Pareto Principle: The Idea of Getting More through Less Effort

We have been taught, trained and possibly ‘brainwashed’ with the concept of in order to get what we want, we have to do more than the day before. For example, to get huge incomes through Internet, there are a lot of tips and advice… especially through ‘make money online‘ blogs’ authors who consider themselves as experts, are also telling us the same thing.

However, there is one question for you – are those advice and tips are absolutely accurate?

I do always believe that there are always alternatives in everything that exist in this world as long as we keep looking for those alternatives and keep pushing ourselves to think outside our box.

There are always two sides for a coin, right?

What is Pareto Principle?

For me, there is an alternative for the idea of  ‘work more to earn more’. This alternative is called Pareto’s principle – a principle that was first introduced in 1906 by Vilfredo Pareto. This principle has also been called other various names such as; the Law of Vital Few, the 80/20 rule and the Factor of Sparsity.

Pareto invented this principle as the result of his simple observation – 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of population and vice versa. Through this, he realized that X amounts of efforts will not necessarily create X amount of good results – the result can be more than the X value or lesser than what we expected. He discovered there is the existence of imbalance element between the input and output equation and this element existed in the observations that he carried out in other countries through different situations.

The key of this principle is there is existence of imbalance element in the ‘input and output’ equation and if we can identify for the 20% portion of input that will create 80% of the output portion, we will able to work in more effective and efficient way. This is because we will not waste most of our time for the 80% portion of input that will only create 20% output portion.

However, the accuracy of the percentage is not the main idea – the imbalance element that matters. The portion can be turned to 1% into 80% or 40% into to 60%.

How can you integrate this principle into your site?

The first step that you must take is to install and integrate in any statistic plugin or toll that will help you to identify the efforts that generate the most returns in terms of incoming traffics or sales. The tools that I recommend are Google Analytics for incoming traffic statistic and MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate for affiliate sales tracking.

Through these tools, you will able to track the performance of your site.

My case study - Huzzer Magazine: WordPress Seems So Easy!

I have also integrated into the idea of this principle. This is because I know that only the small portion of my contents will attract huge traffic and due to this reason, I have used a few ways to push the articles that belongs to the ’20%’ portion of input that will create ’80%’ of output i.e. traffics for my blog to gain more exposure especially for the first time visitors. These are the steps that I have taken:

• Put up Most Popular Posts widget at the sidebar as this widget will help to push the best content of my blog as only the articles that most of people read will appear.
• I installed Yet Another Related Posts plugin and put it at the end of each articles as this will ensure that other articles that are less popular will get notified by my blog visitors and not just ‘died’.
• I will only focus in limited number of social networking buttons such as Twitter and Facebook which give me the most incoming links by putting their buttons in the beginning and end of my contents. By putting a lot of buttons, they definitely don’t have the amount of time to hit all of the buttons. We are asking for them for a favor – so let it be quick and easy!
• I use minimalist design approach for my site as it will help to retain readers’ attention. With ‘messy’ design, it will keep distracting our visitors as there are a lot of things to be seen rather than only our contents. Let our blog have proper structured so that our readers can read the article first, then see related articles that they may find interesting, hit the social networking buttons and finally leave comments. It is better if we do not change this standard flow.
• I have only minimal amount of sidebar widgets in my blog’s sidebar which are value added to the visitors. Our visitors’ main intention to come to our blog is to read the content that they are interested in – not to know what is our blog’s Alexa ranking or amount of spam that we have captured.

Pareto’s principle is a very flexible concept as it can be applied with anything and at anywhere. The most important thing that we must know is there is imbalance element in this world and if we can identify the factor that contribute to us more, we will able to earn more with less effort as we will know and possibly stop doing the stuff that consumes most of our time, but brings less returns.

I believe that great life comes not necessarily through a lot of effort. It comes when we take the right actions and consistently focusing on them.

This guest post is written by Helmi Asyraf Abdullah, the author of Huzzer Magazine – WordPress Seems So Easy! He believes that there are always two sides of a coin which is the main reason he is supporting DoFollow commenting movement.

