send your visitors on to the vendor’s page.

Here are three ways to do exactly that…

• Do a product review or comparison.
  If you want to sell a single product, then you can do a product review. This is where you share the good points (benefits) of the products, the product’s flaws and your “verdict” (whether you recommend it or not).

Tip: If you just want to offer the product benefits, then you’re basically writing a sales letter. That’s fine. But don’t confuse it with a product review. A review is an honest assessment of the product, including product flaws. However, don’t be afraid to share the flaws, as doing so makes people trust you more – and that increased trust increases your conversion rate.

Alternatively, you can compare two or more similar products – flaws and all – and let your readers know which one you recommend.

• Share a case study.
  People want proof that a product works. And one way to offer proof is by sharing a case study of what types of results you or someone else got by using the product.

• Build anticipation.
  Another way to get people to click on your affiliate links is by building anticipation and curiosity. You can do this over a series of emails. Or you can do in just one email, where you get people curious about the sales page.

3. Add Value to Your Offers

When you’re an affiliate, you’re in direct competition with other affiliates who are selling the same product. One way to virtually eliminate the competition is by adding value to the offer – that is, you offer a related bonus product or service to those who purchase the item through your affiliate link.

Examples:

• You offer a free sales letter critique to those who buy a copywriting course through your link.
• You offer a free blogging course for those who purchase a traffic-generation course through your link.
• You offer a free exercise book and a free recipe book to those who purchase a diet course through your link.

Remember:

You can get more clicks on your affiliate links and more money in your pocket simply by doing these three things:

• Building trust with your prospects first.

• Pre-selling the offer.

• Adding value to the offer.

Apply all three of these tips today to improve your click-trough rates and sales with very little extra effort!

Everything Zen by SignFire via Flickr

Imagine this…

You create your product. You put up your sales page and order button. Then you unleash your advertising skills to get your offer in front of as many people as possible.

And then…

Nothing. No sales. Well, maybe a tiny trickle. But not the flood of PayPal or Clickbank notifications that we you were expecting.

Avoid this nightmare by following these seven tips for getting others to buy your products…

1. Get the Offer in Front of Targeted Audiences

First things first: Get your offer in front of targeted prospects.

Example: If you’re selling a dog training book, don’t email your marketing list and expect to make sales. Instead, get your offer in front of people who are likely to buy (e.g., people who need to train their dogs).

2. Craft a Compelling Sales Letter

Next, you need to create a sales page that persuades your prospects to buy your product. This means your sales letter ought to have an attention-getting headline, an opener that hooks the prospect and engages her emotions, a bulleted list of benefits, proof that your claims are true and a call to action.

3. Give a Bonus

You want to give your prospects a good deal, so that as they read the sales letter they’re thinking, “wow, I can’t believe I get all this for just 50 bucks.” Then you really thrill them by throwing in a valuable, tightly related bonus. This small act turns a “good deal” into a “no brainer.”

4. Offer a Guarantee

Your prospects are worried that your product won’t work for them. So put their worries to bed by offering a risk-reversal – that is, a satisfaction guarantee. Unconditional, strong and long guarantees usually deliver the best conversion rates to you.

5. Create a Sense of Urgency

You need to have a call to action at the end of your letter that tells your prospects exactly what to do next (e.g., “get out your credit card and click here to get started now…”). But you also need to give your prospects a good reason to act NOW, otherwise they may leave the page and not come back.

The solution? Create a sense of urgency by:

• Reminding the prospect that his pain and his problems will be over when he buys the product.
• Offering a limited-time discount or bonus offer.
• Offering a limited quantity of products.
• Offering a bonus or discount to the first few hundred people who order.

6. Close the Sale Via Multiple Contacts

The vast majority of your prospects won’t buy the first time they see your sales page, especially if they don’t know who you are (or they weren’t referred by a trusted third party). As such, you can increase your conversion rate by getting your sales letter visitors into an autoresponder series of at least seven messages. This series should build trust by offering a good content, while including promotions to close the sale.

7. Test and Track Your Results

Finally, testing and tracking your sales letter, price, and ad campaigns puts more money in your pocket. It helps you figure out what part of the process gets more people to buy your product. That way, you can focus on those parts of the process that give you the highest profits.

You just discovered seven great ways to get people to buy more of your products.

. Sachie at Ninna-Ji (redux) by 3amfromkyoto via Flickr

Welcome to our Forum Marketing Challenges poll.

