More Links, More Subscribers!

The Smart Way to Link for Growth

Getting Opt-in Subscribers: a 10-point Checklist

You Can't Afford to Rest on Your Laurels!

How to Spread the Word

The Right Way to Promote Your List

More Links, More Subscribers!

by ListChannel.Com Staff

In previous articles, I discussed at some length the
promotional technique of submitting original articles to
other publications.

I pointed out that if you are successful in having your
article published in a newsletter other than your own, this
could boost your own publication's popularity in mainly two
ways. Firstly, there's the publicity generated by the
biographical info at the end, where you'll mention your own
newsletter and give instructions for subscribing.

Secondly, and more significantly, the article itself is a
sample of the fare you serve up, and there should be no more
effective advertisement than that.

Today, I'd like to talk about another way in which
distributing your articles can swell your circulation
figures. Making this work is not as simple as merely sending
out a batch of emails. But if you take the trouble to do it
properly, this should be the most powerful way of all.

This application of the article submission technique
presupposes two things.

The first is that you have a website, or even better, more
than one. For most of you, this is a no-brainer, for your
website is probably the raison d'etre of your newsletter.
Less frequently, it's the other way round: your ezine is a
business (or labor of love) in its own right, and your site
serves to support and promote it. In any event, to run an
email publication without a corresponding website is to
severely limit your promotional opportunities.

The second prerequisite is that you advertise your
publication intensively on your site. Invite your visitors
to subscribe, and highlight the benefits of doing so, at
every opportunity. Include a subscription form on every page
to make the process as easy as possible.

If you do this, it's clear that whenever you promote your
site, you promote your newsletter at the same time.

Now, few people dispute - even though they might like to -
that for the typical website, search engines are still the
major source of traffic. A recent survey ActivMedia showed
that search engines still rate highest (48.4%) as referrers
of site traffic, in terms of site owner satisfaction.
(Interestingly, this figure drops to 36% for large
e-commerce sites with more than 500 online sales per month.)

So what do you do to get a decent ranking on the search
engines? The traditional answer to this question is that you
pay close attention to the frequency and positioning of the
keywords most users will enter when searching for
information on your subject.

But in response to the abuses of many webmasters who have
tried to manipulate the keyword system to their own (unfair)
advantage, the engines have been looking to devise new
ranking techniques.

We're not saying, of course, that the development of these
new algorithms means that keywords are no longer important.
Up to this point, technology has not developed a better
method of matching the relevance of a site to the needs of
the inquirer. The relevance and positioning of your keywords
will remain important for a long time to come. What we ARE
saying is that other criteria, too, are becoming
increasingly critical in determining how your site will be
ranked.

And of these, one of the most important is the criterion of
link popularity.

The principle of link popularity is based on two
assumptions. The first of this is indicated by the name: if
other sites take the trouble to link to yours, then your
site must be a popular one. The second assumption follows on
from this: if your site is popular, it must be relevant to
the needs of the searcher.

Moreover, the principle has both a quantitative and a
qualitative aspect. The number of sites linking to yours is
now said to be one of the significant determinants of how
your site will rank in virtually every major search engine
on the Net. With at least two, it is almost critical.

But even more fascinating, the QUALITY of a linking site -
the popularity of that site itself - is claimed to be
replacing the importance of quantity in the case of a few
leading engines.

So what has all this to do with submitting articles? Now at
last, we can get to the point.

There are several well-known ways of trying to organize
matters so that other sites will link to yours.
Historically, one of the most popular has been negotiating
with other site owners - usually those involved in something
complementary to yours - to exchange links. But these and
similar methods are tedious, time-consuming operations.

Others, like submitting your site to countless Free-for-All
(FFA) pages) are fast becoming obsolete, now that the
quality of the links has replaced quantity as the critical
factor.

This is where distributing your articles comes in, and the
beauty of it all is that you are probably actively involved
in such an exercise anyway.

Let's say your submission is published in a certain ezine,
and that issue is archived on the publisher's website.

Hopefully, that site is a popular one. Your resource box,
which includes your URL, appears at the end of your piece.
If that URL is coded as an active hyperlink, and that page
is then visited by the search engine spiders, you're on a
good wicket!

And if the same article is used by a few other publishers,
all of whom archive their issues in the same way, you're in
clover! if the spidering apparatus records the major
keywords in the article, and users searching for those very
keywords arrive at that page and end up by subscribing to
your newsletter, all the better!

