I’ve uploaded, activated and reviewed a number of different plugins and software applications intended to increase your subscribers – most of which I’ve never told you about.

But Subscribers Magnet is different — in a VERY good way… and the reason I’m telling you about it NOW, is because it is 30% off until but only until October 1st.

First things first, ‘Subscribers Magnet’ is a WordPress plugin, which makes it super easy to install and activate.

See the graphic up and to the right?

Yes, the plugin automatically recognizes and fills in your visitor’s name and email address to encourage signups. You have the option to add your opt-in form all over your blog, and actually ‘seduce’ your visitors to join your list, in a very friendly manner.

Watch this video to see Subscribers Magnet in action.

You can add the form to your WordPress footer or within the post itself.

Better still, you can add a subscription box to the footer and decide how often it will show.

(You might be seeing the footer bar right now.)

Plus, you have full control over the look, feel, location and functionality of your forms and it works with AWeber (my favorite), GetResponse, and other major autoresponders.

The developers suggest that Subscribers Magnet could actually triple your sign-up rate almost overnight, without you having to get more blog visitors than you’re already getting. (I WILL be testing that statement and letting you know how it works. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to report my results before their discount offer has ended. No problem though – they do offer a money-back guarantee).

Suppose the assertion is true and you get 100 unique visitors to your blog on a daily basis and receive a 5% conversion ratio, meaning 5 subscribers. If you use Subscribers Magnet, you should get 15 subscribers instead, from the same amount of traffic.

Just think about it!

If you’re all about the list and optimizing it for better performance (which really should be one of your first priorities), you will love this plugin!

Here’s my caveat. You should NOT buy ‘Subscribers Magnet’…

1. If, once you finish watching the video, you still don’t see its real value
2. If you receive less than 10 visitors a day to your blog
3. If you don’t plan to actually test-drive it on your blog.

On the other hand, you should BUY Subscribers Magnet:

1. If you want to double, triple and even quadruple your subscription rate ‘overnight’ – and do it over and over again, day and night, week after week, month after month!
2. If you want optimum list conversion and to get maximum value from your blog’s real estate by placing your opt-in form in strategic, non-intrusive locations, where anybody can see it.

P.S. Here are some other amazing features that I haven’t found on other subscriber plugins:

• A. You can show the signup form in your footer bar in a highly visible but not obnoxious way. Very good for turning first time visitors into subscribers.
• B. You can also end “automatic” and highly-personalized ‘thank you messages’ by email on the first occasion someone comments on your blog. Think of the possibilities! In that message you can invite them to join your newsletter or rss feed. It’s another “friendly” reason to create trust with your readers and get them on your list, in a non intrusive way!
• C. Plus, there’s unique tracking available for each subscription method – you will know which forms perform better than others; with this new found knowledge, you’ll be able to skyrocket your sign-up rate like never before!

P.P.S. Download your copy of Subscribers Magnet PLUGIN now and GET a free copy of “Multiple Hit Strategy” with your purchase. This bonus item is a step-by-step guide detailing how to build your list FAST with this proprietary “multiple hit strategy”.

After 1 month of prep time, DinerDave.com has content and, thanks to Juscott Media, a fantastic new look! My next order of business is to build up my subscriber base so I can start sending out articles and promoting my merchant programs in the Diner Dave Digest e-newsletter (using AWeber of course). Obviously, the best place to start is to solicit my current subscribers on DinerDeals.com.

Transferring Subscribers from DinerDeals.com to DinerDave.com

I am so happy that I chose AWeber as my email broadcast service because their support is amazing! I utilized their online help chat sessions and a couple of phone conversations to learn how to create a “transfer request” email and send to my existing DinerDeals.com subscriber list. My last provider, oemPro, provided NO SUPPORT for any issues with my subscriber list (my issues with them could take up an entire post altogether!).

I learned that I could import up to 2,000 subscribers a day through AWeber, AFTER I had an opt-in confirmation email prepared. The only issue that I had with their confirmation email setup was that I was limited to 500 characters in the intro before the confirmation link to subscribe to DinerDave.com. I wanted more space to really sell my subscribers on transferring from DinerDeals to DinerDave.