At the moment, he is offering 5 internet marketing tools and special gifts through his collaboration with Obox Design, premium themes developer for those who subscribe with Huzzer Magazine.

Please Tell Me When I Have Something Hanging From My Nose

Be honest… did the title of this post intrigue you a little? I am sure it is not the best title to help drive search engine traffic to a site about making money online though. But I do think it is the perfect title for this post, as it is about helping out your fellow blogger, or anybody for that matter and that is what today’s “Quick Tip” is about.

Have you ever had something hanging from your nose, or maybe a little ranch dressing (from whatever you ate earlier) dried up on your chin and no one tells you about it? I know I have. Usually, the only way you find out is when you are going to the restroom and see yourself in the mirror. You think… “How embarrassing, how come no one told me about it?”

Of course you do have those certain friends that will give you a little nudge, point to where it is on their own face and then whisper in your ear… “Hey, you got a little something right there”, and you thank them, grab a tissue or napkin and give it a little wipe and that would be that. I really appreciate those types of friends, and that is the kind of friend I try to be.

So where am I going with this post? Well like the “there’s something hanging from my nose” analogy, I really appreciate it when someone tells me when something is wrong with one of my websites, or they think something can be done better. Three times in the last week I have had people tell me that something wasn’t working correctly with this site.

First Lax from over at Tech Zoom In emailed me to let me know that in my Feedburner Emails, at the bottom it was showing the word “Array” nine times in list format for no apparent reason. I did a little investigating and found out it was a simple setting in my DamnSexyBookmarks that was causing the problem and with a simple uncheck of a button the problem was solved. I am sure other readers probably noticed this for weeks, but no one ever let me know before Lax, so I never knew to fix it before then. Thanks Lax!

Also, in regards to my Email RSS Feed, not only was it not displaying correctly to the subscribers I already had, but the subscription form on the homepage was not working either. Alfredo over at Asswass.com contacted me last week to let me know about that. We probably lost a bunch of subscribers in the last few weeks because that was not working. We won’t lose them anymore. Thanks Alfredo!

Then just yesterday, Jared over at The Money Cult let me know about a problem that was happening with the comment editing plugin that we were using. When you clicked the edit your comment link, it opened up someone else’s comment, which was not good. So I ended up deactivating that until I get it fixed. Thanks Jared!

As for me, I am notorious for letting people know when something is wrong with their site, or if I think doing something another way might be beneficial to them. I honestly just like to help people out, and I probably overstep my boundaries sometimes, but no one has ever complained (at least to my face) about it. If you read my post “2 Simple Fixes that Could Increase Comments on Your Blog” you know I am NOT a big fan of Captcha in the comments sections of blogs, and from reading all the comments, most other readers are not either. So whenever that I am surfing the net reading blogs and leaving comments… if a person is using Captcha in their comments section (after I write my comment) I usually mention to them that they might get more comments if the get rid of it.

Now that is just one example of things I do. I also send out emails if I notice something doesn’t look right with someone’s site in my browser or if a link is not working correctly. You name it… if I see something wrong, I usually try to let the owner know. Now I am definitely not trying to brag here that I am this great guy, because that is not what I am trying to do at all… even though you would probably say that is you met me.

What I want you to get out of this post is we are all just one big giant family on this planet, and the Internet has brought us a lot closer together. We all need to help each other out and if you see something hanging from the nose (you know what I mean) of one of your fellow bloggers or website owners, let them know about it, as I am sure they will appreciate it. Remember, what goes around comes around, so the nicer you are… the nicer people will be to you!

I also read a great post the other day from Liane over at Better Blogging for Bloggers where she talks about how friendly most people are on the Internet. I have found in general that usually is the case.

So how about you guys? Do you go out of your way to help your fellow bloggers or website owners out? If not, maybe you should!

Beta Testing New Traffic Monetization Program

First off… I want to apologize for not getting this post out earlier, but I was busy playing around all day with what I am about to show you, and I just couldn’t find the time to write anything.

One of the good things, as well as one of the bad things that happens when you run a business (online or off) is you get contacted by all sorts of people trying to sell you on something… either a must have product or service of some kind.

Well yesterday I was contacted by this guy offering me to beta test their new traffic monetization system. To be honest I really wasn’t too interested, but I checked them out anyway. Since this site is about making money online, I figured I should test out as many different ways as I can to make money online and report back to you guys if they work or not.

The program is basically an advertising revenue sharing program, similar to Adsense, but with a cool twist. With this you place keyword text links that you choose right on your website. You can choose high paying keywords if you like, but for my test I chose keywords I know my readers are actually searching for. When a visitor clicks on one of the text links, relevant ads are then displayed right on your website. The site owner then earns money each time a user clicks onto an advertiser’s link.

When I was asked to test this program, the guy was hoping I was going to test it on MakingMoneyOnline.com, but this site is very new and not much traffic comes from search engines. It gets some, but not a lot and I know programs like Adsense get a lot more clicks from people coming from search engines. I think the reason is they are already in a clicking mood, but I am not sure. I just know that is the way it works.

Now on the other hand, we do have a site that gets a majority of it’s traffic from search engines. That would be our community website MiraMesa.com. You can see in that pie chart that over 82% of the traffic comes directly from search engines… which seems like the perfect site to test this traffic monetization program.

Now implementing the program was pretty simple. Once you sign-up you have to list the sites that you plan to use it on. Since I originally wasn’t planning on testing it on MiraMesa.com I had to wait a couple hours until it was approved.

Once approved it was fairly easy to set up. You need to create your text links for whatever search terms you like. I just went into my Google Analytics and I looked for what keywords people were using to find our site and I used several of those, and then I threw in some more that I knew people would be interested in… like Mira Mesa Real Estate, Apartments, etc…

That’s a screenshot of the text links that we are using on MiraMesa.com. I have them displayed right on the top of our sidebar so it is one of the first things people see when they go to the site, so we are hoping they get a lot of action, but we will have to wait and see.

The one other thing you have to do to make the system work is create a search results page. Unfortunately it is not setup to work with WordPress yet, so I created a simple html page with basically just a header and then inserted the code that they provided and uploaded to my server. That was it. It is not beautiful or anything, as I just wanted to get it up, but it will work for this test. If it ends up being profitable I will make it look much better. You can see what the results page looks like below.

So does it make any money? I have no idea as I just installed it… but I will let you know in a couple of weeks. I can definitely see it having potential, and I have a few niche sites in mind that I think this will do awesome. I am not sure if it is the perfect fit for all blogs… but I will know more after I run my test.

He did show me some examples of other sites that are testing it and they are actually what sold me on trying it.

• http://workathomecommunity.com (keywords right under the header)
• http://www.totalhair.net (keywords in top left navbar)
• http://www.backyardchickens.com (keywords above the Adsense ads in footer)

If you are interested in testing this out too, send me an email and I will put you in touch with the owner. To be accepted your site needs to be getting a pretty good amount of traffic, otherwise they will probably not accept you. It is still in the beta testing stage so they are not ready for the whole world to sign-up just yet.

So what do you guys think of this? If it ends up paying well, do you think it is something you would consider adding to your site?

*** UPDATE AFTER READING FIRST FEW COMMENTS – PLEASE HELP *** One thing I have found from people not living in the US is that very few ads appear and more often no ads appear at all when someone clicks on a text link. Can you do me a favor and test a couple for me and let me know in the comments section what Country you live in, and if any ads displayed. You can just click on these 2 keywords… Make Money from Home and Mira Mesa Real Estate. I would think Make Money from Home should produce results for everyone as that it has worldwide interest… so I am interested to see your results. I do not want you to click on the ads… I just want to know if people outside the US can see the ads.

THANKS!

Comment Spam Detective Trick

Today’s “Quick Tip” should be pretty quick, but I think beneficial to many of you bloggers out there. I HATE Spammers and I am sure most of you out there do as well. One of our many goals is to try and keep spam out of our comments section of our blogs. To help with that goal… many (if not most) WordPress bloggers use a plugin called Akismet which is designed to filter out spam comments. For the most part it does an AMAZING job of catching a large percentage of the spam that comes through each day. But it is not 100% perfect, so you need to occasionally check  the spam folder and make sure no legitimate comments got put in there. I usually find at least a few comments every few days that mistakenly got pushed into the spam folder… so I just need to go in and approve the legitimate comments.

Not only does legitimate comments get wrongly put in the spam folder, but occasionally a few spam comments make it into the “Pending Approval” folder where you decide if you want to approve the comments or not.

So how do you tell if a comment is spam or if it is a legitimate comment? No one wants to lose a potential regular visitor to their blog and if someone writes a legitimate comment and you do not approve it… there is a good chance they may never come back.

Well there is no exact science to this, but some spam comments are much more obvious than others and they are usually very easy to spot. But what about the ones that aren’t so obvious?

Many times you will see comments like these:

“Great post. You really know what you are talking about!”

“Interesting concept. I have never thought about that before. Thanks for the great advice.”

“Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this issue, so thanks for writing. I’ll definitely be subscribing to your blog.”

Would you approve any of those comments above from someone who has never left a comment on your blog before? I definitely would not. I have one #1 RULE when it comes to approving someone to be able to comment on any of our blogs…

“I need to know that you read the post by something you say in your comments!”

Those 3 comments above are so generic that they could be used in almost any post on any subject, and you have no idea if they read the post at all.

Well I came up for the idea of this post tonight when I saw a Pending Comment in my WordPress admin. As soon as I read it, I knew it was SPAM, but it didn’t get filtered into my spam folder… and I wondered how many of you out there would approve the comment. I know there are some, as I will show you in a minute.

The image below is a copy of the comment that is in my Pending Approval folder. Here is what the comment says:

“Thanks! You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog. It will greatly help me in my activities. Thanks though, I’m glad some people share good stuff like this! It will greatly help me in my activities this is one of the most extensive articles I’ve read on the subject of making money from blogging”

Let’s be honest… if we didn’t know any better, that actually sounds like a pretty good comment, wouldn’t you agree? I definitely think so. The one problem is… it is in direct violation of my #1 Rule, and I will not break that rule.

So just for fun, and to prove to YOU that it definitely was a SPAM comment I performed a simple test. I took the text from the comment below and highlighted it and copied it…

and then I pasted the text into Google’s search box and clicked the “Search” button. Below is an image of the results.

I found pages and pages of the exact same comments on dozens (if not hundreds) of blogs. That just shows you that not everyone knows what to look for when it comes to SPAM.

Hopefully this simple little test can help you too!

Adding Videos Can Liven Up Your Site

Adding video to your website or blog can be a challenge, but it can also take your site to the next level. We tried to modify one of our popular features from one of our other websites by adding video content. Easier said than done, if you ask me. Although I don’t think our first effort will be winning any major awards anytime soon, we did learn a few things:

1. Not everyone should be in a video. I learned this from watching other videos, and people have often told me that I have a great face for radio (that’s the joke, get it?) I still like to talk to people, and don’t have a problem facing the camera. Remember the music artist Rick Astley? Never gonna give you up? He sold tons of records before people actually saw what he looked like (the face just didn’t match his amazing soulful voice) and his career hit the skids. Point well taken.


2. You may have a lot of information to get across, but remember to use the K.I.S.S. method when doing your presentation: Keep It Simple Stupid. If you can’t get your message across in a few words, give up (anti-Rick Astley reference).
3. Make it entertaining and you will get a positive response. My first video was packed with information, and one of my personal friends (and supporter of the website) sent me the most helpful response: You Suck.  The video didn’t capture my humorous nature, or as she put it “You weren’t yourself”.  By all means, be yourself, just don’t suck.
4. Keep it short. We tried to do a 30 second spot, and it took several hours and several takes/editing sessions to get it down to 30 seconds. Our goal is to have a continuing segment that keeps  things brief, funny, informative and worth waiting for each week.  If you build it, they will come but if you make it funny they will bring their friends too!