But there's more.

So-called "content sites", also known as vertical portals,
abound on the Internet. They may or may not publish email
newsletters as well, but they're continually searching for
fresh material on their subjects of concern, to post on the
site itself. Many of them pay for good content, and if all
you're asking in return for the use of your article is a
little free publicity, they'll probably be delighted to
oblige.

Once again, make sure your URL will be clickable - or better
still, that there will be one or more text hyperlinks
pointing to your own site - the more the better!

Again, an increasing number of sites on the Web today
specialize in storing articles, usually classified by
category, whose authors have given permission for their
republication in advance. Submit to as many of these as
possible.

You could also "pre-license" your articles on your
own site, by inviting publishers to use them. In all these
cases, be sure to specify your conditions for republication.

Happy linking! May the link popularity of your website -
both in quantity and quality - grow day by day. And may the
popularity of your newsletter or ezine grow exponentially as
a result.

Not so long ago (alternately: way back in the distant past,
if you're talking in so-called "Internet time"), trading
links was very popular among new website owners bent on
driving traffic to their sites.

The problem was that many webmasters swapped
indiscriminately with whoever was prepared to go along with
them. They then slapped up a quick page of "Interesting
Links" (or some other equally UN-interesting title)
somewhere in the deep recesses of their sites. If visitors
did stumble upon these pages at all, they would quickly
realize that the links were set up by way of returning
favors to other site owners.

Yet, exchanging links, for those who go about things the
right way, can be one of the most efficient ways of
attracting visitors to websites. After all, hyperlinks are
among the basic building blocks with which the World Wide
Web was constructed.

So what IS the right way?

The truth is, that whenever you put up a third party link,
the primary reason has to be that it adds value to your
site.

If you have a hidden motive as well, that of reciprocation,
there's nothing wrong with that. But any addition has to be
in harmony with your site's purpose and its mission;
ideally, you should want to put it there anyway, regardless
of other considerations.

Whether your site serves to promote your newsletter or your
newsletter serves to promote your site, the reciprocal
linking concept offers many opportunities for publishers
with websites.

Once other webmasters go to the effort of setting up your
link on their sites, they're not likely to take it down in a
hurry. It will therefore serve as a long term source of
referral for visitors to your site - all of whom are
potential subscribers to your publication!

Contrast this with the swapping of ads with other
publishers, when exposure only lasts as long as the life of
the issue in which your ad appears.

Having your link on as many other sites as possible also
makes excellent sense for another reason: the so-called
"link popularity" factor which many search engines
reportedly use in ranking websites.

The more sites linking to YOUR site throughout the Web, the
higher these engines will rank you. (For the same reason,
some experts recommend putting up your link on "Free for All
Links" pages, even though these serve little other purpose
nowadays.)

From all this, we can also see an added benefit in the
popular promotional technique of submitting articles to
other publishers and webmasters.

If the ezine that publishes your contribution is archived on
a website, or if the article is set up directly online, this
automatically means another link under your belt. (To ensure
this, always insist that the webmaster hosting your piece
activates the URL you include in your "resource box" at the
end.)

But when playing the reciprocal link game, don't forget the
cardinal principle: never agree to links on your site unless
they enhance the site experience for your users.

An external link on your site is an implied recommendation,
but it's not just a case of your credibility being on the
line. Few of your visitors will appreciate a recommendation
that falls outside the focus of your site, or publication.

One final word, and a very important one. Never just list a
long set of links on a given subject, whether on your site
or in your newsletter. Far from being useful to your
readers, this often confuses them.

At the very least, classify your links into small groups
with appropriate headings, but if you really want to do your
job properly, even this is often not enough. Ideally, each
individual link should be accompanied by a very brief
description, explaining exactly why you consider the
resource it points to as a valuable one for your readers or
users.

by ListChannel.Com Staff

This handy checklist serves as a brief review of some of the
most effective, tried and tested, ways of building an
authentic opt-in mailing list.

1. If you're running a business, invite all your customers
or clients, and everybody who inquires about your services
or retrieves documents from your autoresponders, to
subscribe to your newsletter.

We deliberately chose this method to kick off with, because
it gives us an opportunity to clarify precisely what an
opt-in subscriber is. Many list owners assume that all
people who make contact with their business in same way or
another - whether they're responding to ads, inquiring about
a product, accessing their autoresponders, even entering a
contest - can safely be added to any mailing list connected
with that business.