I created a 1 page “sales letter” asking my DinerDeals.com subscribers to check out DinerDave.com, sign up for the Diner Dave Digest newsletter and receive my special report (more on that later). I was only able to use a few sentences from the sales letter in the confirmation email that would be sent to my DinerDeals subscribers. Here is the official AWeber request to transfer email:

My First Obstacle – The OLD Mailing List

As I mentioned earlier I had several problems with my old email broadcast program, oemPro, and was unable to send emails to my DinerDeals subscribers for about 6 months (VERY FRUSTRATING!). As a result, my subscriber list was not “cleaned” and there were a few undeliverable email addresses. When I attempted to import certain sections of my old subscriber list through AWeber I was unable to do so because there were a few “bad” email addresses. AWeber, being ever vigilant in the fight against spam, refused to import a couple of sections of my old subscriber list because, in their words, “invalid addresses have not been tracked and removed from the list over time. This causes the list to become extremely stale and will cause significant email deliverability issues if emailed”.

I completely understand and agree with their reasoning behind this, but I’m a little disappointed! It took me almost 5 years to gather 15,000 email addresses! In fact, I have personally signed up hundreds of my subscribers face to face at food and wine events and at local restaurants. Fortunately, I was able to import about 2,500 email addressess (so far…this is still a work in progress). I still have over 8,000 more subscribers to notify and I have been able to import about 50% of the list through AWeber. The other 50% were rejected due to undeliverable email addresses. I guess a lot can happen to a subscriber in 5 years – they can change jobs, change residence, or decide to use a different email provider. Let this be a lesson to you…make sure you use a reputable email broadcast service like AWeber so your list is always current and any invalid email addresses are promptly deleted from the list.

Overcoming Rejection

Now I need to figure out how I can spread the word about DinerDave.com to the VALID email addresses on the rejected portions of the DinerDeals subscriber list. I decided to get nostalgic and manually review the list, which had subscribers from 2005 to present. I quickly realized that I have personally met or corresponded with hundreds of these subscribers. I KNEW that these familiar subscribers were going to want to continue to receive my newsletters with dining out tips, coupon codes, restaurant gift certificates, and fun contests! So I decided to send them a PERSONAL note and attach the 1 page sales letter (see above). I was confident that once they checked out the “new and improved” DinerDave.com, they would sign up for the newsletter directly from the site.

Word of caution: I do not condone sending emails to your subscribers using your own email provider (Yahoo, Gmail, etc..)! Always use a reputable email broadcast service like AWeber or Constant Contact.

The ONLY reason that chose to send my “request to transfer” email to a select few subscribers using my personal email account is that I KNOW these subscribers and am confident that my request will be well received.

Creating Incentive for New Subscribers

I’ve noticed that a majority of the websites or blogs that I visit have newsletter or RSS feed opt-in form where visitors can subscribe PLUS they receive a special free report as further motivation to subscribe. I started wondering “what special report could I create to entice visitors to subscribe to my newsletter?” Then it hit me! I’ll write a report focusing on one of the most powerful words on the internet: FREE! Over the last 5 years many of my subscribers have requested information about free meals, free restaurant gift certificates, buy one get one free meals, etc… So I decided to write a report with “secret” tips on how to dine out and get free meals.

If you want to learn these secrets, you’ll have to subscribe to the Diner Dave Digest Newsletter on DinerDave.com. Plus, if you subscribe, you will get see my newsletters firsthand (shameless plug: with tips and advice on how to “Dine MORE & Pay LESS” from your pal, Diner Dave!)

Stay tuned for my next post on how I created the Diner Dave Digest newsletter – with tips from Ros on lowering the “spam-o-meter” score.

Lastly, if you are interested, you can follow my progress here in my previous posts:

• Introducing Diner Dave!
• Diner Dave Does Market Research
• Diner Dave Writes Content
• Designing the Diner Dave Website

Research has shown that the average person needs to be exposed to an ad at least 7 times (and often many more) before they will buy a product. You therefore need to remind visitors to come BACK to your site, making an autoresponder service essential for your online business.

Below I’ve listed those autoresponder services that I and other Internet marketing professionals have used and trusted for years.