In order to ensure that ZenProfits continually delivers relevant and meaningful content to our new blogging community, I’ve created this poll to better understand your current forum marketing challenges so that I can ensure that the content I create addresses these problems.

Please select any or all of the items above that best describe your current challenges and feel free to elaborate in the comments, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Thanks for your participation,
Bronson Harrington

Ghost Motion in Shibuya by Sprengben via Flickr

If you’ve ever created a blog before, then you know that the saying, "build it and they will come" just isn’t true. However, you can get more people interested in visiting your blog by following these five tips…

1. Offer good content.

By “good” content, I mean you should blog about topics that your audience wants to know about. To find out what they want, just follow these steps:

1. Find out what types of information products they’re already buying – then write blog posts on the same topic.
2. Use a keyword tool (like WordTracker) to find out what topics people in your niche are looking for.
3. Drop by busy niche forums and other blogs to see which topics are generating the most views and discussion.
4. Survey your readers to find out what they want.

2. Update frequently.

Sometimes people start a blog, post a flurry of articles and then abandon the blog for months at a time. If you allow dated posts, then your visitors aren’t likely to come back again if they notice that you don’t update regularly.

What you need to do is commit to posting to your blog at least once a week. If you don’t want to be chained to your blog like this, then create the content ahead of time and automatically “drip” it to your readers. Or, hire a ghostwriter to both create the content and post it.

Point is, you need to post often to keep your blog from looking like a deserted island.

3. Create regular features.

Here’s a great way to turn a one-time visitor into a repeat visitor. Specifically, by creating “regular features” and multi-part blog posts that your visitors can look forward to.

Example: Maybe you create a seven-part article about how to make money with pay per click marketing. And maybe you space it out so that you’re posting one or two articles per week. You can bet that your readers will return at least once a week just to finish reading the series.

Another way to get more visitors is by creating a regular feature, such as a “tip of the week” feature or even a “questions from our readers” feature.

4. Write about hot topics.

One way to get a surge of traffic and increase in your blog is by writing about hot or even controversial topics. You can include relevant keywords and “ping” the blog directories (like technorati.com) to make sure that those who are searching for the hot topic see your post.

Another way to leverage a hot topic is by joining in on the blogosphere conversation. Simply find a popular blog discussing a hot topic, and use a trackback to add your response.

5. Get someone influential to endorse your blog.

Finally, you can get others to visit your blog by first getting someone influential in your niche to endorse you (and your blog). You can do this indirectly, such as by offering to be a guest author on the other person’s blog. Or you can ask your joint venture partners to directly endorse you on their blogs and in their newsletters (and you’ll return the favor).

It’s free advertising. But it’s also extremely powerful, because you’re using social proof to increase your readership.

You just discovered five proven ways to get others to visit your blog – and to visit it again! Your next step is to take action.

Starting today, apply these tips… and then keep an eye on your traffic logs!

Contemplation by jaxxon via Flickr

There are several “ways to make money with a blog”, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, so I’ve created this blog category to create a series of blog posts that deal specifically with the topic of blog monetization and ways to make money from your blog.

Let me just clarify that earning money from your blog is different from earning more money from your blog. Optimising your PPC Ad placements will help you earn more money, but the actual earning money part is made possible by the PPC advertising network that makes the display of the ads possible.

As such, this category will not include posts about ways to make more money from your site by improving click through rates, quality scores and optimising what you already have, but rather a collection of posts that seek to highlight the best direct and indirect methods for making money from your blog.

Where possible, examples and links will be provided at the end of each post for you to check out as well, so watch this space for the first post in the "Make Money With Your Blog" series for information about great ways to make money from your blog.

The first few posts in the series will deal with the topic of direct monetization. The draft that I’m working on at present will be a quick introduction to the four most popular ways to make money with your blog, namely PPC advertising, CPM advertising, banner advertising and text link ads.

Thanks for reading this short intoduction to the new blog category, I look forward to providing you with some really cool blog monetization options and discussing them wih you.

Note: If you’d like to be notified of new posts as they’re published, subscibe to the ZenProfits RSS feed or have it delivered to your inbox.

To Your Success,
Bronson Harrington
–
Founder of ZenProifts.com

PS: If you have experience with a particular method I’ve highlighted, I’d be delighted to hear your opinion, please consider leaving a comment or dropping us an email about your experience.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password: