WHY PEOPLE IGNORE YOUR SITE – PART 1

July 19, 2009 Written by Mr X 0 Comment

You go through all the trouble to put together a web site. You finally get it completed, start promoting it and for some reason, even if you can get somebody to come, they don’t come back. Why? Well, there are a number of reasons why people don’t come to your web site. We’ll explore a few of them here.

One of the biggest reasons why people don’t go to your site is because you don’t have enough free original content on your site, usually in the way of articles such as this one. If you’ve cluttered up your site with stuff that’s been reprinted over and over again, or worse, don’t give people any content whatsoever except for a sales pitch, they’re not going to stay around long and they certainly won’t be coming back.

Another reason is because you don’t give people free software. Now I know you’re thinking that you’re not a programmer and don’t make your own software. Well, you don’t have to. There are plenty of sites that offer free software on the Internet that is actually quite useful. By including a few of these you increase your chances of having the visitor return to your site.

Visitors love contests and prize giveaways. So why not include some kind of contest on your site? You can maybe have a daily puzzle or riddle to solve. Maybe a trivia question. The prizes don’t have to be expensive. There are plenty of things online that you can get the rights to give away.

Something else that visitors like are web directories. These are pages that contain links to related sites. If you provide your visitors with access to sites that have similar content, they will view your site as one that is actually trying to help them in their quest for information, even if they don’t find it at your site.

Another thing that will get people, not only to come back to your site, but actually on your mailing list, is to offer a free E-zine of information. This can be a weekly E-zine or even just monthly. Just as long as they know they’ll be getting information delivered to them each month. And, if you actually want them to come back to your site, have the E-zine one that can only be read online.

One thing that most people just don’t seem to get, is that in order to get people to come to your site and stay there, you MUST make your site look professional. If your site looks like it was done by a five year old, they’re not going to take it seriously. You don’t have to be a Picaso as a graphic artist, but you do have to at least make a site that looks attractive and navigates easily. We’ll dive into this in more detail in a future article.

In our next installment, we’ll discuss other things you can do to bring people to your site, including getting people to read your ads, attracting a target audience and a lot more.

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BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WEB E-ZINE?

July 13, 2009 Written by Mr X 0 Comment

All this time we’ve been talking about getting your e-zine up and running, discussing frequency and paid ads and automation and all that great stuff and we never once really touched on how to do all this for your e-zine if you’re going to do a web based e-zine.

Well, unfortunately my friend, that is a horse of a totally different color.

See, now, when it comes to opt-ins, that doesn’t really exist as you’re probably not going to be sending emails unless it is to tell people that the e-zine is going to be updated or has been updated.

What about the frequency? Well, the same principals really apply. If somebody goes to your web page day after day for a month and they don’t see any changes, they’re going to stop coming.

But, there is one difference between a web page and email. Web pages aren’t intrusive. People go to them when they want. So, it will probably be in your best interest to update your web page e-zine as often as possible. This, therefore, makes doing a web page e-zine a lot more work for you. Something to keep in mind.

What about paid ads? Well, it’s harder to get advertisers to spend money on ads for your web page because, again, this is not a captive audience as with an email. Most people when they go to web pages ignore ads. So you’re probably not going to get a lot of advertising for your web page e-zine unless you have traffic coming out the ying-yang.

What about the autoresponder? Do you even need one now? Well, again, unless you’re planning on telling people when your e-zine is going to be updated, most likely you won’t need one of these either. Most likely, when somebody joins or signs up, you’ll send them just an initial email giving them their user name and password to the members area and that’s it.

But, what happens when you starting getting 100 subscribers a day, if this thing really takes off?

Well, in that case, you have 2 options.

  1. You can go with the autoresponder option and have them opt-in only to get the login info and the URL of the web page. That will probably be the only message in your series. Of course this also serves to build your list. So this may not be a bad idea.

  1. You can go with membership site software like Amember, which really does a great job of automating this process for you. This way, you can add the option of having a paid member’s area if you like. The possibilities with this kind of software are endless.