TOP PICK: Aweber Communications

Having used their service since 1998, Aweber’s autoresponder service is my TOP pick and the one I most highly recommend. Just some of Aweber’s features include detailed email web analytics, activity based segmentation, geo-targeting, broadcast split-testing and an easy-to-use email setup wizard. Try Aweber risk-free for a month to get
more email subscribers, enhance your subscriber relationships, and increase your sales.

Visit Aweber | Read my Aweber Review

Constant Contact

Constant Contact’s service includes customizable website visitor sign up form; Over 100 professional HTML email templates (newsletters, promos, invites and more); List management and hosting (including unsubscribe and bounce mgmt); Automatic delivery in the correct format, HTML or text; Real-time reporting (including opens, who clicked on which links and more); You can try it free for 60 days. Every free trial includes a subscription to their email marketing best practices newsletter and email campaign coaching tips.

Visit Constant Contact

Get Response

Get Response is the email marketing / autoresponder of choice by such top-notch Internet marketers as Michel Fortin, Marlon Sanders and Yanik Silver; and has been used by over 500,000 internet marketers since 1998. With GetResponse, your email marketing campaigns are protected by their Delivery Guard™ technology that monitors your mailings 24/7. Support service is also 24/7.

Visit Get Response

“… still the best autoresponder service available – bar none.”

If you’ve been searching for a service that will let you build a list of subscribers, deliver auto-response messages and send broadcast news to those subscribers, then you already know that there are many different options from which to choose.

You may be finding it difficult to choose, so… I’m going to make your choice simple.

Get an Aweber autoresponder.

I have been using Aweber’s autoresponder service since 1998. For comparison purposes only, I’ve tested many of the other autoresponder services available and have ultimately cancelled all but Aweber’s service.

With Aweber, you get everything you need to build your email marketing campaign at a reasonable price.

Unlimited Autoresponders, Broadcast & Followup Messages

These are the most basic benefits of having an Aweber autoresponder account:

• Unlimited autoresponders so you can set build a different for list for each of your sites or pay per click campaigns.
• Unlimited follow up messages. You can have something as short as a 5-part autoresponder series or build one that delivers a message to your subscriber every week for a year… or longer. It’s up to you.
• Unlimited braodcast messages lets you share news with your subscribers on an ad-hoc basis.
• Unlimited message length. There are some services that restrict the amount of text you can send.

In addition to support, the Aweber guys frequently blog and write articles about email marketing topics such as “Just Because We Publish, Doesn’t Mean You Read” and “Confirmed Opt-in Myths Exposed“.

Personalization, Shopping Cart Integration and more…

The features that you get with Aweber’s service is too extensive to list in this article, but here are few:

• Your messages can be personalized to include your subscriber’s name.
• Send your messages using text, HTML or both — and you can choose from a number of pre-designed HTML templates.
• A WYSIWYG editor is available for the HTML challenged.
• Click-through and open rates are tracked automatically.
• You can send attachments such as ebooks or PDF’s along with your messages.
• Aweber is easily integrated with Paypal and other third-party shopping carts.
• Free customer support via phone, live chat or ticket submission. This is one of the few autoresponder services that has support available on the weekends – and their support is fabulous — they actually answer the question that you asked!

Aweber makes it easy for you to start using their system as well, with free training videos that show you how to do everything on a step-by-step basis.

Creating your opt-in form is as simple as navigating to the “Web Form” section, filling in 4 form blanks and selecting one radio button. All you have to do then is copy and paste the code where you want it on your site.

Pricing

You will have no trouble covering the cost of the service as your list grows.

As a matter of fact, I’m thrilled each time my bill increases, because I know that I now have MORE subscribers and am therefore making much MORE money!

So, as I’ve been telling new Internet marketers and webmasters for years — with more features and lower prices, Aweber is still the best autoresponder service available – bar none.

Visit the Aweber site now to learn more…

Were you completely bombarded by emails urging you to buy Michael Rasmussen’s new “Get More Buyers” Video Course on Tuesday?

Ya, me too.

What really got me was the sheer number of so-called ‘reviews’ that contained exactly the same wording.

(Here’s a tip… regurgitating merchant copy word-for-word is NOT how one becomes a Super affiliate.)

Suffice to say that those marketers probably didn’t bother to watch the course in its entirety — if at all.

I did.