Have you made a video and posted it to your website/blog? There are many different ways to add video content  for free (youtube, vimeo, etc. ) or you can upgrade to premium packages that include HD (we chose to upgrade our Vimeo package and are happy with the results.)

We also use Sony Vegas Pro 8 to edit our raw footage (shot with my HD Flip Video Camera which is all too easy to transfer. I love my Flip Video! ) This sounds like another topic I can exploit in the near future, so I will just share with you what we use.  What about you? Are there some must use applications or software that you can recommend? Extreme John always has video worth watching, so hey big guy, what do you use? You don’t have to have his advertising budget to get your images out there, and that is what we want to share today.

Make Your Blog More Interactive

Today’s “Quick Tip” is another simple way to increase commenting on your blog, as well as make it much more interactive. Again, this post is not for everyone, as lots of you are already doing it… but MANY blogs I visit do not, and I am not sure why they don’t.

From what I have noticed on this site, as well as on other blogs that I visit is… you get many more comments, and COMMENT INTERACTION if your blog allows for “Threaded Comments”. That is where you can “Reply” to individual comments in the comment section and your comment will appear right below the comment you replied to.

If a site doesn’t have this feature and you want to reply to someone that may have left a comment at the very top of the comment section, you have to get the commentor’s attention somehow to let them know you are replying to what they wrote. A lot of times I see people do this by writing something like “@THEIR NAME – ” and then leave their reply comment. I am sure if a particular post receives a lot of comments, there is a good chance the commentor may never even see that reply and there will be no more interaction between the two of them on that post.

So here are a couple of reasons I think blogs should use, “Threaded Comments”:

1. Much more organized comment section – Allowing nested comments makes reading the comment section much easier, as comments and replies are grouped together in a nice organized fashion. That also allows readers the ability to easily skip over reply conversations that do not interest them.
2. Encourages more interaction with your readers – This is probably the most important reason to do it. It allows readers to comment on your blog, and then allows you or other readers to comment directly to what they have to say. Without nested comments those replies could get lost in the mix and the person (or persons) you are replying to may never see your reply and the conversation dies. With threaded comments your readers can carry on their own conversation and you and/or other readers can easily jump into that conversation making your blog much more interactive, which I know we want with this blog.

So how do you allow for threaded comments in your Blog? Well over the last few years there have been several plugins that have come out that allows you to accomplish this. But now you don’t even need a plugin anymore, as WordPress has added this functionality right into their latest versions. You just need to go in and adjust your settings… which can be done in your WordPress admin (wp-admin/options-discussion.php).

Not only can you activate and adjust the threaded comments there, but you can also choose if you want the comments to display the newest or the oldest comments first, as well as… you can break the comments up into pages allowing a maximum amount of comments per page. You can read more about these functions on the WordPress website. One note though: Some older themes or custom themes may have to be updated for this feature to work.

So what about you guys, do you think Threaded Comments encourages more commenting? Also, we don’t do this, but do you think it is better to show the newest comments at the top of the page or the oldest comments first?

How to Create a Gravatar

Today’s “Quick Tip” was inspired by a funny post I read over at Misc Bytes. As I was reading the post it reminded me of the Gravatar I am using and where I got it. When I first started leaving comments on blogs I never used a Gravatar, as I never even thought about it.

But when we started Making Money Online we decided we needed some cool Gravatars so people could relate the name to a face. Well I have always liked those cartoon looking cariactures I have seen around the net, so I searched around for different companies that created them. I ended up finding an AWESOME company that not only does a great job, but they only charge around $5 to create one for you. The company is called CartoonMe, and not only do they do a great job, but they have a fast turnaround time (less than 72 hours) as well.