But that's a mistake. If I tell you that I'm interested in
that special offer of yours, I'm not necessarily implying
that I want to receive your newsletter. To be sure, if I'm
ordering cat food, I'm likely to be amenable to signing up
for your newsletter about cats. If you're on the ball,
you'll invite me to do so right away. But you can't assume
anything without asking.

2. Archive all your past issues on your website, one page
per issue, and insert meta-tags with appropriate keywords.
Then register each page with the search engines. If you
don't have a website yet, acquire one! Search engine
placement is one of the most important steps to ensure the
ongoing growth of your subscriber base in the long term.
Besides, a website enhances the credibility of your
publishing enterprise.

3. Set up a subscription form on every page of your site,
preferably on the most prominent position on the page. If
you have other online forms on your site for visitors to
sign up for or request information on other things, include
a checkbox giving them the option to sign up for your
newsletter at the same time.

4. Take full advantage of the growing number of directories
of electronic publications on the Web. Register your
publication with each one of them. It's a time-consuming
operation, but it's well worth it, because once your
publication info is listed with a directory, it stays there
indefinitely, and is accessible on the Web.

5. Similarly, grasp the opportunity provided by the plethora
of lists which exist for the sole purpose of announcing new
publications. Subscribe to each one, compose a message
advertising your list and post it. Many of the announcement
lists allow you to repost once a week or more.

6. Publicize your list, with subscribing instructions, in
the signature file that appears under all your email
messages. Participate in email discussion groups,
newsgroups, and online forums, especially those on topics
related to that of your newsletter. Use your signature file
in all your postings.

7. Submit articles from your newsletter, or fresh ones, to
other publications. Not only can you promote your
publication in the "resource box" which will appear under
the article, but the contribution itself, as a sample of the
fare new subscribers can expect, might be the best
advertisement you can ever produce.

8. Do cross-promotions with other publishers. Swap ads
inviting subscriptions, recommend their publications in your
newsletter or welcome message if they endorses yours, and
exchange articles.

9. If you operate a business or a professional service,
mention your newsletter on your official stationery,
business cards, catalogs, brochures and all other printed
material. Include explicit instructions on how to subscribe.
Don't forget your newsletter in your print advertising, nor
in the embossed wording on your gift promotions, such as
T-shirts, mousepads and the like.

10. All of the above methods have one thing in common - they
involve no special expense. Finally, we'll refer very
briefly to the various ways you can spend money to promote
your e-publication.

Firstly, of course, you can buy ads in other newsletters and
ezines. Select these carefully, making sure that their
readership is the target audience you're trying to attract.
You can also register with the various services on the Web
that will send you subscribers for a fee. Thirdly - assuming
you have a far larger sum of money to play with - you can
buy out a publication similar to yours, and merge its
mailing list with your own.

by ListChannel.Com Staff

Very often, publishers work long and hard hours promoting
their list during the first few weeks or months of its
existence. But by the time they have succeeded in amassing a fairly respectable number of subscribers, a kind of battle
fatigue has already begun to set in.

Few list owners may ever really be satisfied with the size
of their subscriber bases, but there are, after all, only so
many hours in a day.

Conscientious publishers are not short of other things to
do, not the least of which is the production of content - no
mean task in itself! On the level of list promotion, they
can be forgiven for wanting to take it easy for a while.

But this can be a big mistake.

Obviously, you can't maintain the intensity of your initial
promotional spurt forever. All the same, if you want your
newsletter's growth to continue, you have to keep plugging
away, day after day. In this area, no less than that of
creating good content, you can hardly afford to rest on your
laurels. There's just no way!

The truth is, even if you're content for your numbers to
remain stable, you just can't afford to let up.

The best of lists will lose a certain (hopefully, small)
percentage of its members over time. Some subscribers will
always decide to remove themselves, for any one of a variety
of reasons. Other addresses become "undeliverable" and haveto be scratched from your list.

You're left with very little choice. To compensate for this
natural attrition - and to grow in spite of it - you have to
relentlessly persevere with your efforts to recruit new
blood.

To continuously slog away at the work of promotion, without
letup day in and day out, requires, to be sure,
determination and commitment. But you'll find that it brings
you many significant benefits.

The first time some people hear about your list, their
curiosity or interest may well be aroused, but
preoccupation with other matters, or plain old apathy, may
stop them from doing something about it. However, frequent
exposures to your list information may well move them to
sign up in the end.