But before I tell you what I thought about the course and just in case you think email marketing / list-building isn’t where it’s at when it comes to making money online — I sent out 2 emails last month in one niche and bought an RV with the proceeds — and I don’t do everything that Michael suggests in “Get More Buyers“… yet.

Just 25 seconds into the videos, Michael discards the entrenched marketing theory that ‘the money is in the list’. From the perspective of an avid and successful email marketer, Michael’s assertion grabbed my attention and kept it throughout the rest of the course.

Pretty remarkable, considering I have trouble sitting through some 2 minute video tutorials, and “Get More Buyers” took a couple of hours to go through as I paused the video a few times to make notes.

So, the video was well produced and the content captivating, but will his course really help YOU get more buyers? Well…

Considering how well Michael does in some JV sales contests, I know that his approach works extremely well.

For instance, having already won one prize (and hoping for another), I was sitting pretty in a top spot a few days into one contest when Michael came out of nowhere to end up in the third position and won a giant prize for his efforts.

If I implement just a few of the tips that I picked up from his videos, he’ll have more competition from me down the road. You hear that, Michael?

But will Michael’s 10 strategies work for you?

Well, that somewhat depends on the markets in which you work.

For example, a couple of his suggestions are completely irrelevant to picking up more buyers in dating niche. Too, it might be very difficult to make his strategies work if you affiliate only with big brand name companies. OR, if you’re a ‘lazy’ affiliate marketer – someone who just wants to drive traffic to your offers with PPC then take your commissions and run – Michael’s strategies probably won’t work for you.

Too, I’ve tried one of the more specific strategies in ‘Get More Buyers’ and found that while it generated a mountain of subscribers, they were ‘garbage leads’ or ‘freebie seekers’ – not buyers. Then again, I probably didn’t work hard enough to cultivate those particular leads – a subject that is covered in one of Michael’s Fast Action Bonuses, ‘Making Your Buyers List Pay Off‘ report. Note: This bonus is only available until November 4th at 9:00pm PST.

That said, what Michael recommends will work particularly well if you promote products in the business opportunities market OR if you promote information products in almost any other niche. Affiliate marketers would do well just to listen to Michael’s 16:39 introduction for ideas on how to expand their businesses. And if you put in the effort to do as Michael suggests (re creating funnels, partnerships, added value, etc.), there’s no doubt that you’ll be able to build big fat lists that are filled with buyers, and he gives you a raft of good ideas on how to simplify your workload.

Is ‘Get More Buyers‘ worth $77.00?

To figure that out, calculate the value of your typical buyer. If a buyer is worth $10 to you, you’ll have to make 8 sales to recoup your cost. If your leads are worth $50, then you’ll only have to make 2 sales. It’s all gravy after that, and if you follow Michael’s ‘Get More Buyers‘ plan, you will add hundreds, if not thousands, of buyers to your lists.

In summary, I say Get More Buyers is worth the price it if you want to grow your business and make more money from building bigger buyer lists.

NPT reader Sean wrote this week to ask me a whole bunch of questions about how I was able to get traffic to my websites to the extent that I was able to ‘crack’ the $100,000 earnings level.

Because I reached that level back in 1999, and my traffic generation strategies have changed considerably over time, I’ve answered the questions to highlight those differences.

Here are both Sean’s questions and my answers…

1. Can you please tell me, when you first cracked the $100,000 level, exactly how you were driving traffic to your site(s)?

   I broke the 100K mark in 1999, my second year in business. At the time I was working with only one site, Sage-Hearts.com. Traffic to the site came from 2 primary sources – pay per click search engine advertising and natural / organic search – which were about equally split.

   A larger percentage (between 60 and 70%) of my traffic now comes from natural search and other free methods of traffic generation, primarily article marketing.

   These numbers are highly dependent on the month and season, eg. I drive more traffic using PPC in advance of Valentine’s Day and other gift-giving holidays.

2. Were you doing anything to optimize your traffic source(s) once you found the ones that were working the best for you?

   I used to spend a LOT of time tweaking my pay per click advertising campaigns to maximize conversion rates.

   They’re so fined honed now that I barely even check the long-standing campaigns in the dating niche.

3. Were you offering just one product at that time, if so, what was the price of that product?

   Much as I do today, my visitors were offered a variety of product and service options relevant to their needs. For example, if a surfer found my site via a pay per click search engine while looking for ‘mail order brides’ and therefore landed on my mail order bride page, he would have seen services relevant to his specific search on that page.

