Building an email list is a great way to get traffic and make money in the long term and I’ve written several posts that outline how to build an email list and profit from it.

Today I want to take a slightly different approach and show you some things that will destroy your email list faster than you can say fuzzy llamas.

Read Full Story: Email Marketing – How to Get People to Unsubscribe

One of my readers asked,

How do I make money from my e-mail list?

Before I explain how to make money and get traffic from your e-mail list we need to talk about how important your list is to your business.

1. Remember that your e-mail list is your most important asset

This subscribers you have on your e-mail list, and the relationship you have with them, is the most important asset you have. So you must do your best to take care of your subscribers.

Remember the story about the farmer with the goose that laid golden eggs?  Everyday the goose would lay 1 golden egg and the farmer would collect it and sell it. This made the farmer very rich. But this wasn’t enough and eventually the farmer killed the goose so he could get all of the golden eggs. To the farmer’s dismay there were no golden eggs inside the goose and now the goose was dead and he would never get any more golden eggs.

Your e-mail list is like the goose that lays golden eggs. It has the power to make you very wealthy. But if you abuse your subscribers, or the very least irritate and annoy them, they will leave your list and you will have nothing left.

2. Focus on providing value

The main focus of your e-mail list should be to provide value to your subscribers.

When someone signs up for my e-mail list I send them a welcome e-mail and links to all of their freebies and goodies I promised them.

While I do advertise with my e-mail list the main focus is providing quality content for my readers.

The e-mails I send out frequently follow this format:

Subject: How to build a community and get people involved with your website

Hi {name]!

How to build a community and get people involved with your website
=> http://…

Getting Traffic Is Easy With Nick’s 177 Traffic Videos
=> http://….

Thanks,
Nick

P.S.  If you ever have a traffic question hit the reply button and
send an email to nickstraffictricks@gmail.com

Notice that in the first part of the e-mail I have a short description of something related to traffic generation (“How to build a community and get people involved with your website”) and that the subject has these exact same words.

Directly below the description is a link to that blog post with that exact same name.

After that comes short description for something I’m advertising. And the description is followed by a link to the product.

I close the e-mail somewhat informally, in much the same way you would when writing to a friend or an acquaintance.

I then add a P.S. to let the reader know that they can e-mail me anytime with their traffic questions.

3. Giving more freebies to your subscribers

Occasionally I will add a new freebie for my subscribers and let them know about it.

For example, a couple weeks I sent out 15 Videos on How To Setup An Email List to my subscribers and made them available to anyone who signs up for my e-mail list in the future.

Periodically sending out additional freebies to my subscribers helps to ensure that they stay happy and subscribed to my list.

Another thing I like to do with the freebies is use them as a bribe to join my list.

4. How I get traffic from my email list

Every 4 days I send a short e-mail with a link to one of my blog posts that will help them get more traffic. Because people know I’m sending out links to quality stuff they are far more likely to open e-mails from me and to stay subscribed.

Some of my subscribers have been on my list for a year or more and have received more than 50 e-mails from me. Imagine how many times these people have visited my website!

And remember, return visitors are 10 times more likely to buy stuff you are promoting than first-time visitors.

5. Avoid misleading subject lines

This should go without saying but please don’t mislead people with your subject lines.

If your subject line says “free report” then you better be giving away free report. Hint: If they have to pay for it then it’s not free!

By all means be creative with your e-mails and your subject lines. Just don’t violate peoples’ trust. People will unsubscribe from your list the moment that they feel you are not being honest with them.

6. Keep your e-mails short

Generally it’s best to keep your e-mails short and to the point.

Most people today have way too much e-mail to read and very little time. So if your e-mail drones on for 30 paragraphs there is a good chance no one is going to finish it.

If you have a lot to say in your e-mail then consider writing a blog post with all of your thoughts and send a link to the blog post to your subscribers.

The benefits of this are:

• You have a lot more control over formatting and images with a blog post.
• Spam filters have a long list of words and phrases that they look for in e-mails that you send. If they find one of these words or phrases in your e-mail then it will be flagged as spam and no one will ever read it. But if your e-mail has a short description and link to a blog post then you should get by the spam filters just fine.
• People can bookmark your blog post and come back to it later. This is seldom done with an e-mail.
• People can tweet and stumble a blog post sending you more traffic.

7. Invite people to email you their questions

At the bottom of my e-mails I invite people to e-mail me with their questions. This is a great way to build a relationship with your readers and at the same time gain a better understanding of their wants and needs.

Just make sure that you check this e-mail address on a daily basis and respond to peoples’ questions.

8. How to make money from your e-mail list

There are a couple different ways that you can make money from your e-mail list.

First, you can advertise in the e-mails that you send. You could include an advertisement at the bottom of every e-mail or you could send out e-mails that are just advertisements.

Make sure that your advertising is targeted to your audience. For example, if you have an e-mail list about dog grooming then don’t send them an advertisement about how to make money online.

Second, you can use your e-mail list solely to send traffic to your blog or website and have the advertisements only appear on your blog or website.

So which one is best? Or should you do both?

Every website and every niche is different so you need to test it out for yourself and see what works best.

One of the things people struggle with is getting their blog visitors to sign-up for their e-mail list. I have a little bit of experience with this and thought I would share what I have learned.

Initial traffic

The first thing is that you need to have a decent amount of traffic to your blog. If you only have 1 visitor a day then you are not going to have 10 people sign up for your e-mail list every day. It’s just not possible.

In fact if you have 100 people visit your blog every day you’re probably not going to have more than a handful sign-up for your e-mail list. I’m not trying to be a pessimist here; I’m just being realistic. Most people are not interested in giving up their e-mail address to a stranger.

Focus on return traffic

Return visitors are far more likely to trust you with their e-mail address and sign up for your e-mail list. Because of this you should focus on providing great content and giving people different ways to be notified of new content. These ways include RSS and twitter.

So make it easy for people to subscribe to your RSS and follow you on twitter. Also make sure to respond to all comments that people leave. Doing this will encourage first-time visitors to become return visitors.

Read more about why return visitors are important:
http://nickstraffictricks.com/2262_why-you-need-return-visitors-if-you-want-long-term-traffic/

Give away something free

The number of people that opt in to your e-mail list will be dramatically higher if you give away something for free. This sounds pretty obvious.

But here’s the catch: you must give away something that people want. If your blog is about poodle manicures and you give away a free e-book about mud wrestling then you are not going to get very many people signing up for this freebie.

You need to determine what your blog visitors really want. What do they really care about and what do they need?

I would go so far as to actually ask people. Awhile back I put up a blog post promising to give people a free copy of my next product if they would only ask me 1 question. You can see the blog post for yourself here:
http://nickstraffictricks.com/1964_ill-give-you-a-free-copy-of-my-next-traffic-product/

I have had numerous people ask me questions. Because of this I have a much greater understanding of what my visitors need.

Invite people to join your e-mail list

Once you have the right freebie is targeted to your visitors then you need to place your invitation to join your e-mail list on every page of your blog.

There are lots of discussions about where to place your invitation but I believe that you should put it right above your primary content. You can think of it as if it were an advertisement. Where is the optimal place to put an advertisement? You want to put it right above your primary content.

Google has a fair amount of expertise in where to place ads and this is what they recommend. You can see the recommendation for placement of advertising here:
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=17954

Your invitation should get peoples’ attention but not irritate them

You want your invitation to jump out a little and get peoples’ attention but you don’t want it to irritate them and cause them to hit the back button.

What I like to do is just have a short bit of text that describes the freebie I’m offering and has a link to a squeeze page where they can get all the information about the freebie and sign up for it.

Currently my invitation at the top of every page looks like this:

(Note: By the time you read this the ad at the top of every page may be different. I like to try different things.)

To have your ad look like this you simply need to put the following at the top of your layout:

<table align="center" style="border-width: 5px; border-spacing: 5px; border-style: dashed; border-color: red; background-color: white; text-align: center; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding:10px; ">
<tr>
<td>
<b>Free 68 Page Traffic Guide <a href='http://nickstraffictricks.com/links/68_page.php' target='_blank'>Click Here...</a></b>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

I recommend experimenting with the HTML and CSS to find the look that works best for you.

Thesis theme for WordPress

If you’re using the Thesis theme for WordPress then it is easy to add this to the top of every page:

function make_table($text, $url)
{
$output = <<<END
<table align=”center” style=”border-width: 5px; border-spacing: 5px; border-style: dashed; border-color: red; background-color: white; text-align: center; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding:10px; “>
<tr>
<td>
<b>$text <a href=’$url’ target=’_blank’>Click Here…</a></b>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<br />
END;

return $output;
}

function ad()
{
$text = “Free 68 Page Traffic Guide”;
$url = “http://nickstraffictricks.com/links/68_page.php”;
return make_table($text, $url);
}

function before_post()
{
echo “<p align=’center’>” . ad() . “</p>”;
}

add_action(‘thesis_hook_before_post’, ‘before_post’);

Make sure your squeeze page converts

If you’re going to go through all this effort to get peoples’ attention and send them to your squeeze page for them to sign up, then you must make sure that your squeeze page is set up correctly so people actually sign up.

The best squeeze pages I believe are simple. They have a large eye-catching header at the very top of the page.

I like to have a colorful graphic of whatever freebie I am giving away and also have the sign-up form on the page above the fold. Below the fold I’ll put additional information for people who want more information.

On the squeeze page it’s also important to have plain and simple background. And obviously you don’t want to have links to any other websites on it.

You can see an example of one of the main squeeze pages that I use:
http://free–web-traffic.com/

Feel free to steal/copy the layout, graphics, etc.

Don’t lose your subscribers

Lastly I should mention that you should take great effort not to lose too many subscribers. It takes a lot of work to build an e-mail list and you don’t want to throw it all away by losing all of your subscribers.

So take good care of your subscribers.

Welcome to Day 26 of 30 Days to More Traffic!

Introduction

Today I want to talk about how to use free stuff that you give away to get more traffic.

If you have an ebook, special report, piece of software, or any digital info that is of value to others you can give it away to others and get traffic in return.

The goal here is to give away something of real value and get readers to forward it to their friends.

To keep things simple we are going to assume that you’re giving away an ebook though these ideas apply to other things as well.

Creating the ebook

You must start with something of value, cannot stress this enough, people will not forward something to their friends unless it has real value.

In creating the ebook make sure that it contains a link to your site in the header/footer and at the beginning (the most read page).

For software be sure to also place a link to your site in a place where the user can see it and click on it.

NOTE: Make double sure the link is clickable and that your site does come up correctly. Never put a url in it and assume people will open up a new browser wind and type in the url. People are lazy.

Put in a copyright statement encouraging others to pass on the ebook as they wish as well a disclaimer statement.

Copyright Statement Example

Here is what I put on the first page of Nick’s Traffic Tricks:

This report is free. You may give it away. In fact, I encourage you to give it away.

This report can be sold but I recommend not selling it as anyone can get for free at NicksTrafficTricks.com/nicks-traffic-tricks-2008/

This guide can be combined with any package or bundle, sold or given away.

The only thing I require is that the report is not modified in any manner.

The strategies in this report can be to generate a flood of traffic to almost any website.
However, what you do with these techniques is up to you. Because I don’t know you, don’t know your skills and – most important of all – don’t know how persistent you’ll be, I can’t make any guarantees.

In the introduction & conclusion portion of you ebook, ask people to send it to others. Sometimes it works best to simply ask others to send it to others.

When you link to your site make sure the link is enticing, promising additional information.

Many ebooks have an appendix at the end. Instead of putting an appendix in your ebook put the appendix on your site and link to it. This not only sends traffic to your site but also allows you to keep your appendix up to date, adding further value to your ebook.

Keep your ebook relatively focused on single subject. If it solves a problem make sure it solves it well and solves nothing else.
Viral ebooks tend to small and easy to download, making it easier for others to download and email to others.

Add page numbers, have fonts be standard size

Have a minimum of 3 people proof read it.

Packaging

If you link to the ebook in pdf format then when people click on the link to the pdf it will automatically load the pdf in the browser.

If instead you link to a zipped file (which contains the pdf) they will be forced to download it to their computer, making it easier for them to read it later and forward it to others.

In the zip file also include a file that links to your website.

To do this open a new file in NotePad and save it.

An example filename might be Traffic_Tricks_Blog.htm

Be sure that the filename contains no spaces, is something that gets the viewers attention, and ends with .htm

Inside the file type the following:

<HTML><HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.nickstraffictricks.com">
<TITLE></TITLE></HEAD><BODY></BODY></HTML>

What this chunk of HTML code does is tell the browser to immediately redirect to:
http://www.nickstraffictricks.com

Simply replace http://www.nickstraffictricks.com with your own url and then save.

Be sure to test your redirect!

Now everyone unzipping the file will see a file and if they open they will be sent to your site.

You can do this for affiliates stuff too. Just don’t abuse it. If you irritate people they won’t pass on your ebook.

Distribution

Now that your ebook package is ready there a many ways to distribute your freebie and start receiving traffic:

1. Make a page on your site outlining the ebook and its benefits with a big DOWNLOAD HERE graphic and ask your friends to put it on their sites.
2. Put a link to your freebie in your email signature
3. Post on WarriorForum with a link to your freebie
4. Upload your freebie to Scribd
5. Use forums to distribute your ebook. Read Traffic From Forums
6. There are many people with large email lists in your niche. Find out who they are. If my niche was Poodles I would Google poodle email list or poodle newsletter or poodle news and see who comes up in the search results.
   Chances are they have a sizable email list. Subscribe to their list and respond to one of their emails.
   What you’re going to offer them is to have their affiliate link at the top (header) of every page and you keep the link to your own site in the footer. All the list owner has to do is send an email to everyone on the list with a link to your ebook. The list owner wins by having an affiliate link in the ebook being distributed and you win by having everyone on the list read an ebook with a link to your site!
7. Find other people selling related products and offer to have your ebook bundled with their product. In return give them a link in the header of your report.