I have actually used them several times now, but when I first ordered one… I didn’t have any recent photos of me or Mark that I liked. I did have this photo of us from several years ago on St. Patrick’s Day (when our wives use to let us party) at one of our favorite bars. So I scanned it and here is the original photo. (I am on the left and Mark on the right)

Then I cropped each head and made them their own image, as CartoonMe will only do one face at a time. The ordering process is beyond simple. You give them your email address, select the photo you want to use, crop the photo right there online and make your payment. Then within 72 hours (but we got them back much faster) you are emailed your cartoon.  Here are the results from our first order…

As I mentioned that photo was from several years ago (I think around 7) and I have probably gained 20 to 30lbs since then.  So I have been using that as my Gravatar… since it is a more flattering image of me. I am planning on losing weight by the end of the year, so I will update my Gravatar then . You can see a more recent image of us on our About Us page if you like.

So, if you are looking to get a fun cartoon-type image for your Gravatar, or just want to have one for something else, I suggest you give CartoonMe a try.

And for any of you Graphic Designers out there… since our site is about making money online, you might want to consider developing this skill yourself and offering this service. It could be a good lead-in to offering your clients other services you provide.

Now if anybody decides to get one, please let us know… as we would love to see the finished product!

How to Get More Comments

Today’s weekly quick tip on Making Money Online Dot Com is not for everyone, but it could help you in the future. As you probably know I love comments and I also love to comment on other bogs. One thing I like to do to help build our online presence is to leave comments on the blogs of the people that comment on our site. I also like to visit the sites of the people who comment on their blogs as well and leave comments. The reason is simple… you already know these people leave comments on blogs, so there is a good chance if you leave a comment on their site, they might return the favor and comment on yours. Even though this is a “Great Tip”, this is not the tip of the week.

One thing I have noticed when following commentors (which is not a real word, but should be) to their sites is that some people use the URL to their main site versus their blog and wonder why they are not getting more comments. A good example of this was my buddy Brian Bell. He was leaving lots of great comments on our site and I wanted to return the favor, so when I would click on his URL… it would take me to his BlogEngage site, which at the time I had NO IDEA what it was, so I would usually just leave.

Then one day Brian left a comment on our site on the post “Hey Bloggers, Scratch Our Blog and We’ll Scratch Yours” saying that he should try that method, as he wasn’t getting any comments on his blog. So I suggested that he use his Blog URL in the comment box instead of BlogEngage… which he started doing and is still doing today.

After he made that SIMPLE change I personally started visiting and commenting on his site all the time. Not only because he was commenting on our site, but because SEOMkt.com is a GREAT BLOG and has lots of great information on getting more high quality traffic to your site. Also from reading his blog I actually learned what his BlogEngage site is actually about and I started submitting my blog posts regularly to it. I even added his BlogEngage Voting widget to our blog so readers can actually vote for our posts right on our site. It is an awesome tool and I suggest everyone gets it for their blog.

Okay… so we have learned that making that simple change (using his blog address versus using his main website address) that he has at least received a lot more comments from me personally. But did it make any difference to his overall commenting results? Well I decided to ask him 24 days later…

As you can see the answer is an overwhelming success! Now I am not saying everyone is going to experience these kinds of results, as everyone’s business models are set-up differently. I do think though… that there is a much better chance of getting more comments on your blog if you send people directly to your blog versus to another section of your site (or a completely other site like Brian was doing) and making the visitor have to search for your blog.

2 Simple Fixes that Could Increase Comments on Your Blog

Lately I have been doing lots of “Blog Surfing” to not only see what people are writing about, but also to comment on blogs to get our name (Making Money Online Dot Com) out there. Now I am definitely not one of those people that just say something like, “Great Post! Keep up the good work!” I like to read each post and if I have something I think I can contribute… I try and leave a useful comment. Sometimes they are quite lengthy and sometimes they could be fairly short, but I always try to add to the conversation.

