Great Reasons to Subscribe to Making Money Online’s Newsletter!

We have MANY GOALS for Making Money Online Dot Com (like any other website out there) and we are always trying to find new and fun ways to achieve them. One of our goals is to build a large opt-in subscriber list so we can easily communicate with our readers.

We know there are several of you that prefer to sign-up for our RSS Feed which we really appreciate, but with the RSS Feed you only get to see what the regular viewers see. Signing-up for our Newsletter gets you access to lots of other cool benefits that are regular readers will never even hear about, and we have listed some of them below.

So if you read my post, “The 5 Best Bribes to Build a Subscriber List” you know I am a big believer in giving our readers something of value so they’ll want to join our mailing list, and we need to make sure to treat them very well after they have joined so they’ll want to stay a subscriber. So that is what we are going to do. Here is an ever-growing list of reasons why you should sign-up for our newsletter today…

1. We use Aweber (one of the top autoresponder services on the planet) to manage our subscriber list. If you do not know much about Aweber just do a Google search and you will see what a well respected company they are. On top of that they make it SUPER EASY to unsubscribe to our list at any time and you would never receive another email from us (unless you subscribed again).
2. We will NEVER EVER EVER share your email address with anyone, no matter how much money they offer us. Seriously, NEVER EVER EVER!
3. We will not flood your email in-box with affiliate offers of the next latest and greatest thing. We belong to many email lists ourselves and we hate it when we get on a list where all the owner does is send us email after email trying to sell us something.
4. You will get our FREE COURSE titled “PLR Secrets”. It is a 2-week email course where we will teach you all sorts of ways to make money with PLR content, as well as drive massive traffic to your site, build your own subscriber list and much, much more!
5. You will be entered in a raffle each month to win a FREE PRODUCT OR SERVICE. At the end of each month we will put all the subscriber’s names in a hat and pull out one lucky winner. The winner will win something cool. It could be a great piece of software, a new product that has just been released, perhaps access to a premium blog theme, a book, maybe even a t-shirt (if we ever get some made), etc… it could be almost anything. Each month we will try and give away something different.
6. You will receive free stuff for no reason at all. We purchase all sorts of products online and many come with unlimited PLR or Master Reseller rights. Every so often when we purchase these type of products (and as long as they don’t come with restrictions to keep us from doing it), we will send you the product as a surprise gift for being a loyal subscriber.
7. You will get discounts on products we sell on this website. We have plans for lots of cool products in the upcoming months. As a subscriber, not only will you be first to know about our product releases,  but we will also send you discount coupon codes so you can get the products at a cheaper price, which our regular readers won’t have access to.

Alright… so that’s what we have so far. We plan to add to the list as we come up with new and exciting ideas. The point you need to get from this is we plan on taking very good care of our subscribers and we promise not to abuse the list in anyway! So what are you waiting for? Sign-up today and join us on our journey to fame and fortune! Just enter your first name and email below and click submit.

Build a Subscriber List for Free

Everyone knows that to really start making money online you are going to need to build yourself a subscriber list… right?

Well last week I wrote a post titled, “5 Best Bribes to Build Your Subscriber List”, which listed 5 different things you could use to bribe your readers into joining your subscriber list. In the comments section there were some of you that wanted to learn the basics of setting up the entire process of building a subscriber list without having to pay a 3^rd party provider like Aweber.

Well we have been using Aweber for many years now and have never tried to set-up a free service because we love Aweber and their reliability, and there is no way a free service can duplicate their delivery capabilities. But I did say that I would post a way to do it, so I spent several hours scouring the web and asking people for their solutions. I found it amazing that there weren’t more free solutions out there.

I finally did find a solution that should work. It is called, Your Mailing List Provider” and they are actually are a really cool service. They are not a full-blown autoresponder company like Aweber, but more of a mailing list manager and should work for building a simple subscriber list.

The major concern in my search was finding a solution that was FREE, and Your Mailing List Provider is free to start. They are also very reasonably priced when you move up to their Pro, and Pro-Plus version. The only major differences I see in the free version versus the paid ones is you don’t get any of the tracking features with the free version, you cannot manually add subscribers, and it is only free until you get your first 1000 subscribers. After that, you will have to move up to one of the other versions, which run only $3.75 per month for the Professional Version and $5.00 per month for the Professional Plus. Hopefully when you have 1000 subscribers you should be earning a lot more than that per month, so the upgrade cost shouldn’t be too hard on you.

So let’s walk through the steps for setting up you first mailing list. The first thing you are going to need to do is sign-up for a free account. You can signup here.

As this is a follow-up to my “5 Best Bribes” post, I am assuming you are going to want to give away some sort of BRIBE to entice your reader to subscribe. Since this is not an autoresponder service we will have to do it a little differently than we normally would. The way I would usually set it up would be that once the person signs up and confirms their subscription, they would receive an autoresponder message with a link to their ebook, or I might even send it as an attachment in that email. For this site we are actually giving away an entire free course that is delivered over a 2-week perid. Well we cannot do that here, so we are going to need to create a download page where the user will be redirected to once they subscribe. That should do the trick.

1) Create a free account – YourMailingListProvider.com

2) Create an eBook (bribe) and upload to server

3) Create a “Password Protected” Download Page

4) Create a Subscription Box

5) Upload Code to Your Blog

6) Test

To help make this easier on all of you out there, I decided to create a video walking you through the process. After I completed the video I realized that I could have done it a little differently, but I spent SO MUCH TIME creating the video that I didn’t have the energy to redo it.

The one thing that you don’t have to create is the “Password Protected” download page, but I actually like having the ebook protected myself. You can do it that way, but you could also send the link to your eBook in the “Welcome Email”… it is up to you. Other than that step, everything else is fine.

For some reason (which I know why) this video is not as clear as my last one, so I suggest you double-click on the video and watch it on YouTube in HIGH DEFINITION. Don’t forget to click the HD button. (sorry for the inconvenience)

Again, let me say that I have never used this service before, so I make no guarantees about anything. You guys asked for a “Free Solution” and this is what I was able to come up with.

If anyone has used this service and could give us some feedback in the comments section below, that would be awesome. Plus, if you have any better suggestions, we would love to hear about them as well.

Also, if any of you try this, please follow-up with us to let us know how it works

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?