   However, he would also have seen the sidebar navigation that would present him with alternative options, such as International / Ethnic dating services.

   Dating service membership prices varied according to subscription duration – anywhere from $19.95 for a one-month membership to over $200.00 for a year-long membership.

   Most of the services that I promote (then and now) offer recurring commissions.

   The primary difference between then and now is that I concentrate on sending more traffic to pages that promote higher-priced products – some of which pay between $500 – $1000 commissions per sale.

4. What was your sales process like, once a visitor got to your landing page?

   Then, as now, I posted reviews of various dating services. Summary reviews were included on primary category pages, eg. faith-based dating services. Two links for each service are generally provided on the category page – one that goes directly to the merchant site and the other to a longer review where the visitor can learn more about the specific service.

5. For those visitors that did not buy initially, did you do any email or autoresponder marketing to them, if so, how many more contacts were needed before a sale was made?

   Absolutely! I’ve been using Aweber’s autoresponder service since my first year of doing business online and visitor followup lies at the very heart of my marketing strategy.

   Although I’ve never tracked exact numbers from the time a visitor arrives on the site to the point of sale through the autoresponder sequence and broadcast messages, conventional marketing wisdom states that it takes 7 contacts to penetrate a consumer’s conciousness with a specific product or brand.

   The Pareto principle or 80/20 rule is also a common rule of thumb, e.g., 80 percent of your sales are generated from 20 percent of your visitors.

   That said, response rate is highly dependent on the product being offered. For example, the response rate to a very generic free offer (on which you are earning commissions for the lead) will be much higher than on a product targeted at a narrow niche, eg. senior singles.

   For that reason, I generally include a mix of both generic and more targeted offers within each message – whether it be the autoresponder series or a broadcast message.

   How many visitors were you getting on a monthly basis?

6. Although I no longer have traffic statistics for that period, I estimate my numbers (based on commissions earned and conversion rates) at between approximately 12 and 25 thousand visitors per month.

   What were your conversion ratios for that traffic that was visiting your site(s)?

   At that time, my average conversion rate for traffic sent to a merchant’s site was 2.544%.

7. When making your first $100,000, how much did it cost you, in marketing, to generate that revenue? How much were you spending per month to get your traffic?

   In the early days, it typically cost me $1 to earn 2 bucks.

   My PPC spend is considerably less now and my conversion rates are higher – to the extent that on some product offers I can spend one dollar and make $10 in return. Although those results aren’t typical across the board, I now earn approximately $4.6 for every dollar spent on advertising.

Although I’ve been immensely satisfied with the results of my traffic generation efforts, one area in which I’ve fallen far short is in tracking.

John Reese (Traffic Secrets 2.0) emphasizes the need for all Internet marketers to track where their traffic originates and at what cost. Basically, you can enjoy even better results when you know exactly how many sales, newsletter sign-ups, or other leads your particular marketing campaigns generate. Once tracking is in place, you will know where best to concentrate your efforts and can therefore ‘work smarter, not harder’, make more money… and truly live the affiliate lifestyle.

The first time I installed Feedburner’s FeedCount* on this blog (after integrating the Feedburner feed with Aweber) I uninstalled it almost immediately after seeing that it showed only a few hundred subscribers.

Ugh!

How embarrassing!

Especially considering that there are places on the site where I tout the fact that NPT has tens of thousands of readers.

I mentioned this ‘problem’ to Anik Singal (my partner in BlogClassroom) and he simply told me to “give it a day to resolve“.

So, although the FeedCount chiclet showed ZERO subscribers when I installed it at Sage-Hearts (see screen capture above left), I was a little more patient and left it alone until the next day.

Sure enough, when I checked it the next morning, FeedCount was showing 100K subscribers (see graphic below).

Woohoo!

*FeedCount is a dynamic graphic that displays your feed’s current circulation, as calculated by FeedBurner. You may customize its color scheme to match your site and choose between either an animated or static appearance.

To put the Feedburner FeedCount on your blog, log in to your Feedburner account, go to ‘My Feeds’ and choose the feed that you want to Publicize. Then activate the FeedCount service (found in the left-side navigation), choose your colors, then copy and paste the code where you want the graphic to appear on your blog.

