Why Your Blog Must Have An Email List

Hi Gordon, Email Marketing is something that most bloggers overlook. They'll work on building their RSS, Facebook, Twitter and all other forms for social media contacts but do nothing about email. Most blogs don't even have an email list. And yet, this is the biggest factor separating the big money making bloggers from all the little guys – we have a mailing list. And if you truly want to make the big bucks in this business, you absolutely need a mailing list. You Email List Is Your Foundation Many bloggers think their blog is their foundation and everything else (twitter, facebook, RSS, etc.) builds around that. This might be true if you're just a blogger. However, if you're a blogger looking to make a pile of cash, your foundation is your email list and everything else builds around the list. When you have a big email list, you have a foundation that is so strong that not even Google can break you. The main purpose of my blog is to capture the leads coming to it. This is why new readers are hit with a big light box hover sign up box the first time they visit. I am building my foundation. Email Marketing Makes The Most Money Email marketing may seem very old school and not as glamorous as the latest social media craze. However, email marketing has one huge advantage over social media channels like Twitter and Facebook – Email marketing makes the most money. In my post on Email marketing vs. blog marketing vs Twitter marketing, Email came out on top by a wide margin. Email is still the most responsive medium for getting your offers in front of your readers. I know that if an offer does well with a blog post, it will do three to five times better when I send out an email about it. Don't let all those social media marketing experts fool you. Email is still where it's at. Hell, most of those social media gurus use Email marketing to sell you their social media course! Your Email List Can Leverage Other Sites The nice thing about email marketing it its versatility. You can use it for pretty much anything. My blog email list was used to launch Twitter Follower. Yes, I blogged about it to get people to sign up but the sign ups really started rolling in when I sent out an email to the list about it. Twitter Follower is getting over 100,000 page views per month now and it's largely thanks to the email list. Start Your List From Day 1 My biggest blogging mistake was not starting my blog mailing list from the get go. Because John Chow dot Com was a personal blog back then with no intentions of ever making money, I never applied my normal marketing tactics to it. Had I started the Email list from day 1, this blog would be making way more money. You Must Choose The Right Email Provider Choosing the right email marketing solution is even more important than choosing your blogging software. When you switch blog software, say from Blogspot to WordPress, you can port over all your post without losing any. However, switch email host providers and you'll stand to lose up 80% of your subscribers. This is because the provider will require your subscribers to opt in again because of the Canspam rule. So make sure you get the right email solutions provider from the get go. Don't Be Penny Wise and Pound Foolish This is a mistake I see new bloggers make all the time. They try to save some money by hosting their own list on some free software with the hopes of moving to email provider at a later date "after they've made some money." This is just being penny wise and pound foolish. You can build a list for free but the instance you try to import that list to a service like Constant Contact, you're going to lose 80% of the subscribers because they won't opt back in. Big money bloggers treat their their blogs like a business. And businesses have expenses. Hosting the email list is one of them.  If your blog doesn't have an email marketing list yet, RIGHT NOW would be the time to start one. Everyday you wait is money flying out the window. In part 2 of my Email marketing for bloggers guide, I'll show you how to get readers to subscribe to your list. In the mean time, go take a free test drive of Constant Contact. Remember, the money is in the list! John

John Chow dot Com, 1130 Garden Drive, Vancouver, BC V5L 4P9, Canada

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