Fishing for ezine subscribers
By David Leonhardt
Posted Sunday, October 17, 2004
The Bible tells the tale of the fishermen who were just not catching a thing. Jesus came along and told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, which they did. Surprise! They caught so many fish their nets began to tear.
Jesus had a strategy. He thought outside the box. And he knew where to go. Of course, when you're God, you tend to know a lot of things.
What about fishing for ezine subscribers? Don't expect Jesus to tell you where to cast your subscription net. You will have to build some other strategy. In the meantime, here are the six steps I sued to grow my free online Happy Class (http://thehappyguy.com/self-actualization-happy-class.html )
list by 27 last night, and my Daily Dose of Happiness (http://thehappyguy.com/daily-happiness-free-ezine.html)
by 10.
Step # 1: Sign up for Subscription Rocket (http://thehappyguy.com/SR.html)
and install the code on every page of your web site. SR is a small pop-under offering your visitors free subscriptions to newsletters. Unlike some pop-ups, this pop-under is unobtrusive and nobody has ever complained. Every time the screen pops under your site, your ezine pops under four other similar sites. Most of my ezine subscribers had never even heard of me or visited my site before they signed up.
Step # 2: Get lots of traffic to your site. The Internet traffic gurus will tell you to attract only TARGETED traffic. But, with SR, any traffic will do. 1000 non-targeted visitors might be useless to you, but they will trigger 4000 appearances of your ezine notice to targeted visitors of other sites. Get the most targeted traffic possible, yes, but whatever you do, get traffic. More on this later.
Step# 3: Get sub-affiliates, and get lots of them. Every time web sites you referred get visitors to their sites, you earn three credits. So 1000 visitors to (www.Looky-who-I-referred.com) means YOUR ezine gets seen by 3000 targeted visitors at other sites.
Step # 4: Replace some of the SR codes with Subscriber Drive codes. What's the difference? Not much. They are almost identical. You can see how SD works at (www.TheHappyGuy.com/self-actualization-articles.html) . Why use both? Two reasons.
First, you don't want to run out of targeted subscribers. For instance, if you run an Internet marketing newsletter, you don't want one service to run out of similar sites on which to display your ezine and start showing it to visitors of vampire-slaying sites.
Second, if you can get multiple credits for each visitor to your site ... if you stagger the two services along the well-worn surfing routes. I have SR code on my home page, and SD code on my Self-actualization Resource Center, where the largest number of home page visitors tend to gravitate.
Let's start thinking way outside the box.
5. How do you get big traffic to your site? Suppose, for instance, your ezine and web site are about Internet marketing, competing with 4.5 million savvy entries on Google. Slim chance getting a top ten ranking, or even a top 100 ranking.
Consider your hobbies. Suppose you like horseback riding. Why not have a page on horseback riding, optimized for a couple juicy equestrian keywords, where you compete with just 700,000 not so savvy web sites? What does horseback riding have to do with Internet marketing? Everything, if it is about the publisher (you!). You might also post a page on Italian cuisine, where your keyword optimization competes with only 200,000 other Google entries. These could both be under "About the publisher".
In addition to the untargeted traffic who will bring you targeted subscribers from other sites by tripping the SR and SD codes, your visitors will get to know you better as a human being, a key factor in building trust with them. You can also add affiliate links for related products (want to sell a horse?) and actually make some money from these extra pages. (If you like happiness, why not use one of my happiness articles and sell my two happiness ebooks through affiliate links from (http://thehappyguy.com/earn-money.html?)
6. Another way to boost traffic to your site is to keep sending your subscribers to your site. If there is a free ebook download (or software or puzzle or graphic or recipe) or a contest to enter, you can have subscribers visiting your web site each week. I set up a Daily Fun page (http://thehappyguy.com/l/daily-happiness-fun-page.php) for subscribers to Your Daily Dose of Happiness. Every time one of them visits, she earns me four views of my ezine notice to targeted traffic on other web sites. This page is getting an average of 100 hits a day, and that will increase as my ezine readership grows.
Jesus could help you catch way more subscribers than I can. But until he offers some alternatives, these are the steps you can take to turbo boost your subscriber catch.
About the Author
***************************
David Leonhardt publishes Your Daily Dose of Happiness
(http://thehappyguy.com/daily-happiness-free-ezine.html)
Learn more about ezine publishing at:
(http://thehappyguy.com/ezines.html)
