How Are You Building Your Email List? How's it working?

[Gymjunkie]

Hello!

I'm researching how authors use their websites and email lists. Would love to learn how authors on Fastlane are building up their email lists? How's it going?

I'm mostly interested about Fiction authors as it's way easier to build up non-fiction email list.

If you could share your stories, that would be great!

Cheers,
Gymjunkie

 

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[Gymjunkie]

Here is a success story with building an email list:
http://seeleyjames.com/2014/06/marketing-for-you-nick-stephenson/

Hope this gets a discussion started. Really impressive stuff he did (altho super simple).

 

[GiroudJD]

Use MailCheat(Chimp). But a link to your mailing list at both the front and back of your books. Keep it short and sweet, but display a little personality, or else nobody is ever going to want to sign up.

 

[Gymjunkie]

Use MailCheat(Chimp). But a link to your mailing list at both the front and back of your books. Keep it short and sweet, but display a little personality, or else nobody is ever going to want to sign up.

Well, those are good basics! Segmentation is also something to consider.

How's your's working out?

 

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[JamesSJ]

Started of with just a sign up box on my site - got a few sign ups. Not great.

I was the using a popup on my blog (pop up domination) - had some success but it was a bit annoying according to my core readers.

Then I found Neil PAtels Welcome redirect plugin (wordpress only) - http://www.quicksprout.com/welcome-redirect-plugin

Wow - this thing put my list building on steroids - literally 10 x the sign ups as the pop up. And every 6 weeks or so I change up the offer and it keeps on working... So now I use this exclusively - I don't even bother with a sign up box on any of my sites now it's that good. I hooked up it up to campaign monitor and tweaked it to point to a an unbounce.com landing page. YOu can skip the whole Aweber part - it's pretty easy to tweak out and hook up to your own email company.

And finally I use FB ads - what i do is set up a landing page with unbounce.com and set up a short series (say 5 to 10 videos in it). I then create a FB ad pointing to and advertising this series. The course is a+ content so we get a load of sign ups - around 13 cents a sign up it costs on FB ads. At the end of the series we point them to our e-commerce store and so far we've made our money back and more - so really we're getting free targeted subs (on the one i'm doing right now 1200+ so far in a couple of weeks). Slowly increasing the ad spend and will be running a new series in a month or so.

 

[Gymjunkie]

Started of with just a sign up box on my site - got a few sign ups. Not great.

I was the using a popup on my blog (pop up domination) - had some success but it was a bit annoying according to my core readers.

Then I found Neil PAtels Welcome redirect plugin (wordpress only) - http://www.quicksprout.com/welcome-redirect-plugin

Wow - this thing put my list building on steroids - literally 10 x the sign ups as the pop up. And every 6 weeks or so I change up the offer and it keeps on working... So now I use this exclusively - I don't even bother with a sign up box on any of my sites now it's that good. I hooked up it up to campaign monitor and tweaked it to point to a an unbounce.com landing page. YOu can skip the whole Aweber part - it's pretty easy to tweak out and hook up to your own email company.

And finally I use FB ads - what i do is set up a landing page with unbounce.com and set up a short series (say 5 to 10 videos in it). I then create a FB ad pointing to and advertising this series. The course is a+ content so we get a load of sign ups - around 13 cents a sign up it costs on FB ads. At the end of the series we point them to our e-commerce store and so far we've made our money back and more - so really we're getting free targeted subs (on the one i'm doing right now 1200+ so far in a couple of weeks). Slowly increasing the ad spend and will be running a new series in a month or so.

That's awesome. Thank you for sharing the link to Welcome Gate too!

What's the niche/genre?

 

[JamesSJ]

Music production.

I just set up a post in the INSIDERS section which explains a little more about my business.

 

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[JuliaMF]

For Fiction books I'd imagine you have a great opportunity to get emails. Offer something of value like a quick-study guide, audio version or perhaps a list of key characters, and offer it to folks who buy the book for free .... if they give their email address. You can set this up pretty easily with MailCheat(Chimp) or aweber.

 

[Magik]

YOu can skip the whole Aweber part - it's pretty easy to tweak out and hook up to your own email company.

Can you elaborate on this part? Are you saying you have a way to use this with a different email list provider? According to their page, the plugin only works with Aweber.

 

[Gymjunkie]

For Fiction books I'd imagine you have a great opportunity to get emails. Offer something of value like a quick-study guide, audio version or perhaps a list of key characters, and offer it to folks who buy the book for free .... if they give their email address. You can set this up pretty easily with MailCheat(Chimp) or aweber.

Quick-study guide, hmm that's interesting. Does it apply only to certain books tho? Those that have big worlds created aka Game Of Thrones? Audio version is really cool, but expensive to make and audiobooks have been becoming a good source of sales and income for authors. Tough call!