While visiting all these blogs lately there are a couple of things that I have come across that has kept me from leaving comments on posts where I usually would. Here are the 2 things that keep me from sometimes leaving comments:

1) Comment boxes that don’t auto-fill. This one probably bugs me most of all. The first time you go to a blog and leave a comment you usually have to leave at least your name and email address. Most sites also let you add your web address and many nowadays let you add additional information like your Twitter ID and more. Most sites require that your first comment be manually approved by the blog owner before it appears to the public, which totally makes sense. Another thing that is common in most blogs is once you leave your first comment… your information is stored on that site so when you go to write another comment you don’t have to fill out your personal information again. There are some sites that I have found where each time you leave a post you have to fill in that information again.  I absolutely hate having to do that each time I comment on the same site and I am sure there are many others that feel the same way.  So if your site does not have that “Auto Fill” feature I think you should fix it!

2) Captcha in the comments section. This one really bugs as well. I understand that nobody wants to get a bunch of spam posts on their site (me especially), but that is what the plugin Akismet (which comes with every WP blog) is for… right? It catches almost all the spam comments we get on our sites. It’s true, we have to check the spam folder each week to make sure it didn’t grab some legitimate comments, but for the most part it works great. I hate it when I leave a comment on a blog and then I come across one of those Captcha codes that are really hard to read. Then I have to refresh it until I can read it clearly or it takes me several attempts until I type it in right. It makes me want to just leave the site and abandon my comment. Now I can definitely understand having Captcha on your contact form, as you really don’t expect too many contact emails each day. But having it in your blog comment section is really not needed in my opinion. Why even risk lose visitors to your site?

Of course these are just my personal feelings. Maybe I am the only person this bugs. All I know is having those 2 things on your site might be costing you some comments from me.

How you guys? What do you think about my opinions… do you agree? Please leave your comments below.

5 Best Bribes to Build Your Subscriber List

As everyone SHOULD KNOW or you probably have heard… that the MONEY is in “The List”! It is still the best and fastest way of making money online and off, and it will probably always be that way. That is why you see companies like Google and other huge corporations spend BILLIONS of dollars on companies that have HUGE subscriber bases or followings. They want access to those users!

As for us small business owners who don’t plan on selling our businesses for billions of dollars (unless someone offers it to us) building a strong list of subscribers is of utmost importance for our long-term success.

Your list can be used for keeping your readers informed of what is new on your site, let them know of new products you have coming out, promote affiliate products, recruit affiliates to promote your product(s), etc… the list could go on and on. It is not uncommon for Internet Marketers with large lists to make many thousands of dollars in one day by sending out a simple email to their subscriber list.

As for collecting names and emails there are many different options, but one of the best and most efficient ways is to use an autoresponder. Not only can you build a subscriber list with an autoresponder service, but you can also utilize their built in autoresponders which is basically a 24/7 (working while you sleep) sales machine. I am not going to go over all the reasons why autoresponders are so great in this post, as you can read that elsewhere.

I would say however that one of the best autoresponder services on the market today is Aweber. They were one of the firsts in the business and are still the cream of the crop (IMO). We have had our account with Aweber for at least 6 or 7 years now and we have over 40 different autoresponder lists for different niches setup with just that one account. It is a must-have in our marketing arsenal!

But enough about that… What this post is about is the “Best Ways to Bribe People to Subscribe to Your List”. Yes, I said “BRIBE” people to subscribe to your list. Nowadays it is harder than ever to build a list, as EVERY WEBSITE you come to is designed to try and get you to give them your name and email address. So the best way for you to succeed is to literally BRIBE them with something in exchange for their precious contact information.

You see some sort of BRIBE on most sites nowadays as well… like the site owner that is offering you a FREE eBook or eCourse for simply providing your first name and email address. We even do that on this site with our Private Label Secrets, which if you haven’t signed up for, you are missing out on a great resource (Yes, that was a plug).

So here is a list of some great bribes you can offer your readers to help build your list and start making more money online…

1) An eBook. This is probably the most used method today and still works pretty good. We use this method on several sites and it works great. The key is to offer an eBook that really relates with the niche you are in.

