The Power of the Opt-In Newsletter (Article)

I do not care if you are an affiliate marketer, a wholesaler, a dropshipper, or even selling a product, if you do not have an opt-in sign-up on your website, I think you are missing out on a whole lot of sales! In most cases, this is an expense. But in the world that we live in, it sometimes takes money to make money. The $15 per month is very trivial in the whole scheme of things. If you are satisfied with $10-$20 per day in sales, then may not want to spend the money and that is fine. I assume, though, that if you are doing any of the above money making programs, you intentions are probably to make more than this. Believe it or not, $15 per month is probably a cheaper and more effective than spending $15 on PPC’s, classified ads, etc.

Why are opt-in’s so important? The average number of times a person will look into a product to purchase it online is roughly 6 times. Let’s assume that you were interested on making money online and entered “make money online” into a search engine (something most of us have done at one point or another). You see an ad on the right that says “Make $500/day Easy”. You click it and there are 3 reviews of different affiliate marketing programs. If you were me, you probably did not buy the first thing you saw. You decide at this point to look up: “what is affiliate marketing”, “is affiliate marketing a scam”, “Rick Jerk Review”, etc. etc. etc. So if you were the first, second, third… site this person visited, they probably just passed right over the affiliate link for your sale. Now you may be that 6th site and just happen to be the prompting force to cause the sale, but you just missed 5 other opportunities with others. The opt-in, in this case, keeps the customer interested in your site. And usually, people don’t buy products on the first day. It may be a week or month later. The opt-in provides an invited reminder to the customer that you exist and that they should go through your website to make the purchase.

And this is not SPAM, either! The point of the opt-in is that the customer chooses (“opt’s in”) to receive your emails. When I first starting affiliate marketing, someone recommended spamming to me so I tried it and what a disaster! I become very hated and I spent months rebuilding my image. Remember, spamming is un-invited solicitation. Opt-ins are invited solicitations.

How do you make an opt-in successful?

1) First, you need to convince people that by joining your newsletter or opt-in, they will receive something in return. Offering free eCourses, free eBooks, free software or free exclusive accesses are just few ideas to do this. If you do plan on offering free services, be sure to follow through on your promise.
2) I mention above that the point of an opt-in is for solicitation. In reality, this is true, but you should hide this fact as much as possible. Offer your subscribers good content, but subtly blend in your products or websites. If you email looks like a big advertisement or spam, they will immediately opt-out of your newsletter.
3) Allow your subscribers to opt-out of your newsletters very easily. Also, do not sell your lists to anyone (and be sure to place a note on your opt-in sign that states will not sell them either). The opt-in letter is more than sales, it is developing trust.
4) Don’t overwhelm your subscribers with emails. I once joined a newsletter that sent me an email twice a day for two months. At first, I was annoyed, but I was curious to see how long it would go on for. Further, this person started repeating the same letters once every two weeks. A few letters in the first few days in fine with a weekly or monthly follow-up. But again, your content should be related to what they signed of for. Once you start advertising un-related products, the newsletter starts approaching spam.

Adding an opt-in to your website these days is very trivial. There are programs called autoresponders (both browser based as well as server based) that makes running an opt-in letter virtually no work. They provide the code to create the web form. Then all you do is create the content and newsletters and when each subscriber will receive them. The emails are automatically sent out for you. Once the initial set-up is complete, the program essential runs on auto-pilot. You may get hundreds of subscribers per day that are self-managed.

Because opt-in letters are critical to sales, affordable and so easy to use, there are no excuses for anyone who is even moderately serious about making money online not to use one today.

- Matthew Bredel
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.

Google Adsense Everywhere!

For those of you who do not use Google Adsense, I must first ask: why? Most of my articles focus around affiliate marketing, wholesaling and paid surveys. I don't touch upon Adsense very often, though...and I should!

I am sure most of you know this already, but Google Adsense is a compliment to Google Adwords. In Google Adwords, you bid of keywords to display your ads at a per-click price. But Adwords has two dimensions:

1) Search Ads - These are the ads that appear either at the top or right column of a Google Search (or MSN search or Altavista search...etc.). '

2) Content Ads - These are the ads that can appear on relevant websites.

Which brings me back to Adsense. How do these ads appear on other people's websites? These people are a part of the Adsense network. Basically, you sign up for an Adsense account (free) and then you add a piece of html code to your website (written by Google). Google will then place ads (at their discretion) on your website based on the content it contains. You choose the size and the type of ad (whether it be text, a banner, a video, etc.) and they choose the content. Now, whenever anyone clicks onto your ad, you will receive a portion of the "click-price". It is that simple.

When I first heard about Google Adsense and set it up, I thought: "This is lame...I made $0.60 today on 5 clicks". But it is not always like that. Some clicks pay in the dollars. Also, what happens if your visitor count goes from 10 visitors per day to 1000 visitors per day? That is what happened to me. I now make over $10 per day on one of my websites due to Google Adsense. It virtually pays for my daily Adwords expenditures. And when it really gets down to it...MONEY IS MONEY!

Let's extend this beyond my money-making campaigns for a bit. Last year, I decided to run a fantasy football league with some friends. I was a commissioner and every week I wrote a group email describing the happening of the week. This year, I have my "affiliate marketing cap" on and the first thing I think of is: "How can I make something I already do profitable?" The answer is simple! Adsense! So, this year, instead of a weekly email, I have created a new blog on Blogger devoted to my fantasy football league and splatter it with not only ads, but links to my current websites. By doing this, I create the following:

1) A website that can generate money through Adsense clicks
2) A public forum for my group (and anyone else) to read.
3) Weekly Content to keep the search bots happy.
4) Good Content + Consistant Updates = Page Rank!
5) One-way backlinks to my current websites = Page Rank!

Yes, I know, I won't be making much money on Adsense and my Page Rank will only be a 2, maybe a 3 in a month or so, but who cares! I was going to have to do this anyway. The amount of time to set up my blog is virtually 30 minutes. And even though it is a little, any free publicity and money should never be turned down.

The moral of this story is to change the way you think about doing things in life. If you run a children's playgroup, why not make it into a blog or website? If you want to start a list of all of the MP3s you have, why not post it on MySpace? If you are going to have to do it anyways, why not get something out of it! This is what making money online is all about!

Check out my Fantasy Football Blog at: http://bredel-football.blogspot.com/

Also, to learn more about Adsense, click the logo on the right column of this page!