Web page e-zines do take a little more work if you want to do them right, which is why many people shy away from them. But, if you do it correctly and build up some decent traffic to your web page e-zine, you can expand it to be even more than just that, which is the advantage of having a web page e-zine over an email e-zine.

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AUTOMATING YOUR E-ZINE

July 12, 2009 Written by Mr X 0 Comment

In the early days of your e-zine, you’ve got maybe what, 20 subscribers? Certainly this is a manageable list. And it’s certainly easy enough to handle emailing them and taking care of all requests for opt-ins and opt-outs.

But what happens when your list hits 1000, or worse, 10,000?

There is no way you can keep up with the emails, opt-ins and opt-0uts. Remember, people are going to be opting in at different times. You may get one person on January 1 and the next person on January 14. If you’re publishing a monthly e-zine, you’re going to have to make note that John Doe gets his email in the 1st of every month and Jane Smith gets her e-zine on the 14th of every month. And of course, if somebody opts in on the 31st of a month, well then you’ve got a real problem because some months have only 30 days and…

See the situation we have here?

Over time, there is just no way to handle your mailings manually. You will literally drive yourself nuts and everybody on your list nuts as well when they either don’t get emails when they’re supposed to or get them way too often.

So what’s the solution?

Automation, that’s what.

That’s where autoresponders come in. They make running an e-zine an absolute breeze.

Each autoresponder service is slightly different as far as the interface, option and how they operate, but for the most part, all good services have the following things in common.

  1. Automatic opt-in process – Simply have the person go to a web page form online, fill in their information and click submit. The service will then send them an email telling them that they have to confirm this, if double opt-in, which I recommend. This way you don’t have to keep track of who opted in and when.

  1. Automatic unsubscribe process – At the end of each email that gets sent out, the service will put a little blurb that says something like “If you wish to unsubscribe, please click here.” This way, you also don’t have t worry about removing people from your e-zine.

  1. Delay settings – Each person who subscribes to your e-zine has a subscribe date attached to their account. This makes it easy to determine when the next message goes out the subscriber and you don’t have to do anything other than type in your message into the area where all your messages are stored and designate when the message will go out in terms of number of days after previous message was sent. This way, if a person subscribes on the 7th of March and you are sending an email every 7 days, you simply just indicate for each message to send it out 7 days after the last message was sent. This way, each subscriber will get their message EXACTLY when they are supposed to.

There are more options than these, but these are the main ones that control the whole process. This way, you never have to worry about when to mail or anything when it comes to your e-zine, other than to just create your content.

Yes, autoresponders can greatly automate this process for you.

I’d be dead without mine.

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PAID ADS FOR YOUR E-ZINE

July 11, 2009 Written by Mr X 0 Comment

This is always a delicate subject for e-zine owners and subscribers. Many e-zine publishers shy away from including paid ads in their e-zine.

Why?

Well, let’s look at it from the perspective of the person who has subscribed to your e-zine. They’ve subscribed primarily for the purpose of getting information. Now, I am sure they realize that you run a business and aren’t doing this for charity, but still, they don’t want to be sold on a constant basis. This applies not only to paid ads for your e-zine but also to your own ads. You know, those things that you throw in there from time to time in order to make a few bucks. For the most part, subscribers don’t want to be bombarded with these ads. And certainly, at least at the very beginning, you don’t want to send them any ads at all. You want to build a relationship first.

So, then how do you handle paid ads, or for that matter ANY advertising for your e-zine?

What follows is strictly from my own personal experience. I am in no way suggesting that this is the ONLY way to handle the situation. All I am saying is that this is what has worked for me. You may want to experiment and try different variations of this. That is entirely up to you. I’m just giving you the benefit of my experience.

First of all, my e-zines are sent on a weekly basis, which means that my subscribers only hear from me 4 times a month. I don’t send them any ads, either of my own or paid, until after the 4th week. And then after that, I only send them an ad once a month. Usually, the e-zine will focus on a topic, or related topics, for that month. Then, at the end of the month, I give them my sales pitch. I find this very effective because you’ve spent a month explaining a concept to them and then at the end, you show them how they can take that concept to the next level by offering them whatever product you are promoting for that concept.

