Let Your Affiliates
Build Your Opt-In Lists!
Starting your own e-zine is a great way to
build credibility and increase revenue. Visitors, prospects and contacts will admire your
ability to reach audiences with your message on a regular basis. Advertisers will also
admire your ability to reach an audience - and may be willing to pay you to reach your
audience with their promotional messages.
Many online businesses are trying to
capitalize on the credibility and revenue that an e-zine adds. It seems that every site
you visit asks you to "Sign up for our Newsletter", or "Join our E-zine
List for Weekly Updates".
Though they are all jumping into the e-zine
game headfirst - all don't succeed. So, what's the trick? What makes some e-zines succeed
and some e-zines fail?
There are two main factors in the success -
or failure - of an e-zine: Content and Subscribers.
Content
Content is the base of your e-zine. Your content needs to be well-written, expansive and
worth writing about. If you write well - write. If you write "good" - hire
someone to write for you! Even the best topics, issues and angles can get lost in a mess
of misspelled words, incomplete thoughts and run-on sentences. Be sure that your content
is clear, concise, grammatically correct and accurately spelled.
Pick a topic that is expansive enough to
continually write about. Pick an industry - not a product; an issue - not a current event;
a hobby - not a project. Plan a schedule for regular mailings - daily, weekly, monthly -
and review your topic to be sure that you'll have no problem coming up with new content to
meet the schedule.
Remember, though a topic may be interesting
to you - it may not be worthy of an entire e-zine. Choose a topic that is worth writing
about for you and worth reading to your potential subscribers. For example: If your
company manufactures construction paper, an e-zine about the paper may not be interesting
enough to read. However, a well-written article on the many uses for construction paper in
an e-zine about crafts is more interesting and worth reading.
Subscribers
Subscribers are very important as well - if not more important. If you have the most
well-written articles, eye-catching ads and appealing layout but nobody to read it, you're
e-zine is a flop!
The more subscribers you have, the better.
You've probably seen sites that boast subscriber levels in the thousands - but you
probably haven't run across any sites that boast "14 subscribers!". People are
impressed with big numbers. Hearing that thousands of people read your messages makes you
and your message sound important, interesting and useful. Thousands of subscribers will
also help you get top dollar from advertisers who want to reach your readers.
So, where do you find these valuable
subscribers?
You can place a guestbook on your site to
sign up visitors - but that means signing up only a fraction of your unique daily
visitors. You can place ads in other e-zines, list your e-zine in a directory of
electronic newsletters, post classified ads about your e-zine and so on.
Or….
You could use your Affiliates to build your
subscriber base. You already rely on your Affiliates to draw traffic to your site - why
not ask them to help you find subscribers?
If you have an Affiliate Program your
Affiliates are already sending you visitors - nameless, faceless visitors. Visitors that
remain unidentified until they purchase something or contact you.
Imagine how your Affiliates will react if
you told them that you could place a name, an email address and more on the visitor. What
would they say if you told them that instead of possibly selling to a visitor when they
visit your site - that you'll actively follow up with Bob at bob@domain.com and Ellen at
ellen@domain.com on their behalf? Do you think that they'd like knowing that you are
sending personalized messages to each prospect they send you - complete with their unique
Affiliate link?
Of course they will love it! All they have
to do is send you the contact name and email address. You do all of the work following up
with the prospect and selling them your product - and the Affiliate makes a commission.
You'll love it too! Instead of being a
nameless and unreachable, your visitors will become real prospects with names, email
addresses and instant subscribers to your e-zine.
You're probably thinking, "This sounds
great in theory, but I'm sure it's a lot harder than it sounds". Well, it's really
not - as long as you have the right tools for the job! The tools are My Affiliate Program,
the Affiliate Tracking and Management Solution and Opt-In Pro Email Marketing Software.
The two programs have been combined to form a system that will help you start an e-zine,
continually build your subscriber base, identify your visitors and follow up with
prospects.
In addition to giving your Affiliates
banners, text links, articles and advertisements - this system allows you to give your
Affiliates specially encoded guestbooks. The guestbooks can include fields like email
address, name, address, phone number and any other information you'd like. They will also
contain a hidden field that holds the Affiliate's ID number.
The Affiliates place the guestbooks on their
site advertising your e-zine, free report or other email offer. When a visitor signs up
for the offer - their email address and other information will be added to your Opt-In Pro
email list. The referring Affiliate's ID number will also be added to the list.
Using Opt-In Pro's email follow up
campaigns, you can automatically thank the visitor for subscribing to your list. You can
also follow up with them by sending regularly scheduled mailings "x" days after
they sign up. Sending your e-zine is as easy as typing it up and pressing "send"
- even to thousands of subscribers!
Every message you send can be personalized
to include the subscriber's name. Each link in your message can be automatically
configured with the referring Affiliate's ID Number - ensuring that they'll get credit for
the referral each time the visitor returns to your site and purchases your products. In no
time - you'll build a substantial subscriber base, without searching far and wide!
As you can see, combining your winning
content with the power of Affiliate Marketing and Email Marketing is a sure-fire way to
make your e-zine succeed.
For more information about My Affiliate
Program and Opt-In Pro, please visit:
http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com