The primary benefit to using the FeedCount chiclet on your blog is to increase visitor awareness of the popularity of your blog (social proof) and thereby increase the likelihood that they will also subscribe to your feed.

Then wait for it!!

Here’s a comment that I received from Ron Schmidt last week on our Support Desk…

I wanted the newsletter but I couldn’t read it in the HTML code in which it was received. Please resend the newsletter. Thanks.

UGH.

I do know better than to send out my newsletters only in HTML format, but the truth is that I’ve gotten lazy over the past several months — assuming that everyone accepts HTML newsletters now. Well, you know what they say about assuming anything… and in this case the only *ss is me.

What is really dumb is that I often neglect to include a link to the blog entry where the latest newsletter is posted.

So, to make matters right, from now on I’ll send my email newsletters either in both HTML and text formats, or as text only. It’s not like that’s hard to do using the Aweber autoresponder interface… it’s actually incredibly easy.

And although Ron’s message made a significant impression, the following email that I received just a few days later, really brought the point home…

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?><affiliate_transaction>
<kagiAffiliate>myaffiliateaccountname</kagiAffiliate><transaction_id>CH21UVFKTG4G&
lt;/transaction_id><customer_ip_address>77.195.xx.161</customer_ip_address><total_
sale_currency>EUR</total_sale_currency><total_sale_amount>23.92</total_sale_amount
><products><product_detail><product_name>ProductName__Standard_Edition</prod
uct_name><product_quantity>1</product_quantity><product_currency>USD</produc
t_currency><product_price>29.95</product_price></product_detail><product_det
ail><product_name>VAT_France_EU372000052_TVA</product_name><product_quantity>1&
lt;/product_quantity><product_currency>USD</product_currency><product_price>5.8
7</product_price></product_detail> </products> </affiliate_transaction>
<human_readable_note>You are the affiliate for a transaction that was recently processed. The above XML provides the transaction details. The affiliate fee earned from
this transaction will bedisplayed in the monthly payment data
file.vh1200</human_readable_note></xml>

My favorite part of the above email is the ‘human readable note’. Did you see it?

Anyway… point taken.

Aweber announced yesterday that their RSS-to-email tool now integrates with Feedburner’s tracking and publishing service.

By result, bloggers who use both services and convert their feeds to email newsletters using Aweber’s Blog Broadcast will now see their subscriber statistics within the Feedburner interface. They will also see a spike in subscriber numbers displayed on the Feedburner ‘chicklet’.

Justin Premick, Education Marketing Manager at AWeber also predicted that “The more subscribers you can boast, the more likely new visitors are to subscribe to your blog, and the more likely companies are to want to advertise on your blog.”

This is excellent news for those of us who have wanted to connect with our Feedburner subscribers on a more personal level by customizing the email that we send out to them… and now with the help of my all-time favorite autoresponder service provider, Aweber, we can!

[tags]Aweber,Feedburner,email,rss,feed,blogging[/tags]

Sure… we all appreciate our clients and customers and want to send them our very best wishes for a happy holiday season.

But SHOULD we send those greetings as a separate email? Or, are our SinterKlaas, Christmas, Hanukkah and New Years greetings better received as an inclusion within a regular newsletter?

Justin Premick posted a great article on this topic at Aweber, titled “Holiday Marketing Tip: Don’t Send Pointless Greetings!”

Although the title reveals Justin’s slant and the article justifies his reasoning, I want to add a few thoughts of my own on the matter.

One of the commenters on the Aweber blog made a good point against sending denominational greetings because not everyone on your list will celebrate Christmas. That should be SO obvious, yet how many “Merry Christmas” emails did you get last year?

In a similar vein, email marketers should also make themselves aware of when certain holidays are celebrated in countries.

Case in point.

I received an Inbox full of “Happy Thanksgiving” emails on or about the 4th Thursday of November. That would have been nice except for the fact that I live in Canada and we celebrate Thanksgiving on the 2nd Monday in October… so those greetings came about 6 weeks late.

Those marketers need to figure out how to parse their lists geographically and send their messages accordingly.

For more reasons not to send pointless holiday greetings, read Justin’s article here and check out the comments.