This is how I handle my personal ads.

But what about paid ads?

Well, for starters, you have to look at this from the viewpoint of the person who is paying you to run an ad in your e-zine. They are going to want to make sure that their ad is going to be sent to a responsive list and one of some size as well. If you’ve only got 100 people in your e-zine, you’re not going to get too many advertisers to pay for an ad unless that ad is dirt cheap.

So this is how I handle paid ads for each of my lists.

I don’t even consider offering paid ads until my list has at least reached 1000 members. Then, what I do is offer ad rates based on how many members as the list grows. What you charge is up to you, but for me, I charge $20 for a quarter page top sponsor ad for every 1000 subscribers. If I have a list with 2000 subscribers, it’s $40.

What I tell advertisers is that 1900 subscribers gets the same rate as 1000, so you might want to lock in your $20 ad now before this list hits 2000, which it will probably do soon.

Want to guess how many advertisers you get once the word of this gets out?

Again, I would only offer 1 paid ad per month for each e-zine. So the only way I’m going to make any money is if I am running a lot of e-zines. Some people will just take as many ads as they can and run one everyday if they have to. Sorry, but that’s a good way to destroy your list.

Paid advertising for your e-zine is not a full time income. It’s just something to make a few extra dollars. If you don’t lose site of this, you’ll be just fine when it comes to running ads for your subscribers.

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FREQUENCY OF YOUR E-ZINE

July 10, 2009 Written by Mr X 0 Comment

Okay, your e-zine is done, it’s listed in the directory and you’re starting to get subscribers. You’re so excited that you can’t wait to get your messages out to them.

Hold the phone!

Sit back and take a deep breath. I know you’re excited and you want to start making some money. But the last thing you want to do is get your subscribers running for the unsubscribe link, or worse, the spam button.

Let me explain.

Even though these people have opted into your e-zine, they do have lives outside of Internet marketing. Unlike you, they don’t live and breathe every minute of the day to make a buck. And even if they did, they’ve got other things to do besides reading your e-zine. That is only going to be one part of their day.

So the question we need to ask is simple.

How often do we send our e-zine to our subscribers? Do we email daily? Do we send them a message once a week? Do we contact them only once a month? Do we tell them when they sign up how often the e-zine is going to be published? Do we tell them that there may be occasional special issues? Do we tell them anything at all about the frequency of the e-zine? Why, or why not?

Well, let’s look at what happens if you do tell your subscribers about the frequency of the e-zine.

Let’s for argument sake say that you’ve decided that you’re going to publish your e-zine on a daily basis. Everyday they are going to get a new tip or piece of news on something. What do you think the person, who thought that this was going to be a weekly or monthly e-zine is going to do? He’s going to opt out before he ever gets his first issue. This person is going to be GONE.

Conversely, what about the person who is expecting a daily e-zine? If he finds out that your e-zine is monthly, he’s going to be very upset because he was probably expecting more information on a more regular basis. He may not unsubscribe, since he wants whatever he can get, but he’s not going to be a very happy camper and probably won’t become a paying customer of yours.

But what if you don’t mention the frequency at all? Well, you’re probably going to get some people wondering if they’re going to get overrun with spam 10 times a day.

As you can see, this isn’t an easy question to answer. Well, actually it is. See, a lot of study has gone into this problem and most of the evidence points to not sending your e-zine too often, but often enough to keep your subscribers thinking about you.

Personally, I send my e-zine once a week. Some people send their e-zines twice a week, and that’s fine. But I wouldn’t send them an email any more often than that. This way, they don’t forget who you are and at the same time, they’re not overrun with emails.

E-zine frequency is a tricky subject and easy to err on the side of harassment. But if you follow the above tips, you shouldn’t have too much trouble with your subscriber base. Just make sure you include the frequency of your e-zine in your description at the e-zine directories. That way, if it’s too often or not often enough, they have the option of simply passing on it.

Better that than having somebody hit the spam button.

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