 

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[JamesSJ]

Can you elaborate on this part? Are you saying you have a way to use this with a different email list provider? According to their page, the plugin only works with Aweber.

Sure.

The plugin itself lets you select a Wordpress page you created.

In that page I posted above they tell you what to put on that page.

However below is what i put on my page.

What i'm doing here is just putting in an image that shows the offer with a call to action - a button. The call to action points to an unbounce.com landing page where i can collect email addresses. There's still the 'Skip' link which takes the user to page they were intending to get to. So anyone coming in via a search engine sees this and if they skip will get to the page they intended.

I've removed my own personal content - you can add in your own. To get this to work you'll also need to install the plugin 'Insert PHP'. Don't worry the plugin hides this page from Google bot so doesn't affect the page ranking.

• You could put any page instead of http://unbouncepages.com/xxx/ - so you can send traffic anywhere on arrival.
• Any call to action / offer can be included in http://www.xxx.com/images/welcome-image.png

Let's say i call this page 'welcome' ( so on my site is http://www.xxx.com/welcome/ ) then in the redirect plugin i simply select the page 'welcome' and this is the page that is automatically shown to everyone who visits now.

Here's the code -


<a href="http://unbouncepages.com/xxx/" target="_blank" id="myButton">
<img src="http://www.xxx.com/images/welcome-image.png"></a>

<p style="font-size:105%; color:#AAA; margin-top:25px;">No thanks, i'll <a href="[insert_php] if($_COOKIE['welcome_redirect_cookie']) if($_COOKIE['welcome_redirect_cookie'] == "http://www.xxx.com/welcome/") print "http://www.xxx.com"; else print $_COOKIE['welcome_redirect_cookie']; else print "http://www.xxx.com"; [/insert_php]" id="skip_page">skip</a> this and go straight to xxx.com (<em>you won't see this offer again!</em>)</p>

<script type="text/javascript">
document.getElementById("myButton").onclick = function () {location.href = "http://www.xxx.com";};
</script>

 

[JamesSJ]

It's been a while that i looked at this set up - actually looking at the code it would be very easy to add the form on the first page - but i used unbounce.com pages so i could split test the offer and some other bits and bobs.

To change the code so it's not Aweber just replace the <form> </form> and it's content with which ever email service you use code.

Pretty simple stuff.

 

[JuliaMF]

Quick-study guide, hmm that's interesting. Does it apply only to certain books tho? Those that have big worlds created aka Game Of Thrones? Audio version is really cool, but expensive to make and audiobooks have been becoming a good source of sales and income for authors. Tough call!

Very true! I think it definitely would depend on the topic / type of book.
Maybe you could offer some sort of "behind the scenes" information, like an extra chapter, alternate ending, or "here's another idea for how I thought the plot might go." Basically a book equivalent to the DVD "bonus" info!

 

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[Gymjunkie]

Very true! I think it definitely would depend on the topic / type of book.
Maybe you could offer some sort of "behind the scenes" information, like an extra chapter, alternate ending, or "here's another idea for how I thought the plot might go." Basically a book equivalent to the DVD "bonus" info!

Yeah, extra chapter or prequel-like short story etc.

 

[Blhhi]

Anyone else got actual attempts they've made? Methods they've tried? Stuff that works? Doesn't work?

 

[Gale4rc]

I don't think it matters what industry you're in (I've built a couple big email lists in dif industries) - Create create content, distribute it properly and make sure you're getting close to 10% conversions and that's the best way to build it. Then to grow it faster after you reach 1k you can use contents, outreach, etc.

At the end of the day, there is no secret step to get past the grind of your first 1-10k users.

 

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[Timbonitus]

Hello!

I'm researching how authors use their websites and email lists. Would love to learn how authors on Fastlane are building up their email lists? How's it going?

I'm mostly interested about Fiction authors as it's way easier to build up non-fiction email list.

If you could share your stories, that would be great!

Cheers,
Gymjunkie

I started building a list on my website by offering a free eBook.

But, it's not going so well because the eBook's topic is a bit broad (general self improvement). The problem is that I switched topics a few times on my website and the website traffic is not targeted anymore. So it's not working out. I'm going to make a new website soon. Still, I think offering a free info product works great.

For fiction lists, I have no idea.

 

[Gymjunkie]

Quick and free way to increase your email list through Twitter:

http://neworganizing.com/content/blog/tip-build-your-list-with-Twitter-lead-generation-cards

 

[CreateLiving]

It is always slow in the beginning, at least it has been with the blog at Create-Living-Online. There are so many elements that you need to have in place before conversions start happening. It is important to not get discouraged..."Fortify your base, before you go and start a war"

 

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