Introducing Caylie Price of Better Business Better Life
Caylie developed a product inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge and is now teaching other bloggers and business owners the benefits and how to’s of hosting their own challenge.
Today she’s sharing the benefits of having a mailing list. You all know that I totally believe that all business bloggers should have a list.
Two years ago the catch cry of internet gurus was ‘the money is in the list.’ Although you don’t hear the hysteria now as you did previously there’s still a lot of truth in the cry.
PJ Van Hulle, founder of List-A-Palooza and internet marketing extraordinaire says:
“A good rule of thumb for monetizing your list is to shoot for $1 per subscriber, per month. So if your goal is to generate $10,000 per month in income, focus on growing your e-mail list to 10,000 subscribers.”
What makes a mailing list so valuable?
As Jess Van Den of Create & Thrive says “People can forget to check twitter, they can ignore Facebook, they can bypass your blog and leave their Pinterest account to languish – but they will never stop checking their email.”
So if your mailing list is top dog; top of the heap; super critical to your blog and business you’d better get people subscribing to it. The best way to achieve that? Make it easy and ask at the right times!
Following are five list building opportunities you must have on your blog:
The Side Bar
Perhaps the most traditional place to put an opt in box is at the top of the sidebar. It is very visible above the fold and likely to attract attention.
Landing Pages
Brian Clark from Copyblogger explains landing pages as “any page on a (blog) where traffic is sent specifically to prompt a certain action or result. Think of a golf course… a landing page is the putting green that you drive the ball (prospect) to.”
Your landing page should be minimalistic in design and offer an extremely focused message. The aim is to have your visitor opt in, not become distracted by competing features. Many templates exist for building landing pages but don’t assume you need anything fancy to have a high conversion rate.
For example, the one image plus opt in box landing page I use for my Blogging For Beginners audio recording has a conversion rate of 40.8%. I’ve also edited the image with PicMonkey to create more landing pages for different opt in incentives.
A Hello Bar
A Hello Bar runs across the top of your blog and can be used to promote your opt in incentive. Less intrusive than a pop up box but still noticeable, readers who are keen to take action and opt in to your offer will. Everyone else can continue their ‘experience’ unobstructed.
The best thing about the Hello Bar is it’s a super easy way to A/B test your list building. You can set it up to display two or more different messages and see which gets the best response. You can then tell Hello Bar, in two clicks, to display only the best converting message.
To set up the Hello Bar on your blog try this tutorial for step by step instructions.
Your About Page
Did you know that your about page usually receives the second highest number of visitors compared with all the other pages and posts on your blog? Given that’s where the traffic is you should absolutely add an opt in box to your about page.
Beneath Posts
If someone has read to the end of your post it’s a good indication they found your content entertaining, educational or informative making it the perfect time to invite them to subscribe. Magic Action Box will help you achieve a basic opt in box for free which is perfect when starting your business; you can always choose to upgrade later.
Take Action
You’ve just learned five opportunities to increase the value and income of your blog. What’s not to love? Here’s the thing though – if you don’t implement you won’t enjoy the rewards.
So it’s time for you to commit.
Tell me in the comments when you will have the five opt in opportunities set up by.
Let’s build your list starting now!
This Post is a Guest Post By Caylie Price:
Caylie Price, owner of Better Business Better Life , is currently working her way around the interwebs with her 21 day Blogging For Growth tour. She is also co-author of How To Host A Swingin’ Blog Challenge. Download the first chapter FREE to learn more.
About Sara Duggan
Caylie, thanks for sharing your tips for increasing our lists. I will have all five installed by tonight 7/29/2013. I have one in the sidebar, one on a couple of landing pages, one underneath the posts, and a link on my about page.
The only thing I haven’t implemented on this blog is the Hello Bar. Thanks for the nudge.
Nice work Sara and thank you so much for hosting me!
In the interest of transparency I have all bar the ‘about page’ done because I’ve wanted to rewrite it first. I’m committing to having my about page updated and opt in box added by 4/8/13.
Caylie, it is a pleasure. I know that I’ve wanted to work with you since Biztopia earlier this year so I’m really glad it finally worked out. Great goals and I’m glad you set dates because doing that pushes you to meet that deadline. Thanks for sharing about mailing lists and I will be adding my email to the about page right now. (forgot about it yesterday)
If and when I decide to monetize my blog or start one for business purposes, this information will be valuable. However, I must say that I HATE email. I don’t like checking it, at all. If I do check it, I tend to only look for specific things that I need that moment – usually a password reset.
Kina, for you social media might be a better fit. I know email can be overwhelming with all the offers and junk.
Great post thank you – I love my Hello Bar
Rhondda, I like hello bar too. I just need to remind myself, (just wrote it on my todo list) to add it to this blog.
Awesome work Rhondda!