This strategy sometimes has a fascinating twist, for you can
achieve the same effect in reverse.

Keeping your list in the public eye on an ongoing basis can
also reduce your number of canceled subscriptions. If your
subscriber see your newsletter publicized over and over
again, this is likely to increase their confidence in it.

Thus, your ongoing promotional efforts positively influence
the attitudes of two types of "waverers" - those who are
thinking of subscribing, and those who already have.

Perhaps you are publishing a newsletter to "brand" yourself
on the Internet as an undisputed leader in your field.
(Today, more and more high-powered entrepreneurs are
realizing the value of e-publications in branding
strategies.) Similarly, your publishing motive, in whole or
in part, may be to establish your reputation as an expert or
a trend-setter.

Clearly, the more you promote your newsletter, the more you
will be in the public eye, and hopefully, in the public
mind. Besides, as we have seen, constant promotion means
increased public confidence in your newsletter.

And every boost for the reputation of the publication means
a boost for the reputation of its owner as well.

by ListChannel.Com Staff

In his now famous book, "Permission Marketing", Seth Godin
argued that companies could market their wares more
effectively when they enjoy the permission of the intended
consumers for doing so. "Interruption marketing", where an
intrusive message would be abruptly hurled into the personal
space of the consumer without warning, was declared to be a
thing of the past.

But Godin's principle begged a very pertinent question: how
are companies supposed to get consumers' attention to ask
their permission in the first place?

Of course, best-practice email marketing and publishing has
always been based on the "permission marketing" concept,
even before Seth Godin came along. Over time, ethical but
determined publishers have devised diverse methods, of
varying effectiveness, to attract potential consumers.

And now, Godin has launched a new book that presents his
ultimate solution to the apparent Catch-22 dilemma of the
permission marketer.

In "Unleashing The Ideavirus", the author contends that
marketers gain the attention of consumers by getting them to
market to each other. You develop a marketable idea, then
urge and cajole consumers to pass it on to other consumers.
Hopefully, before long, your "ideavirus" will become so
infectious that it has spread to the whole world.

Interestingly, this "ideavirus" concept has come in for some
strong criticism from a leading advocate of personalization
in marketing. In his article, "Tying Up the Ideavirus", Eric
Norlin contends that although Godin's ingenious concept
breaks new ground, he is still operating on outdated
assumptions.

No matter what method you use to spread your message, says
Norlin, it's a mistake to think that a marketer can
"influence" or "control" the modern consumer.

People don't want messages shoved down their throats, he
warns, even if a fellow consumer is doing the shoving.
Today, people expect to control their own destinies, and
demand to be at least an equal partner in any marketing
dialog.

In the words of the revolutionary "The Cluetrain
Manifesto": "Markets are conversations" and "Markets consist
of human beings, not demographic sectors."

Why do I mention all this?

As email publishers, we all have one marketing message we
want to propagate as widely as possible: "Subscribe to my
publication!" In many cases, this is itself a means to
expose people to further messages: "Use my service!" or "Buy
my product!"

Which of these two strategies - Godin's "ideavirus" or
Norlin's "personalized marketing" - can we adapt and use in
promoting our lists? Better still, can we harness the best
of both these concepts, and use them to our advantage?

These questions crossed my mind when I received an email
last week from one of our readers, who publishes an
informative weekly newsletter related to her profession. She
asked for advice on effectively marketing the newsletter,
which is aimed at a fairly specialized audience: human
resources personnel, educational institutions, leaders of
certain professional associations.

Clearly, many popular promotional techniques that may work
well with publications catering to a more general
readership, cannot be easily used in this case.

Ad swaps or even paid ads in other ezines, would only be
effective if the host publication deals with a closely
related subject, and the right type may be difficult to
find. Submitting articles to other newsletters appears to be
problematic for the same reason.

So what should our reader do?

Let's take another look at her preferred readership profile.
Yes, it does comprise very specific groups of people, but
for that very reason, it should be a little easier to track
them down. And what's interesting here is that many of these
people will occupy positions of influence in their
particular communities - which also form part of the market
she wants to reach.

It may take a bit of detective work, but with the help of a
few contacts in the right places and some good directories,
our reader should come up with at least a few names and
addresses - whether email or postal - of people active in
her target communities. At the same time, she'll find out as
much as she can about these individuals and the companies or
institutions they're associated with.

The next step is a little harder. Our publisher writes a
personal letter to each individual, explaining the special
benefits of signing up for her newsletter and distributing
it to colleagues, students and associates.