2) An eCourse. An eCourse is similar to an eBook, but is usually distributed to the reader over a period of time via email. The good thing about this method is you are carrying on a continuous dialogue with your reader each day (or at whatever intervals you prefer). The key is to end each email with a little taste of what is coming up next to keep your reader intrigued and excited about getting your next email. If you would like to see this in action, sign-up for our newsletter and we will send you our eCourse on making money with PLR products. You can always unsubscribe at anytime if you like, but I don’t see why you would.

3. Run a Contest. We have had some great success with this method over the years and will probably start having contests on this site soon. Basically you just say something like, “Sign-up for our newsletter and get into a drawing to win _______”. Now there are actually several tricks to this one to help you build your list faster and to keep your subscribers longer.

• Run a raffle for your subscribers once a month, or more often if you like. Give away something that your readers will want. Use your imagination on what you can do for prizes. If you have a marketing budget you can buy prizes, but if you don’t, you will have to be creative. Do you have a skill that is valuable that you could offer as a prize? I have seen designers give away complete site makeovers, banner creations, logo creations, etc…. What do you know how to do that would be valuable to your reader? There’s gotta be something!
• For one of our other blogs we are getting our prizes from local merchants for advertising on our site. They actually pay us to advertise on our site, plus they give us free stuff that we can give away to our subscribers. Not a bad deal for us at all. I have sitting in an envelope on my desk right now; eight movie tickets, four $25 gift cards for our local brewery, two gift certificates to Extreme Pita, four free 20 inch pizza coupons from our favorite pizza shop, and more things coming in the next couple of weeks. We are hoping to be able to give away one prize a day, Monday through Friday, 52 weeks a year. That should definitely help build up our subscriber base.
• (ADVANCED METHOD) Sell the eBook that you created instead of giving it away like I mentioned in #1. Create a simple sale page for it and charge $24.95 (just an example). That way you are giving the book an “actual value” instead of giving it away and saying it’s worth $24.95 (the “perceived value”). Next… you run a contest and use your eBook as the prizes. Maybe you give away 10 copies a month, or if you have lots of traffic, 10 copies a week. It really doesn’t matter to you, as you were going to be giving it away for free anyway. This can actually work better than just giving the eBook away, as many people assume if you are giving something away, it doesn’t have any value. But if they have a good chance of winning something of value, you have better odds of getting their name and email. NOTE: If you use this method, make sure that you take the extra steps to create a really good eBook, as you might actually sell some, and you want to be known as someone who over-delivers whenever possible.

4. Subscribers Only Gifts and Deals – Let your readers know that your loyal subscribers get free stuff and deals that regular visitors don’t. You can do all sorts of stuff with this technique. You can occasionally send your subscribers free gifts like ebooks, software, maybe some custom graphics… use your imagination. You could create them yourself if you have the skills, you could have someone else create them for you, or you could customize some PLR products you have. There are all sorts of ways to come up with worthwhile gifts.

You could also offer your subscribers discounts on products you sell. We plan to use this method for the new product we have coming out. We are probably going to be selling it for $7.00 (as per the $7 Dollar Secrets Method), but we are going to give all our subscribers a $5.00 OFF Coupon Code so they can get if for only $2.00. So again, if you are not subscribed to our newsletter, you should sign-up right away.

5) Access to Membership Area – Here’s a way to really build up a subscriber list, but it probably takes the most work. Again you can do this in a couple of different ways as well. You could have your main site that has lots of really good information on it, and then create a free membership section where you offer something more. Maybe something like “advanced techniques” or “how-to videos”, just something special that the regular visitors don’t have access to. To get free access, you readers will need to join by giving you their name and email address.

Another method would be to create just one great website and only allow access to subscribers. This method is a little harder to build your list, unless you already have a good reputation built up. With the first method, at least the reader has a chance to view some of your work first, so they can decide if they like you before they give up their contact information.

Ok… that’s it for this post, as it is starting to get REALLY LONG! I could probably add several more techniques, but my fingers are starting to get tired.

Why don’t you guys give us some more tips in the comments section below? What is something people could give away to bribe people to subscribe to their list?

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