To be sure, this might be especially tricky if she is
sending her letter by email, since it is unsolicited and
could be construed by some as spam. But if her recipients
are made to feel that she's writing to them personally, and
the message comes through strongly that her intentions are
for their benefit, problems will be unlikely.

Sending the letters by regular mail has one big advantage -
she could include a number of paper copies of one or more
sample issues and suggest that these be distributed to
interested parties. She might suggest further that some of
the contents be reproduced, with proper attribution, in
their institution's own publications.

Hopefully, our reader's enthusiasm will be infectious, and
unrestrained, friendly viruses will cause the outbreak of a
most welcome epidemic...

by ListChannel.Com Staff

If there's one ambition common to virtually all list owners,
irrespective of their motive in publishing, it's the desire
to amass more and more subscribers.

Some seem the end benefit of a larger subscriber base in
money, while for others more readers means more prestige.
But whatever their business or personal agendas may be, the
challenge of bigger circulations keeps the keen minds of
ambitious list publishers working overtime and constantly in
high gear.

Once a method of list promotion has proven itself to be
effective, it is quickly adopted and widely practiced. But
for every publisher who uses the technique with success,
there are probably one or two more who come away
disappointed. Even worse, they may find they have harmed
themselves.

Why? Well, it all boils down to a basic fact of life.

With every practical technique and operating procedure you
can think of - even the very best - there's a right way and
a wrong way of doing it. Do it the right way, and you're a
winner. Don't - and you'll know all about it!

Applying that rule to list promotion, let's look at the
practice of writing articles (or taking an article from your
own publication) and submitting them to other newsletters.
There seems to be a consensus among experienced publishers
that this could be the single most powerful method of
building your list, in the long term.

Yet, I'm willing to bet that some e-publishers out there
would vehemently disagree? Again - why? (I'm assuming that
their articles are up to standard.)

If you've had more than your fair share of disappointments
in this area, ask yourself these questions:

*Did I send out each article with a warm, personalized
letter addressed to each individual publisher, or did I send
it out in bulk with "undisclosed recipients" in the "TO"
field?

*Did I take the trouble to find out in advance whether my
article was suitable for the publication I sent it to, or
did I just pick a whole bunch of ezines I knew nothing
about, blast them my article and hope for the best?

*Did I imply that the other party would be doing his readers
a tremendous service by publishing my article, whereas it
was transparent that I would be the only one to gain?

(This last one reminds me of an online enterprise that
offers to send material promoting itself to publishers on a
monthly basis, under the guise of "valuable resources
tailored to your readership.")

And we can go on. And we can conduct similar postmortems
with other ways we use to promote our lists.

Another increasingly common, and potentially very effective,
way of promoting your list is to swap "recommendations" with
other publishers.

This mutual back-scratching: "I'll recommend your ezine if
you recommend mine" - can really work wonders the subscriber bases of both partners, providing both come across as sincere in their recommendations. The endorsements can be made in welcome messages, confirmation page for web subscriptions or in the publications themselves.

So far so good. But a very disturbing variation on this
theme has reared its head recently.

In defiance of one the most basic norms of e-publishing
ethics, a few list owners have actually GIVEN their mailing
lists to other publishers. The receiving publishers then
mail out sample issues of their own newsletters to the
addresses on the loaned list.

Now, when someone subscribes to a certain mailing list -
whether it's to receive a newsletter, free reports, product
updates or whatever - there is usually an implied
understanding that the list owner won't share the list with
anyone else. Responsible list owners often give an explicit
undertaking to this effect, but even if they don't, many
subscribers simply take it for granted.

But the problem here can be far more serious than the
academic issue of a breach of ethical conduct.

Unless you know the other publisher so well that you regard
his integrity and motives above suspicion, do you really
know what will happen to your list? Once your colleague has
sent out his sample copy, are you sure he won't be overcome
by the temptation to pass it on to others, or to use it to
broadcast spam messages?

Nowadays, many people with a number of different email
addresses, will use a unique address for every list they
subscribe to. All you need is for these people to be the
victims of spam emails bearing the addresses they only use
to subscribe to your ezine! (And if the wrath of the world
comes down upon your head, will you deny that you deserve
it?)

The moral of the story? Don't give your list to anyone! And
never ruin a potentially good system by going about things
the wrong way!

When a wonderful opportunity comes you way, why blow it?